You Just Threw Away Your Shot

 I can barely contain my excitement. At 11am today the unholy trinity are back on the television with their charts and graphs. Comedy gold awaits. The best news is that I’m not at school this morning, so I can watch it live. 

All of us data nerds know the truth. We came out of lockdown too early. There were still too many cases around and our test and trace system wasn’t working properly. 

However, this is a politically toxic thing to admit publicly. Just as admitting that you flew to Italy in a private jet to have your son baptised and get your best Russian pal to be godfather wouldn’t be a good look, even if there really isn’t anything wrong with that (Italy is in the travel corridor list, so no quarantine required. I know, it’s hard to keep up but I checked.)

Therefore, I’m looking forward to the charts and graphs that prove there are lots of cases and the rhetoric that will follow to imply that it has actually come here again, brought by wayward young people having holidays abroad and not following the rules, which were only guidance but will become rules in an attempt to deflect blame away from the government.

I’m going to watch whatever they say with a feeling of hopelessness. As I keep singing (Hamilton fans will understand), “You just threw away your shot!” 

There is so much interesting body language in this photo that I like to think of as, ‘The room where it happened. Chris Whitty shouts, “You just threw away our shot!”’

The public understood the need to shut everything down to study a new virus, to get strategies in place to treat it, to get cases low enough so they could be traced. This all made sense. They understood the command to eat out to help out. It was time to get back to normal and they have done that. I’m not sure they will understand the next instructions. I’m assuming they will be one thing like, “It’s all your fault. You voted for us. Yes, we are incompetent. But if you don’t do as we say and snitch on your neighbour then we can make life really hard for you.” Chris Whitty’s ears will go pink. Everyone will ignore Sir Patrick Valance and Boris will say something alliterative, funny and quotable that makes no sense.

The frustration in the room where it happens will be palpable because they all know that they had one shot and they blew it.