It’s now been a year since the first-ever UK lockdown was declared. It was a result of policy failure that this route was chosen. So this is a good time to reflect on the strange moment we’re still living through.
The Johnson government wanted to let the virus spread throughout the country to achieve herd immunity, but they quickly backtracked in the face of mounting cases and media pressure.
We’ve seen thousands of deaths thanks to government incompetence, cronyism and profiteering, while conspiracists get wilder and wilder. Here is a collage of my favourite parts of The Plague Diary.
March 17 2020 – Follow the Herd
The UK stands out for its eccentric response to the Coronavirus outbreak.
The Conservative government has a strategy to ‘delay’ the height of the crisis to make it easier to manage.
This might sound rational, but what this means is leaving more people vulnerable to catching the virus.
The hope is that this will help ‘immunise’ large numbers of people while making it easier for the health service to treat the most serious cases over the summer.
This is taking the notion of herd immunity and applying it to new territory.
The danger is that more elderly and sick people will be exposed to the virus in the meantime. Those are the people most likely to die from the complications of COVID-19.
No wonder some people think this is exactly what the Johnson government wants. However, others have suggested this might not be a bad idea.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long-term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents,” wrote Jeremy Warner in his column at The Daily Telegraph.
Warner later clarified his view, expressing regret at the use of the word ‘culling’. “Any thinning out of those of prime working age is a much bigger supply shock than the same thing among elderly retirees,” the economist explained.
“Obviously, for those affected, it is a human tragedy whatever the age,” he stressed, adding, “but this is a piece about economics, not the sum of human misery”.
Those words capture what many vicious right-wingers feel in their hearts, but dare never say out in the open.
We ought to applaud Warner for his candour. At least we know what he really thinks of our grandmothers.
It would be a conspiracy theory to suggest the Conservative government is deliberately trying to ‘cull’ the old (who vote Tory more than any other group) just to boost the economy.
However, the outcome could still be the same since the most vulnerable people are not being protected.
March 23 2020 – Lockdown Begins
The Johnson government has decided to take the UK into lockdown. This marks the abandonment of the ‘herd immunity’ strategy.
The Tories thought they could keep the economy open and withstand the shock of the outbreak and clean up the ‘mess’ before winter. The basic idea was that the virus would spread through the population and ‘immunise’ us (or at least most of us).
An article from The Conversation suggests otherwise:
“Even if we manage to protect the most vulnerable people (though no discussion is provided on how this will be done or for how long) the fatality rate for the otherwise healthy portion of the population may still be 0.5% or higher. This means that even in this unlikely “best case” scenario we would still be looking at more than 236,000 deaths.”
March 30 2020 – The Pandemics Proxy
The coronavirus outbreak has set a domino effect in motion. The end of which we can’t see because we’re still in its early phases, watching as the first domino falls and the next begins to wobble.
We’re living in a crisis with few precedents. Yet the response from the US and the UK has been slow and ineffectual, even deliberately so. The British government has been forced to retreat from its ‘herd immunity’ strategy of allowing the virus to infect most of the population.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is eager to reopen the American economy. He has even said he wants the United States back to work by Easter. This is while the Trump Administration has pumped $2.2 trillion into the economy, even posting one-off cheques to citizens.
Why are some governments still reluctant to take action to contain COVID-19? Could it be that the Trump and the Johnson government fear something more than tens of thousands of citizens dying?
In the past, pandemics have sown the seeds of rebellion. Not least because periods of emergency powers and containment tend to generate discontent. However, many regimes have been forced by such outbreaks to enact social and economic policies they would ordinarily oppose.
It’s when the outbreak ends, and the rulers decide to roll back the policies that helped keep society going, that the population faces a stark choice: Either accept a worse future or fight for a better tomorrow.
April 16 2020 – Birthday Blues
My birthday this year was a big letdown. I had a videochat with several good friends of mine and chattered for a few hours over beers I bought, while I waited for my dinner to arrive via Deliveroo. But this was the high-point of the evening.
The Deliveroo driver would fail to call me when the food arrived and left it outside, where it was stolen. This was my first and only time using the app to get a meal. Never again would I depend on Deliveroo.
I promised myself I would do better for my 30th birthday.
May 18 2020 – Immune to Coronavirus
The Johnson government may be the most right-wing in modern British history. Yet its disastrous response to the COVID-19 outbreak hasn’t cost it support.
What accounts for its continuing popularity? With so many needlessly dying, it stands contrary to reason.
Looking for answers, I find myself back on the doorstep in Hendon. We were knocking doors for Labour in cold, damp November. We found the working-class areas were very pro-Labour, but this was not the case with every household.
“Fuck off! Fuck off, you cunts!” shouted the red-faced man in his bathrobe. “You fuckin’ muggy cunts! You muggy cunts!” he added for emphasis.
We decided to retreat rather than ask for clarification. It would have been nice to get an explanation for why he was so enraged at two Labour Party members turning up at his door. This was the worst encounter I had on the doorstep during the 2019 election campaign.
I had heard worse campaign horror stories. One elderly man was assaulted in South Yorkshire and was hospitalised. A friend in Coventry told me one person drew a sword and chased an activist from their front yard. It could have been much worse.
The man’s inflamed demeanour spoke of a different politics to ours. Yet stereotypes and clichés are not a safe guide to UK politics. This was the only incident of hostility we experienced that night.
I’ve encountered similar hostility from people who insist Boris Johnson is doing the best job anyone could do in this crisis. It was at its worst when Johnson was in intensive care having caught the virus. He became an unquestionable figurehead for a brief time.
Now, as the reality of COVID-19 is sinking in, the government is shedding unquestionable support. However, it’s still the case that the British government has more support than it should have – especially given that almost 35,000 people have died, according to the government’s own figures.
But this shouldn’t be surprising. The British right has successfully cultivated its hegemony on forms of recognition and distribution that privilege the national and patriotic, the individual and free enterprise over the international and social, the collective and trade unions.
June 1 2020 – Far-Right Fantasy Life
Setting fire to the 5G mast, the perpetrator clearly thought they had achieved something worthy of recording and posting online. The world had to know that 5G was a danger to the survival of humankind and how best to deal with that threat.
There are dozens of such videos on the Internet.
The UK has seen almost 100 attacks on 5G masts in the last three months. The number of incidents peaked over the Easter weekend. It seems there’s nothing so glorious as an Easter egg hunt followed by trying to tear down the local tech infrastructure.
The reasons for torching a piece of new tech infrastructure could vary, but right now the main reason is to stop the spread of COVID-19. The 5G masts, also known as ‘towers’, are spreading dangerous electromagnetic waves all over the country, according to the conspiracists.
These dangerous waves spread coronavirus apparently. The conspiracists claim no country with 5G has had a major outbreak of COVID-19, except Iran would be one striking example where the virus has devastated a country with no 5G masts.
Meanwhile countries like South Korea – where the 5G network is already in place – have managed to contain and control the spread of the virus much more effectively than a country like the UK which is only just building up its 5G infrastructure.
Sadly, the role of conspiracy theories is not a matter of empirical inquiry. It’s about values and the object of the truth claim is the kind of society we inhabit and what it should be like. It’s no coincidence that conspiracy theorists are almost always very conservative people.
The conspiracy theory of history requires scapegoats, whether it’s the Rothschilds, the Illuminati, the Freemasons or even the Jesuits. The fear of an external agent interrupting the natural course of events is itself deeply conservative.
Apparently, the pandemic couldn’t have happened had it not been for China promoting 5G around the world. If the world just stayed the same, and if we could prevent outside forces from changing things, we would be fine. So conspiracy theories are about more than mass paranoia.
June 27 2020 – There Goes Wuhan Flu!
Reuters report:
“Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the University of Barcelona said on Friday.
The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought.
The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run tests on older samples.
They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported there.
Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019 and found the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected on March 12, 2019.”
So it’s been around for over a year. There goes the ‘China did it’ theories…
August 24 2020 – Bill Gates Blocks Vaccine Rollout
An article from Fortune:
“The Gates foundation pushed Oxford to effectively limit the rollout of the vaccine for the sake of profits.’Oxford University surprised and pleased advocates of overhauling the vaccine business in April by promising to donate the rights to its promising coronavirus vaccine to any drugmaker.'”
A few weeks later, Oxford—urged on by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—reversed course. It signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices—with the less-publicized potential for Oxford to eventually make millions from the deal and win plenty of prestige.”
September 21 2020 – Waiting for Q
Anti-lockdown marches in London have brought together very confused people into direct contact with anti-vaxxers and far-right activists.
The confluence of government mismanagement, mass confusion and fear has helped turn swathes of people towards QAnon.
The most recent march saw Q activists marching with people protesting against masks and social distancing.
Memorable signs include: ‘Leave Our Innocent Kids Alone!’, ‘I do not consent: and ‘Fuck the New World Order!’
One man at the 29 August march even unfurled an old British Union of Fascists flag, while others held up signs calling for Bill Gates to be arrested (presumably not for anti-trust practices).
Many of the marchers seemed to believe the Microsoft founder, and anti-infectious diseases campaigner, to be behind the pandemic to hawk a quack vaccine.
Times of great upheaval and anxiety are ripe for apocalyptic visions of the future. Terrifying fantasies grip people seeking meaning in a meaningless world.
Some would rather buy into a fake explanation of ‘what went wrong’ than have no explanation. Yet this does not account for what attracts Britons to QAnon.
The real world is scary enough without imagining it’s ruled by child-eating paedophiles.
October 5 2020 – A Visit To A Small Country
Standing on the white cliffs of Dover on a good day, you can look across the English Channel and just about see the French coast.
It’s no coincidence that these cliffs are a part of the national mythology. All monuments on the coast either refer to the valiant struggle of World War Two or hark back to the Roman era and the Anglo-Saxons.
The white cliffs of Dover are England’s frontline with mainland Europe. But this is not just down to geography.
Dover Castle still has its guns pointed towards France for tourists to photograph. Meanwhile, the castle has an impressive trebuchet pointing inland towards the town.
It’s almost as if the past occupants expected a native uprising sooner or later.
November 4 2020 – 300,000 Dead Americans
Trump might hold on after 300,000 coronavirus deaths. Even if he loses, it’s probably going to be very close. This is pretty appalling, but not surprising given the choices the Democrats made.So who will the Democrats blame if they lose again? Russia, China, space lizards, German-Latin Americans, gravity, Bernie, your mom. There are a lot of possibilities!
November 14 2020 – PCR Tests Are Inaccurate
I keep seeing claims that the coronavirus tests are incredibly inaccurate and churn out thousands of false positives. These claims are baseless. In fact, false negatives are far more common with testing.
I’ll repost what The Lancet says: “Globally, most effort so far has been invested in turnaround times and low test sensitivity (ie, false negatives); one systematic review reported false-negative rates of between 2% and 33% in repeat sample testing.”
“The current rate of operational false-positive swab tests in the UK is unknown; preliminary estimates show it could be somewhere between 0·8% and 4·0%.”
December 5 2020 – An Ode to Falling Pintman
Last night I had to buy camembert to justify my alcohol consumption. Obligatory cheese, anyone? It’s substantial! It’ll protect you from coronavirus! We had to order everything through an app, which was a good idea but incredibly cumbersome.
Nevertheless, everyone in the pub was ‘extremely merry’. One man nearly fell headfirst into the garden’s fire-pit. “Whoa!” the crowd went. He didn’t spill his pint though.
January 9 2021 – One Day, 68,000 Cases
So here’s the number of coronavirus cases reported on January 8 in South Korea and the UK:
South Korea: 641
The UK: 68,000
Funny how the international COVID conspiracy is very localised to the UK. It’s almost as if the crisis is real and the government is just incredibly incompetent.
February 3 2021 – Napier Barracks Siege
The Guardian report:
“Hundreds of men have been locked in at Napier barracks, near Folkestone, following a significant coronavirus outbreak, despite reassurances from the government that the site is not a detention centre.”
February 4 2021 – Vaccine Nationalism
Richard Seymour on the pandemic:
“There’s no putting this microbe back in the reservoir. The world is going to have to get used to an evolving Covid-19 virus, some strains of which will have a transmission advantage over those we’re used to, and will be more lethal. The government knows this, which is why they are developing a ten-year ‘endemic recovery plan’. However, it suits them very well that the conversation should revolve around the fundamentally misleading, emotionally charged tropes of vaccine nationalism. Because if the conversation is about the government’s competence on this axis, it allows them to quietly set the agenda and the terms of any future debate, on the issue of long-term adaptation and survival.
As long as we’re lulled into this hypnogogic trance with bromides about Britain ‘winning the race’, we’re not talking about any of the big questions that matter. We’re not talking about frailties of a neoliberalised health system. We’re not talking about the vulnerabilities built into an exploitative economy, or the pre-existing health condition known as racism. We’re not talking about the need to reform supply chains and expand the social wage to cope with future outbreaks. We’re not talking about ending deforestation and reforming agriculture and trade to prevent future outbreaks. We’re not facing up to any plausible future.”
February 12 2021 – The Return of Herd Immunity
Will the Tories lift all restrictions once the priority groups are vaxxed? The logic here is that the over 50s and people with underlying health conditions account for 99% of coronavirus-related deaths.A growing section of the public will want to end lockdowns.
Certainly the right-wing press and many Tory MPs will want it to. But then there is the problem of ‘variants’. And a lot of people are still very afraid.
February 19 2021 – Disability Deaths
“According to Office for National Statistics data published last week, 30,296 of the 50,888 coronavirus deaths in England between January and November were people with a disability.”
February 28 2021 – Finnish Vaccine
“A team of leading Finnish researchers had a patent-free COVID-19 vaccine ready last May, which could have allowed countries all over the world to inoculate their populations without paying top dollar. Yet rather than help the initiative, Finland’s government sided with Big Pharma — showing how a patent-based funding model puts profit over public health.”
March 9 2021 – Vaccine Update
UK vaccination number: 22.5 million (first doses)
Infection rate: 4,700+ (March 8)
Deaths per day: 65 (March 8)
March 14 2021
The sight of cops trampling flowers and candles set for a murdered woman only to harass and arrest women attending her vigil should be a wake-up call. The Tories are about to try and rush through a new policing bill attacking the right to protest.
Much like the ‘war on terror’ powers, the Coronavirus Act helped lay the basis for these sweeping powers. We’re at risk of losing fundamental rights and it’s not going to be easy to win them back.
Meanwhile, where is Sir Keir Starmer? Will he whip Labour to oppose this bill or just ‘abstain’ on it? Your guess is as good as mine.
PS: Starmer actually pulled a u-turn and, rather than abstain, whipped Labour MPs to vote against the bill. Not that it stopped the Tory government, Boris Johnson rammed it through anyway.
March 23 2021 – 42.4% Vaccinated
UK vaccination numbers: 28.3 million (first dose), 2.3 million (second dose)
Daily cases: 5,300+ (March 23)
Daily deaths: 112 (March 23)
Joshua White 