More about the BBC article from earlier about those in the passport office being told to go to work...
LEAKED HOME OFFICE CALL
Reveals Government Wants Economy to ‘Continue Running’
As ‘We Will All Get’ COVID-19 Anyway
Leaked recordings of a Home Office conference call on Tuesday, exclusively obtained by
Byline Times, reveal that the Government has all but given up in its fight against the Coronavirus and is intent on simply finding “a method of managing it within the population”.
The recordings show Home Office Deputy Science Advisor Rupert Shute stating repeatedly that the Government believes “we will all get” COVID-19 eventually. The call further implied that the Government now considers hundreds of thousands of deaths unavoidable over a long-term period consisting of multiple peaks of the disease.
Premature Defeatism
While urging the importance of reducing the burden on the NHS by staying at home, Shute downplayed the risk of people contracting the virus at work.
He said: “It’s perfectly okay to carry on around your business. And it’s vitally important that you do as there’s a whole bunch of supply chains and the economy that needs to continue running… So carrying on with your normal work is not putting you in harms way anymore so than staying at home or going out shopping. So I keep coming back to this point that we are all going to get this at some point. And it’s about making sure that we have a really strong NHS there to support us when we do get sick.”
The policy being communicated by the Home Office privately among Government staffers is at odds with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s statement at a press conference three weeks ago that the next 12 weeks could “turn the tide of this disease”.
Selective transcripts of the recordings were published by
BBC News and widely reported across the British press from there. But the
BBC News story focused primarily on fears that the Home Office’s insistence on staff showing up to work for Her Majesty’s Passport Office would put them at heightened danger of contracting COVID-19.
While valid, this angle failed to cover the leak’s wider revelations regarding the Government’s broader strategy. A fuller analysis of leaked recordings obtained by
Byline Times reveals that the Government remains committed to the idea that the vast majority of the UK population will contract COVID-19, making a minimum number of deaths inevitable, albeit over a longer period of time.
Using the
Government’s own lowest estimate of a fatality rate at around 0.5%, this confirms that it has resigned itself to the expectation that some 264,000 Britons will inevitably die in ensuing months and years from the disease.
...
Reflecting on the “reality of the situation”, he said that “we will all be exposed to it at some point”. According to the “current modelling we are working on, 80% will get it – of that, a large portion won’t notice that they have it. Another substantial portion will have very, very mild symptoms. And a small portion will have a very significant reaction”.
Shute repeatedly insisted that “we can’t hide away from it forever, but we can manage the way in which we are exposed”.“
There is more about the leaked recording, (edit: including saying that the lockdown itself is causing other forms of death, trying to reassure people who live with vulnerable people that it’s still good to go to work, and quoting made up science as to how long the virus survives on surfaces), what was said, here:
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/09/...e-running-as-we-will-all-get-covid-19-anyway/
(Also reported here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...d-of-taking-cavalier-approach-to-staff-safety)
