So What Was Boris Doing?

[diddlydo]

When he should have been leading strategy in the early stages of the coronavirus catastrophe?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/michael-gove-fails-to-deny-pm-missed-five-coronavirus-cobra-meetings

[sp1814]

Togo

Please explain how a 'medical blip' can put someone in intensive care?

Do you understand what intensive care is?

People don't go there for colitis or tennis shoulder.

[jim360]

Also, how short-sighted. The virus is an urgent problem that needs tackling now. Brexit can wait. It's simply amazing to suggest that an abstract policy position about our long-term place in the world is more urgent than an immediate and real threat to the health of the nation.

[ToraToraTora]

SP the medical blip is the whole CV business, not Boris Catching it.

[jim360]

a 60% increase on background mortality and a sustained increased demand on hospital resources is not a "blip".

[sp1814]

TTT

I’m sure that many would agree with you. I suppose it’s just one of those things where different people interpret the same story different ways.

I think we can agree to disagree on this.

[Togo]

An unnamed spokesman from an unspecified source says that Boris was frantically signing the foreign aid cheques whilst the virus was seeping under the barred and bolted doors. One of the cheques was for about a £squillion and was to be used to stop the Chinese eating too much salt. Next week there is going to be an even bigger one persuading them not to eat bats. Meanwhile back in the real world where deranged scientists with "skin in the game" are back under lock and key(some in their Mam's spare room) instead of being encouraged to argue the toss in public, and a common sense movement wrestles control back from the control freaks, we see a gradual improvement in the World wide mission to be happy or at least have a laugh now and again. Please use the hand gel and bog roll that you have been hoarding, for just such a moment as this, before replying or reading this secret message again.

[sp1814]

Togo

Thank you.

You've answered my question from 20:34.

[Peter Pedant]

// Picking up on Naomi’s point, I’m astonished and impressed at the amount of experts we have on AB concerning this.//

I'm not - Naomi is an expert at EVERYTHING !

oh ! that isnt quite what you meant ? ......

[TheWholeTruth]

^
err no, its just shown you up as yet another on here that has a far too high opinion of themselves.....

[TheWholeTruth]

my last post was directed to 21:34

[diddlydo]

Very few sensible replies to my question - but only to be expected from the rabid Tories "Boris is wonderful" gang on here (with apologies to the few with rational thoughts).

[NickorWan]

To be fair it isn’t just the Guardian, the Sunday Times runs a piece today that is very critical of Boris during that period - ‘Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster’.

[Zacs-Master]

Well, as I’ve said before, you’ve got another 5 years of this. Suck. It. Up.

[ToraToraTora]

diddly: "Very few sensible replies to my question " - or roughly translated, very few concur with my flawed supposition. PMSL.

[diddlydo]

No "flawed supposition" whatsoever. Fact - Boris failed to attend Cobra meetings at the start of the coronavirus crisis.

[emmie]

if you say so, but he is not obliged to attend them as already been pointed out any number of times..
he has i am sure been fully briefed before of their content and acted accordingly.

[fiction-factory]

That Sunday Times article is what prompted the Guardian story =. The ST story has been pulled apart though even by anti-Tories such as Maajid Nawaaz off LBC. It is part of a campaign by Rupert Murdoch who wanted and still wants Gove not Johnson to be the PM. The story didn't stack up. The headlines made out that the government ignored scientific advice for 58 days whereas the article accepts that they actually followed scientific advice from the two special advisory teams- SAGE and NERVTAG. The scientific advice they ignored was from just one member of the SAGE group- a sort of dissenting voice- who was outvoted by the others.
Things changed in March when Neil Ferguson produced his modelling analysis which prompted SAGE to change its approach and the government immediately started to take action.

As for Boris, yes with hindsight it would have looked better if he had attended/chaired the early Cobra meetings but there is no reason to think his presence would have changed anything. It's easy to forget in these fast moving Covid situation that in mid February this was still a problem confined to China and Wuhan in particular were some Covid cases in Italy and Spain/Canaries but there had only been one in Europe.

Imagine if in late February Boris had chaired the meeting and said "we have no COVID deaths and only 13 cases being treated but I'm going to ignore scientific advice and shut the country down for 3 weeks just in case to stop tens of thousands of you dying from Covid and save me from intensive care." He would have been dismissed by most as a mad impulsive dictator ignoring scientific advice.

The only thing that puzzles me is why the scientific advisers like Chris Witty and Patrick Vallance are still the main spokesmen when it turned out that their initial advice had to be flipped based on Ferguson's findings in mid March.

[fiction-factory]

^but there had only been one DEATH in Europe.

[naomi24]

diddly, //Fact - Boris failed to attend Cobra meetings //

He didn't 'fail'. He wasn't scheduled to attend them. Do you understand what the word 'fail' means?

[Grandpappy]

I know as much as Doris?