Thread.

1/ The government’s appalling handling of Covid...

From start to finish, the government has stuffed up their response to the Coronavirus pandemic with a set of responses that were either badly managed or dreadfully communicated. This has led to total confusion and fear.

2/ They willfully attempted to ramp up fear levels by using doomsday scenario charts and applied flawed methodology to create a fanciful worst case scenario that was presented as a real possibility - which was then parroted by the media.

3/ The question is: what were the government hoping to achieve? Did they think everyone would simply look at the charts and freak out? Or did they assume we’re all so terrified already we’d just blindly take those charts at face value?

4/ The government have wilfully mismanaged virtually every aspect of the pandemic. This has caused widespread confusion and panic. We have the worst government at exactly the worst time.

5/ The government have created, overseen and amplified a shambles on the Coronavirus crisis for an entire year.

6/ Allowing infected patients from hospitals back to care homes to inadvertently spread the virus round a vulnerable cohort.

7/ Cancelling exams that could have been held in Covid-secure halls and then overseeing a shambles on A-level results.

8/ Failing to get children back into school in June 2020, and then shutting the schools again in 2021. 500,000 additional children now suffer from mental health problems.

9/ Failing to develop a functioning test / track/ trace system - for an entire year.

10/ Failure to effectively roll out the NHS volunteers programme - despite 700,000 people signing up.

11/ Total mismanagement over the PPE procurement programme.

12/ Negligently allowing the UK to become one of the only countries in the world not to have a test and quarantine programme at airports - for an entire year.

13/ A total lack of a consistent and coherent strategy with inconsistent and unworkable rules such as the rule of six and the 10pm pub curfew.

14/ Creating a wider health crisis with reports of empty hospitals, GP surgeries and delayed treatments and operations for non-Covid patients. 1,000 excess home deaths a week since March.

15/ Forgetting 3 million self employed and freelance workers - who have gone without any income or government support for 11 months.

16/ The UK saw its worst ever economic collapse - with a drop of -20% GDP in April 2020, and a yearly GDP drop twice as bad as the 2009 financial crisis.

17/ The UK government’s only consistent Covid strategy seems to be: deny everything, acknowledge nothing, blame everyone else but themselves, over promise and under deliver.

18/ Watching a weak, incompetent, bizarrely unaccountable government repeatedly mismanage a crisis really wakes you up to the powerlessness of the individual in times of trouble.