Richard Shaw - What’s going on

What’s going on - an attempt at a charitable view

How to understand all this and again from a layman’s point of view? Not that of an expert in medicine or politics but as an ordinary citizen who tries to use his observations and intelligence to make sense of what is happening and to set this alongside the advice of ‘the experts’.

And particularly within this, how to reconcile the opposites, insofar as that is possible. How might it be possible to do that by also being charitable and trying to understand how even those opposed to one another are still trying to do their best?

By all accounts, the government didn’t initially want to take drastic measures or impose restrictions; they wanted to rely on herd immunity through natural means. But scientific advice apart, the threat to the NHS was too great to allow this. So to ease pressure on intensive care units they had to impose a lockdown.

Lack of funding in the past may have been responsible for the shortage of beds - or more crucially nurses, doctors and other medical staff - but this was pretty much the situation everywhere in the world. And so the population had to be encouraged to take the threat this virus posed seriously.

Enter scare tactics and engendering fear. But how else would you have brought a sceptical public round?

When the situation could be eased a bit it was and even if this made for some confusion the attempt was to be measured and proportionate and allow as much freedom as possible.

But what was most eye watering was the cost. Naturally the government would want to do everything possible to get the country back to work as soon as it could in order to relieve the pressure on the exchequer as well as on the nation’s morale, mental health and normal functioning. Not to mention its tolerance for draconian measures.

So a vaccine which could offer herd immunity by other means could not come soon enough and the government invested in this lavishly. Once it was here people needed to be encouraged to have it so no expense was spared in that direction either. And where the facts did not entirely support what we were all being encouraged to do that, could not be allowed to disturb the narrative or derail the initiative.

This has increasingly made for sweeping generalisations and diminished regard for exceptions of whatever sort - other views dismissed, even within the term used, as ‘vaccine hesitancy’, side effects (other than where mild or too serious to ignore (e.g. blood clots) and all those who might be called ‘conscientious objectors’ roundly condemned. All justified in terms of keeping the show on the road towards opening up, gaining herd immunity and most importantly of all getting the nation back to work and the economy moving.

As ever, I have sympathy for the government in relation to all this. But in the tidal wave generated many small and inconvenient truths have been pushed aside as details which cannot be allowed to get in the way of progress.

This is the backdrop from which I have made my contributions to the debate and from where I seek the ground for my own decision.