Sajid Javid - arrogant, insensitive?

[RoisinD]

SJ coming under fire from many for his tweet yesterday following his full recovery from his Covid-19 diagnosis. As Health Secretary he should have chosen his words more carefully and been more sensitive to those who lost loved ones, suffering long covid etc
Link to his tweet

twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1418932718847541248

Link to Yvette Cooper Labour MP's retweet and response

twitter.com/YvetteCooperMP/status/1419064768837599235

My cev dad is terrified to go anywhere atm - vaccinated but with a broken immune system it is unlikely to be fully effective. He is absolutely aghast that the government is basically to let the virus rip through the population.

it was a shitty and insensitive thing to say. HOWEVER he has apologised, something Boris has virtually never ever done. I think SJ has some morals, given the situation where he resigned as chancellor rather than have to fire all his stafff (tricked by Cummings which C later admitted.

I genuinely love reading the posts from those who try to defend Johnson

The Johnson Government have done a pretty good job. Not perfect, but much better than if Labour had been in power.

We're one of the few countries with few restrictions, the ability to travel abroad and a population with 90%+ protection.

The travel policy is rubbish, and there are other changes I'd make, but I absolutely dread to think where we'd be had Corbyn won the 2019 election. It would be the stuff of nightmares.

I just see a Tory who thinks fear can be turned on and off like a tap and who got angry when he realised it couldnt, And quite likely is pissed because he knows its the fault of his own Government for using fear tactics gaslighting and emotional abuse for the last 18 months.

You reap what you sow Tories. You reap what you sow.

The Johnson Government have done a pretty good job aboslutely love reading this sort of stuff, I used to canvass and when I came across the absolute loyalists I just loved to chat to them.

I'm not a loyalist to anything like that so I just find it fascinating.

The Johnson Government have done a pretty good job.

By the standards of Vlad the Impaler perhaps.

Not perfect, but much better than if Labour had been in power.

We Will Never Know.

We're one of the few countries with few restrictions, the ability to travel abroad and a population with 90%+ protection.

Whether "Freedom Day" is a positive thing in the long run remains to be seen.

Likewise our border control and the amount of international travel we have and have had. I think history will not be kind.

55.4% population fully vaccinated.

I absolutely dread to think where we'd be had Corbyn won the 2019 election. It would be the stuff of nightmares.

I didn't vote for Corbyn.

However, "The stuff of nightmares" is an excellent way to describe the current administration and is I think how they will be remembered by history.

The Johnson Government have done a pretty good job. Not perfect

Someone has very low standards. I mean look at, to pluck an example out of thin air, the shitshow around Christmas. Or schools opening for one day in January. Or the absolute mess from cancelling exams. Or not putting India on the red list and letting delta in. Or Johnson catching covid because he shook hands with everyone in a hospital and ending up in ICU. Or hospitals not having enough PPE. Or letting infections run high without accounting for isolations leading to staff shortages in essential workforces. Or undermining your own public health message over the farce of Barnard Castle. Or millions of kids being off school because you let covid spread there. Or the guy they appointed to come-up with a catch up plan for children resigning because they refused to come even close to implementing it. Or u-turning again and again because Marcus Rashford wouldn’t let kids go hungry in the holidays despite government insistence that they should.

I absolutely dread to think where we'd be had Corbyn won the 2019 election

Well he didn't. So why don't we critique the government we actually have rather than some alternative reality dystopian Matrix version in your head.

@starfro

The Johnson Government have done a pretty good job. Not perfect, but much better than if Labour had been in power.

We're one of the few countries with few restrictions, the ability to travel abroad and a population with 90%+ protection.

The travel policy is rubbish, and there are other changes I'd make, but I absolutely dread to think where we'd be had Corbyn won the 2019 election. It would be the stuff of nightmares.

Dear lord They’ve done an abysmal job and people seem to finally be seeing through the woefully unsuitable for the job charlatan that is Boris Johnson

comparing them against a hypothetical labour government rather than judging the actual governments calamitous failures is nonsense

If people don’t want a Labour government then fine, why don’t they want a better Conservative one?

Why settle for this shitshow with a cry of ‘But Corbyn’?

@lannistunut

The Johnson Government have done a pretty good job aboslutely love reading this sort of stuff, I used to canvass and when I came across the absolute loyalists I just loved to chat to them.

I'm not a loyalist to anything like that so I just find it fascinating.

Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't vote Tory in 2019 and have mostly voted Lib Dem in the past. I'm a Remainer and very liberal. There are plenty of Tories I can't stand (Priti Patel, Rees-Mogg etc)

However, my background is heavily science based which leads me to the conclusions I make.

So that list I posted, starfro that represents a pretty good job?

@noblegiraffe

If people don’t want a Labour government then fine, why don’t they want a better Conservative one?

Why settle for this shitshow with a cry of ‘But Corbyn’?

People who voted for a Johnson led Tory party knowing full well he was a liar and devoid of morals never dreamt such bloodstained chickens would come to roost. A lot of them are in denial.

To be fair reading the covid forum on here I think he has got a point with a number of people on here.

@noblegiraffe

So that list I posted, starfro that represents a pretty good job?

I won't answer all the points, however to examine a couple:

1. You have to let infections run high. The only other option is to lockdown forever. Even 100% double-vaccinated populations see massive Delta outbreaks (see HMS Queen Elizabeth). Vaccination+infection is the only thing that really ramps up immunity.

1. Kids need to catch Covid. It's actually less dangerous to them than flu. Getting them all infected and then immune is a good thing. Vaccinating them is actually slightly more dangerous than natural infection. Long Covid in kids is no more prevalent than for any other respiratory illness (see JCVI report).

1. Any more transmissible variant will become the worldwide dominant strain. Closing borders only delays this process by a week or two. It's pointless and this is why the WHO recommends you don't shut borders in a Pandemic.

@Againstmachine

To be fair reading the covid forum on here I think he has got a point with a number of people on here.

What, about 100, maybe 200 individual posters max? In the whole of the UK and rest of the world? Goodness.

You have to let infections run high. The only other option is to lockdown forever.

You missed the bit where they decided to let infections run high without considering the impact of isolations on essential services. That was an error, yes?

Kids need to catch Covid. It's actually less dangerous to them than flu.

If the policy was to get them to catch covid, why were millions of them off school isolating? If the policy was not for them to catch covid, why the lack of mitigation measures in schools? What was the policy around children? Does what they actually did make any sense?

Any more transmissible variant will become the worldwide dominant strain. Closing borders only delays this process by a week or two.

We ended up delaying removing further restrictions by a month as we needed to get more people vaccinated to compensate for the spread of delta. So it would have made a difference, wouldn’t it?

@Againstmachine

To be fair reading the covid forum on here I think he has got a point with a number of people on here.

I am SO surprised that you think this. I wonder if Wildswim et al will be along soon as well...

What, about 100, maybe 200 individual posters max? In the whole of the UK and rest of the world? Goodness.

Extrapolate that with forums and facebook yep there are plenty of people cowering.

@foxandbee

I've not seen you name before are you a banned name changer.

@noblegiraffe

You have to let infections run high. The only other option is to lockdown forever.

You missed the bit where they decided to let infections run high without considering the impact of isolations on essential services. That was an error, yes?

Kids need to catch Covid. It's actually less dangerous to them than flu.

If the policy was to get them to catch covid, why were millions of them off school isolating? If the policy was not for them to catch covid, why the lack of mitigation measures in schools? What was the policy around children? Does what they actually did make any sense?

Any more transmissible variant will become the worldwide dominant strain. Closing borders only delays this process by a week or two.

We ended up delaying removing further restrictions by a month as we needed to get more people vaccinated to compensate for the spread of delta. So it would have made a difference, wouldn’t it?

They should have turned off the app and stopped kids isolating. That's what I would have done if I were in charge. There would be huge backlash though.

Not really, Delta was already in 30 countries before it was even sequenced! And then you need a few weeks before you can see whether it is more transmissible. There are tens of thousands of variants out there, so it's not like when you see a new variant you stop everything as you see a new one every day.

There's a lot more nuance in strategy that would consume pages and pages. But suffice to say, a lot of the criticism comes from a lack of scientific and mathematical understanding.

Extrapolate that

Why don't you have a crack at that? Show your workings,

They should have turned off the app and stopped kids isolating.

So you agree that it was badly managed.

Why not? I mean, that Johnson is a liar is indisputable.

I don't care about lies in Boris Johnson's private life and certainly not from 10, 20, 30 years ago - John Major covered up an extramarital affair for four years. 'Political spin' or 'misremembered facts' I don't consider 'lies'.

Is Joe Biden a 'liar'? I think Lisa Nandy called him an 'inspiration' and the 'sort of leader' we needed in the UK;

May 2021
By CNN's rough count, Biden has made 29 total false claims in his first 100 days, about one every three-and-a-half days on average.

edition.cnn.com/2021/05/02/politics/fact-check-biden-100-days/index.html

That handing government contracts to mates via private channels is corrupt.

Which contracts in particular? Where would you have sourced PPE from considering only 1% of the UK's PPE was manufactured domestically at the time?

That discharging positive cases to care homes was (at best) incompetent.

I think it was established by Dominic Cummings that Boris Johnson was not aware of this at the time. Most hospital trusts claimed they did test in any case, asymptomatic transmission caught everyone by surprise, and there is little evidence that the discharges directly led to any deaths. Most infections were probably spread around care homes by agency staff moving from home to home, staff being assigned to Covid/suspected Covid residents and non-Covid residents at the same time, staff not self-isolating (possibly because they were not paid/couldn't afford to self-isolate or they were asymptomatic) and staff mixing during their rest/lunch breaks. Germany has had thousands of care home infections and deaths over the course of the pandemic - how did the infections get in?

@noblegiraffe

They should have turned off the app and stopped kids isolating.

So you agree that it was badly managed.

Overall between a 7 to an 8 out of 10.

Mistakes were made, of course, like everywhere.