The Prime Minister tried to put on his best Churchill impression yesterday and ended up sounding preposterous as he dug in to “fight and defeat” the virus.
“I know some people think we should give up and let the virus take its course despite the huge loss of life that may entail,” he said in the televised briefing.
“I profoundly disagree. I don’t think the British people want to throw in the sponge, they want to fight and defeat this virus.”
He said that “we will not hesitate” to introduce further measures, but stressed the Government is hopeful that these will not be needed.
Huge loss of life? Right, like in Sweden, where fewer people died per million than in the UK, and Belarus, where fewer people died, and South Dakota, where fewer people died, and Tanzania, where – you get the idea. Since none of these countries or states, however lax their response, lost more than 0.06% of their population to the virus, and the second ripple in Spain was on the wane prior to any new restrictions being brought in (hospital occupancy in Madrid fell yesterday for a third day in a row), on what basis are we supposed to believe that loosening restrictions will lead to a “huge loss of life”? Where did the ludicrous idea come from that we can “control” or “defeat” this virus, which is akin to the common cold?
Meanwhile, Sir Patrick Vallance claimed the virus is not “under control” and defended his graph of doom.
“The illustration was to point out that epidemics either double or halve, they’re either growing or shrinking,” he says. “And doubling means things go very big very quickly. And when things double you see that exponential growth and there’s clearly fast growth in some areas.
“And unfortunately as we’ve seen not only cases going up, but we’re already seeing an increase in deaths. So things are heading in the wrong direction.
“The number of cases that we’re seeing now are picked up because there’s much more testing. The number of cases reported in March were almost an underestimate of the total. So it’s much more likely in March and April we were seeing 100,000 cases a day at certain times.”
Read more: “We Will Fight It In The Pubs, We Will Never Surrender”
