'Smoking gun': not a phrase I have heard lately, probably because it could be applied to so many things today; we seem to be in a sea of mendacity corruption and unbelievably poor governance.
The report from the parliamentary committee on the Covid handling is just another, well, report. It has no clout, it is just a self-serving pile of paper of politicians' views on other politicians' cock-ups or worse. Why bother? No report or inquiry on anything has had the desired effect. The Jay report on the mass rape of young girls is an obvious case: no report has spelled out its findings in a more forthright way yet apart from the next day's headlines it soon disappeared down that well-worn memory hole; not a single issue has been tackled in any meaningful way, hence the never-ending photofits of the next trial of these undesirables.
The report on the Covid crisis conveniently starts out with the presumption that lockdowns actually work so by saying we should have locked down earlier they cover themselves from any criticism that the lockdowns just might have been not necessary at all, after all Sweden managed well enough with light touch measures as did several states in the US. Lockdowns were never a done deal yet the magic words ‘saving the NHS’ make everything OK like sprinkling fairy dust on us all.
So MPs have decided the mistake made by Government wasn't 'lockdowns kill more than virus', it was not being draconian or fascistic enough - lockdowns should have been enforced before the virus got into the country or even earlier if they could have had their way, despite the WHO stating lockdowns were not the answer...
We can argue till the cows come about what or what not the right approach to dealing with the virus should have been, somehow I cannot see there ever being a consensus, but one thing is for sure: there is a stench lurking behind all this. With the exception of Sweden and a few states in the USA plus a couple of other countries there was a general consensus that lockdowns were the way to go. Was this just a follow my leader approach after China locked down hard and these countries worldwide decided this was the best approach, or was it lack of time and a desire to all be seen doing something, our excuse being to save the NHS? The same NHS that every winter gives out the same 'can’t cope' message.
One thing is for sure: once this route was taken our government or any other wasn’t going to go back and admit it was wrong. All dissent was erased and they carried on spaffing enormous sums of money on failed methods of control as well as shutting down the economy to a degree never seen before. The question has to be why? Despite what has been said this was not anywhere near the worst pandemic we have had - during the last one in 68/69 which I remember, the country carried on as normal - or anywhere near the consequences of the Spanish flu. Despite many including our own PM bigging up Covid as the biggest health threat this century, it simply isn’t. No real answers as to why this was different have been given, but the costs are horrendous and the Swedish model of control has not even been discussed, it has been totally bypassed; that can only be because to discuss it would have been to admit we and many others got it wrong and no politician is going to do that. Claiming to be 'following the science' when different views from the scientific and medical fraternity were refused airtime or any semblance of recognition, and shutting down any dissenting voices on all media platforms, was and is Orwellian.
I am as I have said before not one for conspiracy theories, yet so much that was derided eighteen months ago is beginning at least in part to be accepted as true. The cheap remedies written off as some sort of witchcraft now are appearing in some countries as a method to alleviate symptoms of the virus, again you will not see a change of direction from our experts or even a suggestion that just perhaps they were a little too quick to condemn these cheap remedies, 'cheap' being the word no pharmaceutical company wants to hear.
To me though the worst of all has been the appalling decision to decant hospital patients into care homes. Once more this has not been something we have been alone in doing, it would appear to have been a coordinated approach; it cannot be a coincidence that so many countries took the same route at the same time. Did no one anywhere query that this might not be a good thing to do? Not one of the medical bodies involved in decision-making, not one eminent medical practitioner, no one in Health England or any equivalent bodies worldwide had a doubt about it all; I find that difficult to swallow. Or did they all take that same position from a global body such as the WHO?
This reveals the fact in the USA, starting around 4.40 in:
In Canada……
Across the globe the elderly were either neglected wilfully or there was an orchestrated agreement that they would be sacrificed, an appalling indictment of all those health services involved either way.
In Spain they just abandoned the elderly.
If we believe that this was wilful decisions were made at a high level and coordinated early into the pandemic, somewhere there are people in power who should be in jail by now, but already that part of the general mismanagement, an understatement if ever there was, is being sidelined: 'yesterday's news', 'lessons learnt', 'we had so little time' and on and on.
The reasoning and actions given in the report are amateurish to say the least. 'We had options' is actually said and 'hang on this could be dangerous', yet they all went ahead anyway. It's quite alarming that should have been the decision: if correct, the old were indeed sacrificed for a bed shortage that has been a feature of the NHS for years, the extra capacity supplied by the Nightingale Hospitals was never even used even in a way to provide a sanctuary for the same vulnerable patients. Why? The NHS said it never had the staff to utilise the Nightingale Hospitals, no it didn’t as Covid Centres but it did as overflow general hospitals, after all apart from front line staff the rest of the NHS was at home twiddling thumbs for months on end, even at that later date they could have been put to some use to give safe refuge to the elderly. I do not believe their was no other way other than to sacrifice those care home inhabitants as the result of total inaction.
The tragic consequences of that action will never be pinned on anyone or any group despite the size of the tragedy. The smoking gun will never be uncovered, too many reputations and positions rely on obfuscation in the matter. Already here Boris has said about the inquiry to be held, 'there is no rush to start'; no, of course there isn’t, there never is; it will be a complete waste of time and money as all the other inquiries are, but we are used to that by now, they have become theatre.
