The UK government is still taking a very nonchalant approach to the Coronavirus crisis, comparatively to other countries - only 'advising' and not banning gatherings, or closing schools; no sufficient welfare proposals to enable all those who need/want to self-isolate to do so; no requisitioning of private hospitals, etc.
It seems to me that the priority is still to keep the economy running as normally as possible, and for lots of people to fairly quickly get infected, to build 'herd immunity' - even though they have supposedly now finally recognized that this could be catastrophic.
They're going with a nonchalant strategy despite most other countries doing the opposite; despite criticism from most experts; and despite the UK having significantly fewer hospital beds/ventilators/doctors than Italy!!!!!
Am I missing something, or is this potentially a huge crime against humanity? The government's handling of this crisis just seems incompetent to me.
Now is literally the worst time to have neoliberals running the country. These people have destroyed our ability to effectively handle a crisis like this, with their privatizing, deregulating and austerity over many decades. We barely have a functioning state anymore - see here and here. Their ideology is completely incompatible with the kind of big government action, (on the side of ordinary people), that is required right now, to prevent disaster.
They are definitely doing so to an extent, but really our only hope is for them to quickly and completely abandon the horrible ideology that they've adhered to their whole careers.
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