Analysis comment

Video: Johnson took 11 DAYS from ‘gatherings have little effect’ to they must be stopped to block CV – how many lives has he cost?

Johnson’s dithering will have lethal effects

Boris Johnson announcing public gatherings banned – 11 days after dismissing their danger

Boris Johnson dithered for 11 days over the issue of mass gatherings.

On 12 March, he was still dismissing their effect on the spread of the coronavirus – and allowing sporting events to proceed as normal, including the arrival in Liverpool of thousands of football fans from Spanish virus hotspot Madrid.

On 15 March, he was still insisting such gatherings were of little relevance – and only saying that the government would ‘no longer be supporting’ large events that needed emergency services in attendance.

But on Monday night, his ‘scientific’ approach had now changed and all public gatherings of anything more than two people are now recognised as highly dangerous – and must be banned, even dispersed, to slow down the spread of the deadly virus:

Eleven days ignoring a means of spreading a virus that took only four days to spread to its third hundred thousand people globally – compared to 67 days for its first hundred thousand.

Eleven days ignoring large gatherings when even small open-air gatherings are so dangerous that they have had to be banned.

How many thousands of lives will Johnson’s dithering ultimately be shown to have cost?

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35 comments

  1. “allowing sporting events to proceed as normal, including the arrival in Liverpool of thousands of football fans from Spanish virus hotspot Madrid.”

    Would it be too cynical to suggest that Johnson encouraging 1,000s of fans from a Covid-19 hotspot to wander around the centre of Liverpool was BJ’s malevolent payback for the city’s protests against him.

    1. Not at all cynical SteveH , the Tories HATE Liverpool as its always been a Labour stronghold

      1. Yes love Liverpool but I do think they strayed with the limpdem ,or was it liberal then when Trevor Jones was leader of the limpdem council,and like many from the North West I was surprised Hope somone on here can shed light on the liberal reign in Liverpool?

    2. Perhaps a tad cynical, although not beyond the realms of their snideness.

      …’Herd immunity’ becoming their new ‘managed decline’

      But I s’pose UEFA & both Gov’s could’ve put the blocks on it. All equally at fault.

      And anyway, the consolation prize is that the shite went out and the kopite cultist weirdos all started cryin’ about the so-called ‘anti-football’ that Athletic Madrid were meant to have played.

      Because there’s always something unfair and against the rules when that lot get beat….But that’s for another forum 😗🎵

  2. https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/03/24/former-tory-adviser-uses-130000-austerity-deaths-to-argue-against-coronavirus-shutdown/
    Eugenics. Indecent. Heartless. No value of the many. No outcry from the AS accusers. Silence from them. They are not “threatening to leave the UK” now. Their silence about The Tories displaying the ideology for which they have always been known, is not a trouble for hypocrites. If they were genuine, then they would be all over the MSM as they were in the run up to the election. Theatrical liars. Beneath contempt.

  3. I see piers moron’s having his usual rant this morning, this time against big business owners/CEOs like the unkempt medf Tim Martin of Witherspoon’s notoriety.

    Where was moron (and everyone else for that matter) when people were getting their hours cut by these firms so they could ’employ’ people to work for their benefit – and in doing so treat both their ‘normal’ employee and the ‘workfare’ participant like shite in the process under threat of the sack and benefit sanctions respectively?

    Selective criticism at its worst. You’re a shothouse and always will be, moron. No kudos from this quarter.

    1. I don’t get why the posturing shitferbrains has any audience at all.
      Saw a YouTube clip once of Susanna Reid(was it?) looking open-mouthed at the idiocy of him.
      Reminded me of an ex-boss’s wife’s embarrassment that I’d explained something to him three different ways and still he didn’t grasp it.

      1. I don’t get why he’s not been had up in court for the phone hacking shithousery, let alone given a national platform to spout his tripe.

        We can only hope…

        That said, moron apparently ‘tore hancock a new one’ t’other day. I’m yet to see it but I don’t believe that someone who shut the door on Leveson II would get a hard time off moron, seeing as moron’d be a – perhaps THE – prime target in round 2.

  4. Just been to hand in a repeat prescription at the doc’s surgery. Young man on the door, facemasked up, with thermometer gun in hand…took reading of destruct (sic) nurse going in ahead of me.

    Took script off me, asked which chemist…Then I asked him to test me…Reading too low. Took reading off nurse next to him…working ok….me (again)… too low. Nurse ok…Me, too low!!

    I always knew I was pretty cool – but now I’m unofficially the walking dead, or a reptilian. 🥶

  5. Copied from a 2 day old thread, sorry.

    Today I learned of the Royal Voluntary Service’s GoodSAM app so I registered, not that I can do much more than deliveries.
    They probably won’t pick the Dad’s Army types until they’ve worn out the young’uns but you never know.
    Having a big van might be a plus.

    The internet can be useful for getting information out to the people but the lack of a single authoritative source is a problem.
    Googling “coronavirus volunteering UK” yields

    “About 150,000,000 results (0.55 seconds)”

    Bound to be something useful somewhere in that lot, right?

  6. https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-toll/chinas-hubei-eases-coronavirus-curbs-new-imported-cases-decline-idUKKBN21C01A

    NB Why has Johnson failed to screen thousands of flights arriving from hotspots❓Why has Johnson failed by allowing passengers to walk out of Arrivals, without being tested❓ White in China “ To prevent a surge in imported cases, China is ramping up quarantine and screening rules for all international arrivals.”

    “The number of new coronavirus cases in China totalled 47 on Tuesday, all of which were from travellers returning home, down from 78 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.” Meanwhile, has Johnson had any testing at ports❓ No. Boris Johnson and Tory incompetence is not new. Their erosion of the valuable assets of society throughout the last decades of blue and red Tories is now vivid. Yet even now, what us vivid to us MUST be broadcasted and detailed by our MPs and Jeremy EVERY HOUR and EVERY DAY. It cannot be assumed that it is easy for everyone to assume there is an alternative way. The stock extinguisher to criticism of the Tory catastrophes is “don’t politicise”. Our response must be, this IS politics. Politics is about choices governments make. Oppositions MUST scrutinise, dissect and assess AND offer CLEAR ALTERNATIVES. Leave out the bumpf about “consensus” and other trite fillers. There was never any place for that in opposition. There is DEFINITELY no place fo it now. Character assassinations are irrelevant. The wellbeing and lives of the electorate are the relevant concerns. The Boris Johnson Tory use of this deadly disease to cull thousands MUST be constant in print and on the radio. Their failure to have a well supplied NHS and other frontline services with even basic adequate protective equipment MUST be broadcast in BOLD, till every single hospital etc is well equipped. Supplies only came to St Thomas’ yesterday.

    Other shocking failures are the packed tubes and busses with ground down people who are forced to go out to work. There are construction workers on huge luxury flat projects 4 minutes walk away from me and all over London in particular. The confusion of mixed messages from Boris Johnson during this crisis is the cause of crushing uncertainty to the exploited working class. His inability and Tory inability is the front and centre of this crisis. Johnson and Tory failures are the beginning and middle of the crisis. Only a true Labour party with true Labour values can change this, IF it can step up and out NOW 🌹🌹🌹

    1. Very true. Even from my early teens when I first started getting politically aware my dear old mam (God rest her) used to remind me that Liverpool (city) was once a tory town.

      Then the shipping companies left…along with a steady stream of other companies…Then came the ‘Managed decline’ of the late 70’s onwards when the toerags had been evicted for good from the city.

  7. Labour leadership election:

    Former Conservative minister backs Starmer.

    George Freeman, former Boris Johnson appointee, says:

    “When Labour have a sensible new leader, Keir Starmer (if elected) should be invited to Covid cabinet, Cobra and joint No 10 briefings”

    (The Guardian, 25 March 2020) p2.

    The former minister’s comments highlight the very real danger of a victory for Starmer and illustrate why people need to vote for RLB and for Richard Burgon in the deputy leadership election.

    Thank you.

    1. ”When Labour have a sensible new leader, Keir Starmer”

      Code for: ‘When OUR man in the lion’s den gets elected, victory is complete and the annihilation can begin.”

  8. I hope people, particularly in London, aren’t fooled about the real significance and purpose of the much trumpeted new, part military, emergency, London Excel-based ‘Nightingale hospital’ with 4,000 beds for ‘critical care’. This is nothing more or less than the preparation, in case the epidemic really gets out of contro,l of a mass ‘Dying Centre’ for the old and unsavable, the grim end of the ruthless battlefield-style ‘Triage’ process Londoners may soon be faced with – due to just the Eugenics-based ideological arrogance and incompetence-based failure of this spiv government to undertake a mass testing, isolation, and lock-down, strategy seriously weeks ago in line with WHO advice and Chinese, Singaporean, and South Korean success. No doubt the now utterly panicky government has also identified the mass burial sites in the countryside outside London for the dead from the big cities in particular, which existing crematoria simply cannot cope with. https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/24/new-nhs-hospital-open-excel-centre-12450548/

    It is undeniable that even if our NHS hadn’t been fragmented and deliberately underfunded for ten years to prepare it to fail, and hence to be discredited as a state owned and run service, to then be sold off , that this epidemic would have stretched it to the limits. But, with the addition of that ten years of deliberate sabotage by the corrupt Tories (and Lib Dems) our now massively under-resourced NHS is guaranteed to break down in key areas like London in a month or two. The additional tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths this will cause is directly the responsibility of all those politicians, Tory, Lib Dem AND Labour Blairites lets not forget , who have stealthily carried out the long term ‘weaken, fragment, and slowly privatise/outsource ‘ secret anti NHS policy over the last 20 years , never mind the last 10 years.

  9. Well I am gobsmacked at all this make do and mend,volunteers for our Health service and we will all pull together,because we are all in it together.But we are not are we,when the moneys shared out its all going one way just like last time under the worlds saviour Gordon Brown.Labour or Tory we are an aside issue.The real people will have large helpings of dosh.Charley farley Windsor felt unwell,results less than 24hours and treatment i imediatly curtesy of the public purse..Our elderly over seventy locked away reliant on volunteers and the decency of Labour activists in the community.Its all getting a little bit sinister now..!

    1. jpenney u r spot on, except, it is ALREADY “out of control.” It is because most people are decent, they cannot imagine that the Tories could be this callous. Well, they are wirse than callous. Many of the “many” are desperate to make ends meet. That is why they crowd the tube and bus to get to WORK on construction sites, hospitals, care homes and “community care”, refuse collection, supermarket staff … the list goes on. They do not risk Covid-19 for fun. The Tory blue & red and Republican red & blue, have throughout history ensured that the exploited are kept busy and ground down.

      Joenney u also have pointed out what i cane on to sat. Mr Charles Coburg-Gotha had symptoms, he was tested, Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles was also tested. I say, what’s good for the parasites, should have been available from the OUTSET. to NHS and all key workers. It is obvious that care workers et al are having to go from care home to care home, client to client. Doctors and nurses going from patient to patient, PLUS to & fro their families AND on public transport. It is obvious. So the callous Boris Johnson neglect and delay, is not due to ignorance. No! It is WILFUL wickedness, preceded by DELIBERATE starving of the NHS and stripping of public assets. Their shortsighted greed will eventually strip they themselves.

      Oh, and ANY vacuous noises of Mrs Elizabeth S C G of caring for her “subjects” is BALDERDASH. If she and her parasitic family cared, they would have put up the funds needed to have testing kits and PPE available for “loved” subjects. We on skwawkbox.org know that of course. But it must be repeated, everywhere and often.

      When we survive this virus, there must be no more tinkering with the status quo. We must abolish it for good. It is not easy but it IS possible. Changes have been made to happen throughout history. It is illogical to doubt that we can create change again. Facts and history proves it. There never has been some perfect leader or “party”. And yet changes have been made to happen. Some have been reversed in my opinion due to no thought re how the changes had to be guarded from attack. As long as the focus and priority is on protecting the many and making it known with CONNECTED dynamism THROUGHOUT the country, i believe we can be in government and stay there.

      As long as we see issues through to the end the electorate will see a difference. Emma Dent Coad’s defeat at the election in London where Putney was won, proves that. Why would people vote for her when she has failed to sustain interest in the welfare of Grenfel.❓ She was one of those who had no grasp of the immediate needs of her constituents. Of course she thought she did, but it was WAY short of enough. Dent-Coad was one of too many who lost their minds obsessing about imagined cliff edges, while ignoring the EXISTING distress of people under her nose. Similar out of touch rabid blindness also afflicted EX MPs up north like Durham. Boarded up windows economic depravity for decades. Yet humungous mindless hysterical tosh dedicated to imagined futures while blind and deaf to decay and neglect under their noses. Those MPs lost for good reason. They ignored the urgent needs of their constituents. We need TRUE LABOUR MPs who have the hearing and sight, to listen and focus on the needs of the electorate HERE and NOW🌹🌹🌹

  10. Whilst reading about the latest Trump and Johnson burbling idiocies, I keep coming back to the fact that these King Numpties were voted for by a significant proportion of the population, raising the question – after a train of general elections, the Brexit referendum the last general election and the recent ‘Let’s Go Walkabout and Have a Drink’ period – what is the percentage idiot quotient in the population? And what is the implication for democracy?

    1. Oh! Enlightened one, we beseech thee to forgive us our trespasses…

      We’re sorry we can’t all be as fucking infallible and unblemished as your divine self…

      Give it a rest with the condescencion, ffs.

      1. Hi Toffer. I know you’ve got close links with the brain-dead.

        I guess, from that perspective, any minimal intelligence looks ‘condescending’ as an alternative to simply whining incontinently – with a few sweary words thrown in for local colour..

        Sorry I offended your sensitive nature – I know you have a soft spot for Tory supporters who follow SunMail advice.

      2. Same tired, arld shite, same bore that’s shovelling it.

        Get bent, you conceited, spoilt snob.

        You can’t live with the fact that people wanted out the eu and you childishly call them toerags.

        Well guess what? That was their democratic right to do so.

        And so they did; but only after gobshites like you cried about it being ‘undemocratic’ and demanded labour renege on a promise they made to respect the referendum result.

        You were told what’d happen, and it happened.

        And we all remember how your excuse and reasoning was that those yellow tories were taking away labour votes… Remind us all again…How did THEY get on?

        So you was wrong there AS WELL, weren’t ya, dicky?

        Small fucking wonder they did the frank bough if the likes of starmer & watson were seen to be gonna bulldoze their way through policies they didn’t like if labour got in.

        I’m in no doubt there’s hundreds of thousands that voted labour all their lives, then voted toerag last December, are far better, and far more gracious people than you, you godawful cunt.

        But that’s no glowing tribute to them, as it’s not even a challenge to be better than you.

      3. Tell us dicky….What was your defence of Corbyn meeting proscribed Palestinian organisations, the IRA, etc?

        Do you agree that he was proved correct to ENGAGE with ‘The enemy’?

        You’ve said that was the case, previously.

        But you DON’T engage. Far from it.

        Instead, you childishly call people ‘Numpties’ , ‘racists’ ‘knuckledraggers’ and ‘tories’ (Not an exhaustive list)

        You go out of your way to deliberately antagonise and then complain about the tone of reply you receive.

        Well, hard fucking spaghetti, you snob. Treat people like pricks and expect to be treated like one yourself.

        Never heard the phrase ‘Catch more flies with honey than vinegar?’

        You probably have, but you’re too fucking conceited to think it appiles to yourself.

      4. I wish you well, Toffer, with your infection and the symptom of verbal diarrhoea disguised as ‘Man of the People’ posing [Hollow Laugh at the arrogant presumption of sweariness=’the people’].

        I know it’s difficult for fakes like you to grapple with the fact that a lot of wazzocks (like yourself) laid end-to-end don’t make coherent sense, and that you’ve spent a lot of your incontinent bluster trying to pretend that a numpty minority (aka simple ‘majority’) = ‘the wisdom of crowds’ – as in ‘Brexit’ bollocks.

        Meanwhile, whilst you’ve been indulging yourself in dilettante posing, I’ve seen close-up the work of health professionals being compromised by self-indulgent numpties. For information – they are ‘arrogantly’ furious.

        But, hey-ho, Toffer can indulge himself – so what’s the problem?; let’s make out the perpetrators to be exercising their natural entitlements, no matter the cost, and make excuses (just like the Bullingdon Boys)! And we can – at the same time – self-righteously rabbit on, disguised by knee-jerk comments about the Tories.

        Welcome to the world of ‘Watering Hole’ socialists!

      5. …. and in the meantime, Tosser, there’s a large number of people that you implicitly dismiss who don’t indulge in numpty behaviour – and volunteer to do something positive.

        Which side are you on, Toffer? That of the volunteers or that of the Numpties? Or does your fakery eliminate such distinctions because it involves hard choices rather than just preening?

      6. “Same tired, arld shite”

        Indeed, Toffer – you’re a master of it.

        But – ignoring the total self-righteous hypocrisy of your latest spew – which follows on a continual incoherent streaming and screaming rant about those you disagree with – the point is that the ‘honey rather than vinegar’ theory has produced no result.

        Johnson in now rated more highly as ‘doing a good job’.

        (By the way, your ‘parallel’ with Corbyn’s diplomacy is totally irrelevant)

        … and I’m intrigued by your use of the quaint and antiquated term ‘snob’. It says much about your mindset.

  11. I would be the first in line to pay my respects
    Which is why we should have a statue for Margaret Thatcher as well
    CCTV and security allowing, I would like to pay my respects to the milk snatcher as well

  12. This was “dithering” which might well be nominated for an Oscar next time around. Johnson was pushing his covert herd immunity agenda as far as he possibly could. There can be no doubt about that. Anyone who thinks Vallance’s slip regarding this matter was anything other than revealing Johnson’s core strategy is a fool. Encouraging people to get out an enjoy themselves in the sun last weekend was his las crass effort to boost mass infection levels, before having to take action in the opposite direction. Yes, Boris Johnson has signed the death warrants for quite possibly many thousands of people. But no, it wasn’t “dithering” at all. This man actually knows what he is doing.

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