Idiot See, Idiot Do

Perhaps the most striking thing about the current BoJo crisis – more so than whether coworkers singing Happy Birthday counts as a party or not – was the way a section of society grabbed onto the first suggestions, back in December, that there may have been a party in Downing Street during lockdown to declare “If Boris can break the law, so can I!”

Bear in mind, this wasn’t after several apparent breaches of lockdown rules had been revealed and the Prime Minister was known to have been, at least tangentially, involved with a couple. This was back when there was a vague, “something probably happened, we don’t know what exactly, we don’t know if any rules were breached, and we don’t know if the Prime Minister was even in the vicinity at the time, let alone involved.” So, not even the ‘maybe he did’ we have now.

But, that didn’t matter. Idiots see, idiots do – especially when they already wanted to do it in the first place…

So, we had one man on the BBC news demanding that his fine for hosting a law-breaking party should be quashed because of Boris. Does anyone imagine that’s how the law works? Not that Boris, if found guilty, ought to be fined, too?

Then, there was a woman interviewed at the London New Year celebrations by the BBC who explained that she had never attended them before but, inspired by Boris, had decided to break that habit and turn up during a pandemic, because… well, there didn’t seem to be any good reason… Naturally, neither she nor her fellow revellers were wearing masks or bothering to maintain a distance. But, who cares? Boris broke the law, so it’s all okay and COVID isn’t contagious anymore.

Now, there’s no doubt that Downing Street, whether guilty of breaking the actual law or not, showed a distinct hypocrisy towards the COVID rules. But, as galling as a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude can be, that doesn’t mean rushing out to ape bad decisions is a good idea. Unfortunately, it seems there are plenty of idiots who think that it is.

Don’t Politicise Vaccines!

One of the reasons American politics are so toxic is that so many issues have become intrinsically bound to a political party. If you take a particular stance on an issue then you are expected to affiliate yourself with a party and support its views on every other issue. If you support a party, you must follow its lead on every issue even if you don’t understand the ins-and-outs of it. There can be no real debate, no real understanding of complexities and nuances, only ad homine arguments and shouting.

The UK is hardly free of such things, especially as it so often takes its lead from America, but, on the whole, issues are relatively divorced from political position and the plethora of political parties and the fact you do not have to link yourself to one before expressing an opinion, mean things aren’t quite so toxic here.

Thus, it has been possible in the UK to discuss vaccination and lockdowns and other responses to the pandemic without politics muddying the water beyond the shouting of a lunatic fringe and the rare knee-jerk opposition reaction to a government pronouncement. It has been possible to discuss the efficacy and safety of vaccines or the pros and cons of lockdown without people digging in and spewing bile because of their political position. There has been plenty of disagreement, but it’s generally been productive more than destructive.

Which is why I think the government floating the idea of ‘vaccine passports’, yet again, despite knowing there is substantial opposition, is such a bad idea.

Indeed, doing so has not only introduced politics into a realm where it has no right to be, but has also had the opposite of the intended effect as young people, keen not to be barred from nightclubs and concerts, rush to have their second jabs as quickly as possible, without the necessary gap to ensure maximum effectiveness.

I’m due for my second jab (not proving easy to arrange with the NHS website offline) and I don’t want my decision to have it to be given a political dimension. Suddenly, getting it verges on a political statement. I don’t agree with ‘vaccine passports’, identity cards by the backdoor, and being jabbed makes it seem as if I do. Of course, I can have it and refuse to carry such a ‘passport’ and refuse to discuss (or, even lie about) my vaccination status, but it still feels as if going ahead with it is giving ammunition to the government as it takes this course.

My health shouldn’t be a political plaything. I shouldn’t have to factor in how my decision pans out politically when I make a decision about my body. We’ve seen how that works in America, where such decisions are divorced from facts and commonsense, and I don’t want that to happen here.

So, please, Prime Minister, don’t politicise vaccines with yet another attempt to introduce identity cards and controls that nobody wants!

Freedom for idiots!

I’m a strong supporter of freedom. I don’t want the state intruding into my life any more than is absolutely necessary. I’m opposed to identity cards and vaccine passports. The way that certain elements in authority have leapt at the opportunities offered by Covid-19 to try and introduce restrictions by the back door alarm me. But, what alarms me more, is the way in which certain people have played into their hands by refusing to go along with sensible, temporary precautions to protect public health.

Although we must always be wary of giving up freedom temporarily – for governments are never keen to return it – there are situations when it is is necessary, both for our own safety and that of others. It is right that people might be required to remain in place during a terrorist incident or be barred from entering an area, for example, just as lockdowns and the requirement to wear masks have been justified during the current situation.

Unfortunately, there are some people who are so obsessed with their freedoms and rights that they refuse to give them up, even for the briefest of times, no matter how necessary. And, for some reason, they seem to believe the greatest right of all is to be a jerk – and, incomprehensibly, forget that other people have rights. They’re the ones who see their right to free speech as a right to be abusive and offensive, then complain if anyone expresses an opinion on their behaviour (isn’t that free speech, too?). They refuse to wear masks, then complain that shops won’t allow them entry – forgetting that shops, as private businesses, have the right to refuse entry to whomever they want. They’re the sort of person who see no connection between rights and responsibilities and would happily harm others if it suited them – but, will immediately whine if they are so much as inconvenienced by others.

But, it’s not just that their behaviour is harmful to others, but is actually counter-productive. As much as I’m an advocate for freedom, I was happy to suffer restrictions for a short time in order to keep myself and others safe and bring Covid-19 under control so that, with the arrival of vaccines, we could return to normal life. Indeed, I think the British government was too slow and too timid in responding to the situation – swifter and stronger controls stood a real chance of bringing it quickly under control and allowing a return to life with minimal disruption. But, as much as they dithered, it was the idiots who refused to comply with sensible restrictions for a short time who have ensured that the disruption lasted much longer than necessary. All those idiots who shout about their right to not wear a mask and congregate together, have contributed to the resurgence of the virus each time it seemed it might be under control – and, each resurgence meant a renewed lockdown and further restrictions.

Had everyone cooperated, whether out of self-interest or respect for others, things would be better now and we would face fewer restrictions. If, as vaccinations continue, people behave sensibly, we should be able to return to something close to normal – and the government would have little excuse to continue enforcing restrictions. Instead, the selfish bevaviour of those who cannot see past their own rights in the present, have ensured and may continue to ensure that the lockdown has gone on longer than it ought to have and that restrictions have been tighter – and, through their stupid behaviour, have provided a foundation upon which the government can build a case for retaining such restrictions, even as they become unnecessary.

Yes, counterproductively, those who have shouted loudest about freedom have done the most to help erode it.

Hopefully, most people will be sensible and we will be able to reduce the virus to a status no worse than the flu, meaning the government will have no excuse to keep restrictions in place and no further waves to justify future lockdowns.  Hopefully, but not certainly.

What are the rules again?

With England on the verge of a new nationwide lockdown, we hear frequent complaints that it is only necessary because people haven’t been following the rules. And, while it is true there are idiots out there – you see them on the news congregating for one last booze up the night before a local lockdown goes into effect without a hint of social distancing or mask wearing – a bigger problem, and one that likely feeds these idiots, is that the authorities and media are not very good at getting the message across what the rules actually are.

We’ve had a top policeman admit to a parliamentary committe that he doesn’t understand the rules and has had to ask his daughter to explain them to him, before getting them wrong in his evidence to the committee! The Prime Minister has managed to muddle his announcement of new rules. The Welsh government indicated, and media reported, that clothing was not considered an essential only for them to then say it was – they also said they were reviewing their advice on what constituted essential items only to backtrack and say nothing was changing (leaving the question of whether clothing was essential or not unresolved, at least as far as reporting on the national news went; whether the Welsh themselves know the answer, I cannot say). Even a BBC report suggested that the Rule of Six meant you could meet with six other people (which would give a total of seven) rather than allowing for a total of six to gather.

Of a dozen maps of the UK I have seen in newspapers and online showing which tier areas are in, only one correctly showed Southend-on-Sea as tier one, with most colouring it in as tier two with the rest of Essex (despite the constant mentions of the fact it wasn’t included on the national news).

It’s no wonder nobody is certain what the rules are! And, as more areas are moved into higher tiers and new rules introduced, it seems likely that confusion will only grow…

Forget saving Christmas – save our sanity and simplify things!

The Science of Six?

When a government fumbles a situation, it is inevitable that they will attempt to show they are in control through overkill. Thus, having made a mess of dealing with the pandemic from the beginning, the central and devolved governments are busy trying to cram the diseased genie back in the bottle through harsh but ineffective measures, number one of which is The Rule of Six.

Although it sounds like something sinister from a speculative fiction novel, The Rule of Six means simply that no more than six people may gather together, indoors or out unless they are part of the same household.

Where’s the science?

It should be immediately obvious that there is no good science behind this as it makes no reference to households – six people from six households meeting up will potentially spread the virus further than seven people from two households.

To further complicate things, children don’t count towards the total in Scotland and Wales, but do in England, despite all, presumably, being equally likely (or unlikely) to be carriers regardless of borders.

The rule also falls apart because there are lots of arbitrary exceptions to it – and, there is no reason for the different numbers given for different activities (a funeral can have thirty attendees, a wedding fifteen and a christening is restricted to the general six, for example). Nor is there any reason why a vicar doesn’t count as a person…

I can almost buy the idea that organised sports are safer as, in theory, the organisers should be ensuring participants should behave appropriately, but does adding a referee really make a football match safer than if a bunch of friends get together for a socially-distanced kick about?

Then, of course, there are all the exceptions for things like work and jury duty, because co-workers won’t spread the virus to you like your friends will…

How do they know?

I also have to ask how anyone is supposed to know whether a group larger than six consists of people of the same household or not. Will large families find themselves being harassed by busybodies when out shopping and receive visits from the police because some nuisance neighbour has reported a large gathering? Or, will groups be ignored because people assume they must be a household?

And, although we are enjoined to have nothing to do with people who aren’t part of your group, what is to stop someone leaving a group to join another? A social butterfly could flit from group to group spreading the virus!

More Commonsense, Less Rules

Although there are plenty of idiots who insist on getting together to party or refuse to wear masks, most people have been cooperative and pretty sensible. Rather than introducing more rules, inevitably mapping poorly onto the complexities of real life, it would make sense to better enforce the key ones, such as masks, and encourage people to use their commonsense, especially as overly-complicated rules mean people often aren’t sure what exactly they can and can’t do.

The simple fact is that Covid-19 is here for the long run and we must deal with it. Life has to go on. Risk can be managed. It is impossible to be 100% safe and poorly-thought-out rules will only make life harder, while doing little or nothing to combat the virus.

Proximity and Time

Although Covid-19 has been with us for a while, it seems that a lot of people don’t really understand the specifics of how it is spread. For example, how often have people complained “If people can stand in a queue outside a shop, they can go back to the office”?

Risk

It seems that people do not understand that the two major factors affecting how likely you are to catch the virus, as long as you are washing your hands and not putting them all over your face, come down to proximity and time.

Proximity should be obvious – it’s the reason people are told to keep their distance from each other. The further away from an infected person you are, the less likely you are to catch their germs because they will fall to earth before they reach you. Standing six feet apart, as usually recommended, doesn’t guarantee their germs won’t reach you, but it significantly reduces the risk. If you can put more distance between yourself and others, the safer you are likely to be.

Time should be obvious, too. The longer you are close to an infected person, the more likely you are to become infected. Thus, standing in a queue puts you at more risk than briefly walking past someone in the street. Thus, whilst keeping your distance is a good idea, if you have to brush past someone, you probably won’t be at too much risk. This is where the standing in queues means you can go back to the office argument falls down – even if the workplace maintains good social distancing (and, not all can), you’re spending hours in the vicinity of people who might be infected compared to minutes in a queue. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the virus can remain airborne in an invisible cloud for some time indoors (generally, outdoors, the wind will dissipate it, and the sun is likely to kill the virus). This is a risk in a shop, but shoppers will probably move quickly through such a cloud, minimising the chance of infection – but, if your asymptomatic co-worker is breathing out the virus in an office setting, you’re almost guaranteed to be exposed.

The fact that being at work, as opposed to a short outing to the shops, means you are likely to use toilets, stairwells and/or lifts (all places where such clouds can form due to poor ventillation) and many offices have ventillation systems that move potentially-infected air through the entire building, exposing more people to risk, only increase the risk.

Precautions

Which isn’t to say that we should just shut down the economy until a vaccine exists or herd immunity has developed. Many people are willing to return to work and, with the right precautions, could do so.

The major problems are dealing with ventillation issues and ensuring distancing. If the flow of air can be improved without recycling it throughout the building, the first issue could be dealt with to some extent. The latter requires that a significant number of workers continue working from home if possible.

Of course, some businesses, such as factories, don’t allow working from home and the risk of infection may have to be faced. As long as masks are worn and handwashing maintained, the risks can be minimised if never eliminated.

We need a commonsense approach to the situation, but one that better understands the risks and how to reduce them.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

The media have long been enamoured of statistics without context to explain their real meaning and the current situation has seen them presenting more context-less statistics than usual. Indeed, without context, statistics are essentially meaningless.

Here are two examples relating to diabetes (one Covid-19 and one general):

• Apparently, one in five people who die from Covid-19 are diabetic. The inference from the article that we are clearly intended to draw is that people with diabetes are at higher risk from the virus, but without any reference to the proportion of people in the UK who have diabetes, the only conclusion that could be drawn from the bald numbers is that diabetics are less likely to die as four non-diabetics die for every diabetic. What we need to know is if diabetics make up a fifth of the population (in which case the number of deaths is what you would expect if it played no role in them), more than a fifth (in which case either diabetes protects against the virus or shielding has protected diabetics from catching it), or diabetics make up less than a fifth of the population and the virus is killing them more often. (In fact, about 6% of the UK population is diabetic, so the virus is killing over three times as many compared to healthy people. So, yes, diabetics should be worried.)
• Diabetes UK reported newspapers claiming that diabetics were a dispropotionate drain upon the NHS. But, it turned out the statistic only represented people with diabetes who were treated in hospital – not people who were treated in hospital for issues realted to their diabetes. Although some of the people were there due to their diabetes, the numbers also included people who happened to have diabetes but were attending hospital because they had tripped over their cat, been involved in a car crash, had flu or any other of a number of reasons that non-diabetics attend for. Far from swamping the NHS, the number of people attending because of diabetes was roughly the number you would expect.

Then, there were the statistics relating to deaths of non-Whites from the virus that immediately saw the government trying to suppress the report in case it reflected badly upon them and a band of activists practically accusing the government of a policy of genocide (or, the mindless virus itself of having a racist agenda).

The problem was that, whilst non-Whites were definitely dying at a higher rate than they should (Jews, too, suffered more deaths than the size of their community warranted), the bald statistics told us nothing about why. Given that genetic differences can affect how a virus hits a person (making it easier or harder to fight off), it was possible that there was a genetic component. Or, as seems likely, there is the fact that minorities make up a disproportionate number of NHS and care staff, whilst also often filling roles such as bus drivers that have been hard hit by the virus, as more of them have been exposed compared to, say, furloughed office workers.

Providing context also seemed to show that the number of non-white deaths weren’t disporportionate when adjusted for poverty – a poor black person was no more likely to die than a poor white person. Unfortunately, thanks to a complex of reasons, including racism, a higher proportion of black people in the UK are poor than white people.

There was also an interesting discovery that seems to have had no follow up: Apparently minorities are less likely to go into hospital (due, it seems, to a combination of economic necessity and wariness of the system), yet, for unclear reasons, white people were less likely to survive being admitted. Maybe it’s just with more being admitted, more die there than at home, but without context…

No, without actually knowing what the numbers mean, statistics are meaningless. Yet, they can cause panic and division. The media need to be a lot more responsible in how they present them – especially in the current climate.

Complacency Kills

It cannot be denied that Britain could have done better in responding to Covid-19, so it may seem surprising that in a study into preparedness for just such an outbreak the country was ranked number two in the world for its readiness to cope. Number one was the USA, which handled the crisis even more poorly. Germany was significantly lower down the list and yet did far better in containing the disease, although, now that it has loosened restrictions, reports indicate the situation there is worsening.

Of course, luck has played some part. Germany and Italy responded in a similar way, but the German outbreak began amongst young people returning from skiing holidays and was fairly localised, making it far easier for the country to contain the spread, compared to Italy’s outbreak, which began in a region with an elderly population with a high number of smokers, which meant the disease spread quickly and in a more deadly manner, overwhelming the local health services.

But, why did Britain and America, at the top of the list, perform so badly? The answer is simple: Complacency. Because they were confident – overconfident – in their ability to cope and the initial outbreak wasn’t as deadly as a pandemic could be and China seemed to be containing it, the authorities dragged their feet, wary of damaging the economy or causing panic due to an aggressive reaction that might prove unnecessary.

Unfortunately, although Covid-19 isn’t that devastating, the lack of a swift response has seen it cause more deaths than it needed to. Of course, multiple countries, especially China, are to blame. The 2002-04 SARS outbreak provided a clear template on how to handle such a potential pandemic and quash it before it got going – indeed, the experts literally wrote the book on what to do in the aftermath of SARS – yet, the lessons were forgotten or ignored in favour of expediency and nobody in charge in China, the WHO, the USA, UK or elsewhere reacted as they should, transforming what might have been a historical footnote into an outbreak that has severely impacted people around the world.

But, whilst it is Boris Johnson and his government who take the flak here in the UK, it is the civil service, NHS managers, procurement managers and the like who must take the bulk of the blame. Not only is the government reliant upon the information its subordinants pass up to them and the advice they receive from experts in their departments, but they also rely on those same people to carry out their agenda. Some experts might genuinely be able to say they weren’t listened to when they were warning about the danger, but there wasn’t a clear consensus on how dangerous Covid-19 would be and how to respond (thanks to ignorance of post-SARS planning) and, indeed, the issue was clouded by the pros and cons of different approaches – one based upon testing and tracking like Germany would have been better than wholesale lockdown and aiming for herd immunity, but, given that testing still hasn’t been properly organised in the UK, it’s clear the idea was abandoned because it was impossible to put in place, a failure that clearly falls upon the lower levels of management that were actually supposed to be implementing it.

Likewise, lockdown should have occurred earlier and been better prepared for, but not only did the government need to weigh up its options between that and the economic impact (and witness all the whining and arguments now!), but even the medical experts were pointing out the dangers of lockdown, both in direct medical terms of restricting access to medicine for people with other illnesses and the problems of ensuring vulnerable people received food and care, and in terms of the economic impact, which could affect the provison of health and social care longterm.

Then, we have the fact that civil servants have been directly implicated in not providing information to the government when it came to EU plans to pool resources to produce PPE. The government was (falsely) accused of putting Brexit before lives when, it has been revealed, the civil servants who attended the EU meetings showed no interest in being involved (doubtless due to the complacency the British authorities felt) and failed to inform the government of what was on offer. (Of course, it should also be noted that the EU PPE project has, so far, failed to actually produce any PPE for member states, so Britain hasn’t actually missed out, and co-operation between member states – such as the aid given to Italy by Germany, or the provision of German ventilators to Britain – has occured nonetheless.)

Of course, whilst the bulk of the blame can be laid at the civil servants and managers who have, unsurprisingly to anyone who is aware of Whitehall’s failings, not done their jobs properly, that doesn’t entirely absolve the government of blame. Ministers could have been more decisive, even in the light of conflicting evidence – after all, the lockdown could have been lifted if it wasn’t effective, but delaying its implementation caused deaths – and they should have been more proactive in policing their civil servants when it became clear they weren’t providing accurate information or properly implementing policy. And, even if bad advice, understaffing or incompetence may have played a role, there is absolutely no excuse for the fact that planes are still landing from countries with high infection rates without testing or quarantining taking place.

Yes, the government will have questions to answer about the shortcomings of its response to the outbreak, but any investigation into the failings must go much deeper than the ministers and must result in more than resignations or dismissals of ministers or top civil servants. There needs to be a fundamental restructuring of the departments responsible for keeping us safe and an end to the slackness and complacency, because complacency kills. Literally.

Life Under Lockdown – Week One

Although this week is the first under lockdown in the UK, people were being discouraged from going out last week. Of course, that meant everyone rushed out to empty the supermarket shelves and I ended up going out four times rather than the usual twice in a not-quite-successful attempt to just buy our usual groceries. With nothing left on the shelves, it was difficult to shop normally, let alone stock up in order to avoid going out.

As a result, I was forced to venture out again on Tuesday for medicine and food.

I joined the dance of proximity avoidance outside the chemist hatch for a while as the small cluster of people waiting for medicine kept in constant movement as people joined or left and we tried to keep our distance from one another in a fairly small open space. Could definitely be organised better, but it’s probably good exercise!

Although we could survive for a while without perishable foods, medicine is a necessity. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find a volunteer who can fetch it as my visit to the chemist showed it to be difficult keeping my distance from others there.

There were few people in Wilko and they were actually trying to stay apart. Sainsburys, on the other hand, was fairly crowded and people didn’t seem to care about getting close to one another in the melee, necessitating lots of evasive action on my part (especially from the woman who nearly walked into me in an otherwise empty aisle, apparently operating on the basis that social distancing meant everyone else was meant to leap out of her way to maintain distance) to get relatively little as most shelves were still empty or nearly so.

For a brief moment, I thought I’d found eggs, but it turned out there were just a couple of boxes of smashed eggs on the shelf. Presumably the results of an earlier tussle.

Then, I went to Lidl, which was limiting how many people could enter the store and where people were patiently queueing with plenty of space between them, waiting to go in. Likewise, once inside, people maintained plenty of distance, helped by the fact there weren’t hordes.

Going into Lidil was like entering paradise – food on the shelves! Strange that what was normal just a couple of weeks ago now seems surprising. Still, it can be done. If only other supermarkets would get a grip.

So, here we are. How will things evolve as time goes on? That’s a question nobody can answer with any certainty…