Is it a shutdown, or a "shutdown"? Any UK users here have any more info?
It’s a fuckup is what it is. An entirely foreseeable ( and foreseen even by laymen like myself) and preventable mess that anyone with half a brain could see coming months before.
The UK never even got close to controlling the virus. All it’s actions have been piecemeal, knee-jerk and unco-ordinated.
This is precisely the kind of nonsense that happens when you have a country run by a bunch of incompetent old-boys-club, silver spooned aristocrats who got their positions through nepotism and inherence rather than ability; and who never lowered themselves into having to deal with the real world for themselves.
Throughout the outbreak, the absolute paramount overriding priority has always been about business and the economy, with those in charge apparently not able to comprehend that business and the economy needs actually living humans to function and that dead people = economic contraction.
It was all about making sure the rich toffs running the country and their richer buddies didn’t loose money. That’s why the UK initially resisted and delayed imposing a lockdown and was going for the herd immunity BS, because to those in charge money > lives.
The name (not the strategy) was only dropped because apparently they didn’t expect the lower classes to be smart enough to realise what the implications of going for herd immunity meant in terms of the human cost.
When the first lockdown was imposed, it was very much a grudging concession and a retreat in the face of the overwhelming public backlash against their herd immunity plan.
And to be frank, it almost feels like that initial lockdown was purposefully designed to be as ineffective at actually containing the virus as they could get away with; while at the same time being as unnecessarily punitive and disruptive to the everyday lives of ordinary people as possible, especially the old, sick, vulnerable and ‘lower’ classes.
If you want to be charitable, it feels like the Tory leadership wanted to ‘inoculate’ the British public against future lockdowns so as to minimise the damage to their own selfish economic interests; but when you factor in the apparent approval and support for disgusting perversions of science such as Eugenics (A high profile government hire was forced to resign before even starting the role due to his prominent support for Eugenics, which seemed to be the only remarkable thing about the guy) by the likes of Dominic Cummings, who many believe actually runs the country, and it’s hard not to suspect that a high death toll amongst the elderly, the sick, the ‘lower’ social classes and other ‘undesirable’ was not in fact a feature and not a bug of their lockdown and anti-Covid strategy all along.
The UK went out of lockdown far too soon, and the government actively promoted and strongly pushed absolutely ridiculous activities that anyone with half a brain can see will actively help to get the virus to spread like wildfire as quickly as possible. Things like encouraging foreign and domestic holidays; arbitrary and entirely politically determined quarantine and exemption lists (China, where the virus has been brought as completely under control as realistically possible, is still on the quarantine list, while America still isn’t!); strong arming schools to reopen and pushing for workers to return to the office as late as last week.
Right now we are just restarting the loop, with half measures rather than lockdowns.
