The Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps has announced today that due to the continuation of social distancing measures post-lockdown, the capacity of public transport will now be just one-tenth what it was prior to the pandemic. He is suggesting that people start walking, riding or using escooters to travel to their work. He went further and said if people just now switch to driving cars, then the roads will be in gridlock.
To me, this typifies the government approach to this crisis. They say things without the depth of thought. Quite how hundreds of thousands of commuters who usually train into our cities are now expected to escooter their way along the motorways is quite an extraordinary statement to make.
But of course, we are talking about a government who chose to ignore the WHO advice of "test, test, test" and instead chose to listen to a professor who claimed that the only course of action available was a national lockdown so as to avoid the death of hundreds of thousands of people. In being so adamant about giving this instruction, Professor Neil Ferguson then chose to breach the lockdown repeatedly. The fact is of course that many people have been doing the same thing, maybe for not quite the same reasons (google him to see what I mean). It has been an unprecedented erosion of civil liberty.
At the very start of this, there was very little knowledge of how this virus spreads. All the public have been told is that old men seem to be most prone to death. There are implications for elderly people in general, especially if they suffer from underlying medical problems. Hub cities attract more cases, as does population density, as does BAME.
But why can't people be given a choice? Why couldn't they have been given a choice a long time ago more to the point? The government could give us the facts as they know it, and let the people decide. By all means give clear warnings as to the consequences of not social distancing, the risks to the elderly but just let them make their own choices. For sure, get smart and help the population to trace contact with people who have the virus. Sweden (and others) has shown the world that no lockdown can still result in significantly fewer deaths than the UK has suffered.
Our government locked down the nation before it had even tested all the NHS and care worker staff to ensure they were not passing the virus on to the elderly. Get your head around that nonsense for a minute. This has been a government making choices within a culture of fear. It does make me wonder how we would fare in a time of war. I wonder how much of the fear that they like to spread is related to attempting to be seen to take the pandemic ever so seriously. "You can't possibly think of sacking me, look how seriously I've taken this situation."
But fundamentally it's wrong to stop people going to church, or see their elderly parents if they know the risk and still want to. It's wrong not to allow parents to hold the hand of a teenager in a critical condition on a hospital bed [see the previous blog]. And given the fact that this pandemic mostly affects the elderly, it's wrong to close down the whole nation.
I would argue you don't have to be particularly intelligent or street-wise to recognise these points. Blimey, I'm just an owner of a driving school franchise, I regularly come last on our family zoom quizzes, and even I could see weeks ago, right from wrong (as evidenced by this blog).
Right from wrong. People seem to be fearful of expressing their views nowadays. Instead, what we have is the public expression of constant virtue signalling of authoritarian leaning folk, who if they are not telling you how shit you are on social media, are busy snitching you to the authorities. It is ok to think for yourself. You don't have to get permission for critical thought. And if your conclusion goes against the mainstream, it doesn't automatically make you any less correct.
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