We KNEW Tory ministers were warned about coronavirus in 2019. Now we have damning details
Boris Johnson: If he had taken seriously the briefings on coronavirus he had LAST YEAR, he might not have caught it.
There is nothing new in the Guardian headline that UK (Tory) ministers were warned last year about the risks of the coronavirus pandemic.
One day This Writer will tire of mentioning this, but my blog article of March 30 – gosh, nearly a month ago, now! – made this abundantly clear:
Boris Johnson was first briefed about a new virus causing havoc in Wuhan, China, in November 2019. He did nothing.
Okay?
The details now reported by the Graunare damning:
The recommendations within it included the need to stockpile PPE (personal protective equipment), organise advanced purchase agreements for other essential kit, establish procedures for disease surveillance and contact tracing, and draw up plans to manage a surge in excess deaths.
Having plans for helping British nationals abroad and repatriating them to the UK was also flagged as a priority.
All of these areas have come under relentless scrutiny since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with the government accused of being too slow to react to the crisis. It is now under sustained pressure to provide answers about what was done nationally and locally to provide the support that planners have long called for, amid growing fears ministers were “caught out” by the crisis and have been playing catchup ever since.
So where, later in the same article, we see a government spokesperson saying:
“This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided at all times by the best scientific advice.”
This is quite clearly false.
I would agree with the source who said the Tories had not properly focused on the pandemic threat and had been “caught out” flat-footed.
Watch, in the months to come, as the Tories fall over each other to claim there won’t be any need for an inquiry into their sheer, possibly-criminal, incompetence.
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Is Boris’s regime telling the truth about Coronavirus(Covid-19) issues?
The fascist tories will all sing the same refrain ‘not our problem guv it’s the civil servants who are to blame!’ Dictator boris will claim ‘not my problem guv I was on sick leave when the pandemic happened and I didn’t return to my part-time job as a fake prime minister until the virus had disappeared!’
We can add this to the list of criminal acts committed by the fascist tories which has resulted in state sanctioned mass murder of thousands and thousands of women and men.
However the fascist tory refrain will be ‘now is not the time to engage in the blame game because we callous fascist tories did our utmost to rid ourselves of all those expendible impoverished; elderly; disabled women and men!’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/officials-to-investigate-potential-covid-19-link-with-liverpool-match
https://www.thecanary.co/discovery/analysis-discovery/2020/04/23/the-tories-appalling-response-to-a-dire-revelation-about-their-cheltenham-festival-decision/
We may have to persist with telling people the facts!
i wonder if millions who voted Tory last year are just not ready to re assess their choice.
No matter what errors the Tories make, there may be a tendency to dismiss the truth because that would concede a mistake was made at the election. And it would raise the spectre of (shock, horror) real political controversy and a lot of the Tory vote was all about ENDING political controversy, making it go away, getting “Brexit done”!
We have just got to hold our nerve, not despair, and continue to press for the truth to be recorded.
In a way, the Labour members who elected Starmer were behaving in a similar way. They hoped he would be a non-controversial figure, not attracting either fierce loyalty OR bitter denunciations.
A whole nation facing its worse challenge in decades, and all sides are shying away from serious discussion about the causes, the response, and the consequences of policies taken.
But we need to keep our eyes open and formulate clear policies for the future so as not to go back to “normal”.
I think this is a very perceptive comment.
The virus is called Covid-19. The number 19 indicates that it was identified in 2019. Draw your own conclusions.