After all, the 20th year is amazing. Every time you think that nothing more absurd and stupid can be tricked. But each time the abysses open. Back in the spring, he said that the British are fighting an epidemic in the style of the Benny Hill show, but with a "new strain" they raised their heroic resistance to the best stories of Monty Python.
So. Given.
1. Boris Johnson is one of the most dropping-down politicians this year. World champions. Restrictive measures are inconsistent and unpopular. Christmas is an important holiday for England.
2. Negotiations on Brexit are going badly. First of all, because Europe has all the time in the world and the habit of bureaucratic everything it touches. And Johnson promised deliver unconditional Brexit this year, period. That is, he cannot offer to play his favorite European game - “let's take something temporary, and then we will discuss for months what we have accepted” - he cannot. See point 1.
3. Look at point 1 again and understand where Johnson was starting to give hope to the nation for Christmas with friends and family during the "second wave".
4. And here in London, as in many other countries, the number of positives identified begins to grow. Approximately in the logic of the Czech Republic, Slovakia or some other Catalonia. Nothing supernatural if we remember that December is the best time for all diseases in the Northern Hemisphere.
5. In September, another one appeared in the list of hundreds of virus strains - VUI-202012/01. They twisted it, turned it around, tried to prove that it possesses some other unusual properties, they could not, and put it quietly on the shelf. To others, I repeat, hundreds of strains, which, if interesting, are very limited to a narrow circle of scientists. Wuy this same did not become famous even at the level of mink or "Spanish" strains, promoted by the world media.
It was a saying. Now a fairy tale.
Step 1. Johnson is trying to solve three problems in one fell swoop - to save the rating, to play back in the sense of "Christmas with friends" and to divert attention from the Brexit negotiations, which are failing. And he comes in with trump cards. In another coronavirus address to the nation, he says that the government has lost control of the epidemic, but not because it lost, but because a new strain has affected this very nation. This strain, "perhaps" (not even Hiley Likely, but downright mei bi) is 70% (as they thought, interesting?) More "infectious" than the usual coronavirus. And so there will be no Christmas, but new restrictive measures.
Step 2. Minister of Health Hancock (by the way, he is not a doctor at all, not a scientist, but a successful career bureaucrat from those who do not care what to lead) repeated the boss's thesis and added that, since the strain is very monstrous, the strictest measures will spread not only at Christmas, but for now everyone is not vaccinated. That is, until March - April at best.
Step 3. One more official got out and told how they thought. In Kent County, the restrictive measures did not work as well as they expected. And they attribute this to the fact that our new friend Wuy was spreading there. That's all science. That is, my aunt relies on two facts in her science. The first is that restrictive measures have proven effective everywhere in the world, but failed in Kent County. And second, that the fact that the respiratory virus spreads faster in December than in August-September can only and exclusively be associated with the specifics of the “December strain”, and not with the peculiarities of the climate, insolation, the behavior of respiratory viruses, and so on.
Step 4. At this moment, according to Johnson's plan, apparently, the same profit should have happened. Rating - to grow up, Europeans - to feel sorry for the British and meet them halfway, and the British - to sit at home and thank their leadership for the fact that it so tenderly cares for them and saves their lives. But something went wrong. In London, hell broke loose in the style of "Minsk after June 22, 1941". The videos from the train stations are really funny. Europe, instead of sympathy and understanding, decided to "trust scientific data" (that is, actually at Johnson's word) and closed all transport links with the British. It was followed by non-European countries from Israel to Saudi Arabia. (At the same time, Vuya is already in order - three countries have been confirmed, and the rest are not confirmed only because this strain of this type of elusive Joe was not needed and interesting to anyone until the weekend.) incompetence and inconsistency kills people when the vaccine is already there and everyone would inevitably be saved if not for Johnson, of course.
Step 5. All other consequences are also enjoyable. Oil fell, pulling emerging currencies with it. Stock indices also went down. Now they are acting out a little, because the reason is completely idiotic and ridiculous, but someone who is smarter has already earned money. So, let me remind you that everything happened because the Prime Minister of Great Britain decided to resolve issues with the rating a little and used the expression may be about the properties and qualities of the coronavirus strain, which has been known since September that it does not possess any unknown properties and qualities.
Step 6. A degree of absurdity is also added by the manufacturers of vaccines, who began vying with each other to declare that their products "will help" and from this strain. It would be more correct, of course, to say that vaccines will have exactly the same effect as on all other options that are in the population, and whether this will help or not is a dark matter.
There will be no morality. There will be only hope that the Christmas story "The British Premier finds the September strain in Kent and skillfully uses it for his political purposes" will remain the most idiotic story of 2020. But I'm afraid not.
Source: Blog of Gleb Kuznetsov
