Hidden in the Shadow of the Limelight

There has been much attention, and rightly so, given to the way in which the Government has responded to this pandemic. Be it testing numbers, PPE quantities or the way in which social distancing measures have been enforced. In these times of trouble, the mainstream response has been one of widespread acclaim and praise flung in the Governments direction: frankly, the coverage the BBC have been giving makes their coverage of the 2019 election look like an advert for how brilliant Jeremy Corbyn is. Of course, this rubs off on people, ‘Oh that Bowis is doing a lovely job’ and ‘Haven’t they done so well’. Well sorry to burst your bubble Karen but no, they’ve been about as useful as an earthworm at containing this virus, and in all honesty, I think that’s slightly unfair on the mental capacity and empathy a worm has.

Unpacking this paragraph, it may seem like I’ve been overly scathing on the response that’s been made; Afterall, are death figures not now coming down with testing going up? Is PPE not now more available than ever? Are hospital beds not now becoming increasingly available as the virus becomes gradually more and more contained? In answering these, I must disagree with the premise of each of the questions. It is not where we are now that we should be focusing on. Certainly, in looking at this in only this one-dimensional way it’s almost tempting to praise the government for their action, but this would be neglectful in numerous ways.

To be clear, it is without doubt incredibly positive that the virus is coming under control and I hope that no one disputes this. The problem comes, however, in giving the Government praise and pass for their previous inaction: allowing them to hide in the shadow of the limelight is adjacent to allowing praise to ISIS for slowing their number of terrorist attacks. The point being that in each case there were thousands of avoidable deaths.

Let us unpack this further. Where did the government go wrong is perhaps the less apt question here as really, we ought to be searching high and low for the few flickering examples of what they have done right. Starting with the basics, the timing of the lockdown was horrendously late: by the time the virus had hit our shores, the severity of the global challenge was already well known with many countries, interestingly the ones that have far fewer deaths and already coming out of lockdown, enforcing ‘stay at home’ measures long before the daily death toll was even allowed to become worrying. Next we have the severe lack of testing and tracing with the underreporting of figures being chronically misleading as to where the progress of the virus is. Then we come onto to the NHS and PPE. Truly, NHS staff have proved themselves once again to be our saviours, containing the virus as best they can with their very limited resources of funding, beds and PPE; all the while the legislating death profiteers sell off our PPE to other countries for a tidy profit. Money is worth more to them than a human life, it seems.

The common derivative of the issues here lies squarely with years of Tory austerity and their crippling underfunding of the NHS for the last decade: their lack of early action all in the hopes of protecting the economy, an economy that is supposed to serve and better the very people who have been killed for its short term betterment.

This is merely a glancing look at the atrocities committed by this Government in the last month and the autopsy of this pandemic will only reveal stab wounds to the heart of the public with a sharp knife bearing the name ‘Austerity’ carved precisely into the handle.

It is not the Government we should be praising; your time is much better spent on the earthworm: at least it’s not a murderer.