BBC North West news just now discussing the massive explosion of cases on Merseyside and in Cheshire areas like Warrington that as I have been reporting in here has been driving the NW numbers up up and away in past 2/3 weeks.
Local figures on Merseyside have just concluded that over Christmas it was all the fault of people coming there from higher tier areas (wonder who!) that realised they could take advantage of pubs and restaurants being open.
The region is now in massive trouble, with hospitals about to be overrun and the top few locations in Britainfor case numbers being on Merseyside.
If only if only someone had actually worked out that this might happen and it had not come out of the blue like this.
Except.....it was totally obvious and discussed in here many times as we first saw it in July when the Bolton outbreak clobbered the then lowest town in GM by residents going there as they were open to everyone because their cases were low. Wigan has to this day never fully recovered from that and its why I kept pointing this out over and over in here as it was the key reason why the tiers were clearly not going to work as intended. Though not the only reason.
The government knew these facts. Hancock used it pre Christmas when moving all of GM up to the top tier saying you could not separate good and bad boroughs out (citing Trafford and Stockport - now two of the worst!) as they would just spread the virus from bad to good taking advantage of the different restrictions. Especially with the new super spreader strain.
Yet he seems utterly unaware that the North West is like one big region about the size of Greater London and exactly the same thing would happen to anywhere within it that he kept at a lower level.
We saw it coming a mile off in here. It is astounding that it was ignored by the experts and I really doubt they never saw this either so I am baffled as to why as surely they did not want the NW to turn into a powder keg exactly like London had in December?
I am not remotely triumphalist about this. I have relatives on Merseyside and lived and worked there for years and it is heart breaking they are paying such a price for games played to 'reward' them amidst a political bunfight with the regions.
I really hope someone gets their comeuppance over the totally foreseeable tragedy that is unfolding here by them not putting the whole NW in the same tier as some kind of doggie treat for playing nice.
Nobody should be doing that when human lives are at stake as Merseyside and Cheshire are starting to realise and reap the whirlwind given as a Christmas Present they really really should have declined.
The only good thing that can come out of this is dropping the wretched tier system for good as a failed experiment. Yet we are still being told that this is how we will exit lockdown INTO the different tiers.
This needs to be the end to that idea so that those who have paid with illness and their lives have not done so in vain.
