Spare us your sorry state secrets
RTHEY are calling her “Lockdown Liz”. Ms Hurley has posted a string of selfies since being incarcerated at home. She is looking younger and younger in each one. The Austin Powers actress is in danger of doing a Benjamin Button and, if lockdown goes on much longer, they’ll soon have to push her out in a pram.
RWE NOW know so much more about this wretched virus than we did back in March.We know, for example, that it’s pretty damned difficult to pick it up from an infected person if you’re both outside.We didn’t know that eight weeks ago. I flinched every time a sweaty, gasping jogger pounded past uncomfortably close; turns out I needn’t have panicked.The bug hates fresh air and sunshine, and we’ve certainly had an abundance of the latter.
We know also that regular hand-washing really DOES offer significant protection. People who routinely soap their hands six to 10 times a day are substantially less likely to become infected – roughly 30 per cent less likely in fact.
We know that “social distancing” is incredibly effective.The virus drops harmlessly to the ground inside a yard from someone breathing bits of it out (does anyone still think in yards any more?) so staying back twice that distance keeps you comfortably out of range. And so on.
The thing is, you’re unlikely to have heard any of this from the Government.Almost everything we’ve learnt about Covid-19 is via independent studies and research, and good old-fashioned journalism. Take apart those daily briefings we get from our windbag leaders and it’s slim pickings; mostly weary repetitions of clapped-out slogans and meaningless mantras.
Actual hard information is rarer than a hen’s molar.And as for the Q&As afterwards – I don’t know why the press or public bother asking anything: I can’t remember the last straight answer we got. It’s usually a gushing: “That’s a really great question, Sophie/Robert/ Hugh…” followed by 60 seconds of waffle.
Ministers behave as if they’re protecting vital state secrets on a par with those from the Second World War. It’s as if they’re being
WHEN Donald Trump revealed he was taking antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to stop him catching Covid-19, he was rightly mightily mocked.
“Typical,” said White House watchers. “If you take it, you’ll die,” screamed hysterical US doctors. But lo and behold, it seems that the pill is about to be tested in a major UK trial involving 10,000 NHS staff. It’s thought it may in fact be preventative.
So it’s possible the president is right. Maybe this germophobe also got it right by obsessively washing and sanitising his hands umpteen times a day long before the virus arrived. Could it be this muchmocked leader (right) is brighter than he appears? asked to comment on the proposed date of the forthcoming D-Day landings, or if rumours that Germany was developing a V-weapons programme were true.
Here’s what happened just this week on Monday. Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, was asked if Sage (the Government’s emergency advisory body) was looking at whether family members could reunite, and in particular when grandparents might embrace their grandchildren once again.
The professor’s reply? “It wouldn’t be right and proper to comment at this stage and therefore I won’t.”
Uh? This must be the first time in British history where the state is forbidding us to see our own families.Yet its representatives loftily refuse to even discuss with us when this unprecedented Sovietstyle state of affairs might end.
And who are the keepers of such secrets? Four blokes in the Cabinet and their “advisers”.The rest of the Cabinet is kept as much in the dark as you and me too.
It’s untenable.
Why aren’t the minutes of Sage meetings published the same day? Are they frightened we’ll see them dithering? Being unsure? Getting something a bit wrong?
We agreed to a lockdown, not a tyranny of pointless secrets.Tell us what’s happening – NOW, not in 10 years, after some interminable public inquiry.
This is Britain, not North Korea.