Buffeted

Come oooooon. This is taking the piss. How can it even begin to be allowed under current restrictions? 

Eagle-eyed viewers last night may have spotted that in ‘red zones’ like ours, reopening restaurants seem to be permitted one customer per ten square metres. (Must everyone eat alone?) 

It was all a bit blurry and flashed by pretty quickly. But a buffet adds a level of confusion and avoidable risk that has to be properly discouraged by our municipal authorities e.g. people getting up from their tables, utensils being shared and so on. 

Indeed, buffets were one of the first things stamped out in Singapore for that very reason. OK, they are especially keen on stampings out over there, but they have squished the coronavirus quite successfully too. 

Two weeks ago Dr Giammattei established the principle that activity would be recommenced based on a daily tally of cases. Utter madness. 

So yesterday evening back he comes, having reached — or been helped to reach — the obvious conclusion that his traffic lights would have to be driven by a calculation factoring in a fortnightly account of active cases, the number of tests and the positive test rate. 

In other words the very methodology he should have announced two weeks ago, except back then he was really quite specific about the numerical checkpoints, yet on this occasion he seems to be leaving us to try and figure it out on our own. 

Last time he also left himself with a proper backstop, such that should we experience another major spike, red would actually mean red. 

Red has instead been rejigged to mean pinky orange, such that no matter how many people start to croak, the bleeding Esmeraldas and Orellanas will still be carving each other up on the carreteras.

At this rate we'll end up like Texas en un dos por tres.