Lockdown diary, day 24

What a day.

  • Captain Tom completes his walk and has raised more than £16 million for NHS charities.
  • The lockdown extended for three weeks - a sad necessity.
  • More people than ever taking part in the "Clap for carers" at 8pm
  • And proof positive that on the issue of whether we should listen to experts, British politics has completely reversed itself.

Remember when it was Brexit supporters like the present PM, Foreign secretary and cabinet office minister, Messrs Johnson, Gove and Raab, who were accused (with more than a small degree of justice) of ignoring or rubbishing the advice of experts?

I was clearing up some old newspapers to go out for recycling today, and fell about laughing when I found a newspaper from as recently as the start of the pandemic in which some daft Guardianista journo was expressing the fear that Johnson, Gove and Cummings would not pay enough attention to the experts.

Well, for the past few weeks it has been exactly the other way around. It's the government which has been listening to the experts, and the critics - whether they are the ones who say the government  should have locked down harder and sooner to save more lives, or that they should have done the opposite to protect the economy, or the imbeciles who think anyone who doesn't belong in bedlam can simultaneously make both criticisms - who are ignoring the expert advice.

If you want any indication of who appears to be playing the anti- expert card now, today ITV's Robert Peston asked

"It appears to be government by scientist. Should that concern us?"

One of the replies to this on Twitter, from Bea Johanssen, was


"We aren't governed by scientists, but by politicians heeding expert advice.

It beats government by journalist."

Quite.


Keep well.

Stay home; protect the NHS; save lives.

Comments

Jim said…
An example of everyone doing all they can to get to the stage of relaxing the lock down is here

We Need a stategey to get to the point where we can consider realeasing the lock down

CAN WE HAVE IT?

An exit strategy is not how the lock down is realeased, its a plan of how to get to the point where the lock down is released. I think a lot of people dont get that. We need an exit stategy.
Chris Whiteside said…
The government has put out tens of thousands of words about the strategies it has adopted to try to get us towards the point where we can loosen the lockdown - such as the five point plan to increase testing, and yes, increasing both testing for who has the disease and getting to the point where we have a proper testing programme for who has antibodies are both very important.

In the meantime what we all need to do is maintain social distancing so as to limit the amount of this disease circulating in society. Because that is a necessary condition for ending the lockdown.

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