It this our worst ever government?

A rhetorical question, but as soon as we ask it we are reminded how poor our governments tend to be and how difficult it is improve things via the feeble levers of our democracy. Here in the UK there is still an enormous temptation to view the coronavirus debacle from a specific standpoint –

1. We need to do what we are doing.
2. It’s inconvenient but maybe we’ll wait and see.
3. We are doing more harm than good.

To my mind, number three has obviously been sound for some time – we are already doing more harm than good. We had to develop some level of herd immunity anyway and the number of deaths, although tragic, is now very low in the wider context of human mortality.

Instead of pretending to protect people we may as well go back to the herd immunity policy. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, minimise interpersonal contact as far as possible, protect the vulnerable and pay attention to general hygiene. Apart from that it may as well be business as usual. Pretending won’t help.

Yes – this is certainly a contender for our worst ever government and Boris must be a contender for the worst ever Prime Minister.