Exeunt Buffoon Johnson...

...preferably pursued by a bear.

Mr Johnson is, of course, no buffoon, but a very shrewd man.  He has calculated, sadly correctly, that acting as a P G Wodehouse jackass- type will appeal to the electorate and get him where he wants to be.  So he won the London mayoralty twice in spite of making a mess of the job, and in spite of being being a failure as the buffooning foreign secretary, went to to become prime minister.

Now he realises that the upper-class-twit persona is not appropriate for the coronavirus pandemic, so the buffoon veneer is cast off and more serious facade adopted.

With astonishing chutzpah (possible something you learn at Eton,) he now appears in press conferences  flanked by the Chief Medical Officer  and the Chief Scientific Officer.  Mantras about "following the science" and "expert opinion" are repeated ad nauseam by ministers now permitted to appear on the Today Programme. The Britain that had "had enough of experts" is now airbrushed out of our history.  

How differenly our membership of the EU would have been resolved if Brexiteer Johnson had appeared flanked by the Governor of the Bank of England and the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.

It is clear that Johnson is carefully covering  his back.  If the effects of the coronavirus are more devastating in the UK than in comparable countries than he can pass the blame onto the experts.

He may well have to do this, because the initial advice appears to have been mistaken.

In an analogy with "market rules OK" economics, the original aproach seems to have been to let the disease run its course.  A minority of vulnerable people, the elderly and those with underlying conditions, would catch it and die, but the overwhelming majority, inducing almost all children, would suffer only mild symptoms, recover, and the population as a whole would achieve "herd immunity."  

Modelling by scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine** (see below for correction) showed that this approach, even if herd immunity could  be achieved in this way rather than through the normal vaccination process, would lead to a scale of sickness and death which  would be politically unacceptable and overwhelm the NHS.  

As one of the vulnerable (aged 82) who would have been a prime candidate for sacrifice for the common good in this approach, I'm relieved that we have changed tack, even if it does result in my self-isolation for several weeks.

Just as the government expects us to forget its former contempt for experts, we are also expected to have collective amnesia on the effects of 10 years of Tory austerity, not just on our NHS but also on the civil service, local government and other public services.  

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has located not so much a magic money tree or even an orchard, but a veritable magic money plantation.  £350bn is to be sprayed into the economy to avoid the worst economic effects of the virus.  

Well, that's all to the good; in fact a tenth of that in 2010 would have avoided a lot of misery. 

But even if the economy is propped up by this infusion (and, as is often the case, simply expanding the money supply does not necessarily get the money into the right places) all the money in the world cannot suddenly conjure up extra doctors and nurses, extra hospital beds,more ICU equipment,  more local government health officers, more civil servants, more care homes and qualified carers.  

As a slogan "Whatever it takes," is a worthy successor to "our long- term economic plan," "strong and stable" and "get Brexit done" - an effective piece of PR with which to deceive the public, but of little practical value.

What we need is a sprit of self-sacrifice  and discipline.  Neither  Johnson nor his cabinet are effective role-models for these virtues.

** Sorry,I misremembered.  The research was not from the LSHTM but , according to an article in today's "Guardian"  by Dr Richard Hatton, editor of "The Lancet," by researchers at Imperial College.  The reasoning did not require higher mathematics.  The  laissez faire approach  assumed that 60% of the UK's 6.6m population  would get the disease.  That's just just short of 40m people.  If 1% of them die (the going rate) that's around 400 000 people.  

In China, where the spread of the virus appeasers to have been slowed if not halted , the total number of deaths so far is 3 245. 

Of course there's still some way to go, but thank goodness for the change of tack.