After the crisis, will we put up with the cover-up? For the sake of the many thousands he sent to early graves, we have a duty to hold Boris Johnson to account for his Covid-19 cock-ups.
This Writer had the first Covid-19 vaccination on Easter Sunday and within a few hours I felt terrible.
Having been warned that a tiny minority of people experience headaches, fever and/or flu-like symptoms, I was forearmed and didn’t panice. That’s the best I can say about it.
After the headache came on I retired to bed, which I found to be extremely cold – to a point where my hands and feet felt like blocks of ice, no matter what I did to warm them up. I also experienced bizarre pains in my legs.
I did get some sleep, but awoke to the onset of the flu-like symptoms and spent the day on the sofa with the cat lying on me, downing Paracetomols and sniffing (me, not the cat).
When I told my stepdaughter about this, she said, “It’s ok, it’s just your body trying to reject the DNA changes and the nanochip. Bill Gates gets all the information fed back to him, it’ll pass and you’ll be fine in no time.” It’s good to know that someone saw the funny side.
I’m writing this just before going to bed and all those symptoms have died away.
It’s a small price to pay for the protection that the vaccine promises.
With the rollout proceeding at high speed (the vaccination centre in Builth Wells was as full as social distancing would allow when I attended), Boris Johnson and his government have announced that they are proceeding with their plans to lift lockdown restrictions, according to the timetable they set some weeks ago.
Here’s what it means, according to the BBC:
More businesses will open, but indoor settings should be visited alone, or with household groups. Outside, six people or two households can meet.
- All shops allowed to open
- Hairdressers, beauty salons and other close-contact services can open
- Restaurants and pubs allowed to serve food and alcohol to customers sitting outdoors
- Gyms and spas can reopen, as can zoos, theme parks, libraries and community centres
- Members of the same household can take a holiday in England in self-contained accommodation
- Weddings attended by up to 15 people can take place
- Funerals be attended by up to 30 people, with 15 at wakes
- Children will be able to attend any indoor children’s activity
- Care home visitors will increase to two per resident
Here in Wales, matters are slightly different:
- All travel restrictions have been lifted within the country – residents can travel anywhere within Welsh borders
- Six people from two different households (not counting children under 11) can meet and exercise outdoors and in private gardens
- Organised outdoor activities and sports for children and under-18s can resume
- Limited opening of outdoor areas of some historic places and gardens
- Libraries and archives can reopen
- Self-contained holiday accommodation, including hotels with en-suite facilities and room service, can open to people from the same household or support bubble. But non-essential travel to and from other UK nations remains banned
And then, from 12 April at the earliest:
- All pupils and students return to school, college and other education
- All shops and close-contact services can open
- The ban on travelling in and out of Wales ends
- Driving lessons can resume and some driving tests (remainder on 22 April)
In Scotland:
Outdoor mixing between four people from up to two households is already allowed, along with outdoor non-contact sports and organised group exercise.
Communal worship is also now allowed with up to 50 attending (if social distancing permits).
The stay at home became the stay local rule on 2 April.
From 5 April, hairdressers and barbers (but not mobile services) can reopen for pre-booked appointments; more shops can reopen and non-essential click-and-collect can resume; outdoors non-contact group sports for 12 to 17-year-olds can resume.12-19 April:
- All pupils back at school full-time
And in Northern Ireland:
- People can now meet for exercise in groups of up to 10 from two households
- Golf and other outdoor sporting activities can resume (although clubhouses and sports facilities must stay closed)
- Six people from two households can meet in a private garden
- Garden centres can operate click-and-collect services
From 12 April:
- Remaining school year groups 8-11 return (Years 1-3, 4-7 and 12-14 have already returned)
- Stay-at-home message relaxed
- All other non-essential retail can operate click-and-collect
- Sports training with up to 15 people can resume
- Up to 10 people from two households can meet in a private garden
It all seems very optimistic.
Personally, I’m hoping it all works out because I am sick to the back teeth of being stuck at home.
But I don’t want us to forget that we have paid a terrible, terrible price, just to get to this point.
Our government, in whom the nation placed its trust in December 2019, failed us abjectly – and the number of deaths so far is greater than many recognised genocides including:
- The Romani genocide in Nazi-occupied Europe (130,000 at its lowest estimate).
- The Polish genocide (around 110,000 at lowest estimate).
- Idi Amin’s Ugandan genocide, the Rohingya genocide, and the genocides in Darfur, East Timor, Bosnia, Croatia, and California.
I use the lowest estimates because, of course, the number of deaths currently known in the UK is also a lowest estimate. It will be a long time before we get the final figure.
It is already horrifying enough, though:
What a searing, unforgivable milestone 😔
Today’s @ONS statistics show a staggering 150,116 people have now died of Covid.
These deaths were not inevitable. Not predestined. These people didn’t have to die.
We urgently need a public Covid inquiry.
Please RT if you agree. pic.twitter.com/JggZC6W90s
— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) March 30, 2021
Boris Johnson avoided dealing with Covid-19 when the pandemic first arrived in the UK. He avoided briefings and refused to take the decisions we needed, to restrict the spread of the virus.
Because he wanted it to spread through the population and kill where it could. He said as much in a TV interview in March last year.
It was his great “herd immunity” fallacy.
Ever since, he has been too keen to lift lockdown early and too reluctant to impose it again.
He has relied on a heavy propaganda campaign, intended to whitewash his decisions by claiming that the UK’s response to Covid-19 has been successful when it hasn’t.
And while he has said he is willing to have an inquiry into his government’s handling of the pandemic, he has demanded that it will only happen “at the appropriate time”, inducing some of us to believe that, for him, the appropriate time is “never”.
Alternatively, he’ll just fob us off with a government-scripted whitewash, like we’ve seen in his “racism report” last month.
He will never accept responsibility for the huge death toll he has caused.
And that means it’s up to us to pin it onto him.
But will we?
I’m concerned that the Great British Public will let him off the hook.
We have a deplorable tendency to forget about terrible injustices, pretty much the instant after we’ve had a good complain about it.
We shout at the television during the news, but how many of us actually do anything about the cause of that rage afterwards?
You know I’m right.
I can think of 150,116 people who would demand that Johnson and his government be held to account – if only they could communicate with us from beyond the grave.
They can’t so we should.
Whatever happens, it is our duty to demand justice for the multitude who died when they should not have died – because an ignorant, selfish part-time politician could not do his job properly.
Source: What’s the roadmap for lifting lockdown? – BBC News
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