PPE, tests, and the hungry media.

Now I am not what you would call a politically aligned Tory. Indeed I'm very far from it. I used to think as a very young man that Christianity kind of obliged those of us who admitted to being Christians, to be socialist in outlook. Well whether it does or not, there are very many Christians who don't feel obliged. However, I digress. I was thinking that despite the fact that I am no fan of the current government, that is not because of their current Covid 19 performance. Of neither their performance in the face of, nor in anticipation of, and not even in prospect of what remains of, the Coronavirus pandemic am I a critic.. Yes they have made mistakes. If they have a fault it's that they are very reluctant to admit this. At least our Nicola has on occasion been honest enough to 'fess up to this. But to hear the journalists questions - "Does country X have less fatalities than us because they did such and such?" You can smell the scent of their appetites for blame. Of course we didn't have enough PPE and of course they chose to priorotised the NHS over Care providers. Of course we didn't have enough testing capability. Of course we brought lockdown in too late.  And of course they will put enough words around all these choices to make us think that they weren't choices at all. But they were. We are told that there were early warnings (generalised ones about pandemics) and then much later specific ones about Covid 19 and that they were ignored. Stockpiling was not done. But isn't this the case with every life ending scenario? Not every region in the UK stockpiles snow clearing equipment which will mean rapid response and lives saved when the occasional blizzards hit. Not every region that needs to will spend as much as it could to safeguard every vulnerable home from flooding. The government will never make it so expensive, our roads so watched and patrolled, so difficult to learn to drive and own a car, that the annual death toll from motor accidents will plummet. The laying out of cash versus lives saved has always been an economic equation. The very act of easing lockdown no matter how carefully will be an economic choice, until a vaccine is found. The equation is simply a matter of how many deaths are tolerable? The answer depends on who you are, what your arena of work is, and the relationship you had with the last casualty. It is precisely because of this that if you take the high moral ground of elevating every life as non negotiable, then of course you can be a righteous critic of any group, government or other public body that actually works in the real world of the economic equation. What makes me fizz is to hear the journalists doing this. I do not believe they care to that extent. They do however want belters of headlines, and big blame stories. By all means take up a postion in this debate, for that is what it is. But please do not signal your virtue by sallying at a government who have simply done what we pay them to do, and have done with the best will in the world, and that is make decisions, that for better or worse, in this tragic instance have affected thousands of lives and have cost a good few, although thankfully not all of them.

There will be a debrief in the aftermath, name calling, blame laying, a search for that illusive thing, truth. I do not think it will be worth it. What I hope for is that the lessons which have the highest value will have been learned by the ordinary public, for we are the ones upon whom the need for resilience and co-operation falls particularly when we feel especially powerless in the face of a threat as powerfully compelling as this one. I hope we will be the winners in appreciating for and caring for those around us. I hope we will be winners in appreciating and caring for the beautiful world which we longed to see more of when cooped up. I hope we will have learned that we do not need to fly to distant locations half as much as we used to in order to be happy, fulfilled, or to work even. I hope that we will have discovered much to keep us busy and happy nearer home that we ever used to and that the mileage on all our cars will drop significantly. I hope for our planet. I hope for global co-operation. I hope.