Strikes me that one of the UK& #39;s biggest challenges at the moment is that we have been left totally unprepared emotionally for what is about to come over this winter. The narrative throughout is that we are just about to "turn the corner", "come out the other side". 1/

Optimism is all well and good, but not necessarily in the depths of a crisis. "It& #39;s fine, it& #39;ll burn itself out soon" isn& #39;t what you want to hear in the midst of an inferno. But that& #39;s the happy happy coming from politicians who cannot countenance telling bad news. 2/

They& #39;ve been conditioned for decades to manage messages to maximise positive impact in polls. This is politics driven by the twin forces of Goodhart and Campbell. 3/ https://medium.com/@coffeeandjunk/campbells-law-goodhart-s-law-when-you-are-measuring-to-fail-c6c64923ad7">https://medium.com/@coffeean...

Any glimmer of hope is seized upon but the cold hard reality is that it looks quite likely that we are going into a period as bad if not worse than that we experienced in the Spring. And we& #39;ve had months being told "It& #39;ll all be over by Christmas". 4/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53441912">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-5...

Nobody wants this. But pretending it will all go away if we just believe hard enough - a repeating MO at the moment, it seems - is worse than grossly irresponsible.

Especially at a time when it& #39;s demonstrably getting worse. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/covid-has-hit-critical-stage-in-england-research-finds">https://www.theguardian.com/world/202... 5/

We need to be hard with one another. The virus is on the upturn, many more people are going to die prematurely, directly or indirectly, this is going to be the reality for a long while to come and we all need to act to behave differently to try to minimise the impact. 6/6