Welcome to the second wave. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look likely that the second wave of Covid will be any less traumatic than the first. Despite eight months of warnings and preparation, there is nothing in the approach of the Tory government that can fill anyone with any confidence.
First of all, there is the data. The Covid-19 Symptom Study app, developed by health science company ZOE and endorsed by the Welsh Government, NHS Wales, the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland has over 4.2m participants who have downloaded the app onto their phones and are using it to regularly report on their health. It is the largest public science project of its kind anywhere in the world and its data is being analysed in collaboration with King’s College London researchers. So it is no cowboy operation, but a highly respected and professional monitoring mechanism.
C-19 figures far higher than government’s
According to this C-19 app, the daily increase in new coronavirus cases has increased since the first day of September from 1,200 to over 10,000. At the time of writing, the number of ‘active’ cases in the UK has increased in a week from 44,000 to 96,000. These figures are far above those put out by the government; we are just coming into a second wave, therefore, and we are already in false government data territory.
As it did during the first wave, the government will play down all the figures available to it. The official death toll from Covid so far this year stands at just over 41,000, but comparing overall deaths with the average of the same period in previous years shows that the real figure of direct and indirect fatalities is fifty per cent higher than that. The Office for National Statistics know that, the press know that and the government know that, but the lower ‘official’ figure is still trotted out.
In July a report by the Academy of Medical Sciences urged the government to plan for a second wave of the coronavirus this coming winter. The 79-page report suggested a number of government measures be introduced to mitigate such an event, but as regards its most significant recommendations, the government is, as ever, well behind the curve. Yet the report suggested a worst-case scenario that might kill up to 120,000 more people and it seems that once again, the Tories are at sixes and sevens.
Political Ponzi scheme
From Day 1 of the pandemic, the Tories approach to it has been based on two elements. The first has been layers of hot air, hype and blagging to hide their staggering incompetence. The Financial Times editorial made a reference to the Tories’ policy on Brexit (September 12), but it is even more applicable to their record on coronavirus. “It is the political version of a Ponzi scheme: always move on to the next promise before you are asked to deliver on the last one.”
The latest promise, in a long succession of other (broken) promises is the ‘Moonshot’ programme to develop an antibody test that will provide an immediate result. Thus, the headlines the following day completely masked the utter failure of the present testing regime. It was in March that the director of the World Health Organisation advised governments to ‘test, test, test’. The Financial Times in March followed the WHO with a similar call for mass screening:
“Moves to expand testing should also be accelerated, the editorial said, “Tests must be readily available to all medical staff to ensure the infected are quickly isolated, and any who have suspect symptoms but prove virus-free can continue working. Mass screening of the wider population is needed to help isolate cases and trace contacts, and to identify those who have the virus without symptoms, especially as broad suppression measures start to be lifted.”
Six months wasted time
Yet despite six months elapsing, the British ‘world-beating’ test and trace system is a complete mess. According to experts, the contact tracing rate for those infected has to be at least 80 per cent to be effective, but Serco’s system has never got as high as this, except for its debut week. This brings us to the second element in the Tories approach to coronavirus – dishing out lucrative contracts to all their friends in the private sector.
It was once a joke for the shambolic Tory Transport minister to award a ferry contract to a company with no ferries. But that kind of contract – to companies with no prior record or experience in the field and without any competitive tendering – is now the norm. A supposed £100bn has been set aside for the ‘Moonshot’ testing system, almost as much as the total NHS budge and what this really amounts to is a blank cheque for more rich contracts. There is apparently no limit to the corruption in the Tories great coronavirus give-away. As an excellent article on the Unite website suggests, it is corruption on a ‘cosmic’ scale.
Failing ‘test and trace’ system
On the top of the whole rotten pile is the failing ‘test and trace’ system frequently labelled an ‘NHS’ system, but in fact mismanaged by Serco. Here we have a programme, run by Dido Harding, a sitting Tory in the House of Lords, the wife of a Tory MP in the House of Commons, a personal friend and associate of Boris Johnson and a woman completely without qualification and experience in the field, in what is the most important public service job in a pandemic. Not only is she in charge of the test and trace fiasco, but with the abolition of Public Health England, she has been put in charge of its replacement. All pals together.
The testing system is so dire than thousands have been unable to get tests at all and many have been advised to travel hundreds of miles to get a test. Blank computer screens, call centres that don’t answer, telephone queues or a day’s driving. That is the experience of many trying to get a test.
Now we have the ludicrous situation where everyone – everyone with half a brain and any knowledge of how life and society functions – was anticipating a second wave and the return to school by millions of pupils was going to be a trigger, yet Harding, the head of a ‘world-beating’ test and trace system seems to be the only person who didn’t see it coming. Last Thursday, she told a committee of MPs asking about the lack of available tests, “I don’t think anybody was expecting to see the really sizeable increase” in demand. Little wonder the Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, complained of “vacancy” at the top of the Westminster government.
NHS labs side-lined in testing
The disgraceful drive for private profit is so bad that NHS laboratory facilities have been side-lined and their testing capacities completely ignored, so that a handful of private providers can get all the work, even if their capacity is completely overwhelmed. According to the Guardian (September 19), by last weekend, “More than four our of five schools have pupils stuck at home because they cannot get access to Covid-19 tests, according to a survey by headteachers.”
Nearly half of the headteachers contacted had staff absent seeking a test and more than that waiting for a test result to come back. “It is in no way unpredictable or surprising”, said Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, the headteachers’ union, “that the demand for Covid-19 tests would spike when schools reopened more widely this term. And yet the system is in chaos. The government has failed schools and children.” Not all schools and children, of course. We also learned this week that all staff and all pupils returning to Eton were tested, thanks to a private company provided by the school.
Care staff unable to get tests
It is not just in education that the failure of the system is evident. There are once again complaints from the care system that staff are either unable to get regular tests or they are not able to get results promptly Staff who have taken tests are walking around in care homes for a week while they wait for tests. When the demand for NHS beds begins to rise again – as it does every winter, but particularly in this pandemic – there will once again be a shortage of tests and PPE for NHS staff. We can count on it.
One of the worst features of the new phase of the pandemic is the spread of conspiracy theories and ‘deniers’ who are unwilling to accept the wearing of masks, social distancing or any elements of lockdown. We do not agree for one moment with this kind of anti-social behaviour or with daft conspiracy theories, but we have to put the blame for lack of public cooperation, albeit among a minority, firmly where it belongs – with the government. When the most blatant exceptions are made for the rich and powerful – Eton, grouse-shooting, big race events run by the Jockey Club (Dido Harding again) and special rules for Dominic Cummings – and all the rest of changes anyway from day to day, then we shouldn’t be surprised if there is skepticism among some of the public.
Just as bad is the milk and water opposition from the Labour Party. While the Tories are handing out money and contracts in a manner befitting a banana republic, there is hardly a peep out of Labour’s front bench about this legalized looting of the NHS and the public purse. It is not just ‘cavalier’ spending, as Labour’s Anneliese Dodds has put it, but legalized corruption and it should be called out as such.
In his desperate rush to prove he ‘isn’t Corbyn’, Keir Starmer comes across as at best a ‘safe pair of hands’ for the establishment and at worst as the Invisible Man, although in truth, they’re both bad options. Labour’s much-trailed slogan, “A New Leadership” looks like that toxic brand “New Labour”, but with a make-over. However, it offers nothing to ordinary working people.
Justifiable anger among key workers
There is a justifiable anger among key workers that is left over from the ‘first wave’. The coronavirus has confirmed what they already knew – that although they are among the lowest-paid workers, they are also among the most essential. That lesson will not go unheeded second time around. Health, social care, transport and refuse workers, to name but a few, will not be contented any longer with applause from the front doorsteps. They will be demanding decent pay, decent conditions and concrete recognition of their value to society.
Labour deputy leader Angela Raynor had made a small start by demanding that key workers be paid the ‘living wage’. Labour should demand a minimum of £15 an hour for all essential workers. They should demand an end to dash to the bottom in wages and conditions and an end to the privatisation and looting of the NHS by private contractors. Labour should demand as a minimum a coronavirus strategy based on fully public NHS and social care services.
As we enter a second wave, we know that science and technology are capable of great things, but only in the right hands. A comprehensive, real-time, population-wide, surveillance system is possible – and it is the only way to effectively monitor and contain Covid infections until there is a reliable vaccine – but it can never be achieved by private companies whose main interest is cutting corners, cutting wages, cutting staff and ultimately, whatever else happens, to make a profit. The system is failing, and it is the historic duty of the labour movement to demand fundamental system change, not tinkering.
September 21, 2020
