Thought of the Day - May 26 2021 - Crisis, What Crisis?

As you know I am one of the first to criticize our authorities for not acting swiftly enough to tackle the pandemic ( Thought of the Day - May 11 - Thank You, People of the Diamond Princess ). Today I saw an amazing article from the UK that really shows, with all of the "crises du jour" that our elected officials are subjected to, how they have a really hard time sorting the fact from the fiction.

The exposé goes, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was disastrously slow to impose a lockdown in 2020 because he thought COVID-19 was a scare story. He even considered getting injected with coronavirus on live television to show it was benign.

Johnson subsequently caught COVID-19 early in the pandemic and was so ill that he was moved to intensive care at a London hospital where he survived by receiving oxygen. Being an ex-UK subject I got involved when the cry went out to do "Squats for Boris" - don't ask. He later said plans had been prepared to announce his death.

In a blistering attack on the British state, Dominic Cummings (who served as chief adviser to Boris until late last year) told lawmakers this week that the government was completely unprepared for the worst public health crisis in decades and that ministers, including the prime minister, were still on holiday in February 2020. “The prime minister regarded this as just a scare story,” Cummings said. Cummings cast the state as woefully disorganized, dominated by “groupthink” and run by ministers such as Health Secretary Matt Hancock who, he said, should be sacked for lying to the public and the government.

The West, Cummings said, failed during the crisis and British officials [like Canada] were resistant to accepting that they should follow the example of Asian powers in locking down the country ( Thought of the Day - December 29 - Inspiration on a Sunny Day ). “The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me, fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this,” Cummings said.

He related meetings in early 2020 when it started to dawn on some officials that Johnson’s resistance to a lockdown was a deadly mistake. “I’ve come through here to the Prime Minister’s Office to tell you, quote, I think we are absolutely fucked. I think this country is headed for disaster. I think we’re going to kill 1,000s of people,” Cummings quoted Helen MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary, as saying.

There was no data system to deal with COVID, no way to understand its spread and there was “not even a plan to bury all the bodies,” Cummings said.

“I take full responsibility for everything that has happened,” Johnson told lawmakers yesterday. “As I’ve said before … I am truly sorry for the suffering that the people of this country have experienced.”

With the imminent, and as yet undeclared, Federal election campaign now in full swing ( Thought of the Day - May 5 2021 - Meanwhile in Ontario ), I doubt Trudeau will make such a statement to the Canadian electorate.

Cheers Cliff