THE Government sent the Minister for Vaccines to Parliament yesterday for an update on the Covid crisis.
Stumbling, tongue-tied Maggie Throup (the name sounds like something nasty you might catch) could barely read out her prepared statement. Embarrassing.
It doesn’t matter, because it said nothing new. The Government is paralysed in the face of mounting Covid dangers.
Ms Throup droned out the official line: Stick to Plan A.
No Plan B, no mandatory face coverings on public transport or in schools, no vaccine passports for crowded events, no return to social distancing, no push for homeworking.
Nothing, except for some gratuitous advice to behave sensibly and wait until the end of the year for a “miracle pill” that could halve Covid deaths.
But the crisis is now.
The Government admits infection rates are soaring towards 100,000 a day.
A new, more contagious variant of Delta is circulating, hospital admissions are rising and the death toll has surged to 1,000 a week. The booster campaign is sluggish, and vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds patchy at best.
In my village of Sutton and Crosshills the infection rate has doubled to 719.7 per 100,000. Covid is raging through North Yorkshire schools, and our academy has 1,800 pupils. I no longer shop at my Co-op during school breaks, because they congregate in groups without masks.
Admissions to our local hospital are up 85%, and one patient has died.
The outlook is bad, but Boris Johnson, in hock to his hardline Covid Recovery Group of free-market backbench MPs, resolutely buries his head in the sand.
It is not a pretty sight, especially when he talks through his backside.
He claims Covid is “under control”. Hardly. He should “take back control”.
He’s completely out of touch with public opinion. Our daily poll shows 84% of Mirror readers back reintroduction of restrictions.
What will it take for him to wake up to reality?
**********
Expect chaos in Glasgow tomorrow when tens of thousands of foreign delegates arrive for the HotAirAthon, aka COP26.
Matron Nicola Sturgeon this week made vaccine passports compulsory for admission to such events. Imagine the scene on the door: “Che? You want see my arm? Habla ze jabs, but I no etiendo Glaswegian.”
The biblical Tower of Babel was a marvel of mutual understanding by comparison with the next fortnight in Glasgie.
**********
The resting Queen, aged 95, has given up her daily martini. Is that all I’ve got to look forward to? Her mum was still knocking it back as a centenarian. Cocktails of gin and Dubonnet at noon, red wine with lunch and port afterwards. And champers at the “Magic Hour” of six o’clock.
The Queen Mother hid bottles of gin in hatboxes when she was on royal tours. A more encouraging model, perhaps. That’s if we can afford it. Grim warnings that beer will go up by 30p a pint, breaching the psychological £4 barrier round here. It seems like only yesterday I was paying 1s 2d for a pint of Tetley’s in Normanton. But it was actually 60 years ago.
How time flies when you’re having fun.
