It’s a while since I’ve endured one of the now weekly coronavirus de-press conferences.
In the early days of Lockdown One I’d listen breathlessly to the latest death count hoping against hope that it was moving in the right direction.
There was always some kind of announcement about PPE, testing or something else we were manifestly failing at.
I was hoping for some good news last night following the announcement that the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine worked in 90% of cases.
Instead we got the usual patronising waffle that characterises so much of how our politicians and scientists talk to us.
Like children we were told to not got “too excited” about the new vaccine and that relaxing would be a “colossal mistake”.
Boris was his usual laugh-a-minute self peppering his presentation with words such as “toot” and “quiver”.
Brigadier Fossey added some gravitas to the proceedings standing tall and upright with a deep, clear tone that, at least, made you feel there was a chance he’d get things done.
Then it was over to JVT, our Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam MBE, and things rapidly went downhill.
Thankfully he decided against his organisation’s discredited and indecipherable graphs choosing instead to rely on a variety of analogies so that us, the simple viewers would get it into our thick heads.
The good news was that we’d scored the first penalty in the shoot-out which showed that the goalkeeper/virus could be beaten. The bad news was that the train was on its way but it would be some time before any of us could get on or something like that.
We had to carry on feeling “really rubbish” and there would no “nice things” unless we followed the rules “to the letter”. No “home run, slam dunk or shot to the back of the net”, as Boris added.
As so frustratingly happens when you’re about to be late for something important, the vaccine train looks set to get stuck outside of UK station and then when it arrives the guards will keep the doors shut.
Here our supposedly “world-class” boffins – heard that before haven’t we – who seem to think they know better than everyone else, as they did on facemasks and test and trace, will decide whether, who and when we can have it. I have absolute confidence in one thing that the whole vaccine programme will end up being a protracted shambles.
So rather than arriving in time for Christmas, the vaccine probably won’t be fully available until “late Spring” they now tell us.
I know what we’re being told is sensible stuff and we’ve got to be careful but the lack of can-do and the patronising tone of the experts pisses me off to be frank!