21st Century Wire says…
Tens of thousands of businesses and millions of students’ hopes were dashed last night after Boris Johnson just extended COVID lockdown until March 8th, with the PM confirming that schools and all “non-essential” businesses will remain shut.
The justification for this seems to be as shaky as ever. On one hand, Johnson warns of a ‘perilous situation,’ while simultaneously claiming that the government still sees “signs” that infections rates are slowing. As a result of this constant real-time flip-flopping – no one really knows what’s true and what’s political theatre backed by pseudo science.
Undoubtedly, Johnson’s delay in reopening schools will have half-destroyed yet another year of education for the nation’s children, and it’s been reported that kids have already missed approximately 110 school school days out of a possible 190 since the reactionary lockdown polices were implemented last March 2020. These are are formative education years which children will never get back.
This latest move by the PM extends the national lockdown to 9 weeks, and will most certainly crush thousands of more hospitality jobs as ministers seem to be hinting that pubs and restaurants may likely to be closed for longer.
Supposedly, the Government will be rolling out yet another master plan in late February, no doubt some new and creative ‘Tiered system’ which will be sold to the public as a ‘gradual and phased’ roadmap out of lockdown.
Since the new year, the new talking point has been about various and sundry ‘new variants’ which are allegely more transmissible and more deadly, although no actual scientific evidence has been present to prove the government and media hypothesis on their ‘variant’ theory.
SEE ALSO: UK ‘Variant Fears’ Are Over-Hyped Says Leading US Microbiologist
“It was the emergence of a new variant that forced England back into lockdown and I know everyone yearns to know how much longer we must endure these restrictions. We will not persist for a day longer than is necessary but nor can we relax too soon, because if we do we run the risk of our NHS coming under still greater pressure, compelling us to reimpose every restriction and sustain those restrictions for longer,” said Johnson.
Buying Time for the Vaccine
However, the answer to why Johnson has decided to increase economic pain and social suffering may be more pragmatic. When speaking to MP’s he was quoted as saying that, “The reason we say 8 March is the earliest is we have to give a certain amount of time for the vaccine to bed in.”
“We also need to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccine in driving down the number of deaths, and we won’t know that until the middle of February.”
This statement reinforces suspicion many of the critics have that this external lockdown was, and always has been about the dissemination of corporate vaccine products.
“There are still too many unknowns regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine in stopping transmission and the speed at which its roll-out will reduce hospitalisations, according to the PM, reported the Metro.
Johnson claims that the current lockdown which began on January 4, has somehow reduced the fungible ‘R number’ (correctly referred to as ‘R0’ pronounced “R naught”), but then says the lockdown still can’t be lifted because it’s supposedly ‘too early’ to tell’, and they can be sure if it’s ‘safe’ to reopen society and the economy.
Judging by the predictably fluid and elastic nature of this government’s approach to what is now an arbitrary policy, it’s almost certain that Boris Johnson will continue to move the goals posts and may likely extend the lockdown again up to Easter Weekend.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES.
READ MORE LOCKDOWN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Lockdown Files
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