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That Sun King feeling...
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant”. That’s the phrase that David Cameron popularised in the UK when he was leader of the Opposition in early 2010, with the general election looming and MPs’ expenses still rocking the public consciousness.
A decade later, Donald Trump seemed to be confused about the whole concept after his scientists pointed to new studies suggesting varying impacts of UV rays, warmer temperatures and bleach on killing the Covid-19 virus on surfaces.
Trump’s now infamous line - “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in one minute..is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” - sparked ridicule and anger among those who already believe he’s risked lives with other unproven ‘cure’ remedies.
The US President claimed today that he was only joking, telling journalists he “was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen”. Yerright. It felt more like another example of Trump’s belief that he’s some kind of omniscient ruler, like France’s Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’ (once described as running his country with “a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique”, which sounds kinda familiar).
As it happens, it was US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish occupant of his office and a passionate fighter for social justice, who in 1914 came up with the phrase “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”. How he must be spinning in his grave at the obfuscatory crimes of the man in the Oval Office today.
At least UK deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries was unafraid of ridiculing Trump’s disinfectant quackery. “Nobody should be injecting anything, and we should be using evidence based on properly trialled treatments that we know will be safe.,” she said at the daily No.10 press conference. Transport secretary Grant Shapps then added, pointedly: “Perfectly clear”.
In fact Shapps had his own dig at Trump too. When asked about the idea of screening foreign air passengers arriving in the UK, Harries pointed out temperature tests were notoriously unreliable but Shapps went further.
“Countries that lock down their flights, I’m thinking for example in the United States that prevented Brits flying there,” he said, “have not necessarily weathered the storm of the coronavirus any better. Many of them have seen much higher levels of death.” On the day the US death toll passed 50,000, the highest of any nation, that was quite a burn.
Shapps has in fact been one of the most hawkish Cabinet ministers in the UK on the virus. He has got into trouble for saying this week that he wouldn’t personally yet be booking any summer holidays. He faced similar criticism when he suggested people should do one shop a week. But on both counts he was probably just being an ultra cautious risk-minimiser. And to be frank there have been too few of those in the Boris Johnson era.
What does seem highly risky however is the Cabinet’s insistence that there should be no extension to the Brexit transition period despite the Covid-19 crisis and the huge complexity and short deadlines needed to sort a comprehensive UK-EU trade deal. Shapps was firmer than anyone today on this, saying “a lot of people voted” for the Tory manifesto that ruled out the extension. Of course, that vote took place last year, when coronavirus sounded like Mexican beer pong.
And on the issue of sunlight as in transparency being the best disinfectant, Shapps was no different today from every other government minister in refusing to discuss what kind of measures could take place when the UK passes its tests for easing the lockdown. It may well take the return of Johnson for that to become a reality, and even then it could take time.
Shapps did today unveil various measures on his own brief to tackle the outbreak, with cash for big city councils to keep their tram systems going, new agreements on freight and even a drone pilot scheme for delivery of medical supplies (though his Labour shadow Jim McMahon was not impressed). But what struck me was the lack of questions today about another huge transport issue: air pollution and its link to coronavirus.
Several early studies (in the US last week and Europe this week) have suggested a correlation between individuals’ respiratory illnesses caused by air pollutants and their susceptibility to Covid-19. Could this be why London and New York, for example, have been hit so hard so far? The evidence is in its infancy but given the government is hosting next year’s COP26 climate change talks, there’s an opportunity to take lasting lessons from this awful disease and to reset how the world cooperates on global warming.
Shapps was right that “it’s going to be another sunny weekend” and the answer to when the lockdown would end lay “in many ways” in our own hands, if we all stayed at home. But thanks to greenhouse gases, sunlight is proving deadly not just for viruses but for humans. The WHO itself estimates that the death toll from climate change is projected to cause 250,000 deaths every year. That’s a Covid-19-style murder rate every year, for decades ahead.
Quote Of The Day
“We don’t know yet when that day will come.”
Grant Shapps on when the government’s five tests for lockdown changes will be met
Friday Cheat Sheet
The government’s new coronavirus testing website for essential workers had to be shut down after its 5,000 home kits ran out within just two minutes. Some 46,000 people tried to access the website, 16,000 tests in total were booked and the site was back up later in the day. Capacity rose to 51,121 per day.
The number of people in UK hospitals with Covid-19 is now 17,049, down from 17,615 on the day before and 10% down in a week. Some 19,506 people in hospital have died, an increase of 684.
99-year-old Captain Tom Moore and singer Michael Ball reached No.1 in the UK’s singles chart with their rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Chief medical officer Chris Whitty told the Commons Science and Technology Committee that the “only circumstances” in which he would use the phrase “herd immunity” would be to refer to a population being vaccinated - a strong hint he disagrees with others in government who have misused the phrase.
Metropolitan police officers are arresting around 100 people a day for domestic violence offences during the lockdown. Charges and cautions from 9 March are 24% higher than last year.
Equalities campaigner Doreen Lawrence has been appointed by Keir Starmer to head up a Labour review of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.
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