The failing coronavirus strategy
The Prime Minister of Great Britain has given it the very name by which the coronavirus strategy is going to fail: whack-a-mole. Boris Johnson has promoted his latest approach using that name, and he insists it is winning against the pandemic. It is, in fact, guaranteed to spread the disease. Like America, Britain is in trouble.
Meanwhile in America, on Tuesday Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “We are now having 40,000 plus new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to a hundred thousand cases a day if this does not turn around, and so I’m very concerned.”
It’s important to remember that Fauci always speaks in conservative numbers. Recall in April he warned that coronavirus deaths could reach “as many as 60,000” by late August. America already doubled that figure last month, and is on course for at least four times that figure by late August. With one hundred thousand cases a day that means as many as three or four thousand Americans could die every day. In other words, a catastrophic loss of life equivalent to 9/11, seven days a week and on into the foreseeable future.
The British-style whack-a-mole strategy, which is loosely followed in the United States, includes addressing coronavirus hotspots in towns and neighborhoods as and when they happen, or even ignoring the problem completely. The problem with this strategy, and the reason it won’t solve the problem, is because coronavirus isn’t spread by towns and neighbourhoods, it’s spread by people. There exists no education program in either country to alert people to the essentials of mask-wearing, hand washing and social distancing. And since the Prime Minister and the President alike don’t insist on masks and protocols, the messages are unclear and the people remain effectively leaderless.
I do the shopping for two households and I am very careful, but the care I have learned to practice I had to find out about on my own. I get nothing consistent from the British government. When I go into the grocery store I am typically the only one wearing a mask. Employees aren’t required to wear masks so they don’t. As in America, there exists no overarching government rule about the wearing of masks, so it is applied sloppily and inconsistently from place to place here, or, by analogy, from state to state in the USA. This is the inevitable byproduct of weak and stupid leadership.
Because America and Britain have themselves failed, they have also failed the world. The inevitable result (according to the CDC and WHO) is that between seventy and eighty percent of the world’s population will get COVID-19, that is, around six billion. Of those six billion as many as 240 million people will die.
Meanwhile in America the GOP strategy is to ignore all this. They want the experts to “stop spreading fear” about coronavirus, because it distracts from their own fear-spreading agenda about Antifa, Black Lives Matter protests and the removal and destruction of Confederate and racist statues. Their hatred of science has never been clearer, especially when scientific fact interferes with their political agendas.
This is what happens when conservatives are in power. It was the world’s bad luck that two of the biggest idiots in history happened to be in charge when the pandemic hit. Conservatives love money and hate science, that is a deadly combination and we are paying the price. So, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, you must carry the burden of caution by yourselves: wear masks, wash your hands, disinfect everything that comes into your house, practice social distancing and stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.