Following the Science

I can't help but feel that Boris 'The Lazy Bastard' Johnson's dashboard analogy - with regard to the rapidly rising number of Covid-19 cases - is unfortunate.  To be precise, he said that the rising number of cases was 'flashing at us like dashboard warnings in a passenger jet'.  (Quite why he thinks that only passenger jets have dashboards with warning lights is beyond me - I can assure him that private planes, cargo planes and military planes have them too.  They aren't exclusive to jets either - piston engined aircraft also feature them.  I know, I know.  I'm being a pedant, but what the Hell, the likes of Johnson really need to be more precise with their language).  Now, I've never flown a passenger jet, or any other aircraft, for that matter, but I do drive a car and I know that when warning lights flash up there, it is usually the result of previous neglect: missed services and oil changes, for instance.  Moreover, ignoring the warnings can lead to serious damage being done to the engine or other vital systems, (unless it is a late model Saab, where certain warning lights are the result of an over complex electronic system and seem to come on and off at random).  So, bearing in mind that the infection rate has been steadily rising for weeks now, following the dashboard analogy can only lead one to the conclusion that the government has been neglecting the 'maintenance' of the pandemic for some time now.  Neglecting it to the extent that, to extend the car analogy, serious damage might already have been done.

But Johnson isn't using a car dashboard analogy, he's using an aircraft dashboard analogy.  Which makes it worse: when those lights start flashing on an airliner, it is a sign that there is a good possibility that it might fall out of the sky at any moment, (listen, I've seen all of the Airport movies, I know about this stuff).  So, if his analogy was meant to reassure people, it is more likely to alarm them, giving the impression that he believes the country is about to crash and burn.  (Which is ridiculous, obviously - we did that ages ago, thanks to Tory austerity policies).  But not to worry - the government has now come up with its 'tier system' of local lockdowns, whereby every part of the country will be placed under one of the tiers: medium, high, very high.  (Note that there is no 'low' or 'normal' tier, giving the impression that we are to be forever locked in this crisis).  I'm not sure what the criteria for each tier actually is - probably the government doesn't either, judging by their past performance with regard to the pandemic.  According to the Crapchester Chronicle, the town is likely to become a Covid 'hotspot' within a few weeks - what that actually means in terms of lockdown tiers, I have no idea.  Is it sufficient criteria for the guys in hazmat suits to start appearing, burning the bodies of victims in the street?  I don't know and neither, I strongly suspect, do the authorities.  The tier system seems designed only to deal with pre-existing conditions rather than the possibility of escalation.  But hey, we shouldn't worry, Boris Johnson is on the case and he's 'following the science'.  What 'science' I'm not sure, (the sort expounded by second string character actors in lab coats and glasses in B-movies, I suspect), but apparently it doesn't matter, just so long as it is labelled 'science'.