No.145 - Testing for the 'Booster Virus'

Dear James,

We all like good news and, let’s face it, there isn’t much of it about these days. But when bad news is covered up as good news the blood boils. And that is what we’ve been getting this week, courtesy of the latest outbreak of the government’s ‘booster virus’ that has plagued our land in the last three or more years.  

The first example came on Wednesday when a much diminished Boris Johnson came to the daily coronavirus podium - for the first time since his recent brush with death - to make a major declaration. “I can confirm today for the first time that we are past the peak of this disease. We are past the peak and we are on the downward slope”. For those of us who are craving good news, this was it! The war is over. Mission accomplished! Remember George Bush in 2003? 

But Boris didn’t finish there. He went on to embellish his announcement further. Ahead of us, we were invited to glimpse, as if through ‘some huge subterranean Alpine tunnel’, the sunlight and green pastures ahead. Oh glory of glories. How grateful and thankful we should all be. Thankful to Boris that is. Here was, ‘the good news uncle’ filling us with hope.  Or should that be despair?  

On Friday Mr Hancock capped off this week of infamy with his announcement that he had far surpassed his unlikely target of 100,000 tests by a massive 22,000. Mr Hancock had taken the ultimate gamble of the booster fraternity by linking his targets to an actual number which could be checked. So when you checked this figure we found that out of the 122,000 tests, 40,000 were self-testing kits sent out to people but not yet returned or even used. Mr Hancock had, with a quick flick of the magician’s wrist, tried to convince us that a failure of 30,000 was a huge success of 122,000! Unfortunately, his Chief Tester, John Newton, attempted to justify his new figure. Under the manic pressure put on them by Matt Hancock, even the medical experts have now become politicized! 

Boosterism’s main aim is diversion. Your government wants to distract us from the awful fact that to date, 27,510 of our fellow citizens have died and the number is rising. The present situation is as grim as any we have seen since the end of the second world war. Boris’s boosterism about ‘passing the peak’ may play well to his base, but to the non-gullible, it is pure hype. Even if we take into account that we are more organised on the downward side of the peak and assume that we only have 25% of the deaths on the upwards side, this would leave us with another seven thousand deaths still to come? One epidemiologist has even suggested a final figure of 45,000. That would give us a fatality rate significantly higher than that of Germany or South Korea and might even be the worst record of any country in Europe. Add to that the economic damage being done and we can see that our government is presiding over a massive disaster much of which was due to their fumbling and late response in the first place.. 

So if in doubt, here is my very own ‘Test, Track and Trace’ approach to the Booster virus simultaneously sweeping our nation with its biological counterpart 1. Treat every repeated three-word phrase with suspicion e.g ‘Past the Peak’, ‘Get Brexit Done’, ‘Take Back Control’, ‘On the Downside’. They are designed for the ‘snapshot mind’ or to put it another way, the gullible. 2) When subjected to one of the former 3-word devices, ask what is not being spoken about e.g  27,510 deaths. 3) Check out single words that are repeated more than three times in a 3-minute speech, e.g.’ ramping up’ or ‘target’. They are often mantras designed to motivate the troops and keep them on message.  4) Interrogate every piece of good news delivered as a number – the number may well have been ‘manipulated’ viz. Hancock’s 122K this week. 5) Finally, ask who is doing the speaking – is it Boris (save the good news for him) or Hancock (save the crap news for him – he’s expendable)?

That’s the testing bit. As far as track and trace are concerned, you need look no further than Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings. 

Hope this helps James? 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent