Hello Craig,
Why do we always have to find someone to blame? Under different circumstances, I would agree with you but it is a sign of our times, the anonymity of social media and all that. We are in the middle of a horrible pandemic — at least I hope we are — and not just at the end of the first phase dreading if a second wave comes along.
We seem to have yearly panics in winter with the flu and the NHS cannot cope because of reduced funding year-after-year. Some lessons must have been learnt about these already. While they may be manageable, it is true that the world has had a few pandemics in the 20th and 21st centuries. I think a lot of lessons were learnt by many then. Ebola comes to mind, albeit in far away lands, as well as the British nurse who contracted it, twice. The PPE doctors and nurses wore at the time were akin to space travel outfits.
Imagine somebody in government telling us that they cannot deal with a foot and mouth outbreak in the UK?
It is also true to say governments must prepare themselves for a pandemic because these come out of the blue. If this was not so, why would the World Health Organization exist? It implements agreements and convention agreed and adopted by the Member States and the WHO is governed by these — not the other way around.
And yes, we do point fingers because we believe our elected representatives are responsible for looking after us, regardless of which party is in charge, and their responsibility is to prepare for every single eventuality, be it a pandemic or a terrorist attack. In this instance, I am very sorry to say, that herd immunity was a foul way to proceed and the statement "many loved ones will die" rang alarming bells in me. Natural selection? Perhaps. But, hand in heart, dispensing with the elderly was considered, by some, to be beneficial.
On a totally different matter though not unrelated, do you remember, by any chance, the TV programme called Survivors?
Ivonne Holliday ● 2151d