Kmflett's Blog

150,000 dead, not much said by Boris Johnson

Saturday marked the 150,000 death from COVID within 28 days of testing positive in the UK since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Of course there were those busy checking where this put the UK in the world league table of COVID deaths and others claiming that the real figure is rather higher.

These are the Gradgrinds of COVID obsessed with facts and rather overlooking that actual people are involved here.

Boris Johnson managed a platitudinous tweet while of course avoiding any suggestion that he might be in part at least to blame for all this. There is due to be an official inquiry. If you want an example of how good the British State is at holding inquiries which go on for a long time and take even longer to report while nothing actually happens check Chilcott on Iraq. That’s not say that inquiry should not be held btw.

The impact of deaths from COVID, long COVID and economic hardship has been felt in all sections of society. If it hadn’t been Johnson would have done nothing as the ruling classes of Europe did on cholera in the nineteenth century until they started dying from it as well.

Getting on for two years in certainly in England we are also at another stage familiar to nineteenth century historians. Namely that it has been determined that the economic cost of the pandemic outweighs the importance of controlling it and so ‘let it rip’ in a phrase Johnson may or may not  have used at some point.

The difference thankfully with the nineteenth century is that thanks to science and the NHS we have an effective vaccine which means that while infections are huge at the moment, serious illness and death are much less.

But hundreds are still dying from COVID each day. The disease doesn’t discriminate but class society does. It’s a fair bet that as in the COVID first wave, many of those dying will be the less well off, those in poor housing and poorly paid jobs that can’t be done from home. Numbers may not have been vaccinated but in many cases that wont be because they have ‘researched’ matters on the interweb but because they are from sections of society whose interface with official society is very limited. In places that is recognised and addressed by local Councils and health authorities. In No.10 it is a world and a people of whom they still have no conception.

Meanwhile whatever their status they are people with names not just numbers..