This is the funniest thing that has happened in politics in my lifetime! (Quite probably, the first funny thing in politics in my lifetime). I called in to my local Co-op this morning, saw in the newspaper rack the headline about recently appointed health secretary Sajid Javid catching the COVID virus, and couldn’t stop laughing! When I got home and looked up some more, my laughs became belly-laughs.
Sky News tells us that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, as recent contacts of Javid, were phoned directly by NHS people, not pinged by the app. And that “legally” requires them to self-isolate for 10 days! Heh heh heh. Boot. Foot. Other. Hoist. Petard. Own.
I do hope that this will lead to a proper debate on what “the rule of law” is. In my view, it means that the rules we are expected to follow must be the same for everyone, with no exceptions – even for government. But I’m not holding my breath yet. The media are so corrupt that they are still with the establishment. As witness the “on-line safety bill,” intended to silence people who oppose the establishment, that makes exceptions for those “qualified” as “journalists.”
If I compare politics to a game of chess, Javid is a genius player. With one move, he has neutralized both the current incumbent and his main rival for the Tory party leadership. And he hasn’t been in his place long enough to be held responsible for the situation. Gove is already compromised by his recent trip to Portugal. When the Tory rank and file get restive this winter after lockdowns are re-imposed, who will they turn to? David Davis? Steve Baker? Or Javid? I can’t think of any other candidates.
For the avoidance of doubt, I do wish Sajid Javid a speedy and complete recovery from the coronavirus.
[quote]”For the avoidance of doubt, I do wish Sajid Javid a speedy and complete recovery from the coronavirus.”[unquote]
Infection does not always result in disease and/or illness.
Tom, what you say is correct. And if we could only work out how many people in the UK have (like me) had and recovered from the disease but not been reported as cases – for whatever reason, that would make it a lot easier to work out how close we are to herd immunity. Yet the ONS, who should have been tasked with working out this ratio, have failed to do so; or, at least, to publicize it.
I’m starting to doubt that there really is a specific novel virus causing this. I don’t doubt that people are falling ill, which suggests there is a virus, but how is that different from any other year? I’m afraid we keep going round in circles with the same basis questions because the whole thing lacks credibility to anybody looking at it objectively. It’s just a mass brain-washing exercise – and a successful one.
Tom, there is a metric called “excess mortality.” It plots the number of deaths reported from all causes at a given time of year (usually identified by a week number) as a percentage over and above the number of deaths at the same time of year averaged over a series of years in the recent past. I’ve done this plot for 14 European countries, including the UK, towards the end of this article:
http://www.honestcommonsense.co.uk/2021/07/covid-19-are-we-nearly-there-yet.html
It’s clear there is something different about 2020 and early 2021, compared with 2015 to 2019 which were the comparison years. In Spain in April 2020 the weekly mortality peaked at more than two and a half times the “normal” for the time of year. In the UK it was more than twice the normal. It’s also clear that the symptoms of this virus (at least in the pre-respiratory phases) are different from ‘flu and from other viruses we have seen in the past. And I say that as one who had the damned thing way back in January of last year, before it was even officially in the country! So the supposition that it is a novel virus is not, I think, an unreasonable one. Whether all the lockdowns, mask wearing and the other crap that has gone around them will end up causing more trouble than they saved, is another question… one I’m not able to answer definitively yet, but I know which way I’m leaning.