It is now approx 600 days since the start of this prolonged nightmare.And, to set things in context it is approx 900 days to the next election on 2nd may 2024. We must be approaching or past the halfway mark by any reasonable estimate. By way of comparison, the Spanish flu lasted 2 years, call it 750 days. So let's see what the govt. intends, by assung they have some control over events.
The Length of regulated period before polling day is 365 days. Once in the regulated period, election spending and donations are subject to regulation, and the influence parties can exert on voters is henceforth limited.
Hence the parties will wish to have broadly defined their intentions, and to have set out their political landscapes prior to 2 may 2023, after which the nation will be slowly engulfed in and paralysed by the run up to the election, this occurs in approx 534 days, i.e a year from next spring.
Hence,it is assumed that the remainder of this government's term will be dominated by two factors. The second factor (the election run up) will be determined by the outcome of the first factor, which is the government's ambition be to position the Pandemic in the year view mirror. Unexpectedly high infection rates, deaths or hospitalisations or intrusive restrictions, or accusations of poor leadership, are unwelcome and unlikely to win over undecided voters.
Labour will need to get its shot together.
So it'll be a race starting next spring, to uncouple the present government from the spectre of the Pandemic. So in the next 6 months, the government will begin its segue away from the monomania of covid19.
There will be many unwelcome and unpopular disturbances to prevent an orderly unwinding the crisis,Scotland may secede and join the EU, Brexit and the dispute with France is a problem, there is the unravelling borders in Belarus, the energy crunch, the global warming, the inflation, the PM is universally ridiculed and loathed and most of his ministers, MP corruption is a hot item, if I were advising the government as a Tory Grandee, I would advise them to down scale covid19 sooner, rather than later, since any of those issues could get very unwieldy quite quickly. I'd tell them to clear the decks for action soon.
I don't think we are near half way no.
Spanish flu had a definite start and end. The was no 'vaccine' so even people stopped dying it was over.
Vaccines allow it to be prolonged almost indefinitely because the spectre of it coming back if everyone isn't vaccinated.
Modern technology allows testing to scare people in the BBC. If you trained tested everyone for flu or for etc you could produce lots of doomish graphs of infection rates etc as much as you wanted.
People never really started dying in this pandemic. The death rate is/was around the same as 2008-2009. And that's before the wonder vaccines. Even full fact admits this.
Going off topic slightly I thought there was actually the realistic possiblity of the end of the BBC license fee but this farago shows that the government will never allow that to happen.
It depends what you mean by "nearly over". I suspect they can end the casedemic whenever their agenda is fulfilled, whatever that may be. Simply stop testing so many people and it'll disappear without a trace, but the ugly likelihood of vaccine passports, continued boosters etc seems probable. Thereafter a much bigger state with 1984 like consequences. To me that would be the beginning of something awful, nowhere near over.
Thereafter a much bigger state with 1984 like consequences. To me that would be the beginning of something awful, nowhere near over.
So you think they will pin their hopes for the next election on creating a dystopian society, it doesn't seem like a winning formula to me.
Vaccines allow it to be prolonged almost indefinitely because the spectre of it coming back if everyone isn't vaccinated.
This is not correct. Smallpox was a massive killer for 1,000s of years....until it was eliminated by vaccination.
@fingal i believe it took some 200 years though, are you suggesting Covid is of the same magnitude to demand these draconian actions forever?
@sunjor did you not notice,most of the measures were lifted since July 19th, why are you spinning as if they were still in place? Why are you so desperate to prolong the era of of fear and panic?
@sunjor We may never eliminate covid (it's endemic all round the world) but we've already greatly reduced both its mortality and its social impact. As of now there's no lockdown in England. The restrictions that remain are relatively easy to cope with. We've got this far in blindingly quick time from a standing start. The main reason for this rapid return of our freedoms is vaccination.
