There is a stark reality that has to be faced in this country. It is that the third wave of coronavirus is coming.
I share this tweet:
Exactly 2 weeks ago, we briefly considered closing the Covid unit in our hospital. Today we have TWO active teams, nearing 20 patients, many whom are young & previously healthy. The 3rd wave may be the most sobering of them all. Really hope it's the last. pic.twitter.com/rAi9nAtqYx
— Abdu Sharkawy (@SharkawyMD) March 22, 2021
Now, in fairness, I think that's US data, and we may be a little behind that. But I mentioned some weeks ago now that I had been reliably informed that the NHS was preparing for this next wave, which many within it think will reach its peak during the summer holiday season. It is the inevitable result of three things.
The first is new variants. The idea that this wave is the same as the last is wrong: it is the result of a different form of this disease.
The second is misplaced faith in a vaccine programme being managed inappropriately in delivering only half the dose most people require and with insufficient protection delivered as a result to prevent the spread of new variants.
And third it is the result of reopening schools and other premises far to early when no preventative measures have been taken within those locations to stop transmission. This is largely because, I am told, there remains a stubborn refusal in government to accept that this disease is aerosol transmitted. The prevailing belief in government is instead that it is droplet transmitted. Schools may be safe for the latter, but hopelessly ill-equipped for the former, which is what we have.
So, a third wave is going to happen. The likelihood is not ‘if' now, but ‘when', with sooner rather than later being the case because it is entirely possible that R is already back over 1.
I am, of course, aware that there is also a belief that this wave will not have the impact of previous ones. It is believed that there will be fewer hospitalisation and deaths. The evidence that this is true is clearly not there: if it was then the tweet I have noted would not have been posted. People are still going to get sick. They are going to end up in hospital. At least 30,000 deaths were assumed acceptable by the Johnson ‘road-map'. The only question now is how long it will take for them to happen.
This is all pretty depressing, of course. But it is also inevitable. If the government wants to put the economy first, child minding to ensure parents can get back to work second, and the safety of people a distant third then this is what happens. If at the same time it is indifferent to the workload and stress on the NHS, as its actions on this crisis and on nurses' pay shows to be the case, then this is also what happens.
Every single action this government takes is for one reason only, and that is to reduce the rate of money creation that it has to undertake within the UK economy. Note I do not say borrowing, because there has been almost none of that in the least year. The precise figures can be argued over and largely depends on timing, but it is likely that more than 90% of all Covid costs and the resulting deficits have been paid for by money creation. And such is the irrational fear of this process, which those in the Treasury claim not to understand, that the government is willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives rather than use the capacity that the state has to get things right using he power it has to create money, when getting things right would be putting in place the measures needed to tackle this virus on a timely basis.
It could sometimes be argued that debate on economics is without consequence, because a great deal of it speculates on what might be with little chance of influencing the outcome. But in this case economics does have a consequence. Government debt paranoia is leading to the early deaths of tens of thousands of people in a way that is wholly unnecessary if only we realised that the option to act appropriately exists, and that the measures to make our society a lot more safe could be taken.
All the money that is needed to beat coronavirus is available.
What is lacking is the will to use it. Setting acceptable death tolls is easier.
The result will, however, be a third wave and even more government support for the economy being required very soon because the right steps to ensure public health were not taken soon enough.
And that's what's really annoying about this. All of this could have been avoided by a government really willing to tackle the issues and not just its symptoms, but they weren't. One day, maybe this time, I hope we hold them to account for that.
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You are missing one fundamental point..people want to try and live again. The motivation for coming out of lockdown is undoubtedly the general public.. there is a natural balancing act between the world living in full lockdown until covid is eradicated and people living there lives..you might argue one “excess” death is one too many but the same would apply with the many deaths and injuries that come from living, mixing and giving people their freedom.. road traffic accidents, swimming and sport in general.. the many ailments that come from
mixing (flu etc) the many deaths caused by allowing people to eat and drink what they want ( the consequences of obesity and alcohol).. the Government could impose its will in favour of the health of the nation by putting in measures which restrict people’s choice and freedom.. significantly restrict motorised road travel or ban it completely, same for processed foods same for alcohol … the list obviously could go on and on and the slant of your argument is we should limit all “preventable” deaths by Government action… but people want to live and socialise and that comes at a price whether it be through covid or something else and that is the balancing act we are seeing now… it certainly isn’t about the creation of money!!!
All of which is true
But politicians also know people will not accept people dying in hospital car parks, unable to get in for treatment
I share your concern that we are by no means out of the woods, for the reasons you give, but the data from Canada (Ontario) simply reflects, I think, increased prevalence of the Variants of Concern – Kent, Brazil, South Africa, etc. They are having the “second wave” that we’ve gone through since January or December or September. There are others – e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-variants-genomically-confirmed-case-numbers/variants-distribution-of-cases-data
The risk of a “third wave” caused by European infections coming to the UK would in the main be the variant we have exported from Kent coming back. Because it is airborne and highly infections, considerably more than the original virus, so the countermeasures that we used so successfully last summer will not be sufficient. We are gambling that letting many people get infected now won’t matter so much.
Not a big deal, but the data is headed with ‘Ontario’ which is a province in Canada.
Oops…..I knew it was over the pond…
The point is the same rise in cases is happening here now, just a little later
My wife had the radio on yesterday lunchtime – Radio 2, there didn’t seem any grasp of the idea that foreign holidays are really not a good idea.
Amongst other things what seems to be really lacking is public education, ok you can take a horse to water etc but I cant imagine that a better health education programme would be anything other than positive- I think events show that the Police could have done with it.
As Andrew notes, it is the B117 (‘Kent’) variant which is currently running rife in Canada.
One difference between the UK and Canada is that we’ve got a much larger proportion of the population who have received at least one dose of a vaccine – all of the vaccines offer good protection against B117, thankfully. Therefore, although infections in the UK will increase in coming weeks as things begin to open up, it shouldn’t lead to such a large surge in serious illness and hospitalisations as is currently being seen in Ontario.
That’s the theory, at least. Whether or not this proves to be the case remains to be seen but the government does at least seem to be taking things cautiously this time around as compared to the more blase attitude last year and we do have large scale testing capability available to keep track of infections more easily. If the numbers begin to turn for the worse, we ought to be able to pause the relaxation of restrictions in good time.
In addition to Canada, there are actually a large number of US states currently encountering a surge in B117 infections, especially as many have now foolishly lifted restrictions almost completely. The US has vaccinated a lot of people so it will be worth watching what occurs in places such as Michigan and Florida in the coming week or two to see exactly might possibly occur here. The caveat is that the US hasn’t targetted those most at risk of severe illness quite as much as we have. The age-groupings of those hospitalised in these US states will probably differ to the numbers here.
We half millions of half vaccinated people
We do not have many vaccinated ones
Yes, but the numbers show that even a single dose should provide good protection against serious illness. The Oxford/AZ immune response actually strengthens as time goes on following the first dose (as does the J&J single dose vaccine – the increasing immunogenicity seems to be a factor of the adenovirus vector vaccines). This isn’t to say the second dose isn’t required, however. How long protection lasts remains to be seen, however, and we don’t yet know how effectively the T-cell and B-cell responses created by prior infection and vaccines protect against serious illness once the initial antibodies have waned.
Will a single dose provide enough protection against large numbers of hospitalisations? That’s the question. Our educated gamble is that it will which will allow us to kick the can down the road and gradually relax restrictions as more and more adults receive their first vaccine doses. The numbers look quite good so far, albeit under lockdown restrictions. We’ll have to see how a relaxation of these restrictions affects the numbers and hope that the government have the sense to roll things back if required. I tend to think that they will – after their innumerable blunders during 2020, they’ve lucked out with the vaccine rollout and realise they will probably get away slowing the relaxation of restrictions or even rolling them back for a period if required. The ERG/CRG nutters can probably be safely ignored now that Brexit is ‘done’ and they’ve given themselves leeway in the timetable.
One occurrence which might put a big spanner in the works is another more dangerous variant springing up which has a degree of immune escape such as the South African B1351, but B117 still seems to be the dominant one in the UK for now.
I admire your confidence
AZ can’t even get their own results right
But half vaccination keeps people from dying
How do you know if they help create new variants, which is the fear?
You are talking about yesterday’s vaccines, and they have gone
There is certainly no room for complacency by taking in the government’s false optimism that the vaccination programme will “do the trick” and bring us back to “normal” by July. If a country like Germany that has until recently been able to control the virus very effectively is now facing a large increase and third wave of the Kent variant, then the UK is in deep trouble, especially when the R number is above 1. With the coronavirus spreading like wildfire in the US, Brazil and other countries, mutations will gather pace and the development of vaccinations to deal with these will put the global vaccination programme back and it will take years to get under control.
From what my Covid recovering lorry driver brother tells me, our borders have leaked and continued to leak like sieves throughout 2020 and this year at places like Dover, Holyhead, Dublin, Fishguard and Heathrow to name but a few he has gone to seeing people not wearing masks, gloves and flicking through BREXIT induced paperwork by licking their fingers – and they’re operating 24/7.
These places as far as am I concerned sound like open sewers for Covid transmission to me. There’s no other way to describe it and that is why we need a public enquiry. It’s only a matter of time before it all kicks off again.
Exactly. The UK government is planning to run an enormous experiment with three groups of people – those under 50 who are not vaccinated at all, those from 50 to 80 who’ve mostly had just one jab so might have some partial level of immunity, and about 2.2 million people who have had two shots and so are in as good a position as we can hope to achieve, but that is only about two third of the 3.2 million people in the country aged over 80.
They are gambling that each group will be sufficiently protected – the first by being young enough, and the second and third by having a measure of protection from the vaccinations – that it won’t matter if infections run rampant. That might be ok if the effects for all but a small minority are like the common cold, but the risk!
By comparison, Ontario has a population of about 15 million, but (like Europe) they are miles behind the UK on delivery of vaccines, and (also like Europe) they’re suffering the second wave that we we are just getting though. In Ontario, they’ve delivered 1.5 million shots (about 30,000 per day) but only 300,000 people have had two.
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/covid-19-vaccines-ontario (They seem to have the same website format as gov.uk.)
I don’t know what the situation is in Ely, but in this rather similar small town schools certainly are taking preventative measures to stop transmission. The school where I am a governor has children sitting as well spaced as they can, and wearing coats all day because the windows are open to minimise aerosol transmission.
The relationship between the two modes of airborn transmission isn’t quite as straightforward as your summary. At close distances droplet transmission is far more of a risk, with infective doses being achievable in minutes. However droplet transmission can be readily countered by increasing distances and wearing masks. At distances greater than about 2 metres aerosol transmission becomes by far the bigger risk, though it takes hours of exposure in an unventilated room to achieve infective doses. The government’s “belief” in droplet transmission presumably reflects advice from their scientists that the majority of UK cases will have arisen by that route – but that still means hundreds of thousands may have been infected through aerosols, and I don’t think the government believes that is not the case. In fact the repeated advice (and formal guidelines) about meeting outside being much safer than indoors surely reflects the risk from aerosols.
However remember that – unlike the Canadian situation referenced in your quoted tweet – the UK has actually experienced a third wave of Covid, one which was entirely due to Johnson and co deciding to relax restrictions just as control of the second wave was achieved at the end of November. There are a lot of infections and deaths which resulted from that government decision. And as you analyse it was due to prioritising the economy ahead of people and the health service.
They show no shame or contrition.
I am not convinced by your arguments on transmission
I am not an expert, but those who are (and yes, I am independent SAGE biased) suggest droplet transmission is a convenient fiction and aerosol is what matters in all cases
But let’s see what happens
Richard, you are writing this from a position of pure privilege. You have your house, children and the ability to pay your bills.
What about the unfortunate people who want to get a job, buy a house, start a family and have a life rather than being locked in doors for all eternity?
You are just from that generation who does not care about youth in anyway shape or form
That is absolutely ridiculous
I have two late teenage sons
I enjoy teaching young people
One of the main intentions of the Green New Deal is to tackle inter-generational unfairness and even injustice
And what I am actually saying is that the lock down the government is going to deliver again could be avoided
As a spectacular misreading yours is pretty impressive