Here we are again

In the churchyard of St Martin of Tours, Guston near Dover, there is a row of about ten graves. Each one contains the remains of a cadet from the nearby Duke of Yorks Military Acadamy, the all died just before the First World War from a flu outbreak. None was older than 15.

Just after the War, there was the "Spanish Flu" epidemic that killed approx one quarter to the earth's population. No one can be sure of how many died between 1918 and 19, but more people died of that than were killed in the war that had industialised death. Troops returning home from the Western Front carried the virus to all corners of the globe, bringing death. And sometimes very high mortaility rates. Some indiginous communities saw a mortaility rate of 75%, as did pregant women. The second wave had mutated so was much more harmful to young and healthy people, creating an auto-immune reaction.

Spanish Flu swept round the world in three waves, there is no telling what will happen to the current Covid-19 virus, whether it will just melt away with the appearance of Spring, or will mutate or hybridise with another virus and come back different and stronger.

What we do know is that the current situation was all to predicatable. We knew it would happen, just not when. Bill gates warned in 2015 in a TED Talk, and the NHS held an exercise in 2016 that highlighted lack of Personal Proctective Equipment (PPE) and ventilators. Under Jeremy Hunt as Health Minister, nothing was done to implement these lessons learned.

The modern world with jet travel, hub airports and our ever-crowded lives mean that a pandemic was always going to happen. It was a case of just when.

So, international travellers went from where the virus emerged, maybe China maybe not, took it on their planes, left it at the hub airports and took it all the way home to share with their friends and families.

Here in the UK, a decade long deliberate underfunding of the NHS and health care means that the NHS is even less prepared for the pandemic than it would have been. How fucking shameful to hear the former Helth Minister asking where the PPE were for the NHS, he stood idly by while the NHS was asset stripped.

And so the Government try to get a ahead of the curve, after spending a week working on tackling the wrong virus, so now the lockdowns and restrictions will increase.

As will the power grabs. Because, like all good proto-facists Johnson is using the virus to pass emergency laws to give Ministers and him yet more unaccountable power, for two years. There are already emergency powers, and when used are reviewed every 28 days. No matter how bad things are, do we really want to give this Poundland Churchill and his ragtag group of incompitents almost unlimited power for two years?

Scottish and Welsh schools are to close by the end of the week, but English ones probably won't. Legal cases lasting less than three days will still go ahead, but longer ones won't, because if its the one thing we have learned is the visrus needs four days or more to infect people.

A Brexit executed by morons is bad enough, but a viral pandemic?