It doesn't have to be like this

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The difference in approach to the pandemic between the English government and the Welsh government has been on display again this week, with the Welsh government inching cautiously towards further restrictions whilst Booster Johnson claims that there is no need for further action because the trend is in line with what was expected. It is, according to him, all going to plan. Drakeford’s caution is understandable; short of independence, he simply does not have the power to take the necessary economic steps to back up further restrictions to the extent which the situation requires, and in the absence of action by the UK Treasury, unilateral action in Wales would mean people here paying a high price. His unionist mindset prevents him reaching the logical conclusion, in the absence of which we are likely to end up with the worst of both worlds – continuing with the highest rate of infection as well as the tightest restrictions.

However, Johnson’s claims about everything being in line with the plan deserve rather more scrutiny than they are being given. The daily rate of premature deaths due to the pandemic is currently erratic to say the least, but the number of deaths per week has been 500 or more for the last three months, and is currently running at around 750. Johnson’s ‘plan’ effectively assumes that it will continue at that rate for the remainder of the autumn and winter. To put that another way, the UK government proactively planned to stand aside and allow more than 7,500 deaths over the last three months and is planning to allow another 10,000 or more preventable premature deaths over the next few months. Seen from Downing Street, these 17,500 people (on top of those who died during the earlier stages of the pandemic) are mere statistics, an ‘acceptable price’ to pay for maintaining the profits of the capitalists who fund the Conservative Party.

But each of those people is an individual, with family, friends and maybe others who depend on them. The death rate due to Covid may be an obvious example of government priorities, but it doesn’t stand in isolation – the government’s approach to benefits will plunge millions of people into poverty this coming winter. The surprising thing is that this callous approach to the health and wellbeing of ordinary citizens has not led to more dissent. Donald Trump famously said that he could stand on 5th Avenue in New York and start shooting people, and it wouldn’t affect his support. Boris Johnson is demonstrating the truth of the sentiment.

It underlines the extent to which capitalist ideology and the selfishness associated with it have come to dominate thinking. Trump’s supporters didn’t believe that they would be the ones being shot on 5th Avenue, and Johnson’s supporters don’t believe that they’ll be the ones dying or being impoverished by his actions. They see it, probably subconsciously without even really thinking about it, as being in their own interests to believe the lie that the poor have only themselves to blame, or that the victims of Covid have either brought it on themselves or would have died soon anyway. And it is in the interests of capital and those who own and control it to ensure that most of us never get to understand that we have more in common with each other than we do with them. It doesn’t help that the main opposition party at UK level basically buys into the same ideology; they might want to tinker a bit with some of the detail, but the basics are broadly accepted, along with the need to ensure that we remain divided.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though; there are other ways of organising an economy or a society. Where are the politicians brave enough to make the case? Anyone not making the case against the current system is effectively supporting its continuation.

Building in resilience

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We may never discover the full details of what went wrong at Facebook and associated sites a few days ago; companies which suffer embarrassing IT failures are generally reluctant to admit to the causes of those failures. This story, however, gives us a few clues as to why it took so long to fix – suggesting that the company ran its own internal processes, including building access control, on the same systems, meaning that the technicians charged with fixing the system couldn’t even get into their own offices let alone use their computers to fix the problem. It highlights the essential fact that, in IT, building resilient systems necessarily means incorporating a degree of redundancy into the design, and that redundancy carries a cost.

That simple rule doesn’t just apply to IT, though, and when the UK government said the other day that it wants the UK to be the “most resilient country in the world”, it raised some obvious questions about whether they understand the costs involved. The cynical response would be to say that of course they don’t; it’s just another of their many vacuous and meaningless slogans which they don’t know how to implement even if they wanted to. And the cynics would probably be right, but let’s pretend for a moment that the government are serious.

If we take energy supplies as an example, back in the days pre-privatisation, the approach of the old CEGB to running a highly resilient grid was to have a significant amount of extra generating capacity available, at a significant cost. Post-privatisation, those ‘unnecessary’ costs could be (and were) reduced by running the system closer to full capacity. Similarly, pre-privatisation, the gas boards had a huge storage capacity, meaning that any disruption to production was unlikely to impact on the consumer. Today, as a result of the pursuit of profit, the UK has one of the lowest levels of reserve stocks of gas in Europe. That move to a ‘just-in-time’ approach isn’t restricted to the energy sector. For decades, business schools and consultants have been pushing companies towards the model as a means of improving their ‘efficiency’. Not holding stock on the site of a factory means a reduced requirement for space and a reduction in the need for working capital, both leading to an improved return on investment. Profit, again, has been king.

It all worked rather well on the whole, just as long as the system operated smoothly and reliably. It was always, though, going to be more vulnerable to a shock event than the previous model and the system has suffered two major shocks recently, whilst a third looms large on the horizon. One of those two was unplanned and the other entirely intentional. That a major pandemic such as Covid would happen at some point was both foreseeable and foreseen; that Brexit would have a similarly disruptive effect on supply chains was also both foreseeable and foreseen; and that climate change will provoke another large shock to economic systems is again both foreseeable and foreseen. In the first two cases, however, neither government nor businesses considered the risk level sufficiently high to warrant the expenditure involved in building in the necessary contingency, and there’s little sign to date that they are any closer to preparing for the third. One might, perhaps, excuse businesses, to an extent at least, for not spending large amounts of money on preparing for a type of Brexit which they probably believed no rational government would pursue, but they can’t escape the blame for failing to allow for the possibility that we no longer had a rational government. And in both cases, a responsible government would have led the planning and preparation work.

The lesson we should be learning is that long global supply chains with little or no built-in redundancy are highly vulnerable to shock, and the corollary is that secure and reliable supplies of essentials are easier to guarantee with a more localised approach and a greater level of redundancy and stock-holding. If that’s what the government mean by increasing resilience, then it’s something to be welcomed. It is, though, likely to compromise both international competitiveness and productivity the way the latter is usually measured. It seems extremely doubtful, to say the least, that the current regime is really intending to put security of essential supplies ahead of the ability of their friends, cronies, and donors to make profit. The more cynical assumption expressed earlier is a much better fit with the observable facts. We should treat it as the vacuous slogan which it is.

It's almost certainly not the zeal of the converted.

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Wales’s ‘go-to’ politician, when the media want a silly quote delivered by a man whose only moving part seems to be his mouth, is the man who manages to be both the ex-leader and the future ex-leader of the Conservative group in the Senedd, Andrew RT Davies. And as a bonus, sometimes he doesn’t even wait to be asked; his incoherence can also be entirely spontaneous and unprompted, as in today’s demand for an independent Welsh inquiry into the handling of Covid.

There are some good reasons for having a separate Welsh inquiry, just as there are some good reasons for not holding one, although Davies seems to be having some difficulty articulating the former. That’s probably because his only real reason is his belief that a separate inquiry will do more to damage the Labour government than a UK-wide inquiry. It may or may not be true; there is surely at least an equal chance that separate inquiries will do more to expose the comparison between approaches in Wales and England, to say nothing of revealing what else could have been different if Wales had more devolved power. He should remember who will appoint the inquiry's leader (spoiler: it won't be Andrew RT Davies). In lieu of saying what he really means, and absent any ability to come up with anything better, he’s resorted to saying that Wales will be consigned “to a solitary, overlooked chapter” in any UK-wide investigation. That sounds like the story of Welsh life in general to me, but for the leader of the so-called ‘Welsh’ Conservatives to declare in such an open and forthright manner that the problem with UK-wide processes set up by the Conservative government in Westminster is that they are guaranteed to largely ignore the different circumstances of Wales is either a Damascene conversion or else shows an almost incredible lack of self-awareness. There aren’t many who’d put their money on the former.

Do the Tories understand capitalism?

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It might appear a silly question, given that the Tories are generally regarded as being the party of capitalism, but some of the things they have said and done recently give rise to more than a vague doubt about the answer. And that’s not just a question about Brexit, legion though the examples might be in that regard.

One of the key features, allegedly, about market capitalism is that it promotes innovation. Sometimes that innovation is purely the result of intense competition, but at other times it’s a response to changing market conditions or external shock. In any event, according to the theory, the most innovative businesses will thrive as a result whereas those adhering to outdated business models will go to the wall. The idea that those working for those failing companies should be left to their fate is an uncomfortable one for many of those of us opposed to unregulated capitalism, but for the enthusiasts, it’s a necessary and indeed desirable feature.

One recent such external shock has been the Covid-19 pandemic. It forced many businesses to experiment with different working patterns and to employ already available technology to facilitate more flexibility. The best employers have seen the benefits of this for both themselves and their employees and are already looking to embed the new working practices in their future business models. Admittedly, it hasn’t been so easy for those employers who start from an assumption that they need to measure and rigidly control hours worked by their staff, none of whom can, apparently, be trusted further than they can be thrown, rather than consider productivity or output, but such companies are capitalism’s natural victims of innovation. However, it isn’t just the businesses adopting (or failing to adopt) new practices which have been impacted – as capitalist theory would suggest, there’s also been an impact on other companies in the wider economy. In this case, that includes businesses such as city centre shops, restaurants etc, all of which have seen a fall-off in footfall, and which are now facing the probability that they will never be able to fully recover. Market conditions have changed, and their scope for adaptation is limited.

The response from some Tories has been to demand that people must be forced to return to their offices in the city centres, as we saw from former Tory leader, Ian Duncan Smith earlier this week, in his case talking about civil servants. But to return to my opening question – does he understand the market capitalism he claims to espouse? Demanding that organisations return to working methods and practices which have been superseded by events in order to protect some old businesses which will otherwise be unable to survive in the new world seems to owe more to the thinking of Ned Ludd than modern market capitalism. The question for thinking capitalists (to say nothing of those of us who consider the system to be flawed anyway) ought to be about how we support people during the transition to a different type of economy, not how we resist changes which will benefit many as well as reducing carbon-expensive travel.

Underestimating his contribution

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Boris Johnson’s crass comments about Thatcher’s contribution to avoiding climate change by closing mines were not only insensitive to the affected communities, they were also, as is usual for the fact-free world he inhabits, plain wrong. Thatcher’s pit closures had nothing at all to do with reducing the use of coal; they merely outsourced its production to other countries.

But, following his strange logic for a moment, he was underestimating his own more than modest contribution to reducing the UK’s carbon footprint. After all, if it hadn’t been for the way he handled the Covid pandemic, there would be tens of thousands more old people still alive today burning fossil fuels to keep warm. If it weren’t for his Brexit deal, there’d be many more lorries on the roads ferrying wholly unnecessary food supplies around the country (and from the European mainland) to fill supermarket shelves. He’s saving millions of food miles at a stroke. And we should not forget that the planned reversal of the Universal Credit uplift will directly reduce the spending power of millions of people, in turn reducing their demand for goods and services and the carbon cost of producing them. Given the complete disregard for the consequences of government actions on people and communities displayed by his comments on pit closures, it’s surprising that he hasn’t yet claimed the credit for any of this.

Staying popular with the horses

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It’s easy to understand how the English government has concluded that having hundreds of young people packed together in poorly ventilated venues such as nightclubs while large numbers of people in the relevant age group are still unvaccinated is not the most brilliant idea ever, although it’s a lot harder to understand why it was not so obvious until hours after declaring that the clubs could open. How exactly did something so blindingly obvious only become so after it had happened? It’s also easy to understand how they concluded that taking steps to mitigate the problem by only allowing in those who have been fully vaccinated is better than doing nothing at all, once the original mistake has been committed. But I struggle to imagine the conversation around this which led to the conclusion that the right thing to do was postpone the implementation until after most of those concerned have been fully vaccinated. It’s a bit like a committee running a stable full of horses which takes a decision to change the lock after the first horse has bolted, but then decides to delay implementing the decision until after the last horse has escaped. It might well be more popular with the horses, but that’s rather losing sight of the original objective.

Using the word 'freedom' is a deliberate attempt to mislead

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According to government statistics, an average of around 1800 people are killed on the roads in the UK each year. That’s around 5 people each and every day. Some of those are the result of drivers breaking the speed limits or driving under the influence, but the existence of laws prohibiting both undoubtedly means that fewer are killed as a result of speeding or drinking than would be the case of the laws didn’t exist. We don’t know exactly how many deaths have been prevented by those laws, but we do know that around 5000 fewer people are killed on the roads each year now than was the case in the 1960s. Those laws aren’t the only contributory factors in the reduction, of course: road improvements and vehicle improvements have also contributed. But the contribution of reduced speed is so strong that many are arguing for even tougher action. If we suppose, for the sake of argument, that all of the lives saved are due to the laws on things like speeding, drink driving and the use of seat belts, then simple maths tells us that the maximum numbers of premature deaths prevented is around 13-14 per day. There are very few people who would seriously argue that this number of deaths is so low that we should just ‘live with it’, and ‘restore people’s freedom’ to drive at whatever speed they choose and drink as much as they like before getting behind the wheel, depending instead on their own good judgement and sense of responsibility.

Yet that is exactly the approach being taken by the UK Government in response to Covid. It is now the official policy of the UK Government that, for the next month or three (after which they assume, with little by way of supporting evidence, that the pandemic will be over as far as the UK is concerned) up to 200 people per day should die at the peak of the third wave and up to 2,000 per day should be hospitalised in order to give us the ‘freedom’ to decide for ourselves whether or not to take some simple and inexpensive steps to protect ourselves and others from onward transmission of the virus.

It’s not as if the argument about ‘freedom’ is significantly different from that relating to driving laws. I’m old enough to remember that opponents of drink driving laws and compulsory seat belts both argued at the time that the laws were an unwarranted interference with their personal liberty, and they should have the ‘right’ to decide for themselves whether to wear a seat belt or drink before driving. And there were also the familiar arguments about banning drinking and driving having a disastrous impact on some businesses such as pubs and restaurants. The difference is that, at the time, the government of the day was convinced of the value of the laws and presented them in terms of taking necessary steps to protect lives rather than as a restriction on freedom. With consistent messaging along those lines, and the passage of time, public attitudes changed – those laws enjoy considerably more support now than they did at the time. Laws, even apparently unenforceable ones, can and do change perceptions and attitudes over time.

The current government has, from the outset of the pandemic, given the impression of acting only reluctantly if at all, and now seems to be valuing the right of some to infect others above the right of those others not to be infected. It values individual selfishness over any sense of collective solidarity to protect each other. They have deliberately chosen to frame the debate around relaxing restrictions in terms of ‘freedom’ (despite knowing full well that it will feel like anything but ‘freedom’ to the most vulnerable now being forced into some sort of self-imposed lockdown) rather than in terms of avoiding premature deaths. Worse, a weak and spineless opposition, aided and abetted by a sycophantic media which is unwilling to call out the government for its lies and spin, have allowed themselves to be bounced into debating on the same terms. The very use of the term ‘Freedom Day’ by anyone outside the government is itself a capitulation to a mindset which is prepared to sacrifice thousands of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society in order to advance the economic interests of the richest.

Learning the international lessons

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One of the most difficult moral problems for humanity as a whole is the question of deciding when and how ‘the international community’ (a term which itself raises a whole host of issues) can or should intervene in the affairs of a sovereign state. In recent decades, the de facto answer has been ‘whenever one of the most powerful states decides that its interests are served by so doing’, a response which many would feel to be wholly inadequate, based as it is on the ugly principle that ‘might is right’. The idea of sovereignty is a powerful one, but other states must surely have some sort of right to protect themselves against the actions of states which decline to abide by internationally agreed standards. And what about a state which only endangers the lives and wellbeing of its own citizens – should the rest of the world simply stand by and watch, because ‘sovereignty’? Even those of us most opposed to the self-interested war-mongering tendencies of states such as the USA and the UK are left feeling very uneasy at the double standards which allow allegedly ‘friendly’ rogue states to oversee the deaths of thousands of their own citizens, and economic sanctions often end up impacting precisely those who are already the worst hit.

Insofar as it’s an issue that gets discussed seriously at all, it’s usually in terms of what ‘we’ should do about ‘them’. But perhaps we should also give it some thought in terms of what ‘they’ should do about ‘us’. Professor Richard Murphy drew attention this morning to this letter in the Lancet, signed by 100 scientists outlining why a policy of allowing mass infection by Covid should not be a policy option. This is a policy which certainly threatens thousands more premature deaths amongst UK citizens than might otherwise be the case, but as the authors point out, it doesn’t only impact the UK:

“… preliminary modelling data suggest the government's strategy provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants. This would place all at risk, including those already vaccinated, within the UK and globally. While vaccines can be updated, this requires time and resources, leaving many exposed in the interim. Spread of potentially more transmissible escape variants would disproportionately affect the most disadvantaged in our country and other countries with poor access to vaccines.”

That gives the rest of the world, and especially the poorest countries, a direct interest in the actions of what they might, entirely reasonably, perceive to be a reckless government which doesn’t even care about protecting its own citizens, let alone those of other states. Add to that a casual and increasing disregard for international law, treaties, and human rights, and it becomes legitimate to ask – at what stage should the international community start to take action, and in what form, against the rogue state which the UK is rapidly becoming?

Tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but not completely so. There are lessons to be learned from the pandemic, and they are not only the domestic ones from which the current government is incapable of learning as it strives to repeat them. There are also international lessons to be learned. As things stand, the world has shown that it is in no position to deal collectively with a viral threat to mankind. Yet there seems to be little thought being given to the changes we need at an international level to ensure a better state of collective readiness in future, and an ability to deal with states which decide to opt out of international actions. And the next novel virus could be a great deal worse than Covid.

Could the removal of restrictions prove economically counter-productive?

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There is some doubt as to whether Einstein ever actually described compound interest as the most powerful force in the universe, but exponential growth, the underlying principle, is something that many people – including, it seems, many politicians – struggle to grasp. I remember Dr Phil Williams once doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation projecting forward the effects of a 7% annual growth of sales to arrive at the number of years it would take before the entire matter of the universe had to be converted into Mars bars. It was a very large number but it demonstrated the power of exponential growth (and, of course, the fact that, ultimately, there are limits to that growth).

On Monday, Boris Johnson told us to be prepared to see the number of new cases of Covid reaching as many as 50,000 per day by the 19th July. Given that there were already around 27,000 cases per day on Monday, and that the number is doubling roughly every 10 or 11 days, that looks, typically for Johnson, to be an optimistic assessment. Unless something changes, that number is likely to be exceeded several days before then.  Yesterday, the new English Health Minister said that the number may top 100,000 per day by an unspecified date sometime this summer. Perhaps he was just trying to avoid excessively underlining his boss’s message by being too honest, but that, too, looks like an optimistic scenario, even though it’s a number significantly higher than the peak seen during the second wave, of around 81,000 per day in late December. Again, unless something changes, current growth rates suggest it's about three weeks away. It is being widely reported today that the expectation is for around 2 million cases in the next few weeks, with around 10 million people supposed to be self-isolating. This, it seems, is now deliberate government policy. Encouraging people to go back to work by removing support for businesses by running down the furlough schemes and at the same time removing all those restrictions which have helped to control the spread of the virus is probably the most effective combination of policies anyone could devise to maximise the spread of the Delta variant and encourage the evolution of new variants. That too, it seems, is now the official policy of the English Government.

Telling people that they must take responsibility for their own safety rather than expecting the state to protect them through laws may sound good to the libertarians in the Tory Party, but the point is that mask-wearing, for instance, isn’t about self-protection, it’s about protecting others. Removing the requirement is like abolishing speed limits or drink-driving laws – the laws are there to prevent people becoming potential victims, not simply to restrict the liberty of perpetrators. In the circumstances, taking responsibility for our own safety means deciding how much we can depend on others taking actions to protect us, and many are likely to conclude that we simply can’t.

It’s being done in the name, allegedly, of reopening the economy. There is, however, at least a possibility that it will turn out to be a complete failure, even in those terms, since the effect may be to dampen spending rather than grow it. They seem to be assuming that everyone else will see the removal of restrictions in the same terms as they themselves do – as being about the restoration of freedom. For many in the population, it may turn out to be the complete opposite – the start of a new, voluntary, lockdown with no obvious end point or route out. People who have been cautiously starting to venture out, in the knowledge that other people around them who may be infectious are legally obliged to take the obvious precautions of wearing masks and keeping their distance, and that those actions have dramatically reduced the prevalence of the virus, may well decide that it’s no longer as safe as they thought. That would be an entirely rational response in a situation where people may well be infectious without knowing it, and where the number of people in that position in the population at large is increasing rapidly in accordance with what appear to be the new government targets. The chance of coming into close contact with an infectious person on public transport or in shops goes from having been very low just a few weeks ago to very high by the end of the month. If large numbers of people respond by taking more steps to avoid potentially dangerous social contact, then the impact on economic activity is likely to be negative rather than positive.

It hasn’t been easy for the UK Government to secure both one of the highest levels of deaths per head in Europe and the biggest economic hit, but it’s a record which they seem determined to maintain. The complete disregard for its citizens is may well be a good demonstration of what ‘Global Britain’ is all about, but it’s doubtful that many outside the UK will be as impressed as Johnson might wish to believe.

A high stakes gamble

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As part of their justification for removing Covid-related restrictions in England, English ministers have argued that we need to get used to Covid, just like flu. It requires us to simply accept a higher level of preventable hospitalisations and preventable early deaths than would otherwise be the case. They are apparently unwilling to spell out the numbers which they consider ‘acceptable’, but the continued references to flu suggest some sort of parallel.

It’s not an easy comparison to make, though, for several reasons. Firstly, in non-pandemic years at least, very few people die directly of flu; most of those who die do so of complications such as pneumonia. We also know that most of those who die with flu are older and poorer than the population at large, and that fuel poverty is a key factor in turning illnesses resulting from flu into deaths. Some of those points are true of Covid as well; Covid also causes pneumonia and other complications, which is why the news reports keep reporting the numbers of people who have died ‘with Covid’ rather than ‘of Covid’. Like flu, it is also more serious for older people. Claiming that flu and Covid are now on some sort of par is a bold claim, but it’s noticeable that it’s one being made more by politicians than by epidemiologists.

Even if it were ‘true’ in simple numerical terms, there are other complications. Whilst the current numbers of infections are already way higher than flu (although it’s hard to be certain about the extent because flu is not a ‘notifiable’ disease), there are few, if any, experts in the field who don’t believe that they would be significantly higher again were it not for the measures currently in place. As the government itself admits, removing those remaining restrictions will undoubtedly lead to a surge in infections, and that in turn will inevitably lead to a surge in hospitalisations and deaths, although hopefully the vaccination programme will mean that it won’t be on the same scale as in the second wave. And any comparison with the actions taken to mitigate flu in a non-pandemic year as opposed to those which might be necessary in the event of a pandemic caused by a new variant of flu are misleading to say the least.

The government chooses to present figures for the vaccination program in terms of the ‘proportion of adults’ who have been vaccinated. This is not unreasonable in itself given that vaccinations have not yet been authorised for the younger groups, but it also serves to disguise the fact that, as of this week, only 33.7 million people in the UK have been fully vaccinated, a figure which is barely above 50% of the population (66.6 million). Whilst more will be done before 19 July, that will still leave up to 40% of the population open to infection, a level far higher than is consistent with any suggestion that ‘herd immunity’ can stop the chain of infections. And free of restrictions, a large proportion of that 40% are likely to become infected, even without raising questions about repeat infections and the duration of the immunity provided by vaccination for other groups.

Most of those will be younger people, of course, and to date it seems that younger people are less likely to be seriously ill or die. But ‘less likely’ isn’t the same as a zero probability; some of the young people concerned will be hospitalised and some will die. Some will develop ‘long Covid’, and be seriously ill for months. The even bigger concern is that the more the virus circulates the more it will evolve. As some scientists have already pointed out, removing restrictions which have been proven to work is like building variant factories in the UK. That there will be new variants as a result is inevitable; the only question is whether those variants are more infectious, more dangerous and/or more vaccine resistant than the variants already circulating. They might or might not be; but the government is effectively taking a massive gamble with people’s lives. It is running a major medical experiment using millions of people, predominantly but not exclusively the younger generations, as involuntary and unconsenting guinea pigs. Normal ethics considerations relating to large scale experiments require that people are given enough detail to make an informed choice as to whether to participate or not. It’s a choice being denied by a government obsessed with the dogma of balanced budgets and shrinking the state.

There was a rather unsubtle attempt to bully the devolved administrations into meekly following suit yesterday, but all the signs are that they will continue to show more sense than that. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the English government simply want to avoid having a less damaging comparator on their doorstep if things go badly wrong – and it will be hard to avoid the ‘let it rip’ philosophy in England directly impacting on Wales in any event. We may be lucky, we may not – both individually and collectively. But gambling on the current government making the right choice in the light of its record to date is not exactly what anyone would call a sure-fire thing.

Jaws 5 - The Cornish Connection

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At the last meeting of G7 leaders, in 2019, the UK’s Prime Minister swam out into the Atlantic and around a rocky outcrop in some sort of bizarre Brexit analogy. Whether he’ll repeat the gesture during this week’s summit which he is hosting in another Atlantic shoreline town, this time in Cornwall, has not yet been announced, but given his predilection for contorted stunts, it must surely be at least a possibility. Perhaps this time he’ll look for a Covid analogy. He has said, after all, that he wanted to be remembered as the mayor who kept the beaches open. Although, in the version of Jaws that I watched, I was sure that the mayor was the villain, not the hero – not the most obvious choice of role for a known narcissist.

By way of handy coincidence, there was a report less than two months ago that a great white shark called Nukumi was crossing the Atlantic and, according to CornwallLive, could even be making a beeline for Cornwall. There have never been any fully authenticated reports, as far as I am aware, of great whites off the shores of Cornwall, but it’s not an impossibility according to the experts and this has the potential to be a screenwriter’s dream come true. The outcome of the battle between BoJo and Nukumi would be tense, but inevitable; not even Disney could write a script in which the PM could defeat a 253 stone 17foot long shark. The mayor who kept the beaches open finds himself in an epic battle with the beast about which the hero of the piece had been warning him for months – that’s certainly a good Covid analogy – and is ultimately consumed by his very own Nemesis Nukumi. Only after the PM’s empty beanie hat is pictured floating tragically on the surface of the sea do the scientists come along and deal with Nukumi in the way that they had always said would be needed, so that the beaches can once again become safe.

It’s a fantasy, of course, but with just that necessary element of credibility. To whom should I offer the script?

Are Welsh Tories demanding that more of us should die?

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It’s a stark question, but a valid one, given yesterday’s call by the party for the whole of Wales to be moved into Alert Level 1 immediately. It’s in contrast with the continued caution being shown by Mark Drakeford, who is slowing down the unlocking process so that more people can be vaccinated, given the potential impact of the new variant. None of us knows with certainty what the impact of either strategy will be, but experience to date – and all the scientific evidence – indicates that the risk of hospitalisations and deaths will be lower the more people have been vaccinated before the lockdown restrictions are removed.

The underlying question is about how many hospitalisations, deaths, and instances of long Covid are considered ‘acceptable’. Very few people would argue that the whole economy should be shut down for a year to avoid a single death, but equally few would argue against a short shutdown if it would prevent millions of deaths. Neither of those extremes is realistic in the current scenario, but we don’t know exactly where we are in between the two. The best probability, according to the experts, is that an unchecked third wave involving a more infectious and more serious variant could result in a number of deaths in the thousands or tens of thousands, and the more restrictions in place and the greater the number of people who have been vaccinated when it happens, the lower the death toll will be. Governments and opposition politicians are faced with a very simple question – what number is considered ‘acceptable’ when balanced against the costs of maintaining restrictions.

There is no ‘right’ answer to that question, it’s all about making a judgement call. And I don’t envy those who have been placed in the position of having to make it. What’s missing, though is a degree of honesty about the fact that they are making such a call. Governments are taking decisions which literally mean the difference between life and death for thousands, even if they can’t identify who will die and who will live. Underlying those decisions is an opinion about how many deaths they are prepared to tolerate. It’s a number which they don’t actually know themselves, although they have a reasonable idea of the likely ranges associated with different courses of action and different scenarios. It follows that any politicians arguing for faster removal of restrictions are effectively stating that they are prepared to see a higher number of deaths than those arguing that restrictions should be eased more slowly.

So, to answer the headline question – yes, the Tories are indeed calling for more Welsh people to die of Covid. We don’t know how many more (it could be a handful, it could be thousands); we merely know that the number would be higher if the government implemented the Tory proposal. That doesn’t necessarily make the Tories ‘wrong’, however. If the difference in outcome between the policy being followed by Drakeford and that advocated by the Tories were to be provably small, the public (with the probable exception of those who end up dead or in hospital as a result) might even support their position. But presenting it as a case of giving people back their ‘freedom’ without spelling out the health consequences is simply dishonest. The public at large – i.e. those with whose lives they wish to take chances – surely deserve to be told the likely consequences with greater clarity. We deserve an adult conversation rather than populism.

Turning minima into maxima

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One of the few good decisions made by the Cameron government was to set a target that the UK would devote at least 0.7% of GDP to overseas aid. There are always going to be arguments about the appropriateness of individual items within that expenditure – as with any other budget line – but the idea that wealthy countries like the UK should set a minimum target for aid to poorer countries was a sound one. By linking it to GDP, the target level of expenditure will inevitably fluctuate: as GDP increases, so too will the amount of aid increase. Conversely, if GDP falls, so too will the target minimum expenditure for aid decrease. That means, in effect, that after an economic shock such as Covid, the amount of expenditure required to meet the target automatically falls, although given that it is a minimum target it doesn’t necessarily follow that the government has to make real terms cuts. Imposing an additional cut, as the current government has done, to 0.5% was an additional and mean-spirited act.

It gets worse though: as this report indicates, what was a minimum target has been turned into a maximum cap. Thus, the Treasury delayed offering surplus PPE to India – some of which has apparently been binned instead after the delay resulted in expiry dates being passed – because the cost of it would have to be accounted for under the aid budget, leading to cuts elsewhere to remain within the limit which the Chancellor has imposed. What sort of country has the UK become when useable PPE for which we have no need can be allowed to go out of date and be destroyed rather than donated to countries in desperate straits because of an accounting requirement? According to the Independent’s version of the story, “Many Tories proclaim that slashing billions from aid is popular with the British public”. I wish that I could deny the truth of that, but I can only ask how on earth we have been ‘led’ to a position where so many consider it reasonable for one of the richest countries to cut aid to the poorest because it is ‘popular’. The sooner that any state acting thus is dismantled and consigned to history the better.

Large scale job creation?

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There was a story, some years ago, about a British company which ordered a large quantity of computer chips from a company in Japan. The order specified a fault rate of 2%, meaning that they expected that 98% of the chips delivered would be perfect. When the order arrived, there was a small package containing some of the chips along with a note which advised the customer that the faulty chips had been packed separately so it would be obvious which ones they were. The point of the story, of course, is that the traditional ‘British’ approach to quality control was to put expensive processes in place to identify faulty products, whilst the Japanese approach was to build quality in so that there were no faulty products to identify.

It’s stereotyping (and almost certainly apocryphal), but it resonates. Worse, it seems to underpin some aspects of the current government’s approach to handling the pandemic, and in particular the issue of quarantine. Moving from a ban on all holiday travel to a gradual relaxation could have been a very simple process: all that was required was to keep all existing rules, and publish a list of excepted countries where travel was once more permitted. Those booking holidays would know exactly where they stood, and travel companies could bring enough staff off furlough and enough planes out of their parking zones to run flights to a small number of countries. But why do anything so simple when there is a more complicated approach available? By removing the ban on travel and placing all countries into one of three lists, the government has managed to turn simplicity into absolute confusion. Travel companies believed (reasonably enough) that they had been given the legal go-ahead to run flights to amber list countries and consequently lined up more planes and staff than would otherwise have been the case, and would-be holiday-makers believed that they were being told that they could go as long as they followed the quarantine rules on return. The government has spent much of the time since their announcement trying to explain that that which is legal isn’t really allowed after all.

Not only that, but they’ve been busy expanding the numbers of people employed to check that people are properly quarantining – the Home Secretary told us yesterday that “Significant resources have been put in place – millions of pounds – in terms of the follow-up checking of people around their testing and making sure they stay at home. It has been stepped up”. As job creation projects go, getting more people working to provide travel arrangements which then require the government to employ more people to check up on those who travel is a pretty large scale scheme but, just like the example of those computer chips, it’s about dealing with the consequences of things going wrong rather than preventing them from going wrong in the first place.

The government would probably counter by arguing that trusting people to use their own good sense and do the right thing is better than banning them from doing the wrong thing. In principle, they’re right – social solidarity is a much more cohesive approach than using rigid rules. But social solidarity is based on people identifying with the common good and wanting to work collectively, not on a system of shaming, pursuing, and fining transgressors. And a party which has spent decades preaching – and is still doing so – that greed is good, and that selfishness is the motive which should drive us all is singularly ill-placed to fall back on any sort of appeal to people’s altruism.

Monkeys, typewriters and Boris Johnson

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Given an infinite number of monkeys, an infinite number of typewriters, and an infinite period of time, it is said that one of the monkeys will at some point type out the complete works of Shakespeare, in the same order as the bard himself wrote them, and using the bard’s own spelling quirks. The usefulness of that knowledge is limited, but it can help to understand the nature and scale of infinity.

We can, though, extrapolate the argument and state, with a high degree of confidence, that given an infinite number of waves of Covid and an infinite period of time, Boris Johnson would, at some point, take the right decision at the right time in order to save lives and avoid massive numbers of hospitalisations. In practice, we don’t have an infinite period of time, or an infinite number of waves (and if we did, they’d kill an infinite number of people anyway). We’ve had two waves so far, and it’s clear that a third is coming: but just as one would not expect even a solitary sonnet from three monkeys with three typewriters in two years, the probability of three iterations in two years being sufficient for Johnson to get the approach right is also diminishingly small.

That helps to explain why experts in the field and those who understand probabilities are advising people to ignore what Johnson says about relaxing the lockdown rules and carry on as though the rules weren’t changing today. It’s sound advice. Like the example of the monkeys, it’s also capable of being extrapolated: based on his record to date, assuming that everything Johnson says is either untrue or unwise is likely to lead to better outcomes than taking his words seriously. The scientists are onto something here.

Saturday was not just a one-off 'mistake'

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Throughout the pandemic, there have been regular calls from some for the police to be more pro-active against those breaking the coronavirus rules, demanding a crackdown with more fines and arrests. On Saturday, the Metropolitan Police gave us a clear demonstration of what a crackdown looks like. Suddenly, it seems that some of those previously egging the police on to do more to enforce the rules aren’t quite so sure – or, rather, they want to apply different rules to different groups and causes. Clearly the police could and should have adopted a different approach to the proposed vigil and worked with the organisers to ensure that the event could take place in as safe a way as possible; the flat refusal to do so underlines a degree of incompetence and lack of empathy which is hard to understand. But on what basis do we expect the police to distinguish between, say, a beach party and a vigil, both of which involve an assembly of a greater number of people than is permitted under current legislation? That is not to argue that there is some sort of equivalence there; clearly there is not. But distinguishing between the two involves the application of values and judgement, and there is a real question as to whether the police are the best people to make that call, particularly if their role is defined simply as ‘upholding the law’.

Differential application of the law is, of course, one of those traditional British values of which politicians are so fond, although that isn’t the way they usually describe it. In practice, Lady Justice has never been as unseeing as the blindfold she traditionally wears might lead us to believe. Being part of the ruling elite has long bestowed a degree of indemnity – the Covid rules applied to Cummings were clearly not the same rules being applied to others, to quote just one recent example, and there was never the same expectation that someone like him should abide by the rules. It hasn’t always been as blatant or rampant as it has become since England elected a fundamentally dishonest man as its Prime Minister. Previous regimes haven’t always been as confident about what they could get away with, but the current regime seems to be pushing at an open door. The new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently wending its way through parliament actively seeks to extend police powers to decide what is or is not ‘acceptable’ behaviour, including criminalising any assembly of people which causes “serious annoyance”, effectively giving the police on the spot the power to decide the meaning of both ‘serious’ and ‘annoyance’. They are targeting dissent and opposition.

For many of us, Saturday’s events underline the need for policing in a democracy to be based first and foremost on consent and a sense of social solidarity; but the current government is taking us in a completely different direction, where policing is seen as enforcement of rules by whatever means are necessary. To them, Saturday will look simply like a one-off mistake, rather than a problem with the approach. If they come under enough pressure, a sacrificial head might roll to protect other more culpable heads, but they won’t see it as a reason to change their approach. The question is whether, and to what extent, people at large go along with that view. The way in which so many have been calling for the police to be more heavy-handed in other circumstances is not exactly a cause for optimism. Wales doesn’t have to follow England on this, but following England towards becoming an authoritarian state is precisely what will happen if we don’t take control of our own future.

Hunting the sixth man

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The hunt for the sixth person who tested positive for the Brazil variant has been turned into something of a drama. One day, perhaps they’ll turn it into a film pitting the scientists, statisticians and politicians against a deadly virus carried by one unwitting member of the public who returned an anonymous positive test for analysis. To keep it simple, the plot will revolve solely around tracking down the infamous six, ignoring the wider pandemic raging at the time. For added drama, the film version will differ from reality by having the scientists’ hunt obstructed and complicated by a bumbling politician who insists that there isn’t a problem and that if there is it’s nothing to do with him. On second thoughts, that last bit might not require any great feat of imagination at all.

It is all a bit of a diversion, though, which ignores a few key facts. The first of those is that there aren’t only six people in the UK with the Brazil variant. What we know is that, of those who have tested positive for Covid and whose samples have been subjected to genome sequencing, there are six identified cases of the variant. But that sentence includes two significant filters. The first is that not everyone suffers symptoms and even amongst those who do, if the symptoms are minor, there’s no guarantee that they will be tested at all. There will be people in these categories who have the Brazil variant and who are wandering around in complete ignorance of the fact. The second is that, even amongst the positive tests carried out, not all the genomes are sequenced. As at December last year, the proportion of tests being genome sequenced was around 10% (meaning that which variant was being carried by the other 90% was unknown). With the number of positive tests having fallen rapidly since then, the proportion being sequenced will have risen (it’s a capacity issue not a percentage one), but it’s still not 100%.

So, there is still some way to go before we can be certain that we are identifying anywhere near 100% of the cases of any new variant of concern. In the meantime there are two things that could be done to lessen the risk. The first of those is to reduce the extent to which the virus is circulating within the UK – the smaller the pool, the lower the likelihood of dangerous mutations. The second is to prevent new versions being imported by people entering the country. On the first, government policy is, however they attempt to spin it, tantamount to vaccinating the vulnerable as rapidly as possible and then reopening the economy whilst the remainder are still being vaccinated. This is a recipe for leaving a significant pool of virus in the economy for several months to come. It’s a gamble, and not necessarily a carefully calculated one. On the second, government policy is to quarantine only around 1% of those entering the country, and only those arriving directly from only some of the countries where the new virus has been detected. All other arrivals are allowed to leave airports and get onto public transport, and then trusted to self-isolate on arrival at their final destination (a trust which we know to be completely misplaced) whilst the PM regularly stands up in Parliament and repeats the outright lie that the UK system of border controls for Covid is one of the tightest in the world.

Those writing the screenplay will have little difficulty mocking the politicians whilst making the scientists look good. They might, though, struggle to find a way of engineering that essential happy ending where thousands of extra and unnecessary early deaths are prevented. However, Hollywood is like the current PM in one key respect – truth will never be allowed to get in the way of a good story. It just means that the final screenplay may need to rewrite the reality of the next few months.

Increasing the stakes

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In the lead up to his statement on the road out of lockdown, the Prime Minister of England was keen to stress that his plans would be based more on data than on dates. Given his customary and casual relationship with truth and consistency, it was no surprise to find that what he eventually produced was heavy on dates and vague on the data. Assuming that he will do the opposite of what he says he’ll do is usually a safe bet.  It would also be no surprise to find that his apparent ‘caution’ this time round was merely a spin-based shift from over-promising and under-delivering to under-promising and over-delivering, and that he actually intends to move faster than his road map suggests with more than half an eye on the English local elections in May. His repeated use of phrases such as ‘irreversible’ and ‘one-way route’ sounded ominous.

In theory, all his plans relate only to England, but as we have repeatedly seen over the past year, short of imposing and policing a hard border along Offa’s Dyke it is impossible to fully insulate Wales from the reckless decisions of an impetuous English PM, and the Welsh Government is right to be wary of the consequences. Johnson’s critics in his own party have been arguing long and hard that once the vulnerable parts of the population have been vaccinated there is no reason to continue with restrictions, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Johnson and his cult followers agree with that analysis but are only being held back by the caution of the government scientists. Such an approach would amount to allowing the virus to rip freely through the unprotected sectors of the population (as well as any of the vulnerable who have, for whatever reason, not been vaccinated). It’s a policy which depends on an assumption that those not yet vaccinated will only get a mild illness from which they will quickly recover.

That is a big assumption and a huge gamble. We know that, allowed to circulate freely amongst any sizable population, the virus can and will mutate. There’s a reasonable chance that most vaccinations will not cause any worse symptoms, and that the vaccinations will still protect against them. But it only takes one mutation that either causes worse symptoms (and more deaths) or against which the vaccinations don’t work for us to be facing another major surge later this year, in which tens of thousands more lives would be lost. None of us can know whether Johnson’s bet will pay off or not, but his record of recklessness is not exactly a sound basis for optimism. Statistically, betting on him being wrong would have shorter odds than betting on him being right.

The sight of the leader of what is euphemistically called ‘the opposition’ supporting Johnson’s insistence on irreversibility not only gives Johnson a degree of political cover, it also increases the risk. Even more worrying is that the most vocal opposition to Johnson’s approach is coming from people on his own side – and his natural supporters within his party at that – who think he’s still being too cautious and want to end restrictions even sooner. When dealing with a chancer and gambler like Johnson, the last thing we really need is people who are egging him on to up the stakes, especially when those stakes are measured in human lives. Yet that is what we have, and with a compulsive and over-optimistic gambler like Johnson at the helm, the dangers for the rest of us are obvious.

Tory morality stops at the border

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According to reports, the Foreign Secretary is today urging the UN Security Council to seek temporary ceasefires in war zones across the world in order to allow the citizens to be vaccinated against Covid-19. In principle, calling for ceasefires is always a worthy thing to do, and it’s impossible to be critical of the call itself. However, it’s hard to interpret a call for ‘temporary’ ceasefires as not suggesting a rather relaxed attitude to death by bomb or bullet once the population have all been properly vaccinated against one specific disease. Perhaps he has it in mind that any temporary ceasefire creates a basis for extension and a longer-term solution, although if that is what he is thinking, he hasn’t said it.

What he has said is “Global vaccination coverage is essential to beating coronavirus … We have a moral duty to act, and a strategic necessity to come together to defeat this virus”. That to many will sound more like pursuit of the interests of the UK than those of the war-torn countries themselves. Indeed, the report suggested that he would warn that 'allowing Covid-19 to spread in areas without a vaccination roll-out will increase the risk of new variants taking hold', confirming the impression that he’s more worried about uncontained outbreaks generating new variants which will spread back to the UK than he is about protecting the people in the war zones themselves. His words about moral duty might sound very idealistic, but his idea of a moral duty to protect people seems to stop at the UK’s border. It shouldn’t really surprise us; it has always been evident that the UK’s current governing cult was going to be a selfish rather than altruistic actor on the world stage. The only surprising thing is that they’re being so blatant about it.

Keeping government in work

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It’s probably a sign of increasing age, but there are times when events bring back memories from long ago. This week, it was a song from the 1960s by Flanders and Swann, “The Gas Man Cometh”, which floated into my mind. For those too young to remember it (or for those who are old enough but would just like to be reminded), it’s available here. It was a satirical take on the great British workman, as a series of different workmen do a fine job of fixing the problem that they have been called in to fix, only to damage something else in the process, needing a call to a different workman the following day, in a circular pattern which eventually leads to the process repeating itself.

It’s funny, or at least it appeals to my sense of humour. It was never intended as an instruction manual for governments in the event of a pandemic, but it appears as though Boris Johnson and his crew of what could only very loosely be described as ‘great British workmen’ have taken it that way.

·        Inadequate hospital capacity was ‘fixed’ by sending patients with Covid to care homes which had no PPE or guidance.

·        The lack of PPE for care homes and hospitals was ‘fixed’ by ordering vast quantities from companies with no experience in the field, many of which failed to supply anything or else supplied equipment which was unusable.

·        The problems of the hospitality sector were ‘fixed’ by paying people to go out and spread the virus in restaurants and bars.

·        The problem of people bringing in new strains of the virus is being ‘fixed’ by charging those travellers who own up to being in only some of the affected countries £1750 to stay in a hotel for 11 nights.

·        The problem of people being unwilling to pay £1750 and thus falsifying their travel documentation is being ‘fixed’ by threatening them with 10 years in jail, increasing the incentive to be convincing in the lies they tell.

There were, at every stage, other options which could have been taken by a government able to take a wider view, but they’ve preferred to take a short view and find a quick fix, which has invariably led to further problems. Still, as Flanders and Swann nearly said, “It all makes work for the government to do”.