Lickspittles

+The New York Times runs a story today which shows that in the U.S. unvaccinated people experience on average per week 7.8 deaths from Covid per 100,000. For those who are vaccinated and have had a booster the figure is just 0.1. This should be enough to convince anti-vaxxers to change their minds. But they won’t, of course. The good news is that by political affiliation, 36% of Republicans remain unvaccinated as opposed to 9% of Democrats. On these figures, more Republicans will die of Covid than Democrats. Long live the pandemic!
 
+There is something deliciously excruciating about a politician wriggling on the end of a stick vainly trying to defend the indefensible. This is now the position in which Boris Johnson’s cabinet colleagues find themselves. On the news tonight we had Brandon ‘I love my red box’ Lewis trotting out a well rehearsed line that in the light of ‘Partygate’ we should all wait for the results of a Metropolitan Police inquiry into the affair (it’s no longer ‘we must wait for the Sue Gray report), but in the meantime the inquiry which was led by civil servant Sue Gray has made some recommendations which Johnson 'wholly accepts and will act upon.' This is indeed the nature of inquiries of the sort Johnson set up—to provide space for a little contrition and promise teacher it won’t happen again. I’m not sure Johnson is capable of that obedient leap, however. It’s just not him. When we do hear from the Met, the line will be ‘we’ve already had Sue Gray’s [bowdlerised] report, so what’s new? Move on!’ But as with most things Johnson, the defence will end up being worse than the original offence. We’ll have to wait and see to what extent the great British public are willing to be taken for fools.