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The COVID Diaries – 63 30th May

A new opinion poll by Opinium for the Observer newspaper shows a massive 81% of the population think Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The poll also found that support for the Conservative party is collapsing, with the Tories now just four points ahead of Labour, having had a commanding lead of 26 points just two months ago.

More than two-thirds of voters – including more than half of Conservatives – want Cummings thrown out of Downing Street for breaching lockdown rules.

In the past week alone, the Tory lead has fallen by eight points, the largest weekly drop the polling organisation has recorded since 2017.

For the last week the news has been dominated by the row over Cummings’ family trip with his wife and child during lockdown from London to Durham, and his refusal to apologise. The Opinium poll confirms the level of public anger. Some 68% think Cummings should resign. If he does not, 66% believe he should be sacked by Johnson.

At a time when it is essential for everybody to maintain social distancing and continue to work together to stop further COVID – 19 infections, the behaviour of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings is deeply disturbing and is destroying trust in the government.

The COVID Diaries – 62 29th May

John Edmunds, a professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a government adviser who attends meetings of Sage, the scientific advisory group on emergencies, has voiced unease over the decision to ease England’s lockdown while thousands of people a day are still becoming infected.

World Health Organisation statistics suggest our infection rate is the fifth highest in the world. “We cannot relax our guard by very much at all,” said John Edmunds. There are still 8,000 new infections every day in England without counting those in hospitals and care homes, Edmunds said. “If you look at it internationally, it’s a very high level of incidence.”

The COVID Diaries – 61 28th May

The UK’s contact tracing system was due to launch next Monday, but was suddenly brought forward to this morning when it was then plunged into chaos with many staff unable to access the system. The government has also admitted that it will not be fully operational until the end of June.

The official reason for the early launch was to build confidence among parents and teachers ahead of the reopening of primary schools next Monday. However, many believe this was a desperate attempt by Boris Johnson to push the Dominic Cummings scandal off the news headlines.

This looks highly probable as there are several indications the whole thing has been introduced in a rush before it is ready: as well as NHS staff not being able to log into the computer system, doctors also said they had not been briefed and learned the details only when they watched last night’s Downing Street press conference.

The COVID Diaries – 60 27th May

The government’s attempts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be blown off course by the ongoing row about the conduct of the Prime Minister’s top adviser Dominic Cummings and his lockdown trip to County Durham.  Boris Johnson has been grilled again about this, but speaking to senior Members of Parliament he ruled out an inquiry and insisted it was time to “move on” from the row.

The Prime Minister also announced a major test and trace system which aims to find people who come into close contact with those infected with the coronavirus. It remains to be seen if the row about Cummings will undermine the new system.

Meanwhile in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on Donald Trump’s re-election plans. His promise to maintain record-breaking economic expansion and “keep America great” has been swept away by record unemployment and the financial toll that the nationwide business-closure and shelter-in-place orders have taken.

Having relied on his favourite method of communication, Twitter, to bypass mainstream media he has now attacked it after a “fact check” label was added to his tweets. Just a few hours after Twitter’s move, the president began threatening “big action” against the company (although it is unclear what power the president has to do anything).

The COVID Diaries – 59 26th May

Public anger about the Prime Minister’s chief advisor has continued unabated, with his explanation of the reason for his visit to Barnard Castle during the “stay at home” period of lock down being the subject of particular ridicule. Would you really test your eyesight by going for a drive with your son and wife in the car? Of course, it was Easter Sunday and it was his wife’s birthday and Barnard Castle is a beauty spot……..

Among the many comments circulating on social media, this one caught my eye:

The COVID Diaries – 58 25th May

In a bizarre press conference held in the Rose Garden at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings confirmed he had driven over two hundred miles to Durham during the period when everybody was being told to “stay at home.” He also confirmed that while “locked down” in Durham he had driven 60 miles to and from Bishops Auckland on Easter Sunday with his wife and child in the car “to test his eyesight.” Just how irresponsible is this guy?

The acting Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, tweeted: “Cummings’ statement confirms he broke the guidelines. When millions kept to those rules.

“The PM must now terminate his contract – if he wants to regain any credibility in leading the country on dealing with the coronavirus crisis.”

The COVID Diaries – 57 24th May

Today Stephen Reicher’s Tweet said it all:

“As one of those involved in SPI-B, the Government advisory group on behavioural science, I can say that in a few short minutes tonight, Boris Johnson has trashed all the advice we have given on how to build trust and secure adherence to the measures necessary to control COVID-19.”

The COVID Diaries – 56      23rd May

The revelation that, at a time when the population across the United Kingdom was observing a lockdown, the Prime Minister’s principal advisor Dominic Cummings travelled hundreds of miles to Durham while showing symptoms of coronavirus shows just how contemptuous this ineffectual government is of the people it is supposed to serve.

Latest revelations suggest he may have travelled back to Downing Street and then returned to Durham, a blatant violation of the lockdown rules he helped to frame. Never has there been a clearer example of one rule for the privileged elite and another for the rest of us. So now we add hypocrisy alongside incompetence to the charge sheet.

People who have missed out on seeing their loved ones one last time, who have struggled to care for their disabled child without their usual support, who have yet to meet the newest members of their family, will rightly be very angry. The hypocrisy stinks.

The COVID Diaries – 55 22nd May

A leading British scientist, Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse has severely criticised the Government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme today, Sir Paul said: “The question I’m constantly asking myself is, who is actually in charge of the decisions?”

“We have lions on the front line of clinical care. We need lions also in the leadership so that we can actually really drive this forward.”

“We need a much clearer, publicly presented strategy.”

The COVID Diaries – 54 21st May

It’s been a humiliating day for Boris Johnson who has been forced to do a U-turn on charging migrants working for the National Health Service a surcharge for the very services they are helping the UK to provide. The Prime Minister has ordered the removal of the NHS migrant surcharge from health and care workers just a day after he told MPs that imposing the £624 fee on foreign-born NHS workers was “the right way forward”.

And in a second humiliation, Downing Street has confirmed that despite the Prime Minister’s promise, the NHS smartphone app for tracking people who have been in contact with coronavirus patients will not be ready for 1 June, when the lockdown is due to be relaxed further in England. It comes as the UK death toll has increased beyond a 36,000.