“A STRATEGY FOR ZERO COVID WILL REQUIRE THE WELSH GOVERNMENT TO FUNDAMENTALLY BREAK WITH TORY POLICY WHOLESALE, BUT IS NECESSARY TO SAVE LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS.”
The pandemic is getting dangerously out of control, and even though Welsh Government has put in place specific measures to stop the spread of Covid, such as the current ‘fire break’, the truth is there has been no Wales-only response to the virus. Instead we have been subject to a blend of both Welsh Government and Westminster strategies, and we are being failed.
Let us start with the Tories and be absolutely clear: the Johnson government is killing people. Covid deaths across the UK are above 60,000 with up to 100,000 experiencing some post infection chronic illness. In Wales this has contributed to deaths totalling over 1,700 and cases over 35,000. Where I live in the Cwm Taf Health Board area 366 people are at the time of writing in hospital and since early September there have been 69 hospital deaths.
This disastrous situation is due to a mixture of total Tory chaos, incompetence and a continuing belief in ‘herd immunity’. There is also another growing danger, that as each lockdown or control policy fails or is undermined by the Cummings factor (politicians breaking the rules), people are becoming less supportive: large numbers are losing income and jobs, the lack of direction, leadership and honesty is leading to a growing indifference to other people’s lives, where ideas that seek to deny or minimise Covid dangers are taking hold. Popular barbarism is a real threat.
We have to get a grip on both Covid and the disastrous Tory strategy – saving lives and livelihoods is inextricably linked: support of virus suppression strategies will fail unless everyone’s income, work and health is protected.
The Welsh Labour Government needs to play a firmer role in this. If we are successful in Wales and become like New Zealand – then everyone in the UK would benefit. At the moment the Welsh Government is still largely locked into the Tory government strategy. Partly this is through finance, so for example the UK funded ‘lighthouse’ scheme of testing in Wales is reliant on UK government funding, it is not being allocated separately to Wales to develop our own find, test, trace, isolate and support system. The Welsh Government also lacks a clear, comprehensive and coherent alternative strategy that emphasises saving lives and livelihoods.
Strategies required to aim toward zero Covid will require the Welsh Government to fundamentally break with Tory government policy. It will require a mobilisation of local communities, councils and health boards across Wales to work together to ensure that an effective find, test, trace, isolate and support strategy is put into place and, moreover that it is back with additional funding that maintains incomes, peoples work and ensures other illnesses and care are not neglected.
It will be a political and possibly constitutional challenge to the Tory government but to stop the current murderous drift it has to be done. Linking up with councils in England and possibly with the devolved administrations of Scotland and Northern Ireland would help to make this challenge effective.
The current ‘stop start’ strategy is killing us, it has to stop and a clear objective of aiming toward zero Covid supported with all the scientific evidence is urgently required. It is also urgent to win the argument against the dangerous grass roots slide toward indifference to the pandemic dangers. In the longer term the right wing ‘herd immunity’ and eugenicist inhumanity, anti science and extreme ‘winners v losers’ libertarian arguments pose a real threat to ecosocialists ideas of supporting others and saving the planet.
Daily I come across arguments that seek to deny that Covid is a threat or is no worse than influenza. According to this report in the British Medical Journal, the risk is actually double and there is no vaccination. In the absence of a clear lead, in the absence of financial support, work and health protection, arguments that seek to minimise or deny the Covid risk, or worse, seek to reduce the ethical barrier by a ‘means justifying the ends’ collateral damage argument that deaths are a price worth paying to return to ‘normal’ will gain strength.
The People’s Assembly Wales has been advocating for a strategy to save lives and since the start of the pandemic. With the current ‘fire break’ lockdown, we believe that there is a real chance to aim toward zero Covid if an effective find, test, trace, isolate and support strategies are in place. Last week we launched a petition to support this case and are urging as many people as possible to sign it.
There is a real chance to both put the case for aiming for a zero Covid strategy to the Welsh Government and at the same time challenge the ‘herd immunity’ arguments that threaten to poison communities and politics for the foreseeable future.
*Len Arthur is convenor for People’s Assembly Wales
