Latest image of the covid cabinet trying to make decisions

 

There’s one covid decision looming over the horizon which is too delicious to disregard. Whichever way that particular cookie crumbles – the outcome will show us who is more powerful: the covid emperors or  the international footie VIPs. There might be a weasel-way out for the poor things. More on that below. 

Firstly though – a look at language. Rest assured, this isn’t about grammar and vocab. This is about a slip of the tongue by Hancock. Such slips-of-tongue reveal more about the thinking and the character of the speaker than any well-formulated phrases.

At the NHS Confederation’s annual conference both Whitty and Hancockup spoke. We’ll get to Whitty in a jiffy, first here’s Hancock on NHS waiting times, telling the conference that ‘Our Sacred Cow’ is facing a backlog twice as big as thought, with

‘a flood of up to 12.2 million people in need of elective procedures such as hip, knee and eye operations’ including the 5.1 million already on waiting lists (paywalled link).

Next, he said that dealing with this backlog will be ‘the greatest challenge the service had yet encountered’, reassuring his listeners that he is:

“[…] totally open about the fact that we fully expect the formally declared backlog to rise because there is another backlog out there – it just isn’t in the numbers.” (paywalled link)

Yes, well, he and SAGE have been shown to be less than correct when playing with numbers, so being vague is a good option. Here comes the language that truly irked me, so pay attention:

“Health bosses believe there could be a further 7.1 million who stayed away during the Covid pandemic but who will come forward demanding treatment, Mr Hancock revealed.” (paywalled link)

There it is: people, i.e. patients, ‘will come forward demanding treatment’. How very dare they! This slip of the tongue reveals brilliantly what Hancock, the DHSC civil serpents and NHS bosses think of us: we’re unreasonably ‘demanding’ treatment when sick. That’s why we’re a burden on the NHS. This sort of thing must be nipped in the bud. “We” must be nudged into accepting that we can’t expect, never mind demand, treatment: see the backlog – the one known so far and the one still to come. Don’t fall ill and make demands on you-know-what!

It’s no wonder that Whitty, speaking at the same conference, painted the usual picture of doom and gloom, aiming to prepare the background for more lockdowns:

“Chris Whitty told the NHS Confederation’s annual conference that while the forecast was “a lot better than it was”, there were “really quite a lot of things that we need to worry about, particularly I think this next surge, and then going into the following winter”. […] Whitty told the online event that the UK was now going into “what is likely to be a third surge and possibly a third significant wave”, with the scale not yet clear but with further hospital admissions and deaths.” (link, paywalled)

Amazing, isn’t it: yesterday’s MSM were reporting that the SAGE data used to rob us of our freedom were outdated – i.e. wrong and here’s Whitty trying to weasel out of this particular doom-prophecy by saying ‘the scale wasn’t clear’. And then he threw the kitchen sink into the mix:

“He said that he expected “a further late autumn/winter surge” because respiratory viruses found it easier to spread in colder months. How big a problem this will be, he said, depends on the success of vaccines and how the present wave progresses. […] However, once social contact restrictions are lifted, next winter will also see resurgence of flu and other viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in children, he added.” (link, paywalled)

One doesn’t need to be a prophet or SAGE modeller to predict that yes, masks will stay, and yes, restrictions and even lockdowns will be used, to ‘save the sacred cow’ again which will be working at full stretch to deal with the backlogs, known and unknown. Clearly, “we” peasants must be kept in check so that we won’t fall ill and ‘demand to be treated’.

And so to the delicious conundrum facing the covid government. It illustrates the mindset of those who deem themselves above us plebs. This mindset is international, as the images of the G7 meeting have shown. You remember them: the ‘leaders of the free world’ cavorting with no masks and no social distancing while the working stiffs handed round drinks and food, duly muzzled up. 

So here’s the latest ‘we’re VIPs, rules don’t apply to us’ incident. The ‘footie VIPs’ – there’s a tournament on, dontcha know, and we plebs all love footie, don’t we! – have demanded that the quarantine rules be waved for them, else they’d take the footie semi-finals and finals away from Wembley (link). So now ‘ministers’ are discussing if they should

“exempt Uefa and Fifa officials, politicians, sponsors and broadcasters from having to self-isolate on arrival despite concerns that this could lead to an increase in coronavirus infections and provoke a backlash from the public.” (link, paywalled)

There’s the conundrum: if our covid emperors won’t permit all those footie VIPs to come in without observing the quarantine rules which the travelling Brits have to, then UEFA could take away those semi-finals and finals from Wembley and give them to Hungary where the stadiums would be at full capacity. What would the British footie fans have to say to that?

Anyway, there are only about 2,500 VIPs who’d come here – a drop in the ocean, who’d notice! The G7 didn’t spread covid in Cornwall, did they – oh wait, there’s now ‘a spike’ in St Ives where all those G7 ‘support personnel’ were staying (link). Still, those VIPs wouldn’t mix with the footie plebs anyway, would they! Yes, our covid cabinet is twisting in the wind:

“Cabinet ministers are understood to have acknowledged that amending the law on border restrictions for VIPs could cause controversy at a time when millions of Britons are unable to take holidays abroad.” (link, paywalled)

Oh – they’ve noticed that? Perhaps that’s why these covid ministers are now dangling this little carrot of a possible ‘vaccine passport’ for the ‘double-jabbed’, to allow them to come back without going into quarantine. Mind you – this is again ‘jam tomorrow’, the covid government is only ‘considering’ it and it’ll be a few weeks at least before it’s done. But yeah, if VIPs from ‘amber countries’ are permitted unquarantined entry for the sake of footie then some carrot must be given to us plebs, in the form of eventually giving the double-jabbed the same permission – eventually, that is.

But this covid cabinet seems to have found a weasel-way out of this conundrum. They’re thinking of ‘ending’ this current lockdown earlier, provided the ‘data’ improve. The DM writes:

“Downing Street has opened the door to ending restrictions on July 5, amid growing evidence that assumptions used by government scientists to justify delaying Freedom Day were too pessimistic.” (link)

Here’s a lovely coinky-dinky: the semi-finals are on July 6th and 7th, the final is on July 11th. Wouldn’t that allow the covid cabinet to let all those footie VIPs in because we’d surely not complain since we’re getting our freedom back? Do we detect a hint of ‘fluff it – it’s footie, so let the plebs run free’?

Anyway – the covid torture implements are already in place, with the dire Whitty-warnings of illnesses an deaths to come, with the dire Hancock-warnings about huge backlogs, known and unknown, not least because we unreasonable peasants demand to be treated when ill.

While the covid emperors twist in the wind, dump your muzzles and switch off your smartphones should you still use one. The end of lockdown might actually be nigh-er than we were told at the beginning of the week.

KBO!

 

 

Photo by ashokboghani

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