Andy Munro talks about what he’s been missing.
I’ve started to time my daily jog for around 5pm when the streets are empty when most people are around their telly listening to the daily government briefing. Why am I not watching like a good citizen? Because the briefings and questions have become both boring and evasive in equal measures.
So, to free everybody from this daily drudgery and so they can switch over and watch The Chase instead, here is the daily mantra which you will be missing from the Government rostrum.
GRAPHS
Our first graph shows transport use and and we like it best because of the low trajectories as most people are inside their houses. It doesn’t mean much but we will keep showing it because it looks so good.
Our second graph shows hospital admissions and with typical incubation periods of a week, after 6 weeks of lockdown, we haven’t a clue why it still remains high.
Our third graph shows deaths, which is a bit depressing but we have now reached a peak..or is it a plateau…or is it like that table mountain? It’s unfortunately not a true comparator because ours thankfully only shows deaths in hospital so it doesn’t look as bad as it might. However, we are doing our best to get a figure on outside corona deaths but, as you might imagine, it is proving very difficult to get statistics out of the Office for National Statistics.
PPE
To our complete surprise, this is a problem that every country is facing but there is no need to worry as we have a container ship due from Turkey next week with three billion items of PPE. I know this because it was ordered personally by me five minutes before this briefing.
You will also be pleased to hear that we are also augmenting this at home with Women’s Institutes all over the country sewing articles for the NHS and England.
WEARING OF MASKS BY THE PUBLIC
This is a controversial issue and we are being guided by our medical advisers who are probably the best advisers in the world and actually got us into the position where overall, we have the biggest death rate per head than anybody else in the world. Their advice is that until we first have enough masks for the NHS and Care Sector, we should ignore the WHO and anybody else before finally admitting that masks should be worn by everybody.
EASING THE LOCKDOWN
We haven’t either a clue or a date until we can or can’t meet the five tests that we have set. However, I can announce that Premier League football will resume in June behind close doors to keep the country from rioting
VACCINES
As you will be aware, a vaccine is being trialed now but our medical advisors (who are probably the best in the world) don’t think there will be a cure widely available for eighteen months. This means the vaccine should be in place and widely available by Christmas.
THE ECONOMY
We have borrowed trillions of pounds because of this virus but hopefully this will cover up the trillions of pounds we borrowed before the virus. Anyway everybody in Europe are in the same boat so don’t let’s worry about stuff like that.
THE WIDER WORLD AND BREXIT
We are pleased to say we are continuing regular talks with Donald Trump and he has already offered an exclusive deal on disinfectant to clear up the virus. We are happy to keep close to Trump as his announcements are making Bojo and the rest of us look eminently capable.
However, with regard to China people have been asked if China are going to be held to account on the spread of the virus. Obviously, this is under consideration but we’ll probably leave that to the EU as we don’t want to upset any new trading partners.
BREAKING NEWS
Another container ship is on its way from China with millions of Chinese made Union Jacks to wave on Thursdays to help us all forget the sorry mess we’ve got ourselves in.