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Johnson’s government opposes nationwide lockdown despite exponential rise in UK coronavirus cases
By Robert Stevens
September 19, 2020
A large part of Britain is now under local lockdown, as the Boris Johnson government announced on Friday that a 10pm curfew would take effect across the north-east of England. At least 10 million people are now under local lockdown in the North of England, the Midlands, Scotland and South Wales.
Starting next Tuesday, this will rise to around 13 million when more restrictions are introduced in Lancashire, Merseyside, much of West Yorkshire and Cheshire. These will include curfews in pubs and restaurants, which must close at 10 p.m., and a ban on socializing outside of homes.
The situation is being reviewed in Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city, and neighboring Sandwell and Solihull, with further restrictions being considered as COVID infections rise in the area. Households were banned from mingling in Birmingham and the other two cities as of Sept. 15 after the seven-day infection rate rose to more than 70 cases per 100,000 residents.
Large populations and conurbations are experiencing a daily recorded increase in COVID-19 cases even greater than at the height of the pandemic in the spring. On Thursday, Leeds, with a population of almost 800,000, confirmed another 117 infections. Its previous highest daily figure was recorded on April 22, when 109 cases were detected.
It’s been just 77 days since the Johnson administration recklessly reopened the economy on July 1, amid a pandemic, to restore corporate profits. As of August 11, the UK’s more than 20,000 schools began to reopen, and these decisions resulted in a predictable resurgence of the deadly virus.
the R (reproduction) of the virus rose above 1 last week to between 1.0 and 1.2. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) announced yesterday that it had risen back to between 1.1 and 1.4. SAGE said this level equates to a “widespread growth of the epidemic throughout the country.”
In the last week alone, officially recognized COVID-19 cases have more than doubled, a daily average over the past few days of between 3,000 and 4,000.
On Friday, 4,322 new laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases were registered: one infection every 20 seconds and an increase of almost 1,000 in 24 hours. Another 27 deaths were announced.
Given that many thousands of people with symptoms, and millions in “hot spots” across the country, cannot be tested, even this is hugely underreported by the Conservative government.
Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics reported that an estimated average of 6,000 people per day In England alone they were infected between September 4 and 10. This represented an increase of 3,200 people per day during the period from August 30 to September 5. The Covid Symptom Study app, developed by King’s College London and ZOE, a healthcare data science group, which tracks the health of four million people in the UK, it is estimated that there were around 7,500 new COVID cases all the days during the last two weeks.
On Thursday, Professor Anthony Costello, former director of the World Health Organization, who created, along with other scientists, the independent SAGE committee to challenge the misuse of scientific evidence by governments, tweeted: “I am listening to a person the government now thinks, in the absence of evidence, there are 38,000 infections per day.
Yvonnne Doyle, Public Health England chief medical officer, noted yesterday that evidence showed the virus was spreading widely across all age groups, saying it was “a warning of much worse things to come.”
As the number of infections rises, the increase in COVID-19 cases requiring hospital admissions nearly doubled from 100 in the week of September 8 to 194. The government refuses to shut down the economy even as it plans to reopen several Nightingale hospitals that originally opened in the spring with National Health Service units under strain. One of the Nightingales based at Birmingham’s NEC Stadium is already on standby to start treating patients in two to three days.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted Sky News yesterday that “the virus is clearly accelerating across the country”, before insisting, “the last line of defense is complete national action and I don’t want to see that.”
Instead, what is being proposed are half-hearted national “circuit breaker” measures that would be in place for only two weeks. This would mean that schools and most workplaces open, while some pubs and restaurants could They have restricted opening hours.
To ensure that the massive return of teachers and students to school in recent weeks is not reversed, Financial times reported Thursday, “Experts from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and the Scientific Group for Pandemic Influenza in Modeling (Spi-m) have suggested a national shutdown that could coincide with the October school semester.”
He added: “The government is keen to avoid closing the schools, as it closed them during the national shutdown in March and reopened them completely this fall.”
The article quoted a “Sage Fellow” scientist as saying: “As schools will be closed for a week in the medium term, adding an additional week will have limited impact on education.” The semester doesn’t start until October 22, by which time the spread of the virus will be catastrophically out of control as it was before the March national shutdown.
As of Friday afternoon, 1,230 schools had been affected by coronavirus, an average of more than 32 a day since the August reopens in Scotland, but the majority of cases developed in schools in England (933) since September. There are at least 147 schools with multiple confirmed infections in their school population. the guardian reported yesterday that “more than four out of five schools in England have pupils trapped at home because they cannot access COVID-19 tests, according to a survey of principals.”
Johnson said on a visit to Oxfordshire yesterday: “Now we are seeing a second wave coming. We have seen it in France, in Spain, throughout Europe. I fear it has been absolutely inevitable that we will see him in this country. “But even as deaths in those countries increase – 154 died yesterday in France and 557 in Spain in the previous 72 hours, Johnson insisted that his murderous agenda would continue:” We want to keep schools open, that’s going to happen. And we will try to keep all parts of the economy open, as much as possible. I don’t think anyone wants to go into a second lockdown. “
This dire situation exposes the lies of conservative governments, led by Johnson, who insisted that there was little chance that children were in danger from the virus and almost no chance that they could infect adults. Responding to questions from a committee of parliamentarians on Wednesday, Johnson was forced to withdraw from such lying claims, admitting that it is “a fact of the disease that is easily transmitted between children and adults. And what we are seeing now is, sadly, the progression of the disease from the younger groups, which, as everyone knows, are much less prone to its worst effects, to the older groups. “
The response from Labor Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, who played a pivotal role in ensuring the economy and schools reopened, was to urge Johnson on Friday to convene a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, Cobra. Fearing the mounting anger of the public, he stated: “I am deeply concerned about the sharp increase in coronavirus cases and the difficulties people across the country are facing getting tested … The British public wants to know what the situation is and what is the government going to do? do about it. “
Again, Starmer insisted that his party would continue to support the Johnson government and would not oppose his policy of herd immunity, stating: “I also want to make it clear that Labor will continue to act in the national interest.”
The massive danger of lives underscores the need for workers and youth to fight for an alternative perspective. The Socialist Equality Party is providing the only viable opposition to this deadly agenda through the formation of independent grassroots security committees to protect lives. Today, the National Educators’ Archives and Rank Committee is holding its second meeting to oppose the unsafe reopening of UK schools and universities.
Register here to attend and participate in this critical event.
