The government has a bit of a conundrum. Given how Keir Starmer and his Labour colleagues damned the previous Conservative administration for failing to lock down the country early enough for Covid, what are they now going to do about the new strain of monkeypox (or ‘mpox’, as we are now supposed to call it)?
Come on, now is the time to act, when 548 people are reported to have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the first case has reached Sweden, and the World Health Organisation has declared a global health emergency. So what are you going to do? Ban travel from the DRC? Place into quarantine anyone who has been travelling in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa in recent months? Close swimming pools, ban contact sports, prohibit sex, and any physical intimacy outside marriage (which would be the equivalent of banning mixing of households in the case of an airborne disease like Covid) under pain of £10,000 fines?
I don’t see the government rushing to do any of these things, and for good reason. It would almost certainly turn out to be a gross over-reaction. It would undermine civil rights and discriminate against a section of the population – Africans – who would find themselves incarcerated and shunned as a result of the fear that derived from tough government measures. When the emergency had passed, as it almost certainly will, Britain would end up looking a bit foolish, as well as having caused itself considerable economic harm.
And that, never mind the assertions of people who choose to be wise after the event, was exactly the same position that Boris Johnson’s government was in during the early months of 2020. There was a novel virus doing the rounds in China. It probably wasn’t going to erupt into much, because novel viruses rarely do. Yet there was, admittedly, an opportunity for the government to get ahead, ban all travel from China, prevent all social gatherings, and close the schools. It is unlikely to have achieved much in the long run because Covid was destined to become endemic and would eventually have arrived on Britain’s shores anyway. But no one knew at the time how the pandemic was going to pan out.
One thing, though, is for sure. If monkeypox does erupt in Britain and starts killing people here, then nothing that the Starmer government will have done will seem adequate. Pictures of Keir Starmer shaking hands with people will be used to demonstrate his recklessness. The government is damned either way, whether it takes monkeypox as a grave threat or not. The honest thing would be to admit that the same was true for Boris Johnson with Covid in 2020. When it comes to outbreaks of infectious disease, all governments are fishing around in the dark.
There is one difference between monkeypox and Covid: we already have a vaccine. Ordering vast numbers of doses and a vaccination programme for the whole UK population would most likely turn out to be a waste of time and money. But then again, if the disease does start claiming victims in Britain? How would Starmer explain his inaction to the subsequent inquiry? I don’t envy those in power, having to make these calls.
Comments