News and comment from
Roy Lilley



It's the rest of us I'm worried about...
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Did you see the news in the Sunday papers?

  • Chief Medical Officer is going to resign because BoJo won’t listen to him.
  • Chief Scientific Officer is going to resign because BoJo won’t follow his advice.
  • The Chief Executive of the NHS is going to leave because BoJo wants more power over the NHS.
  • Bojo has fallen out with his backbenchers and will go in the Spring.

The pandemic’s problems; listening, leadership and strategy… all tracked back to BoJo.

Of the four scenarios on offer my money would be on BoJo going. If we can all see he is a bull$+!^^€£, if we can see he’s out of his depth, a scruffy braggadocio, unable to think straight and clearly, is still unwell… it’s fair to assume the people who work with him can see it even more clearly. 

The go-to replacement is probably Jeremy Hunt. All the rest are enthral or tainted by association.

Look for key-names to start distancing themselves. Look for BoJo to become more impetuous, more gesticulation, lectern-thumping, on-the-hoof-claims of global-greatness. More King-of-BoJong.

Incidentally, all this ‘key-people-quitting’ malarkey is right out of the How Not to Run a National Emergency playbook.

Without leadership and vision, the longer the situation is unresolved, the more tensions there will be, the greater the speculation. The more people will play the blame-game.

That’s the problem… the situation is unresolved. 

Covid never went away, it’s just appearing in new places, infecting deferent people. People who, either because they can’t afford it or don’t understand it, aren’t following the rules.

We’re trying to three things simultaneously;

  • suppress infection, 
  • lift the economy 
  • push for a vaccine.

I doubt we’ll see a working vaccine before spring, so let’s park that.

Making the economy work means mingling. Mingling means more Covid. 

Half-hearted, local-lock-downs, with porous boundaries are… well, half-hearted. The public-health equivalent of pulling the legs off a spider.

The rules are confusing, chaotic, inequitable, anomalous and have no logic. With thirty mates, we can take a day-off to go and shoot grouse but you can’t take a day-off, to take your daughter and six school friends to feed the ducks in the park.

There’s a big decision for BoJo to make. Unpalatable, runs contrary to all our views and visions of freedom. We have to stay at home if we can.

Work from home, get our stuff delivered and meet our mates on screen. Call it what it is… lockdown aka, BoBoxed…

Then, inevitably, eventually, we'll have to unlock and until there's a vaccine, the whole thing kicks-off again. Then back into the BoBox. On and off. Lock and unlock, a Bojo-Yo-Yo.

Is there an alternative? Maybe. 

Four steps;

Cocoon the vulnerable. Really look after them. Sort out the food, the medicines, free technologies for companionship, keeping in touch, out reach and clinical support. There's plenty of software like this we could use. Make life as bearable as it can be. Go to town and here’s the difference; give people a choice. If they don’t want to be cocooned, their call.

Second; understand why there is a problem with testing. George Batchelor tells us; when daily demand is consistently more than capacity; it spills over to the next day. And, snowballs; if capacity is 220,000, demand is 300,000 this creates a deficit of 80,000 on day-one, 160,000 on day two and millions by Friday.

It’ll take time to stabilise unless you limit demand.

Third; let people get back to whatever they’re comfortable doing. Test as much as we can, be draconian with the enforcement of clear rules on social distancing, mask-wearing and officially-certified, approvals for all premisses. Mean it. Make examples of non-compliance.

Four; the important bit... use data to our advantage (More George).

Publish local, anonymised infection-numbers; age, gender, occupation, location. Spell out the source of infection; pub, school, work, household, public transport.

Let the numbers show everyone the patterns of transmission and share them for targeted social-distancing. Give people the facts. Let them see for themselves, what’s dangerous and what’s not. Alter their own behaviour rather than interpret unfathomable rules and conflicting guidance.

Publish the numbers, daily, like a weather forecast. People aren’t stupid, if they can see the infections are in their local pub, people will stop going…

If the Sunday papers are right and BoJo is to be Boj-axed, I’m not worried. 

I’m only worried about the rest of us.
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