Tory delay is political
Early last month, the SKWAWKBOX revealed exclusively that public health chiefs had been told by the government to prepare for the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic to hit from the beginning of October – including getting emergency COVID-19 wards ready to re-open.
As predicted, the second wave hit – and the government has now re-opened ‘Nightingale’ emergency health facilities in preparation for overwhelmed NHS hospitals.
Now, the same public health sources who tipped SKWAWKBOX off to the government’s plans then have also told this site that, while the Tories are delaying and delaying the inevitable renewed lockdown needed to even begin to get on top of the second wave, they have in fact been preparing for it ‘for weeks’.
And that those preparations include the armed forces.
Letters have also gone out to parents asking for permission to switch to video teaching ‘if necessary’ – as opposed to the online submission of homework already in place for hygiene reasons – and public health bosses have been told that the lockdown will be imposed as early as immediately after the school half-term holiday and at the latest by Christmas, with an early lockdown looking most (and increasingly) likely.
The Tories have been aware all along that a new lockdown is necessary to suppress the second wave – yet they have denied and delayed for at least two weeks from the start of the latest spike of the pandemic, for what can only be political reasons.
During the delay, they have imposed tighter restrictions – and now a ‘Tier 3’ local lockdown – on areas of entrenched opposition to their politics and have inflicted even deeper damage on the economy and local communities.
Boris Johnson’s one-week lockdown delay in March cost tens of thousands of lives, for which he refused even to express regret. How many lives – and how much damage to the fabric of our country – will his delay of two weeks, to a lockdown he has known for weeks is inevitable, cost now?
Two weeks and counting.
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