Ludo Thierry

Remember ‘Vote No Borders’ the ‘grassroots’ anti-Indy campaign funded by City of London ‘dark money’ and given huge tranches of beeb airtime in 2014? They even released a single record (it was a ‘Miss’ rather than a ‘Hit’ for those able to recall Juke Box Jury – chart topping it weren’t).

Where are Vote No Borders when you need them? – Apparently Johnson has pulled Ukania (and, by current default, Scotland with it) out of the European Early Warning System for epidemics. Truly, we HAVE to get out of this place – It’s britnatery gorn maaahd. Link and snippet below:

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-sets-uk-apart-coronavirus-nhs-eu/

LONDON — Brexit means Brexit, even when it comes to coronavirus.

The U.K. is bracing for an increase in confirmed cases of those infected but on the day it published its “action plan” to combat an outbreak, it was abundantly clear London does not want to lean on the EU to help coordinate its response.

While still paying into the EU budget and able to access EU infectious disease databases until the end of the transition period, the U.K. is officially out of the club, without representation — and no exception has been made for the growing international health crisis, the first such event to test the post-Brexit relationship.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock is not attending — and has not been invited to — meetings of EU health ministers to coordinate the Continent’s response and there are also doubts over the U.K.’s continued membership of the EU’s Early Warning and Response System (EWRS) for pandemics.

As Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his health secretary laid out the details of the U.K.’s strategy, several health experts voiced concern about the apparent lack of cooperation with the EU. “Not taking the best public health approach for political reasons is foolish,” said Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who co-authored a paper in January warning about the possible loss of access to EU health protection mechanisms, described the lack of cooperation as “incomprehensible.”

“Given that viruses and bacteria pay no attention to international boundaries, it is incomprehensible that you would put up borders to international efforts to control them,” he told POLITICO.