Something I've noticed that nobody is saying...

Local lockdowns in West Yorkshire have been royally fucked up and it's a sign of fucked up things to come for the rest of the UK.

(A concise thread)

Yesterday, Rishi Sunak made some comments about no longer "putting life on hold". The gist was that we can't go on forever with severe restrictions that people feel limit their freedom

West Yorkshire offers up some PERFECT examples of why this kind of chat is wrong and dangerous. West Yorkshire is very average - it's a little microcosm of the UK. It might even be the *most average county* in the UK (I think I heard that once)

It's home to places that have had local lockdowns (Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees) and places that haven't. The big one being LEEDS. Leeds is interesting because two weeks ago there were massive national headlines about how Leeds was on the brink of lockdown - "teetering" even

And that's because our R-rate has been rising FAST. In fact, at that time we had more cases per 100,000 people than anywhere else in West Yorkshire, including Calderdale and Kirklees. But no restrictions for Leeds were announced, which was... odd?

*sorry, I meant to say bar Bradford, which had the most cases

Little mini detour here: Leeds politicians were blaming young people breaking the rules for this rise in Leeds. They didn't really offer any explanation as to how they knew it was rule-breaking, other than police shutting down half a dozen parties

So Leeds, this city with what, more than 100,000 young people, a large percentage of whom work in healthcare, retail, hotels, bars, pubs, restaurants had a crazy rise in cases, starting from the date those sectors reopened. I don't know science but there might be a link there

So why, when Leeds was one of the worst-affected areas, was a local lockdown decided against back then? Only the government can answer that. But I think it has something to do with Rishi Sunak's comments yesterday. Leeds has the strongest economy in the region

And its economy is based around services. Limiting who can meet who (and where), who can use public transport, etc etc, this has a big impact on the Leeds economy. Especially as one massive event happened at the weekend...

FRESHERS. Leeds has five (?) universities - a lot for its size. And going into local lockdown would have meant many of those pounds, I mean people, not arriving. Or at least, not being exchanged for goods and services in the normal manner

But over the last few days it's become clear that Leeds is getting into serious trouble. Here's a BBC graphic - note that Bradford is still the worst but look at the *trajectory* of Leeds, nought to sixty

Here's the link for that: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-54295144

Leeds politicians have been watching this - probably very panicked - and had to go to the government and straight-up ASK for a local lockdown to try and protect people

Which appears to have been granted. Tonight Leeds joins its neighbours, as it should have done weeks ago (and would have done if it wasn't for its lovely £££) and enters into a local lockdown. Great! So, what does this have to do with the rest of the UK?

This is a window into how the government is going to manage the winter spike - economy first, pandemic second

This is coming to a city near you this winter. It happened so quickly to us. Back in July, when Leeds United celebrated some football thing (?), we had hardly any cases. And now look. This is going to happen where you live because the government is putting money before lives

People will say it's because we're testing more and I'm sure that's a factor. But if you've tried to get a test in Leeds recently, you'll know it can be impossible (here's @SusieMayJourno's piece about her experience https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/health/coronavirus/i-was-sent-leeds-bolton-pre-booked-covid-19-test-and-still-got-turned-away-2976988)

I promised concise, so here's the summary:

The West Yorkshire fuck-up is solid proof that we can't put the economy first and withstand the pandemic. It's painful but we have no choice other than to take an economic hit. The government is ignoring this and it will kill people

Matt's tweet should actually be the last tweet in the thread: https://twitter.com/mattround/status/1309526927829594113