[plutonorm]

Very suspicious that this story breaks just as Boris needs to lock down the country over christmas.

"everyone is going to hate me, quick think of something to blame.".... Eureka .... "There's a new virus strain, totally unforeseeable, don't blame me for the lock downs"

Just sayin'

[standardUser]

These days, it seems like everyone is "Just sayin'" some sort of nonsense conspiracy theory with no evidence. I wish people would stop sayin'.

[nickthemagicman]

These days everyone just blindly trusts the people in charge. I wish people would start questioning authority more.

[plutonorm]

Are you GPT-3?

[oneeyedpigeon]

Why did he need to lockdown the country other than because of this? Given that he said 3 days earlier that this would be tantamount to "cancelling Christmas", and he now looks like a fool and a hypocrite for ridiculing the leader of the opposition over it, what possible benefit does he have to gain?

[tialaramex]

The strategy in the UK (and much of the world) ignores epidemeology and tries to negotiate with the virus. OK, you say people will die, I'd prefer if they vote for me, how about if we meet in the middle and only a few of them die, but the rest vote for me?

This was probably made worse by politicians because it's their natural instinct, but you'll see regular people trying to bargain like this too. "OK I know it's unsafe to do X, but I really wanted to, and so was extra careful to use hand sanitiser today".

The virus doesn't understand your proposed bargain, it's just (very complicated) chemistry, it is no more able to agree to a "deal" where you can spend Xmas opening presents with the extended family without getting COVID-19 so long as you promise not to stay overnight than a falling rock is able to spare your life because you prayed to Jesus.

One small piece of good news is that to a limited extent, and for some privileged people, technology made it possible to ignore these bad policies and enjoy much of the safety offered by sane policies despite living somewhere that had chosen to ignore them.

Anyway, the idea (which I'm not agreeing with) isn't that Boris knew the old plan (Xmas week doesn't need rules) wouldn't work, and concocted this story to cover for the fact that he'd need to U-turn rather than just never issuing the obviously bad policy, nor that this new strain is the only reason it's out of control and the old policy wouldn't work. Instead the idea is Boris was disappointed to hear that scientists (who've said all along that couldn't work) are right and it's going to drown the NHS in patients, likely resulting in staggering death tolls around New Year - and once he understood that he wanted an excuse to U-turn for which a new strain provides a convenient excuse.

Boris always looks like a fool. It's a big part of how he got elected. British people think he's a charming buffoon. Under current plans he has several years for them to forget he killed their parents or grandparents before they get the chance to kick him out directly, although it's the nature of Tory party politics that Boris isn't likely to survive that long.

[plutonorm]

"Why did he need to lockdown the country other than because of this?"

Imagine for a moment that the current case number was entirely predictable. i.e. it is due to Boris ignoring scientific advice, believing he knows better. So the need to close for christmas is a result of not locking down sooner and harder. Now due to that failure to sell the hard truth, people wont be able to meet over christmas and he wants to find a way of shifting the blame.

[poma88]

I agree