HUMAN experience, a nation of snitches and ‘forgotten’ disabled people were the latest aspects of coronavirus debated by columnists in the newspapers.
The Daily Mail
Sarah Vine said she was not entirely sure the new measures, announced by Boris Johnson on Tuesday, were the right way forward.
“The problem, if Messrs Whitty and Vallance will forgive me, is that, almost a year in, Covid is no longer just about the science, or indeed the virus itself,” she said. “It’s about something much more fundamental and infinitely more complex: human experience.”
She said it was about loneliness and isolation, families torn apart, cancelled birthdays, funerals with no mourners and weddings scaled back.
“It’s about the empty cafes, the lost jobs, the closed restaurants, the growing forest of ‘for rent’ signs on our high streets,” she added. “It’s about cancelled hip operations, thousands of undiagnosed cancers, missed hospital appointments. In short, it’s about people, not numbers — and this, I fear, is where the Government is struggling.”
She said politicians had to find a way to contain the virus, but in a way that let people continue to function as individuals and families, and to let the country function.
“Crucially, and perhaps just as importantly, it is about morale. And that, I worry, is where we are failing,” she said. “Everyone I speak to, everyone who emails me or writes, is at their wits’ end. And this matters because in situations of national crisis, you need to win over hearts and minds, to carry people with you in your mission impossible.
“But that is not where we are. There is only one way to defeat this thing and remain standing, and that is to be David to the virus’s Goliath — and remember that it is not always brute force that wins the day.”
The Daily Express
Ann Widdecombe said we are now encouraged to become a ‘nation of snitches, sneaks and quasi Stasi.’
“So far has Boris departed from his “land of liberty” that ministers are now actively urging people to report groups of seven in their neighbours’ gardens and proudly proclaiming they would do so themselves,” she said. “Presumably Boris thinks the boys in blue have nothing better to do than rush out to investigate the allegations of busybodies and nosey parkers: no thefts, burglaries, assaults, rapes or murders or even raves and really serious breaches of coronavirus laws. Just how much sillier can this whole saga get?”
She pointed out that Sweden, which had no lockdown, had the lowest number of deaths in the past 14 days and the lowest number of daily cases per million residents.
“As long ago as March 18 I wrote in this column that with nine out of 10 Covid deaths occurring in those with underlying health conditions (and that was before ministers were classifying obesity as such a condition) the logic pointed to locking down the unhealthy and the very frail aged and telling the rest of us that it was our duty to keep the economy and volunteer effort going,” she said. “I raised another issue in a previous column which I have never seen answered: of those who have died without any underlying health condition, what is the breakdown in age? What is the proof that healthy septuagenarians are substantially more at risk than healthy quintagenarians?”
The Guardian
Frances Ryan said it was remarkable, given the fears over a rise in Covid 19, how little was being said about those most at risk - those with underlying conditions.
“Apparently, there was time to talk about when you can get a pint in a pub, but not how to keep disabled people safe,” she said. “This government has failed to support people with underlying health conditions from the start of the pandemic.”
She said the Equality and Human Rights Commission said employers have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people if it is less safe for them to go to work than their non-disabled colleagues.
However,disabled workers and carers report that in practice, they are being put at risk and even threatened with the sack.
“If the test of a civilised society is how it treats the most vulnerable, the test of a government during a pandemic is how it protects the clinically vulnerable,” she said. “As the winter approaches, Boris Johnson is failing fast.”
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