It was another bad day for the UK government and the rest of us as Covid-19 deaths rose above 900, not what we hoped for after the optimistic noises we heard earlier in the week.
We know, or we’ve been told, that the thing to look at is the rate the virus is spreading (it still is.) But there’s something awfully certain about deaths.
The Government, minus hospitalised PM Boris Johnson, is on a hook here. It badly needs some good news.
In the meantime it produced probably its most unconvincing daily press conference to date with chancellor Rishi Sunak taking the flak. And he did, sad to say, seem like a wet behind the ears politician.
His economic measures may have been praised but the proof is in walking the walk as opposed to talking And so far the signals haven’t been good. Lots of businesses are dying and lots of people will be in dire straits.
At the Downing Street press conference the message was: stay at home, support the NHS, seemingly in answer to every question. But we all know that, certainly the hacks do. Sloganising is no longer the answer.
Mind you, the assembled journos are muppets for asking questions with two or three bits to them. They should have clocked by now that whoever’s answering will only answer the first one.
Then they might get a result from the (now allowed) follow-up question rather than another load of waffle.
PS Saw that the Sun is predicting 66,000 deaths in the UK from Covid-19, replete with charts and graphs.
Dunno who approved this one but, for his or her sake, they’d better be right. For rest of us, obviously, hope they’re not.
PPS Free advice for health secretary Matt Hancock: there isn’t an iceberg’s chance in hell that there’ll be 100,000 daily Covid-19 tests available by the end of April. Start backtracking now.
