As you may know, my occasional panic attacks consist of a nightmare that I have somehow managed to go back to Oxford as a mature student but, sitting in Schools facing finals again, I realise that I have done even worse than last time and that my Desmond will be removed and I am, if lucky, heading for a Douglas. One of the papers I must face is logic. Observing recent events, if I am compared with the current crop of Oxford-educated poltroons running the country, I reckon I might come top of the class and be set for a Geoff.
Today, little Matt Hancock announced that he and his chums Boris and “half”, that is Mr Whitty to you oiks, had decided that surging Covid cases in London and much of the South East meant that tighter restrictions on commerce and folks’ freedoms were needed. The region was being moved into tier 3 of lockdown. This is so urgent, the surge in cases of the plague where the survival rate among the under 70s is 99.97%, that the move to tier 3 will start on Wednesday at 1 second past midnight. Whatever…
According to little Hancock, cases in London are doubling every seven days. And he also says that the Tiers will all be reviewed on December 23rd. But hang on, that review, happening during working hours, will happen AFTER lockdown rules are eased across the land, including in London, for five days starting at 1 second after midnight on December 23.
So rules are being tightened now to stop the spread of Covid and to save the NHS. Then in a week they will be relaxed, come what may, whether case numbers are up, down or unchanged and before recent data determining the efficacy of the tighter rules has been considered. The looser rules will last for just five days when, presumably, if cases are not down, they will be tightened again.
So Mr Hancock: you are back at schools sitting finals once again in PPE. To ensure that you once again get a Geoff in your logic paper, can you answer the question: “To date, there has been no causative correlation whatsoever shown between Lockdowns and curbing Covid spread. On that basis, what is the worked reasoning to push London into tier three this week before retracting all those restrictions and more one week later whatever has happened and before data has been reviewed and then quite possibly pushing it back into tier 3 five days later?”
I sense Hancock is heading for a Douglas on that one or have I – as happened last time around – not quite understood the question correctly?