In a move that appears to be more to do with Drakeford's narcissism than saving lives, the Welsh Labour Leader announced at lunchtime today that all bars, restaurants and non-essential shops will close from 6pm on Friday with everyone in Wales ordered to 'stay at home' unless they are critical workers or are unable to work from home.
The Labour leader claimed that failure to act now would mean 'more people will die' and said households will be banned from mixing indoors and outdoors while exercise outside will be allowed but it must 'begin and end at home'. The decision to impose a 'short and deep' lockdown until November 9 has sparked a furious political backlash after statistics showed Wales has an even lower Coronavirus infection rate than England, prompting some to suggest that this is more to do with political posturing than actually saving lives.
Data showed England had a coronavirus infection rate of 166 per 100,000 people in the week of October 14 while Wales had a rate of 163 per 100,000 but even this is irrelevant as we previously proved. Deaths, the only statistic worth looking at, remained well under 3 figures with just 80 deaths recorded for the entire United Kingdom in the last 24 hours.
The 'firebreak' step was criticised by Welsh Tories, who said it was dooming Wales to an endless cycle of two-week lockdowns while Conservative MPs in Westminster said 'closing down the whole of Wales is disproportionate to the level of risk in some parts of the country'.
They also lashed out at Mr Drakeford, accusing him of 'small man syndrome', with one MP telling MailOnline: "You have got somebody who is the head of what is essentially smaller than the West Midlands but where they have got a mayor, Wales has a first minister. He is trying to show he is an equal to Boris Johnson. He wants to be regarded as his equal but he is not."
Neil Hamilton (UKIP Wales) speaking to Ian Collins at TalkRADIO today suggested Britain will remain as "a kind of open prison or series of gulags around the country" if the government commits to a permanent lockdown. The interim leader of UKIP said the government "are not being guided by the science" and instead were following mathematical models which Mr Hamilton said were "guesswork...it's garbage in, garbage out."
It is highly unlikely that a two or three week lockdown of the type Drakeford is imposing will have any positive outcome, either to Coronavirus cases, which testing will continue to find once the lockdown is eased, or to the Welsh economy which is likely to be crippled to such an extent that it will not recover for a generation. Many commentators are also warning that this signals the start of an endless cycle of 'lockdown and release', as all UK governments chase shadows due to the myopic view that there must be no coronavirus cases anywhere before we can go outside again.