THE First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, has announced that Wales will be plunged into a full lockdown from Friday until November 9. The BBC has more.
‘People will be told to stay at home, while pubs, restaurants, hotels and non-essential shops will shut.
‘Primary schools will reopen after the half-term break, but only Years 7 and 8 in secondary schools will return at that time under new “firebreak” rules.
‘Gatherings indoors and outdoors with people not in your household will also be banned.
‘Leisure businesses, community centres, libraries and recycling centres will shut. Places of worship will be closed for normal services, except for funerals and weddings.
‘The announcement follows rising case numbers in Wales and increasing hospital admissions, and replaces the 17 local lockdowns that had been in place.
‘Figures now stand at 130 coronavirus cases per 100,000 over seven days – there were 4,127 cases recorded between October 9 and 15.’
Needless to say, daily deaths in Wales are in low single digits and cases are falling.
Daily deaths from Covid peaked at 11 on October 7 and haven’t climbed above single digits since. The cumulative death toll in Wales, as of yesterday, was 1,712, which is about 3.9 per cent of the total in England. There is absolutely no need for a ‘circuit breaker’. Let’s call this by its proper name, a hospitality industry breaker.
One of the many irritating things about this is that Mark Drakeford can indulge in this pointless virtue-signalling without worrying about the economic impact because the Chancellor has agreed to bung Wales an extra £350million this year. We’re now facing an untenable situation where Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can all afford to introduce these absurd, economically destructive measures because the English are covering their losses. It is this, more than anything else, that will tear the union apart.
Stop Press: Matthew Lynn has the right idea. He’s written a comment piece for the Telegraph‘s Business section saying that Scotland and Wales should pay for their own lockdowns.
This first appeared on Lockdown Sceptics on October 20, 2020, and is republished by kind permission.
