THREAD:

KEEP THE FAITH

1. We have a new Government in power during one of the most revolutionary times in modern history. We've had 4 years of political instability following the referendum & now we're in the midst of a global pandemic.

2. We had the Prime Minister go into intensive care at a time when we needed leadership most. I sat & cried as I felt our country was facing being orphaned just when it needed encouragement and a 'It's okay, we'll get through this'. I think we all felt overwhelmed by events.

3. But now the battlegrounds are firing up again. The left are seizing the opportunity to nit pick every strategy & every word the Government utter. The same old critics are only too pleased to stick the knife in, despite the fact they've offered no ideas of their own.

4. The libertarians are now odd bedfellows with the left, each attacking the Government from different angles in the Lives v Livelihoods debate.

But just be careful what you wish for please.

5. We can't stay in lockdown indefinitely, but if we come out too soon & the infection rate increases exponentially again, we're going to find ourselves in a political as well as a health crisis.

6. It seems to me that the libertarian argument of opening everything back up & normality resumes is nothing more than a pipe dream at the moment.

If a work colleague comes down with the virus, everything grinds to a halt again.

7. Premises require deep cleaning and employees working in close proximity to the infected person are sent home to isolate pending testing after several days of potential incubation.

8. The economic disruption would be disastrous & we could find ourselves in lockdown again. Clearly we do need to start to open up the economy more but also attempt to keep infection rates down as low as possible. Small steps now could prevent a surge of infections later.

9. Although it feels bleak we have much to be grateful for. I went 6 months without income during the foot & mouth crisis. The Labour govt. handled the epidemic very badly. Not wanting to vaccinate livestock because it would hit exports decimated our farming industry.

10. Millions of healthy animals were culled in an attempt to control the outbreak, but it got out of hand and ravaged the farming industry, taking rural tourism with it too. There was no furlough scheme & compensation was inadequate & too late for many smaller enterprises.

11. Sir Hindsight can be as forensic as he likes, but there is no magic solution to the health crisis we are in, we struggle through it & like the rest of the world, learn as we go along about the new virus.

And let's not forget that we aren't to blame for this virus.

12. We just need to be careful. Not all politicians, even those in Government, have our best interests at heart. Their eye is on power & political ambition. They're attempting to destabilise & undermine whilst Boris is perhaps at his weakest point.

13. No sooner had PPE obsession been replaced with testing obsession, the weak spot is now focused on care homes. But compared to other European countries our stats aren't as disastrous as some. The ECDC paper lists percentages of care facility deaths: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/surveillance-COVID-19-long-term-care-facilities-EU-EEA

14. In summary here are the figures for care facility deaths as a % of total Covid fatalities:
FRANCE: 66%
SPAIN: 66%
NORWAY: 61%
BELGIUM: 51%
SCOTLAND: 45%
GERMANY: 37%
WALES: 25%
ENGLAND: 21%

Not quite the picture Sir Hindsight would have you believe is it!

15. Things are seldom what we're led to believe.

We have the various economic packages to assist businesses & employees. We have quite a number of businesses still functioning - all but a few people in my village are working, so the country isn't entirely at a stand still.

16. We should be grateful we're not in the Eurozone, where belated, underfunded measures of 500 billion are intended to bail out 27 countries but not until next year, if at all, depending on what happens with the recent German Constitutional ruling.

17. As usual 'more Europe' = more austerity & a power grab by the inept, who never quite learn that more of the same will reap more of the same economic stagnation.

18. At least we have a Government that has put its money where its mouth is & placed its faith in British businesses & British people to ride the storm & come out of this fighting.

It's time we returned the favour & placed a bit more faith in the Government don't you think?