I wrote the below piece when the real story behind the Government's 'protective ring' around care homes was just being exposed in early July. But I forgot to post it.
I don’t expect any government or institution to get everything right in a pandemic. Not straight away.
But the UK Government have consistently ignored the science when it doesn’t suit the herd immunity policy they seem set on delivering. They also ignored the experience of other countries, which we had the benefit of and we could have acted upon given the timeframe of the disease spread in the early stages. But this failure has been well documented.
The worst thing now, however, is that they haven’t learnt.
The UK is slowly opening up for business with an 'R' rate still hovering close to 1 and one localised infection spike already forcing part of Leicester back into lockdown. Several SAGE committee members warned against opening up too soon. I genuinely hope we avoid a second wave, but I fear it’s likely. Or this re-opening of the UK will just ensure the first wave keeps on going, which is a novel response to disease management. But it seems to be what they’ve opted for.
The over-arching media policy during this pandemic seems to be Lie, Obfuscate, Confuse the Narrative, Double Down on the Lie, Obfuscate, Repeat. It’s straight out of the Steve Bannon and Roger Stone playbook.
An example of this is the ‘protective ring’ they claimed to throw around care homes. It was non-existent. But they pretended there was one. The result was that 25,000 untested people who couldn't be treated by an under-resourced NHS were discharged into care home, meaning the infected went on to infect other residents. Even worse, the Government are now trying to shift the blame onto under-resourced and under-paid care home staff.
As The Guardian reported, this prompted an explosion from Mark Adams, the chief executive of leading social care charity Community Integrated Care: 'We’re almost entering an… alternative reality where the Government set the rules, we follow them and they don’t like the results and they then deny setting the rules and blame the people that were trying to do their best.'
If the Government have thrown a protective ring around care homes with the same speed that they threw one around Durham sight-tester Dominic Cummings and Clearly Corrupt Minister of Backhanders Robert Jenrick, then we may well have fewer grieving families.
But they didn’t. They can own that.
This blaming of other people is shameful. It’s the despicable tactic of a failing coward of a Prime Minister and his minions who hope they can make people look the other way by scapegoating somebody else. But the Government have done it elsewhere. At various times, they've also tried to blame NHS staff for over-using PPE, the NHS, the WHO, teachers, trade unions, scientific advice, young people and Public Health England.
It's shameful. But it's also part of an ongoing list of horrors. I'm old enough to remember when we were promised a world-beating test, track and trace app, I'm old enough to remember when the Government decided to stop publishing figures on the number of people tested because it was clearly an embarrassment, I'm old enough to remember when a Government Minister thought taking the knee was from Game of Thrones.
Naturally, it's the most vulnerable people who are taking the biggest hit. The old, the poor and members of the BAME community are among those hardest hit by this disease. But after 11 years of austerity, it's hardy surprising because these are among the most vulnerable people in society and all Covid-19 has really done is to expose those inequalities that austerity has wreaked,.
As I said earlier, i don't expect any Government to have got everything right when handling a pandemic of this scale. But I expect some honesty, some humility and some consideration.
And this lot have none.
