Will.i.am Compares Voting For Donald Trump To Staying In An Abusive Relationship

The Black Eyed Peas star recently made his feelings about President Trump crystal clear to a news outlet, portraying him as a narcissist who has used hostility and propaganda to divide America.

During his Good Morning Britain interview on Tuesday, will.i.am took it further and said Trump supporters have settled with the President’s stunts during his first four years in the White House.

And he said that it would be a very terrible thing if Donald Trump was re-elected over Democratic hopeful Joe Biden.

Presenter Susanna Reid then posited that despite the fact, a few people feel uncomfortable with what Donald Trump had said and done, he remained quite popular and in with a chance.

Will.i.am, 45, replied that was like any abusive relationship and that there were people that stick with their spouses and go through abuse because they don’t know how to escape, but that doesn’t mean that they’re happy.

He continued that they just don’t have the strength or the bravery to get out and change, switch it up and have confidence in something else and that was all people have known for the past four years and that people have settled and just took the humiliation and stupid antics of how he behaves, divides and steers hatred.

And he added that if Donald Trump gets in for another four years, that would be bad for the course of America.

Earlier in the conversation, will.i.am said that America was acting like they were a third world country as it leads the number of coronavirus deaths worldwide and struggles with social unrest.

He noted that seeing the racial tension right alongside COVID, a lot of people are feeling tension on both the Democrat and Republican side.

Putting his faith in Joe Biden to rebuild America, the Voice Kids host continued that Joe Biden was part of the cleanup crew – remember 2008 when we had the mortgage crisis? Barack Obama and Joe Biden stabilised the economy and they handed over to Donald Trump a pretty stable America.

And he added that they need that experience and that they don’t need division or chaos or an egotistical everything is about me candidate.

There are numerous people out there that are terrified and beg their fellow Americans to leave him, but there are many Americans that are so in love with him that they don’t care that he treats them like their nothing and only cares about himself and voting Donald Trump is like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Will.i.am is a great celeb and he’s good at what he does, but people should keep their politics to themselves sometimes, especially when they don’t live in the same world that working-class people do.

He knows that the media will publicise everything he says. I’m not implying that he’s trying to influence the election and if he feels that strongly perhaps he should have stood as a candidate himself, then everyone could have voted for him instead, perhaps he would do a better job, who knows!

However, he’s right, there is a cultish element around a lot of Trump supporters and I’m sure people would rather have a bland but consistent and dedicated politician over a posturing, bullying showman any day.

No, The United States Isn’t On The Brink Of Civil War

As the US enters the final straight of what has been, to put it mildly, a highly unusual election campaign, something akin to hysteria is taking hold among spectators on both sides of the Atlantic.

The assumption is that the United States is in a highly delicate condition, that the election could quickly tilt it into widespread violence, and that the social and political divisions presently dubbed the culture wars could escalate into a real war.

One scenario suggests blood on the streets were Donald Trump and his followers to resist defeat and a respected think tank, the International Crisis Group, which usually analyses places such as Somalia has explained that it’s presently focusing on the risk of violence surrounding the US elections.

Reuters is providing its reporters in the United States with flak jackets, helmets and gas masks and there’s even a strand of academic opinion saying that the country has never been as dangerously polarised since 1860, the eve of the American civil war, and at which point does someone need to say, steady on?

The United States today may indeed be combustible with the Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the demise of George Floyd, the vicious pre-election verbal slanging matches across the US media, and questions about whether a defeated Donald Trump would go quietly but do we really have to go back to 1860?

The United States of the mid to late 1960s was a far more violent country than it is today.

Race riots were a recurrent fact of life in numerous US cities – the civil rights movement was in full flow – the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965 were regularly broken up with excessive violence by local police and white avengers.

City centres and university campuses were the scenes of mob demonstrations against the Vietnam war that routinely turned violent.

In 1970, four students were shot dead and nine wounded at the Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard.

Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy only three years later.

Urban rioting that followed the demise of Martin Luther King that April affected more than 100 US cities and the extent of the damage to downtown Washington DC was such that there were still hints of it in the late 1990s.

For the 1968 Democratic party convention in August, Mayor Daley sent 23,000 police to the streets to counter an estimated 10,000 protesters. The result was a confrontation and four days of violence during which more than 100 demonstrators were injured badly enough to be taken to hospital and almost 200 police officers were hurt.

Hopefully, Donald Trump will end up being toast in the elections and come January he will then crawl back under the same rock from whence he came, and let’s see what happens when he refuses to leave the White House or won’t accept that he’s lost the election – those unscalable walls and heightened security forces aren’t there for decoration!

But we’ll find out in a few days – I mean, it’s not like Donald Trump hasn’t endeavoured to interfere with ballots already or asserted that he can stop the election because of COVID.

Whatever a person’s politics is, I can’t believe that any rational thinking person would vote for Donald Trump – he doesn’t care about you or anyone else – he’s a nutter and only cares about himself, although saying that, I guess that makes him pretty average in American politics.

Pro-Trump Caravans Are Jamming Freeways, Sometimes Causing Gridlock

Before the 2018 midterm elections, President Trump forewarned of caravans of migrants coming up through Mexico and with only a few days until the 2020 election, Donald Trump devotees are the ones forming caravans, taking to highways and freeways in considerable numbers to demonstrate their support for the President or make some other statement.

In some cases, like when Trump caravans waited on the I-35 in Texas to ambush a Joe Biden campaign bus, things turned a little sinister.

The FBI is investigating that incident, although Donald Trump tweeted that in his view, they should let it go – in other cases, the rallies just generate traffic jams.

Around Denver on Sunday, the gridlock appears to have been an incidental byproduct of the MAGA Drag The Interstate rally, however, in other areas, such as New York and New Jersey, the goal appears to have been to shut down traffic.

The real goal for most caravan participants appears to be a visible display of strength amid dire polling for Donald Trump, but police are readying for disorder and confrontations on Election Day, and already early voting has been tarnished by accusations of voter intimidation and unease around the polls, including numerous reports of caravans and honking automobiles flying Trump flags at times blocking access to voting locations.

Actionable voter intimidation includes people confronting voters in official or military-style uniforms outside polling places or poll watchers following voters or aggressively challenging or intimidating them.

But is this all these people have left to try? Apparently logic didn’t work, and it seems that when you’re that impotent, just get out your oversized truck, but this fits right in with Donald Trump’s obstructionism, anti-law and selfish egocentricity.

It’s a part of the MAGA hive mentality to assume the vexation they engender toward them and they enjoy the adverse energy – it’s a bullying thing, but some people just wouldn’t understand.

The irony is that they despise themselves more than anyone else, nobody who’s happy would act like this, they wouldn’t have the time.

Road blocking can be an effective demonstration tactic because, by snarling traffic, it puts pressure on local officials to address the protestors’ demands and blocking highways is a fearless expression of civil insubordination.

But, then that’s the point – one can either cheer both or condemn both – which camp are you in? But it’s a bad and even destructive strategy no matter who’s doing it.

And then you have the comic tweets for the FBI to let it go, generating disorder and endangering people with traffic jams and flag-waving – is this what the American people have become?

And it would be so amusing if all those people out there intimidating forgot to vote and do they believe that this kind of behaviour would make someone want to vote, if anything, it would make me not want to vote.

This is not America first, it’s a ME first cult behaviour and this could be one of the most idiotic things that the Trumpanzee are doing right now, and I love the fact that they believe this strategy will get Donald Trump re-elected.

You couldn’t make this level of idiocy up! And cult mentality isn’t especially bright.

I mean, how do you feed yourself stupidity? Well, it seems that in the last four years everyone has come out from under a rock and is now demonstrating a ridiculous cult-like mentality, and what, they didn’t realise they were that dumb?

Not now, Bird Flu!

Hundreds of birds at a farm in Kent will be culled following an outbreak of bird flu.

All 480 ducks and chickens on the site near the town of Deal will be destroyed to restrict the spread of the disease, Government has confirmed.

The outbreak of the H5N2 avian influenza at the small commercial premises was confirmed on Monday.

A 1 km restricted zone has been put in place around the site to limit the risk of the disease spreading while pressing enquires are underway for any evidence that it has fanned further.

Public Health England (PHE) says the danger to public health from the virus is extremely low and the Food Standards Agency said bird flu doesn’t pose a food safety threat for UK consumers.

Thoroughly cooked poultry and poultry products, including eggs, are safe to eat.

Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss said that avian flu has been confirmed at a small commercial premises in Kent and that prompt actions had been taken to limit the risk of the disease spreading and that all remaining poultry and captive birds at the farm would be culled.

There’s not expected to be an impact on food reserves as this company doesn’t supply poultry meat or eggs to the commercial food chain.

Christine Middlemiss added that bird keepers should stay alert for any manifestation of infection and report any suspected disease immediately and ensure they’re maintaining adequate biosecurity on their premises.

She said that they’re urgently looking for any evidence of disease spread associated with this farm to control and eradicate it.

Dr Gavin Dabrera, Consultant in acute respiratory infections at PHE said that bird flu is an uncommon disease in humans and the risk to the UK population remains extremely low.

He added that sick or dead birds should not be touched and to make sure to wash your hands exhaustively with soap after contact with any animal.

A thorough investigation is in progress to determine the most likely source of the outbreak.

The trouble is that these animals are kept in vast industrial sheds with hundreds of thousands of other birds with the space of only an A4 piece of paper to stand in, and it’s modern factory farming methods that make such disease outbreaks both more likely and more deadly.

This is why most farm animals are routinely dosed with antibiotics to prevent secondary infections from mutilations (animals cannibalising each other) and from faeces.

Viruses, of course, can’t be so actively prevented so you end up having these mass culls instead.

One Post, 947 Applicants: Restaurant’s Story Reveals The Depth Of UK Jobs Crisis

It was a single job advert for a minimum wage position as a waiter in a Manchester restaurant.

Buoyed by the ‘eat out to help out’ scheme, Peru Perdu, a Peruvian themed restaurant in the heart of the city was looking for someone to join its serving staff.

Within four days, 320 people had applied and by the time the ad was taken down, 947 people had submitted applications.

Recruitment consultant Abi Dunn, who posted the ad, told Channel 4’s Dispatches for a programme to be broadcast Monday night that typically they would have had between 20 and 30 for a position like this.

And said that they were surprised by that and that it was a true indication of where the sector is at and that they were recruiting in different times.

Among those applying was Faye, a dancer on a cruise ship. She’d been forced to move back in with her parents and was struggling to find a position that paid even the minimum wage.

She said it took her a long time to get a job on the cruise ships. It took her two years of auditioning.

She said that she’s rather small for a dancer, 5 feet 2 inches and she found it hard to crack through that wall to get a job, which was her dream job.

When asked about how many jobs she’d applied for, she said it felt like hundreds and that maybe it was hundreds and she said that when she first started applying, she was applying for everything, even things she was probably under-qualified for because, you know, you do feel so desperate.

Among the applicants for the position, even those with years of experience in hospitality were finding it difficult to get noticed.

Jake was most recently a manager in a luxury hotel and he thought it would be easier with a degree and ten years of experience, but it’s been a struggle and he said he probably only had one and a half months rent left in his bank account and that would only take him through to November.

Admin worker Kerry was one of 1,000 people to lose their job at luxury carmaker Bently. She said that her savings was going down and that she was able to put money into her savings and in the children’s accounts, from there to nothing.

She said that she did get a little bit of money from Universal Credit as it is now and that she just put it all into the joint account and that was her contribution at the time to pay for the house because she didn’t want to lose her house, and she said that she’s not even going to be able to put money away towards Christmas presents this year and that upsets her.

This isn’t an issue of lockdown, it’s the issue that our Government don’t want to help those in need and this is called mismanagement from our Government, but then what do you expect from a Tory Government?

In New Zealand they’ve been well managed, no more casualties and only one case that’s come from someone in quarantine, coming from overseas.

There Government gave everyone self-employed funding early on, which helped enormously. The problem is Britain has far too many people not observing proper health guidelines, so infection is running wild in places and it’s the same in the US and now very negative consequences of lockdowns are going to destroy economies.

However, if Governments gave everyone a universal living wage, then the economy would still be okay and that’s what we should be lobbying for.

There was a time when it was the Government’s job to help the unemployed find work, through what was called the Labour Exchange, but that all changed and now there are far too many unemployed people frantic to find work, applying for jobs and everyone is fighting one another for work when the Government should still be helping them.

Plus many permanent jobs have been superseded by several people working shifts, it’s called the ‘insecurely unemployed’.

Fewer workers rights that end up needing top-ups by benefits, but those top-ups allow the Government to vet everyone’s earnings – dictatorship masquerading as socialism.

It also massages the true unemployment figures by passing off part-time workers as being in permanent, if not full-time employment. On the other hand, it also suits the Government to keep a reserve of permanently unemployed to drive down wages and workers demands.

Schools May Have To Close If Lockdown Fails

A key SAGE adviser said that schools may end up having to close if infection rates continue rising.

Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said schools would stay open during the extreme lockdown, but added that because they have delayed the onset of the lockdown, it makes keeping schools open harder.

And that if the transmission in secondary schools continues to grow that may have to be reconsidered in the next four weeks.

Obviously, this isn’t the student’s fault, but there is now a concern about their futures and it’s extremely sad indeed.

There is no fault here, we have a pandemic and we all have to follow the rules and it’s impacting everyone, no matter their age, but the rate of infections in secondary schools is growing rapidly as is in the general population.

And lockdown might seem extremely selfish to the young and it might seem unjust, but we need to do what needs to be done.

Students will now effectively be locked in for four weeks with no pubs open et cetera and there will be numerous older students having house parties where this virus will spread further.

There doesn’t seem to be an answer, but perhaps opening up universities was now in hindsight the wrong decision. However, sending two million students, many of which will be carrying COVID 19 back across the country to families, parents, grandparents and siblings will cause a spike and we need to get the transmission rates lower before we start pushing for the mass migration of millions of students.

And they seem to be discouraging mask-wearing in school because they assert that hundreds of these children that are in cramped spaces are in a bubble, but then supporting those in need isn’t the style of the Government – killing thousands meaninglessly does seem to be.

The scientists on SAGE advise the Government, but it’s become increasingly evident that our politicians don’t have to take that advice, and have at times rejected it and had the crisis been addressed earlier and more effectively by the Government, we might not be in this alarming situation now.

In the meantime, we the ordinary people are paying the price of our Government’s lack of judgement and skewed priorities.

Unfortunately, we’re now seeing a lot of suicide rates, mental illness, domestic abuse, people forgoing medical treatment, which killed a lot of people last time, wanton destruction of livelihoods and the inescapable fiscal tradeoffs to finance all of the handouts et cetera.

And now we’re in lockdown for four weeks, but if we’re honest with ourselves, it will be much longer and the Government seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Not everyone seems to be agreeing with one another, some want to lockdown, some don’t and believe that we should just take our chances and carry on regardless.

Sheild if you feel you need to, but those that don’t want to shield, be thoughtful and caring by wearing masks and washing your hands to protect yourself and others.

Shooting Of Priest In Lyon

A Greek Orthodox archpriest is battling for his life after being shot in the chest with a sawn-off shotgun outside his church in Lyon in central France and even though the shooting is not being treated as a terrorist incident, it’s fuelled an already frenzied atmosphere around churches in France following the slaying of three people in the basilica in Nice by a Tunisian Islamist on Thursday.

The archpriest, named as Father Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, was shot as he closed the church in Lyon’s seventh district on Saturday. Prosecutors say he’s in critical condition.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that in Lyon, around 4 pm on Saturday, residents and a police patrol heard two gunshots near a Greek Orthodox church on the 7th arrondissement of the city.

Police officers saw a man escaping the location and discovered a priest with gunshot wounds near the church’s back door. French media reported that the assailant used a sawn-off shotgun.

The prosecutor’s office said that the police captured a person matching eyewitness descriptions of the assailant later on Saturday and a report from the prosecutor’s office said that the individual was not carrying a weapon and didn’t say that the person was a suspect in the shooting.

Grégory Doucet, the mayor of Lyon, said that the priest had been hospitalized with serious injuries and the prosecutor’s office said that at this stage, no hypothesis had been ruled out nor favoured, adding that it had opened an investigation for attempted murder and that it was in communication with the national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office.

However, the fact that the national antiterrorism prosecutor was not directly handling the case was a sign that authorities didn’t have proof of a terrorist motive.

The Lyon prosecutor’s office didn’t deliver more details about the attacker.

The police cordoned off the site, a residential area in Lyon, and local police asked residents to avoid it and French authorities have put the country on its highest terrorism alert status after the attack in Nice and had increased security patrols around key locations, including places of worship.

Jean Castex, the Prime Minister, told reporters on Saturday that grave events had transpired in Lyon but he didn’t have any information on the circumstances.

Jean Castex happened to be speaking from St-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a small town in Normandy where an 85-year-old priest was killed in 2016 in a terrorist attack that the Islamic State said it had carried out.

Mr Castex, who was visiting the town to review heightened security at the church, said the French Government was determined to ensure that all worshipers could practice their religion in complete safety and with total freedom.

Terrorist attack or not, this was still a heinous crime that should not have occurred and seems to be getting very little coverage via media outlets.

Then there were the two Muslim women who were stabbed repeatedly under the Eiffel Tower amid growing tension in Paris after the beheading of a teacher.

French police arrested two female suspects after an argument about dogs that allegedly descended into violence and racist slurs including the words ‘Dirty Arabs’.

One of the Muslim women said the assailants had pulled out a knife after refusing to put their dogs on a leash and slashed her in the skull, arm and ribs.

Evidently, according to French authorities, a fellow Greek Orthodox adherent and aggrieved community member has been detained and is the leading suspect in the attempted slaying of Father Nikolaos Kakavelakis outside the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Lyon.

According to the Lyon Police, Jean-Michel Dhimoïla, a French national, Greek Orthodox Christian and member of the same Lyon parish where Father Nikolaos Kakavelakis was shot, was arrested and brought into police headquarters for questioning.

Jean-Michel Dhimoïla, a former legislative contender for the far-right French political party Debout la France, was also once a Greek Orthodox Monk and had a long-standing personal conflict with the priest.

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the former monk and the priest were involved in long-standing disputes that ended up in court.

This was a hate crime and so far this incident doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Muslim hate crimes.

Young Children Exempted From Key Lockdown Rule

Tory ministers today revealed a major new exemption for young parents in England’s national lockdown.

Babies and toddlers will no longer count towards a two-person limit on meetups in an open area, like a park.

This means, for instance, that new mums will still be able to see a friend or family member while holding their baby.

The regulations are part of a month-long national lockdown which starts in England from 12.01 am on Thursday.

Social mixing, indoors and outdoors, will be prohibited between people not from the same home or bubble.

A major exemption is that two people from two homes can still meet in a public open area, like a park, as long as they socially distance.

The regulation is designed to throw a lifeline to friendships and family members and to prevent people from being isolated, but only two people in total can take part in such assemblages.

That is despite the fact new parents need to be holding their baby, who is already a second person, at the time, but that had raised fears new parents would be excluded and isolated at the time they needed social contact the most.

A Health Minister said, that due to the concerns, children under school age will now be exempted from the rule and they will no longer count towards the limit of two people assembling outdoors.

Neither will older children or adults who are dependent on round the clock care, such as those with severe disabilities.

Health Minister Nadine Dorries confirmed the move on Twitter and she said that children under school age who are with their parents will not count towards the limit on two people assembling outdoors.

And she said that this would mean that a parent can see a friend or family member with their baby or young children and she added that children and adults who are dependent on round the clock care, such as those with severe disabilities, would also be included and that the guidance will be revised to reflect this.

The change is a major departure from the rule of six which controlled crowds up until the lockdown and under the rule of six, children counted towards the six-person limit on assemblages no matter how young or old.

Labour MP Stella Creasy had raised concerns, tweeting: “Hard to see how a baby is distinct from a parent in transmission stakes at such a young age and given growing crisis of postnatal maternal health vital mums not stuck at home this next month!”

TV star Kirstie Allsopp was among those who had raised concerns and she tweeted: “If you are allowed to meet one other person while walking outside that must exclude a baby in a pram, and if doesn’t it is frankly barbaric.

“Have we learned nothing about the acute, long term danger to all family members of PND?!!!”

Is anyone baffled by the new rules?

Well, some will be extremely confused by them and some might say that it’s ridiculous.

For months grandparents were not permitted to see their families, children and grandchildren together, but now we’re in another lockdown you can see them all providing their under school age, extremely confusing if you ask me.

And I’m sure anyone under the age of about 11 years old needs around the clock care, not just babies and toddlers. It’s not like you could leave your 7-year-old in the house alone while you went shopping.

And are the Government for real – meet up in a park in the middle of winter, they know anyone in their right mind wouldn’t subject their children to that kind of torment and you couldn’t make this babble up if you tried, but the Government have and Boris Johnson appears to be making this up as he goes along.

So, what about people that don’t have children, what are they supposed to do? Next Boris Johnson will be telling us to take a brisk hike around the park in the middle of the winter, and don’t forget soon the snow will be here.

Not only that, what about those poor people out there that have no home to go to and that are out on the streets, some being told that they can sofa surf even though we’re not supposed to be in other people’s homes.

But it’s a good ploy by our trusted Government. Go out to the park to see your friends and family as long as you socially distance, come rain, or snow – don’t worry about getting sick or ending up with pneumonia – the Government don’t care because it’s one less person to worry about.

England Shutdown To Start Thursday

A second lockdown in England may last longer than the four weeks outlined by Boris Johnson, admitted Michael Gove.

The Prime Minister has decided to prohibit household mixing and shutter pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops, but that came six weeks after scientific advisers first urged him to do so.

Following months of insistence to the contrary and on the day it was due to end, Boris Johnson also announced the furlough scheme would be extended throughout the shutdown period, while scientists warned the Government to use this time well and fix the ailing £12 billion test and trace system.

Meanwhile, data shared with a news outlet disclosed that tens of thousands of NHS staff are presently off sick or self-isolating because of COVID 19, but this is going to keep occurring.

Boris Johnson talked of nature yesterday, this is nature we have to let take its course, and I hope that nobody else out there loses someone but there’s a slim possibility that they could, but we might have to take some risks so that we can get on with our lives.

What we need is a vaccine and then there are no guarantees that it will work effectively for everyone.

When it’s a natural existing virus we can rely on the body to create antibodies, but this virus isn’t creating antibodies, which mean that it possibly wasn’t a naturally occurring virus and it’s been designed to evolve.

We now have to use common sense and take precautions by wearing a mask, social distance, wash your hands, use hand sanitiser, eat nutritious foods, get plenty of sleep, exercise, get plenty of sunshine and fresh air.

But we must also protect those who are most vulnerable to this virus – it doesn’t have to be 100 per cent one way or the other, but common sense is a wonderful thing.

There is always some evidence out there, but at the moment no evidence can be trusted as conclusive.

Perhaps soon there will be clearer ideas about it all, but doctors, scientists and Government all need to agree, but at the moment they’re all saying different things and delivering different facts.

And the return of the virus in its second wave demonstrates that this pandemic is definitely not over and increased cases are already emerging here in the United Kingdom.

Publishing half-truths and ignoring reality will not prevent the virus from killing thousands more people and at the moment we are just learning to live with this virus, but we still have to get on with our lives, which means that everything we do will be a risk.

Boris Johnson has from Thursday now locked us down until December 2nd, so he’s thrown us a bone and then he will tell us that we’ve done great as a nation, that we’ve united and come together, but that we would be stupid and foolish to unlock now and to unlace all the hard work we’ve done together as a nation and he will add another four-week lockdown, and as a reward, we’ll get Brexit, with no time whatsoever to prepare – lucky us!

And then when the vaccine is ready, if it ever is, everyone can join societies line up to take it. And those that have read about it and refuse to take it will be yelled at by the snarling sheep that they’re being selfish.

However, until halfwit Boris Johnson gets the track and trace programme sorted it will be a case of lockdown after lockdown, and of course, lockdown takes slight pressure off the NHS momentarily, but once lockdown is lifted it’s back to square one again and again.

We Must Keep Our Heads And Accept COVID Is Here For The Long Term

The Keep Calm and Carry On catchphrase on your coffee cup seems quaintly entertaining in better times, but as the second wave of coronavirus sweeps Europe, perhaps we should be clinging to its wartime message.

We’re now nine months into this fight against the pandemic, but we need to quit treating COVID 19 as a crisis and we need to stop panicking over every new statistic and start preparing for the long haul.

In the early days, we were faced with a new and deadly disease and harsh measures made sense.

The first lockdowns sought to buy us time, to quell the virus and protect hospitals until a vaccine arrived, but despite gallant progress, it’s evident that no vaccine will be widely available until spring at the earliest, and possibly never.

There’s still no vaccine for SARS and there are reports that the coronavirus is mutating.

Even if there was a vaccine, the UK’s chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance said recently that it was unlikely to eradicate COVID 19 entirely, which means we must learn to live with this thing.

And in the United Kingdom, the hysteria mindset of the emergency phase had some terrible consequences.

Patients have been forced to decide which of their children to see before they die and they’re frightened lonely people who have been forced to stay at home, have put on weight, while obesity is a considerable risk factor for the virus.

Curfews have replaced unruly drinkers from pubs to car parks, with devastating takings at the till.

In Wales, which has been a one-party state since devolution, the first minister has imposed a Soviet-style prohibition on supermarkets, selling anything but essential goods, in case customers might contaminate someone while skimming for a T-shirt.

The challenge ahead is to look coolly at what works and to examine all possibilities.

Closing down swaths of the economy indefinitely will have enormous consequences for jobs, livelihood and mental health.

The UK Treasury has already expended billions to keep the economy in suspended animation and now we’re at a cliff edge with the furlough scheme for jobs about to expire and the Government must extend a more generous alternate safety net than it’s fashioned so far or they must reduce the lockdowns.

The Prime Minister can only feel his way through the difficult trade-offs between lives, livelihoods and hospital capacity and he’s repeatedly shown every jump in the R numbers of infections.

But there are no R numbers for jobs, no equivalent stream showing when a business owner will lose their life’s savings and life’s work and there’s no Downing Street unit scrutinising worst-case health scenarios and modelling families queueing at food banks, corporations planning mass redundancies and people contemplating suicide.

There, of course, have been numerous pandemics throughout history, which usually last about 1-3 years but took many lives and then ended and I don’t see any reason why this relatively mild one should be any worse, especially given that we at least learned to wash our hands and wear masks.

But what we do need to learn is to adapt to this virus and to condition our lifestyles and hygienic behaviours accordingly and you can thank the media, public health officials and most politicians for acting as though everyone is 80+ years old with comorbidities and at increased risk of dying, which has led to the panic.

Although I don’t know anyone who is panicking per se, but I do know many people who are simply fed up with the crisis and believe that it’s time to move on and get back to normal because really, there’s nothing we can do about it.

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