Alok Sharma draws a short straw and makes an April fool of himself | John Crace | Policy

Well it could have been worse. Only.

Chris Grayling was able to spend his birthday in a parallel universe – yes, the failure of Grayling’s birthday really is April Fools Day – to be a government frontman in a daily briefing on coronavirus in Downing Street. Imagine Grayling’s enthusiasm for awarding a ventilation contract to a company that doesn’t seem to ever make a fan.

Still, this is not much worse than the reality when the government made soda during January and February when it was able to award contracts to companies that actually produce fans.

Return to no. 10, one must investigate whose bright idea was the daily press conference on coronavirus. What must have seemed like an indication of strength and leadership when Boris Johnson and Classic Home came up with the plan a week or so ago is now only revealing the government’s lack of preparation and complete stupidity every 24 hours.

Moreover, almost everyone in government knows it is a disaster. That’s why most cabinet ministers turn off their phones every morning for a few hours: because they don’t want to be the mug that hits the television at 5pm in the morning for 45 minutes.

So today is a press conference Alok Sharma, which not everyone in the cabinet knows is the current business secretary. Although he is a huge improvement on both Dominic “Psycho” Raab and Michael Gove, simply because he has no connection to this instability and lack of trust issues. Simply put, Sharma is a man the public can trust completely. The downside is that they have the confidence that they can be guaranteed to know nothing about anything.

After giving the latest alarming death records, Sharma fell asleep on a whole series of general and timid fruits. There was something when even Donald Trump could see that the original “herd immunity” plan was a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine the American Sunflower God is not thinking of you.

Sharma then handed him over to Yvonne Doyle, England’s director of public health, who moved through her four slides at high speed. Mainly because everyone was so deeply depressed.

Believe it or not, that was actually the main point. Top gravity and misinformation. Because from there it was downhill all the way. Often, these press conferences can become atavistic with journalists asking a variety of different questions that can easily be ignored. Either by answering the simplest question or the question they would like to be asked. But now the lobby is hunting like a pack, persistently pressing both Sharma and Doyle on the issue of medical security and testing.

And Sharma and Doyle had nothing. Not even gaps for the fire. Sharma kept trying to remove difficult questions from Doyle, who then made an effort to direct them to the secretary. Medicine is now political, and political medicine and neither side want to take the blame.

To really gain public trust, one in the government must admit that he has basically done nothing for several months because he has completely underestimated the crisis and is more interested in Boris’ sixth or seventh child. But no one is ready for it, so we beat each other, with power boats, constantly in the back.

Why did Michael Gove insist that thousands of fans be on the road next week when the actual number is 30? Both Sharma and Doyle shrugged. Why were the Germans so ahead of us in testing? Were we really so small in England that we thought we couldn’t learn anything from Jerry? How come we tested only 2000 NHS staff of about 1 million line workers? Again, Sharma and Doyle looked a little gloomy. Above their salaries.

“Do you have more than warm words and good intentions?” asked one journalist. Sharma nodded sincerely. His words got a lot warmer – even hot, and his intentions were for the best. You haven’t seen anything B-b-baby yet. You haven’t seen anything yet