Politics is a stage...

...and all the politicians merely players.

The Covid-19 pandemic is fast becoming a political hotbed for future point scoring. The mundane questioning by some journalists at the daily press briefings and the inane and deflecting responses from the minister of the day are all pointing one way: we will never be certain that the right decisions were made.

Why would a journalist ask such a pointed question as "based on what you know now, should the levels of personal protective equipment have been higher sooner?". Of course things will change as the scientists learn more about the virus. Surely that's a given? But to say "we should have done this before we knew about it" is rather akin to locking the stable after the horse has bolted. is it not? Equally, when faced with questions regarding the capacity of the NHS, how well-prepared it was for this crisis (and would be for another crisis that may happen again in the future), the minister of the day doesn't want to admit that years and years of cuts and shredding services back to the bones, or even to dust in some cases, is now having the impact as the NHS struggles to provide the very service it was designed for. Hospitals were running beyond capacity before this virus hit our shores. Some might argue that we just needed a particularly bad year of flu infections to cause the system to crash (and in recent years it has seemed that this is indeed the case). Our public services are not there to be run as a business. They need to have an element of "overcapacity" for the majority of the time, in order to be able to cope with sudden surges in demand as a result of a public crisis such as we find ourselves in right now.

When we look at other countries that require you to have health insurance in order to receive a decent level of health care, what we are seeing between the lines is a significant proportion of that population living in ill-health because they can't afford to access the medical assistance that they need. I have worried many times that the UK is heading in this direction. But even then, if we were an insurance state, would it increase the capacity of medical assistance and health care that's available in a crisis such as this? No. Because by paying into an insurance state, those businesses are going to have their profiteering hats on and demand more for less from the system that they create. And I've seen traits of this come into education over the past ten years. That's how I understand the business world to work. I hope beyond hope that I am wrong. I will be happy to be wrong (just don't tell my husband).

Why is data being presented to the public with graphs that are not well-understood by those with anything less than A level maths/physics? (I've had to google a log axis, to get my head around why the y axis on the one graph that is repeatedly updated does not increase in equal increments. I still don't understand it. So I'm just trusting that the information is correct on there to get an understanding of how we compare to other countries.) The trends shown on the graph that tracks the number of recorded deaths is misleading; confusing at best. The constant talk of the curve is surely going to be misconstrued somewhere that the line will start creeping back down, which in reality would mean the victims of this virus are coming back from the dead.

The data being used in reference the curve in question is also misrepresentative from what I can see. We keep seeing a bar graph of the number of new cases with each passing day but this is distinct from the curve which shows how many hospitalised and confirmed cases there are cumulatively on any given day against the capacity of available beds/equipment in the NHS system. That's the thing with data, you can interpret it any which way to put a positive spin on it. The data is hugely misrepresentative of the actual state of play: the UK is not testing in the numbers required; those with symptoms are not included unless their symptoms reach such a point that they are hospitalised and tested; and the deaths recorded is not consistent among the four principalities. England is not including deaths that occur outside of hospitals. Wales and Scotland (I think) do. Nowhere is including deaths at home. And people are dying in their homes as a result of Covid-19. We just aren't being allowed to see it clearly.

There will be many things I have written here that I am misreading. I am playing devil's advocate in some cases while in others I am simply too frustrated to do a bit of research in order to clarify certain points. Either way, I find it very difficult not to see the lives of the British public being played like pawns in chess. Each individual who is becoming a statistic will also be a point to win in the political debate that will ensue. Our political parties may be working together and in agreement with each other for the most part at the moment, but each positive test result, each death, will be a point to score for either side. I fear the British public will again be fair game for the politicians to debate about, with a seeming ignorance of the realities of what they are debating.

The whole thing reminds me of that Shakespeare quote:

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

I see the British public as the stage here. The men and women are our politicians. Exits and entrances are the general elections. The one man playing many parts is one politician moving around the roles in the cabinet office before their career ends having not made much of a change to the perception of the role at all.

I feel dejected at the prospect of what is ahead of us as a result of the measures that this government has taken. I don't feel these measures are unnecessary in any way. Although I feel that there has been a lack of preparation and a subsequent lack of joined up thinking which will have longer term effects. A bit like a normal day in the office, in the absence of a deadly virus that is.

Be kind. Stay safe.