Something happened over the weekend. No, I am not talking about Matt Hancock's resignation. I am talking about the release of interviewer anger with the government.
Andrew Marr was angry with Brandon Lewis yesterday, and rightly so.
Trevor Phillips revealed personal anguish and deep anger on ITV when also interviewing Brandon Lewis.
This morning Nick Robinson has laid into another minister on Radio 4, and that is not something that can be said too often.
But the corollary of this anger is that people are now indifferent to the instruction to comply with Covid regulations. And the new Health Secretary will, no doubt, release all remaining restrictions on 19 July.
This matters, because we have a rampant Covid variant in the UK. Look at the data:
And yes, I am aware that patients admitted are not rising to reflect the cases. That's because we know many of those now infected are young people. The consequence is that cases are not as severe in the first instance as they were.
But we know there are massive risks for young people from long Covid.
And young people do also die from this.
And all this is on top of an NHS already in crisis because of the backlog of cases it is facing, which are at an all time record high.
There should be anger with this government. I just hope it is not so misdirected that we suffer an even more rampant wave of Covid than we might have done, but I fear we might. Anger needs a focus, and the government should be it. But it must not give rise to a recklessness that might be very costly indeed.
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I think Chris Mason encapsulated the moral vacuum at the heart of this government by asking on Friday “what do you have to do to get sacked from this government?” Answer came there none. This government will attempt to brazen out any behaviour, however execrable. It had lost any authority it may have had, although I think many people had given up on the government after Barnard Castle.
Also on the radio this morning was the suggestion that social distancing measures should be abandoned at schools this autumn. If the coronavirus is still prevalent, that is tantamount to saying all children should be allowed to catch it. How many adverse health outcomes would that be condoning? It is one thing to abandon the aged to their fate in care home, but quite another to threaten the health of children.
The aim is to get children to have Covid
That is what a herd immunity policy requires
That is what they are aiming for – and sod the consequences for children with long Covid, which I know that they get
I came across this concise explanation of the Economics of Herd Immunity in a reply to one of Richard’s Twitter posts and thought it worth sharing:
“There must be a limit to the ‘Life Deficit’ surely? I mean the Govt can’t keep increasing the death supply without runaway death inflation. We’re simply cutting off the supply of future grandchildren. There’s no such thing as the magic herd immunity tree.”
The Government are panicking over the surge & the deadline in three weeks. (Hancock jumped.) Received a letter claiming they’d lost my second jab appointment (booked two months ago) and I should visit a drop-in centre asap. The super-spreader drop-in events with the long queues & no social distancing, that I can only reach via covid-intensive public transport. I’ll wait for my appointment at the pharmacy-run site within walking distance that’s only open once every blue moon when they can get the vaccine.
There’s a chasm between being offered the vaccine (receiving the letter saying you’re now entitled) and actually getting the jab. Took months of waiting for the local appointment, while the booking website only offered appointments one or two cities away. Can’t change the appointment to later in the day – have to cancel & go back to square one. And 119 drops you into an indefinite queue, after passing a game of random choices between one & two, to maybe talk to someone who’s only reading off the same website.
I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience, Mike. The experience of my friends and family is that the vaccination system has been working reasonably well. Both sets of grandparents and other aged relatives double vaccinated weeks ago, and my middle aged generation (friends, siblings) got our jabs within a few days of booking when it opened to our age cohort. For my second jab, I rebooked when they changed the criteria and actually got it at a local site the day after I rearranged it. My 18+ children are booked next week.
But if R~6, we are still nowhere near herd immunity.
My own experience is good and my sons are getting it
But I is the world still believed in social distancing
I do
No, the booking system is not fit. It should allow appointments at a local vaccination centre of choice, so that people without cars & who are long-term isolating can continue to avoid public transport. It needs to allow booking two or three months in advance in case of vaccine shortage or no available slots at the centre. (Whole cities have run out of vaccine.) For managing existing appointments, the booking system needs to show availability of slots without first cancelling existing appointments.
Instead, the system only looks a few days in advance and then directs people to unattainable centres one or two cities away. People try for a few days in a row and then give up.
Agreed.
Fair play to Nick Robinson on Radio 4 this morning. He’s a former Tory activist but you could hear the frustration and despair in his voice at the failings of the government.
Robert Buckland floundered and blustered and tried to deflect and change the subject but like all the others, wouldn’t come clean and admit Johnson should have sacked Hancock.
The point is, if Hancock had stood his ground and refused to resign, would he still be in office? Everyone knows the answer to that one.
Forgive me for not standing up and saluting coordinated fake ‘anger’ by the controlled MSM.
The narratives they daily collude in delivering from on high through their outlets that reach all people who are plugged into whichever channel on the political spectrum are designed to do just that.
So it’s no longer Bozo’s decision there’s going to be a raft of scapegoats that will bear the responsibilities- handy there are a lot of non-aryan ones to push the buttons of the Volk – who just are so thick that they still haven’t realised their Sovereignty- does not put a glass dome over the Air on their ‘island’ that would stop oxygen moving!
Such theatrics by the MSM obviously coordinated. By the touchstone ‘priests’ should be viewed with scepticism – WTF are they trying to sell/divert from now?
If children catch it, even if they don’t become severely ill or even mildly ill and/or require hospitalisation, even if they don’t develop long-covid, doesn’t that provide more opportunity for the virus to circulate and more opportunity to mutate into more infectious strains and strains more resistant to the vaccine? Unless I’ve missed something.
Also, isn’t a full class required to self-isolate if one person test positive? Or will that requirement disappear when restrictions are lifted.
Craih
What will this mean for the economy when either or both their parents have to stay home to look after them?
The whole things gone to pot.
We were getting on top of stuff and had much of everyone back working at stage 2. (I understand performing arts were struggling – they should have been given more support, not used as a chip by the anti-lockdown brigade)
Stage 3, in combination with delta, is creating a horror show. I’m just waiting for the next total lockdown to begin on… erm, the 20th July?
And yet the discussion has been around whether to open up fully sooner, rather than delaying and ratcheting back.
What happened to data, not dates!
I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Sorry for the ranting, and thank you, Richard, for providing an outlet for frustration
This new delta variant is terrifying!
Anecdotally – I am now a definite positive case after a brief ( 2m) and fully masked contact in a large room.
Another friend of mine, in a different city, has also become infected after a similar contact event.
The transmissability is almost incomprehensible to me.
The only silver lining to this is that I suspect that I had covid in March last year, and I’ve had one Pfizer jab ~ 4 weeks ago, and my symptoms feel like a medium head cold (plus the hay fever which I think may have been masking onset symptoms…)
My friend is less lucky, having never had the virus before, and only receiving his first jab on Friday just gone.
He is apparently in a pretty bad state (we’re both fit and in our early 30s).
If we open up on the 19th July, I will have no words to express my anger.
The virus will just rip through the population, and that will be it.
I can’t even begin to consider how bad it will get, other than, extremely bad. A small % of the entire population is a chuffin’ large number!
And then we’ll have yet another 3 month lockdown…
Is it worth it?
that should be:
… brief ( 2m separation) …
Ffs. A victim of markup script I believe
Third time lucky:
Contact for less than 15 mins and with separation much greater than 2 meters. Plus masks all around plus very large room volume
This is the price of their libertarian belief in herd immunity
This is not a price we should pay. Especially when there is an option.
How long until it is too much and heads begin to roll (I hope just metaphorically)?
How much more until people realise the severity of the situation?
If I had any agency at all, I’d be taking the whole lot to court for treason.
Alas, the MSM is captured and the Labour Party have no teeth, so that’s no repercussions for anyone involved.
A little update
I no longer think I caught Covid at work – but rather, after posting my first (negative) pcr test for the daily contact testing study, I popped into a greggs to grab a pasty (we all have our vices…)
The man in front of me had no mask on, and two primary school age children with him. Also, the man behind me had no mask on. I’m pretty certain this is where I caught Covid – it fits the timeline of my symptoms and negative/positive tests much better
I reckon I was in queue for less than 5 minutes, but obviously it was long enough.
Also – the delicious irony of catching Covid because of posting a Covid test required because of isolating for a possible Covid contact does not escape me.
I hope you are OK….
With this variant, 5 minutes is ample time
And nothing wrong with Greggs, IMO
Just to note, Richard, the numbers reported yesterday didn’t include all of those for England due to a technical issue. Not sure of the number, but ultimately, yesterday’s numbers were worse than they appeared and today’s (whatever they may be) will be ‘better’:
“PHE official note — 27 June 2021: Delayed reporting of cases data in England.
Because of a technical issue, there was a delay to the processing of a subset of cases data in England yesterday. This means that the reported number of cases would be lower than expected. Outstanding cases will be reported in the next update.)”
Could be just a few hundred different, could be thousands.
I’ve a holiday booked and due to travel on 23rd July up to Northumberland. Very much in the balance as to whether or not it will be possible to go as it stands and that’s without even considering whether my wife (partially-vaccinated secondary school teacher) and two young children manage to avoid infection in the interim…
My concern here is constitutional. Supposedly we have an old and robust constitution. We don’t; we have an old and decaying, rotting constitution. Nobody can quite bring the PM and Government to account over Hancock, because everthing depends on the PM to launch any examination worth the name; more typically, even then it will prove a whitewash, written by PM appointees, finding nobody guilty of anything. I note that the present Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle was reduced almost to apoplexy through Johnson’s constant, casual disregard for the protocols of Parliament. Do not think this is mere jolly absntminedness; or anything other than a Neoliberal-Brexit ‘softening-up’ exercise to sideline Parliament from the real issues.
Personally, my guaranteed way out of the reeking stench emanating from the corpse to which Parliament has been reduced by Neoliberal Conservatism, is Scottish independence; but there is, perhaps a short-term, Parliamentary solution avaliable for those who remain behind in Britain (heaven help you), that may help. Speaker Bercow flexed the muscles of Parliament, dabbling at the margins of his authority (although noting some decisions were “above his paygrade”). Nothing, however is above Parliament’s paygrade in our constitution. It is time for Speaker Hoyle to push the boundaries further than Bercow, and insist that Parliament is able properly to scrutinise Government. The Speaker, not Prime Ministers have been the protectors of Parliament. In the past some paid for that independence of Parliament with their lives seven were beheaded between 1394 and 1535. It was Speaker Lenthall who broke the mould, and perhaps established the precedent Speaker Hoyle should follow, in 1642. The Speaker quite obviously requires more scope to protect the sovereignty of Parliament from the tyranny of Government (sovereignty is the very power which Government relies on to tyranise everyone else, it is currently using to take the Scottish Government to the Supreme Court in pursuit of precisely that power today – a power Parliament does not currently possess to resist an Elective Dictatorship). Everybody knows that PMQs has been reduced to farce. Every week we discover that according to the PM it is the Opposition that is responsible for every Government failure for the last ten years and more: you work it out, but until then, Parlaiment is being turned into a clown-show and a farce.
The Speaker should have the power to enforce the proper scrutiny of government; he cannot control any resulting vote, but he should have the right to ensure the facts are properly presented and debated in Parliament, in public. It is time for the Speaker to rise above anger and to take action now against the new tyranny, in the spirit of Speaker Lenthall.
I agree
Thank you John – very well put. Parliament’s reputation, already shaky, has been totally undermined by this government. It has relied in the past on Members of both Houses respecting the rules, both written and unwritten. There have been respected ‘Parliamentarians’ from all sides who were sticklers for those rules, and who would challenge the government of the time.
We have a government that has no respect whatsoever for Parliament and is fully exploiting all those weaknesses. The Speaker and the Clerks who would normally be guiding affairs are powerless to challenge the undermining that is going on. The smaller nations of the U.K. would be entirely rational to want to escape from this.
Agreed
The problem with Hoyle is that he was the choice of the Brexit fanatics in Parliament who couldn’t stand Bercow actually putting Parliament before the government. So much for their precious ‘Parliamentary sovereignty’ they were so concerned about apparently. More lies from the Leavers.
Hoyle is spineless. Or has proved so thus far.
I know you’re a fan of the BBC with it not being formally accountable to the people who pay for it, either through the ballot box or markets, but the article from the BBC’s Nick Triggle today has positive data:
“During September and October cases were rising much as they are now. Within eight weeks that had translated to more than 1,000 admissions a day. This time round there are just above 200.
There is even better news with deaths. Latest estimates show fewer than one in 1,000 infections is leading to a death. At the peak of the winter wave it was one in 60.
This has dramatically altered what can be considered a proportionate response to the virus”
With children thankfully barely affected by this thing compared to the other respiratory viruses they share, we’re getting close to the situation where we can reconsider what is a proportionate response. Fix the teething troubles in the vaccination programme. Compulsory hand-washing at airports. Masks on public transport. Possibly that’s it.
At this stage of the increase we do not know that the conclusions you reach are appropriate
And you do not know about long Covid impacts
You can suggest recklessness if you wish
I will reach my conclusions about you if you do
I think we deserve some honesty from the government. Cases are continuing to rise in an uncontrolled exponential manner – over 22,000 reported today – and hospitalisations and deaths are rising, albeit slowly. But are still talking about all restrictions being removed on 19 July. So, does the government accept that more people will die and more people will suffer long COVID as a result? How many? Is that acceptable?
At growth of 50% per week we will have 75,000 cases on 19/7
Growth in the last week was 70%. That is 110,000 cases. And they want to ‘unlock’
Like I said: Hence, the drop-in centres.
Reports on French TV are that 40% of the newly infected in the UK have had both doses of the vaccine.
Has that featured in the UK?
As for the trend; your graphics are several days out of date, the infecton rate was over 241 per 100,000 on 28th June the last date figures were published.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-kingdom?country=GBR~FRA~DEU~USA
On 26th Hancock resigned after saying that the figures were improving just before that.
The r rate hasn’t been updated since 22nd June .
There is something going on …
Stay safe
a while ago on one of your blogs, i wrote that this would be the test, whether the vaccines, this time round, in this 3rd wave, have made the difference, and that will be born out eventually in the hospital admission data. And that was why the 3rd wave is different to the first two.
Well, so far, it’s looking OK (obviously understanding the implications of exponential growth, i don’t say that with any conviction).
you write:
“And yes, I am aware that patients admitted are not rising to reflect the cases. That’s because we know many of those now infected are young people. The consequence is that cases are not as severe in the first instance as they were.”
well, this is exactly the point…isn’t it.
Before you pounce, here me out. If it’s mostly young people being infected, and they are just getting ill and recovering, what on earth is the problem? Are we never meant to get ill, ever again?
Yes covid has killed young people. So does influenza. I don’t know the specific numbers and how they contrast, for young people, definitely worth finding out though, a quick google shows that the CDC in america has figures on it, and influenza does also kill in any age group, some tiny %, and obviously it’s rare.
about 3 years ago now i had some random illness. Flu-like, high temperature for a few days. Persistent cough for a few weeks. Runny nose etc…….. then after all that lot went, i was still left with a lack of taste for what lasted about a month. It took a full month and a half for me to actually become 100% again. What did i get? Who knows. but i was ill. Andrew Marr was annoyed that he got ill and had a horrible flu for a few days. Like as if he’s never been ill before covid? (didn’t he have a stroke a few years ago!)
every year, i used to get ill, usually around January, for about 3-4 days. Sometimes mild, sometimes awful. But getting ill about once a year is a pretty much an accepted part of life, as it is for most people.
If hospital admission rates/mortality rates for young people, 40 and below, are similar for Covid compared to any other kind of illness, then what on earth is the issue?
i looked up long covid, the jury is still out on properly defining what it is, and how it can be diagnosed effectively. The latest study i could find was the one where they had spent months collecting data from long-covid patients reporting their symptoms through an app, and the report was fairly inconclusive.
source: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-publishes-second-themed-review-on-long-covid/27232
I experienced a long term symptom years ago, was it debilitating? No. Is long-covid a serious issue for some young people? Undoubtedly. What is the % at risk? Is it not tiny?
do we not accept some % risk to life every single day? If we wanted to prevent car accidents, we’d just put the speed limit to 10mph everywhere. But we don’t. We accept some risk of serious accident/death in return for mobility.
i mean, where do you draw the line exactly, do you expect 0 covid? I’m not being provacative, i’m asking a genuine question – if you were in charge what would you be doing?
again, if hospital admissions do continue to increase at a faster rate over the next few weeks, then of course i am in full agreement, and we should go into a harder lockdown immediately. I just don’t know what the lag period is, in this case.
for the record – i’m perfectly happy being in ‘lockdown’……i wouldn’t even call what we’re in now a lockdown, judging by the site at wembley stadium today. i’m one of the lucky ones who gets to work from home, i love table service in bars outside and not having to sit or queue in crowds. I think its the reset button that society frankly needed.
So i’m certainly not one of these anti-lockdown covid sceptic nutjobs!
First, almost no one dies of flu. Some die of pneumonia, I agree. Flu is very rare. The suggestion otherwise is false.
Second, long Covid is very real, and debilitating.
Third, it is true young people are unlikely to die of Covid if they get treatment, including intensive care. The reality is that at present the risk is many might be denied that.
I have to say your comment seems very ill informed.
you what?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839350/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf
page 51.
Data in that format is wrong / misleading
This is the real data:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020
This is what it says
Of all death occurrences between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) compared with 13,619 deaths due to pneumonia and 394 deaths due to influenza.
Pneumonia is not the same as flu
Flu causes a tiny number of deaths
Pneumonia deaths are not flu deaths
And many pneumonia deaths are linked to poverty – although not all
and regarding long covid……..simply saying It is…….does not make it so.
I’ve been genuine enough to provide evidence of a comprehensive study on it, as i said.
Given the evidence and the number of people suffering from a variety of symptoms that simply get reported as ‘long covid’, a catch-all term for anything, i’m sorry, saying that anyone with long covid is debilitating is just false, as well.
You simply cannot make binary assertions like this if you want some kind of evidence led genuine conversation on the issue.
I mean it’s your blog, you can do what you want, but if you are totally closed to available evidence then that’s not a conducive way to form opinions.
I think you need to tell The Lancet and British Medical Journal that long covid is not true. There is a large literature on it now.
I have just shown you cannot find appropriate stats
Politely, you’re displaying all the characteristics of a psychopathic charlatan with these claims that are utterly untrue; it’s a type usually associated with neo-fascist leanings
I wouldn’t try responding
I see that the UK is currently running 4th in the league table of world’s highest COVID infection rates. Yes the good news is that death rates are very low. The bad news is that no other country is going to want to open its borders to Plague Island, regardless of vaccination rates.
What are you focusing on 2020 data, which is obviously massively distorted by COVID/
Because the patterns are consistent