What was the point of tonight’s Covid press conference? Boris Johnson didn’t have anything big to announce, other than a very dubious-looking new lectern telling people to ‘Get Boosted N0w’, with the 0 in the ‘now’ looking a lot like a Hula Hoop. His purported focus was on the doubling rate of Omicron, and to announce today’s record high number of positive tests (78,000).
A cynic might argue that calling a press conference on the vaccination programme is distracting from the self-inflicted political mess Boris is currently wallowing through. Given people are already queuing round the block for their booster jabs, it doesn’t seem as though the message about Getting Boosted Now really needs a, well, boost.
Arranging press briefing sends everyone into a whirl of worry that a new lockdown might be announced, which isn’t unreasonable given the last-minute nature of many of the big announcements over the past two years. But there might have been a more noble purpose to getting everyone to nervously switch on their TVs once again.
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