Open Letter To Boris

Dear Boris

When the Conservatives won the election I was fairly optimistic for the future ....

   Churchillian Poses And Tones, Are Just So Much Hot Air And Bluster ...

.... but then came Covid19, and the governments increasingly flailing response.

Now that we are entering a second mini lockdown, with the threat of a further six months of this, or even stronger (full lock down) action to come, I am forced to ask at what price are we being 'saved'? 

I am in my early 60's, and my acquaintances are largely aged over 40 and under 70, and almost to a man or woman, they think this lockdown approach is the wrong one, and has been after the initial 6 - 8 weeks 'to save the NHS'. Like them I think we are in serious danger of wiping the social and cultural life of the UK off the map. Just look at what could be gone in 6 months time.

• In sport, we could lose nearly all the local town professional Football clubs, up to and including even some Premier League levels, but particularly from the bottom two tiers and the non league. Rugby could be gone at a professional level, and the same for professional Cricket. Nearly all other sports are all going to be impacted as well, which is going to change our country forever. 
• Theatres, Ballet, Opera and other aspects of the higher arts, will all see venues that have been around for centuries closed, probably forever, and the same for cinemas. They will likely be turned into flats, by developers looking for a quick buck. Even Zoo's, wildlife centres, and other similar outdoor venues could fold. If Zoo's etc start putting down small animals, I can hear the outcry from animal lovers even now, but its inevitable if they have reduced or no incomes. 
• Then there is the hospitality sector; Pubs, restaurants, cafes, and even hotels. They are all teetering on the edge of mass redundancies, and or closure, with the loss of hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs, many of them small self-employed business owners (the very people this government should be encouraging), or low wage jobs filled by students, and younger or unskilled workers. These are in some case the most financially vulnerable workers in our society, but they are workers and not living off welfare benefits. I remember the 1980's, when a whole generation of welfare recipients was created, and the social disaster that was unleashed by that hopelessness. We are serious danger of recreating that again.

Surely, we now need to reappraise the approach to this pandemic, and accept that we maybe on the wrong path. Pandemics are a part of the human condition, and have been since the dawn of our history. 

We have rarely stopped one, and many remain with us as part of our existence i.e. The flu, which depending upon the annual strain, takes thousands of the elderly, infirm or sick in the UK alone every year.

Simpler Tests In The 1960s For Hong Kong Flu

We have had especially destructive versions of that particular illness in the past with the 1957/58 H2N2 Asian Flu, and the 1968/69 H3N2 Hong Kong flu, both with at least five million deaths worldwide (probably many times more, as only the first world even tried to count the deaths back then), but we didn't close down our societies to try and stop the unstoppable.   

Now is surely the time to honestly admit that the human and economic cost of trying, and failing to remove this disease from the planet, is already too high, and will be simply pointlessly destructive if we carry on down this road. We should now open up, not lock down. We have to try and target support for hospitals, geriatric wards, care and nursing homes and those who suffer the more serious form of the illness, but let the rest of us start living again. 

As I mentioned, I am by no means alone in this opinion, and this seems to be a view that is gaining traction amongst all age groups (as increasing signs of civil disobedience to the rules suggests).

I fully accept that not everyone agrees with this, but we can't allow public health, social and economic policy be driven by the BBC or social media tweets from certain opinion groups, who often have an agenda of their own. We have to look to the national interests, which are increasingly not being served by trying to save lives at one one end of the age spectrum, at the cost of the well-being of those at the other end. 

If we carry on like this, then surely we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water?

No doubt, given the nature of our society these days, if this post is read, I will risk getting trolled or abused for even suggesting that destroying the UK's way of life is a price too high to pay to partially combat this disease. 

But with the complete inertia of Parliament in this matter, we need to open a national debate about what we are prepared to lose forever, to fight this, and probable future pandemics.