Conservative Friends of Covid
It hasn't worked, of course. Not even the Daily Mail front pages desperately pointing to the drink Keir Starmer had during a work meeting has knocked Tory wrongdoing from popular consciousness. Nor will it. Everyone has an opinion about it, and Johnson's transparent arse coverings are only going to make matters worse for him. They see you, and everyone knows what you're doing. Nobody is fooled.
Amid the politics knockabout, there is a cost. One of Johnson's juicy sirloins are plans to relax Covid precautions further. In England, the mandatory period for self-isolation following a positive test has fallen from seven to five days, putting it at odds with the "the science". Come January 26, as heavily trailed by Nadhim Zahawi this weekend, the plan B restrictions brought in before Christmas are likely to be shelved. And self-isolation itself is, apparently, due to be scrapped. Covid's little helpers on the back benches are sure to be thrilled.
Writing about Covid makes me sound like a broken record. For the umpteenth time, it is more than a respiratory disease. It can attack the brain, storing up possible neurological trouble down the line. It leaves lesions on internal organs. And Covid also depletes T cells, reducing our capacity to fight off future infections and making us more vulnerable to serious long-term health conditions. Like cancer. Like MS. I know this, medicine knows this. And this knowledge is littered throughout government briefing notes and the research summaries Chris Whitty presents to ministers. Meanwhile, Johnson, the rest of politics, and the entirety of the media carry on as if Covid is a bad case of the flu and nothing, except for an unlucky few, people need worry about. This alone is damning and should see them in the dock for reckless endangerment.
Let there be no doubt about this, the Tories know what they're doing. Boris Johnson knows his decisions have consequences. He knows the tumbling number of infections, which is real and not an artefact of test kit shortages, is thanks to simple measures like the mask mandates on public transport and self-isolation. And as per every previous time, as the numbers head in the right direction he's champing at the bit to abolish these protections. Act late, lift early, how many more times do we have to see it before this is regarded as something more than an error? Except this time, as part of his doomed effort to save his premiership, Johnson is actively contriving a situation where others pay the ultimate price for his stay in office. No regard for the rules, no regard for the wellbeing and livs of others, what an utter grotesque the bowels of the Tory party voided into office.
What can we - the left and the labour movement - do about it? Keep pushing for the retention of present protections, fight Johnson's efforts to abolish self-isolation, carry on wearing masks to protect others. Covid has been and remains a clear danger for our people, a manageable scourge turned into class war by epidemiological means by the Tories. If the government won't protect our collective health, we have no choice but to do so ourselves.
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