“Together we can defeat this virus”

[IfIHadAHeart]

From Boris’s press conference.

I really don’t think this is a helpful message. A virus cannot be “defeated”. Not to mention that the strategy is completely impossible to understand due to being different across different nations/areas, and the measures themselves seem contradictory and pointless.

Somebody somewhere is gathering fascinating data on all this as a study of social compliance (not a conspiracy theorist, but I’m sure this is all useful information for future governments).

Oh and another thing. Corruption.

All this giving of multi-million pounds contracts to their mates, who then don't deliver PPE.

They absolutely need to be held to account for that if there is any hope in hell of it stopping.

It is almost as immoral as the government's actions in this, to suggest to people that they ought to offer unquestioning support.

We should be demanding better of them. At every opportunity we get. We should be outraged.

@larrygrylls

Annabel,

The ‘government should take responsibility’ is an empty soundbite.

What would that look like to you?

What they shouldn't do is blame the public for doing what they were told to do (go back to the office, eat out to help out, go shopping, go back to school, go off to Uni).

The majority should not be tarred with the minority of selfish wankers who have been partying and doing what they want.

@RepeatSwan

Overall, I think the British people have been massively let down by Johnson. I am so sad our country has had such a low-grade government at such a difficult time.

I have never cared less about political party, and I've never cared more about honesty and leadership.

totally agree

Also totally agree with @annabel85

Whitty usually gets the tone right and says we’re doing well and we’re asking you to do things that are hard. Works better

openly

It is called personal responsibility. You don't need to be qualified to know that if everyone took their responsibilities seriously, then we would not have the growing problem that we have now.

Depending on the severity of the second wave this will have a huge impact again on our children, our jobs and our futures.

So why on earth is someone's right to party/socialise and infect others more important than all of society some that heavily depend on us. Children, the seriously or terminally ill, the vulnerable, the elderly - all of them need us to do the right thing, and yet it is still beyond some people.

They deserve our anger, our irritation and exasperation. Your misdirected fury is being vented in the wrong direction.

If you know people like this, let them know you think it is wrong - grow a real backbone - don't just stand there screaming into the abyss about the government. That won't change anything. They are already working flat out and doing their level best as far as I can tell - whether you agree with the strategy or not.

The ‘government should take responsibility’ is an empty soundbite

No it is not, i think a lot of people would respect the Govt and Johnson a whole lot more if they admitted to their failings.
No one expects perfection in what is a once in a lifetime (i hope) pandemic but the inability to say "sorry, we have to do better" is galling and counter productive.

So the cabinet all jumped on Ferguson when he had his GF around but Cummings was completely exonerated.

Double standards!

PPE, Care homes, testing, the app, universities... all major cock-ups but no apology... its now become all our fault if CV spreads further... despite the mixed and changing messages on eating out, go back to to work turnarounds.

The majority should not be tarred with the minority of selfish wankers who have been partying and doing what they want

The minority is probably bigger than you think sadly, or certainly the infection rate seems to indicate that is the case.

Oh right, I have been writing to the media asking for proper coverage of the rising infections in schools

This is not exactly news though is it, there is a slight uptick, most schools are open and functioning so I can see why that might not make the headlines. The BBC has its own agenda here and it is nothing to do with covid or schools.

I agree @IfIHadAHeart.

The virus is here, it can’t be “defeated” and we just need to live with that. Ever more draconian restrictions won’t magically kill it off.

I would absolutely be more receptive to the government were they to level with us, and admit mistakes.

The problem is that blaming people as individuals and yarning on about personal responsibility while ignoring the massive structural problems and pretending rule breaking is fine when a government advisor does it just won't work. We know enough about human behaviour and thinking to understand how doomed to failure this strategy is. It's pissing in the wind. Ironic that people congratulating themselves for understanding evidence seem to have missed this bit.

Completely agree.

The government messages are really disingenuous.

Even a full, strict lockdown did not 'defeat' the virus in any country.

We can't eradicate a virus. The only thing that could is a suitable vaccine.

Everything else is just about trying to minimise the spread. But even the social distancing/locking can't go on forever. At some point it is either a vaccine or accepting the inevitable. Everyone will get infected. Some survive, some don't...

I think it is silly not to be honest about this.

I don't mind 'defeated' but 'together' makes me despair.

I don't feel huge camraderie because it's apparent that people have diverse views on what to do , how to manage, and this comes down to how necessary or excessive you think the control measures are. If you think it's difficult but necessary that's different from thinking "There are a dozen other strategies" that would work better.

The virus is here, it can’t be “defeated”

Yes it can, with a vaccine. We don't need to live with covid forever.

pretending rule breaking is fine when a government advisor does it just won't work

Every parent I know agreed that without any childcare if we both had covid then we would drive to drop our child off with family to ensure their safety and wellbeing. My family are 300 miles away and our plan was to drop the dc there in the worse case scenario. We couldn't ask friends, so what else is anyone supposed to do??

I have no problem with Cummings driving his child to his family house. The only outrage I see about this is on the news. The rest of us are more realistic in real life. They both had covid, the PM was in intensive care what they supposed to do???? No nannies were available at that time as you well know, and they couldn't ask friends. It was a media witchhunt whipped up to try and get rid of him.

So no, I don't buy into the huge structural problems you are alluding to. I simply think people need to stop being so bloody selfish! End of. It is not huge or big or difficult to understand.

open The time for reflection, apologies and understanding what mistakes will happen in due course, this is not something any government should be doing in the middle of the actual pandemic.

There will be an inquiry, and much will be learnt from this I am sure. To expect the government to have the time to do this now is quite frankly ridiculous when they are fire fighting on some many different fronts.

Jasjas and Annabel,

So, what you want is a mea culpa, which would serve no purpose and, even if one were made, you would say it was just empty words.

Making through this is like walking a tightrope in a gusty wind.

You feel the wind, over adjust and the have to throw out the other arm. And, each time you do this, people accuse you of panic or being overly cautious

There is no magic formula of the right amount of caution vs the right amount of openness. The only thing any government can do is repeatedly open up (when possible) and close down when they have to.

This will have to go on until we have a vaccine.

The minority is probably bigger than you think sadly, or certainly the infection rate seems to indicate that is the case

I really disagree with this, although I do think that’s what they want us to think. While we are all blaming each other, the majority aren’t scrutinising the government too closely.

The majority of people absolutely are obeying the rules, however contradictory and stupid some of them seem to be. The figures have shown time and time again that the infection is most likely to be passed on inside the home or in health care settings. This is followed by care homes and then workplaces. There have not been loads of mass outbreaks traced back to pubs as far as I’m aware. But every “battle” needs a villain, and this seems to change depending on the agenda of the government at any particular moment. For now, students are to blame. Before, it was holidaymakers, then multi-generational living. No doubt in the future it will be someone else.

I just think we all need to stop blaming different segments of society, the majority of whom are doing as instructed, and really look carefully at what this government is doing.

Every parent I know agreed that without any childcare if we both had covid then we would drive to drop our child off with family to ensure their safety and wellbeing. My family are 300 miles away and our plan was to drop the dc there in the worse case scenario. We couldn't ask friends, so what else is anyone supposed to do??

I have no problem with Cummings driving his child to his family house. The only outrage I see about this is on the news. The rest of us are more realistic in real life. They both had covid, the PM was in intensive care what they supposed to do???? No nannies were available at that time as you well know, and they couldn't ask friends. It was a media witchhunt whipped up to try and get rid of him.

Think you're confused here. It's not the drive to Durham that broke the rules, whatever anyone may feel about the responsibility or otherwise of hotboxing covid for a couple of hundred miles and however pissed off people who'd chosen to keep their children at home in a similar scenario because they didn't want to put anyone else at risk might have been. That was almost certainly legal. It was the trip to Barnard Castle. There is no interpretation of the regulations that puts Cummings' actions within what was legally permissible then. What your mates think is irrelevant.

And you can yarn on about the irresponsible media all you want, as though the story wasn't being discussed widely outside those forums. But the data is very clear that the Cummings situation led to a loss of trust and support in the government, with no evidence that this has yet recovered. That horse has bolted. Pretending it hasn't and blaming people you don't like for having left the stable door open makes no difference to any of that.

So no, I don't buy into the huge structural problems you are alluding to. I simply think people need to stop being so bloody selfish! End of. It is not huge or big or difficult to understand.

Yes, I can tell that you think that. Naturally you've just zoned out stuff like sending infectious people into care homes.

The problem is that however convincing you find it, the approach you advocate is not working on the population as a whole. It's an unfortunate fact that do what we say not what we do gets enough people's backs up that it impacts on trust and compliance. We can all be as annoyed by that as we like. It will remain the truth.

It's like housework, never done but you can keep on top of it.

Great analogy @Midgebabe. Bojo should use this one!

Why do we even need to have 'blame' at all? I mean no one is actually to blame for this as far as we know. If at some point China opens up to WHO then we might finally know where it started, but now it is here - all I can see is MOST people doing their best, and then you have some people that really don't care about covid or who suffers.

We are definitely NOT short on everyone and his dog having something to say about the government though - there is massive scrutiny from the media and others. Some of it is very biased. We are short on people falling over themselves to jump on every last little detail lets face it.

We all have a collective responsibility, and there is no silver bullet to fix this problem, so the quicker we can stop acting like children and actually pull together the better.

I have no problem with Cummings driving his child to his family house. The only outrage I see about this is on the news. The rest of us are more realistic in real life. They both had covid, the PM was in intensive care what they supposed to do???? No nannies were available at that time as you well know, and they couldn't ask friends. It was a media witchhunt whipped up to try and get rid of him. I totally agree and I didn't worry about his trip to Barnard Castle either.
His actions had no impact on me whatsoever. He should have apologised for BC but other than that no.

@larrygrylls Now? yes an apology wouldn't be taken seriously.

A few months it would have been accepted, just like the one Macron gave.

You cannot have a govt, less than a month ago, telling us all to go back to the Office and then 2 weeks later, pleading for us all to WFH and its our fault that the virus has spread.

That's on top of the fiasco that was "eat out to help out" or Johnsons most recent (plus a cabinet minister) couldn't tell us what the new rules in the NE are.

@Friendsoftheearth

The majority should not be tarred with the minority of selfish wankers who have been partying and doing what they want

The minority is probably bigger than you think sadly, or certainly the infection rate seems to indicate that is the case.

Cases were low until the schools went back with no social distancing and full classrooms and there was a government campaign to get people back to the offices

A lot of people want to follow Sweden but are not asking our government to follow the Swedish lead on apologising and bring honest about the bits they messed up.

Sweden apologised for their care home deaths. Our glorious leaders span that vomit-inducing line about a protective ring . Friends with dead parents were pretty hurt by that. They're still not doing the claimed testing in care homes.

One of the reasons Sweden gets ongoing reasonable compliance (although they have anti measures protests too I think) is their honesty. Johnson only stops lying when he's asleep. Those basic values really matter at times of crisis.

I totally agree and I didn't worry about his trip to Barnard Castle either. His actions had no impact on me whatsoever. He should have apologised for BC but other than that no.

Which again is perfectly fine, but has no effect on the point being made, which is that the Cummings situation led to a drop in trust on a population level which has not yet been corrected. The data on this is really clear. Obviously there are people whose views weren't affected because they already couldn't disapprove any more of Johnson, and those who continued to approve of him despite Cummings. But the 20 point loss in approval ratings was stark.

It's also not simply about what Cummings did. It was the response of the Cabinet to it, the AG potentially compromising herself by weighing in.