THE National should perhaps find some means of marking tomorrow, March 3. It was on March 3 a year ago that, in the light of the developing coronavirus crisis, the UK Government advisory body SAGE gave clear advice that the government should warn against shaking hands and hugging.
It was also the day that Boris Johnson told reporters: “I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands.” (It will come as no surprise to those who have followed the mendacious career of Johnson that there were no patients with coronavirus in the hospital.)
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It is important to recall this incident. The Conservative government are basking in the success of the vaccination programme and are using it as a screen to begin the re-writing of their performance in handling the pandemic, as seen in Hancock’s tour of the media outlets last week playing down (at best) the PPE shortages. Johnson’s words more accurately reflect the ineptness that marked the government’s performance.
By March 3 he had already missed five meetings of the Cobra committee. In the months that followed, the UK Government was slow to lock down, oversaw PPE and ventilator shortages, built Nightingale hospitals they could not staff, outsourced the test and trace system to disastrous effect, supervised a scandalous PPE procurement exercise, mishandled quarantine, eased the first lockdown too soon, instigated the ill-advised “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme and, having learned nothing, was slow to lock down on a second and then on a third occasion.
This list of shattering and repeated incompetence should not be forgotten and we should not allow them to try to forget it.
Gavin Brown
Linlithgow
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