Writing from a position of complete epidemiological ignorance, I nevertheless believe that the Government bluster about the new Covid strain is 90% smokescreen. This isn’t the first mutation, as Spanish citizens and Dutch (correction, it was Danish) mink well know.
In my suspicious mind, Johnson and Hancock needed some “new” news to legitimise their dramatic U turn, and they latched onto the new strain. Everything was hunky dory for a five day celebration on Friday morning, and then suddenly, it wasn’t.
IMO after Johnson’s performance at PMQs on Wednesday he should have announced tier four and his resignation at the same time. I downloaded the PMQs session from Parliament TV in case anybody hasn’t seen it. It’s disgraceful.
Due to popular demand a version that is 25mb as opposed to 70mb.
A larger version for those who may want to watch Johnson lying in HD.
Video not working here either.
I totally agree with your comments.
EU governments (France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Pays Bas) are taking the UK govt at its word…
Let e try and work on that Stella, I have to go into “problem determination mode”. However in the meantime i think it will work if you just cut and paste the following (without the "s) ino your browser.
What I take from that is that he is using the “mutation” as an excuse to justify doing something he should have done days ago but can’t admit he was wrong. However he forgot to consider what the impact would be on other countries in the EU…and strangely they want nothing to do with the UK!
Good timing with 11 days to go. Well done Prime Minister, what an example of statesmanship
Worse than that - from Guardian - France announced it was suspending passenger and human-handled freight transport from the UK for 48 hours from 11pm GMT.
Imagine how long this will take to unravel and how much perishable foodstuff will spoil.
I pity the poor truckers. Should be interesting in the supermarkets tomorrow.
An interesting foretaste of Brexit.
" In summary, NERVTAG has moderate confidence that VUI-202012/01 demonstrates a substantial increase in transmissibility compared to other variants.
• NERVTAG concluded that there are currently insufficient data to draw any conclusion on:…"
How else do you expect them to respond? If someone says this is true then they have to believe it is true and react accordingly.
A responsible government should have contacted neighbouring governments to discuss this anyway, but my guess is that they didn’t think this through - again.