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Editorial: The Prime Minister is letting the country down, again

SINCE the start of the coronavirus pandemic Boris Johnson has combined grandiose rhetoric with shocking complacency, and yesterday’s press conference was no different.

He announces to a fanfare that “the scientific cavalry is in sight,” offering us the prospect of a vaccine in spring to make lockdowns redundant.

For good measure, he implies a comparison of himself to Winston Churchill by saying that no peacetime prime minister has ever asked so much of the British people.

Yet his talk of sacrifice is tasteless. If it is true that great sacrifices have been made in order to defeat this virus, the PM must not be allowed to hide behind a narrative of heroic unity against an external threat — “this wretched virus” — that masks a sacrifice of a different character, the sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of thousands of jobs because of government policy.

More lives and livelihoods will be sacrificed unless it is urgently made to change course to a zero-Covid strategy, as called for by Independent Sage, the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, the People’s Assembly and others.

With confirmed new daily cases running at over 18,000 — 16,000 of them in England — the government cannot realistically claim the second lockdown has suppressed infections, even if the numbers are declining. 

This is partly because, by excluding schools from the lockdown and insisting on pupils’ attendance — even fining parents who do not comply — the authorities have done nothing to interrupt the spread of Covid in the sector contributing the most new infections, education.

The contrast to east Asian countries seeking to eliminate rather than manage infections is stark. 

Seven confirmed cases in Shanghai have prompted quick, targeted lockdowns, including of schools, and the testing of more than 17,000 workers at Shanghai Pudong international airport within a few hours.

After a case was confirmed at a nursery in Tianjin last week, its staff, children and the families of both were immediately moved to a supported quarantine environment.

A vaccine is on its way in China too, but that is not being used as an excuse to put lives at risk in the meantime. 

Nor on the government’s record to date can we regard the mere development of a vaccine as equivalent to the vaccination of the population.

Mass testing remains confined to a handful of areas. The privateers initially handed responsibility for running test and trace have proved expensive and inept, at an incalculable human cost.

The links between Britain’s weak labour laws and its exceptionally high Covid-19 infection and death rates has been clear at least since the summer.

A lack of support for people who need to isolate will continue to force sick people into work unless calls for an urgent increase in statutory sick pay are heeded — followed by tougher legislation to remove the many loopholes employers use to avoid paying it.

A return to localised restrictions on a tiered system is pointless unless outbreaks can be quickly identified and isolated, which is impossible without proper support for those affected. The current high daily death tolls will continue over the winter.

And the effective responses to the pandemic in parts of Asia were informed by their governments and health systems learning from the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) nearly two decades ago. 

There was nothing in the Prime Minister’s address to suggest he acknowledges the reasons Britain has seen one of the worst death counts globally from Covid-19, or that the Conservatives have any intention of investing in our resilience against future disasters. 

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