We now know that according to the Prime Minister all Covid restrictions in England (but not, necessarily, the other countries of the UK) will be lifted by 24 February. This is a months earlier than previously anticipated.
It will happen despite around 15,000 people being in hospital with Covid yesterday, with those people occupying more than ten per cent of NHS beds. 430 were in intensive care.
There were also more than 1,500 Covid deaths in the last week. That's maybe 75,000 deaths a year. Fewer than 2,000 people die of flu a year (the rest of the flu statistics are pneumonia and related respiratory diseases, which are not the same thing).
In other words we still have a public health crisis.
We still have very large numbers of people deeply vulnerable to Covid in society.
There is also growing anxiety about long Covid and its impact. It is known it has impact on the rate of heart disease. The impact on the brain is beginning to look like that created by Alzheimer's disease, with unknown long term consequences for those who might suffer in this way. Children are badly affected.
And there are four things to note.
First, the Prime Minister did not consult SAGE, the scientific advisory team to the government on this policy change. One member made clear on Peston last night that this was the case.
Second, the only motivation for the change appears to be to appease right-wing Tory MPs. How many people must die for this cause, I have to ask?
Third, we have heard nothing from Sir Chris Whitty or Sir Patrick Vallance. If they have an ounce of gumption between them they should now be saying what they think - or resigning. If they don't it is very hard to see how they have not failed in their duties. Vallance chairs SAGE.
Fourth, variant BA.1 is rampant, and likely to become predominant on the day restrictions end. It is as transmissible as measles. If you are in a room with someone who has it you will almost certainly get it unless a very good mask is worn. This crisis is not over.
So, where are we on policy?
Has public health been abandoned now?
Are people with infectious disease now simply expected to turn up at work, or school, and knowingly infect others?
And how is education to be managed when it is likely that many children will be off with recurring versions of this disease?
How are the vulnerable to be protected? What does ‘living with Covid' mean for them, and what help will they get?
To these and other such questions there are at present no answers.
All we know is that many must suffer to keep Johnson in office.
This is what extremism looks like.
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Bang on the nail, Richard: this is what extremism looks like, and there’s absolutely no denying why this decision has been made and why it was announced yesterday. Johnson may not have ploughed ahead once before with ‘piling the bodies high’, or whatever he’s (alleged) to have said along those lines, but he obviously has no problem with adopting that approach when his own political survival depends on it.
I also agree with you about Whitty and Valance. There have been times over the past two years when I thought they were going down the same route as Deborah Birx – Trumps Covid Coordinator – who largely kept her mouth shut and went along with Trump’s idiocy on Covid. But then they’ve come right again, But not now. If they don’t resign over this then their reputations are shattered – as indeed was that of Birx (Vallance has another job to go to anyway at the Natural History Museum). Ditto other members of Sage – or indeed the whole SAGE grouping. So, we’ll soon see if any of them have any backbone or whether they too are willing to take Johnson’s shite just as almost every Tory MP does. Sadly, I suspect the latter.
Let’s see….
In the small, old-ish conservative (and erstwhile[??] Conservative) village where I live this announcement has left many slack-jawed.
Overall infection numbers may be falling but anecdotally, they are rising for us. We all know that the youngsters in the big cities are getting “back to normal” (whatever that means) and dropping isolation rules might seem attractive but us cautious, older folk having kept the disease at bay over Christmas, are now seeing more of our friends catch it as we slowly start to socialise more widely…. and it still worries us. Decisions about what to do are made on a “risk-reward” basis but those choices are founded on a strong expectation that people will behave responsibly. Eliminating rules on isolation changes that and my friends don’t like it. Next, there will be an end to free test kits and at that point it will be treated like the common cold…. but it is not.
It is becoming popular to say “dying WITH Covid” not “FROM Covid”…. but a back of the envelope calculation says otherwise. In round numbers, we might expect about 2,500 people a day to die (out of 70 million). With 70,000 a day testing positive about 2.7% of the population are “within 28 days of a positive test” which would suggest that about 70 people a day are dying WITH Covid”…. so the other 100 are dying FROM Covid.
The latest data from the ONS (week ending 29 January) is still reporting over 1,500 people per week (over 200 per day) where COVID is given as a cause of death on the death certificate.
For the same period, the “deaths within 28 days” statistic was running at about 250 per day (1,750 per week). Clearly some people will be dying of other causes within 28 days of a positive test. Equally, there will also be some people who die “of COVID” outside 28 days.
Medical practitioners are required to certify the causes of death, to the best of their knowledge and belief. They don’t include irrelevant medical conditions that are not a direct or an underlying cause of each death. If it is mentioned on the death certificate, that is not “dying with COVID”, it is “dying of COVID”. And it it will be tens of thousands of people this year.
From Travelling Tabby – https://www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/ – it still seems to be heavily weighted to older age groups – this week, 350 people aged over 90 (60 per 100,000 of population – nationally, more than one person in 20 in this group have died of COVID in the last two years), 500 in their 80s, 275 in their 70s, 133 in their 60s, and 56 in their 50s (and 36 aged below 50).
In years to come, epidemiologists are going to have a field day working out the excess deaths, and the loss of life-years for different age groups, and comparing the (lack of) performance in the UK to other countries.
Look, just imagine that a measles outbreak was infecting 100,000 people every day, putting 1,500 per day in hospital, and causing 100 or 200 deaths every day. What would we do?
There are still 300 a week dying of Covid in care homes
This is from the weekly flu and Covid-19 Surveillance Report out today
Weekly National Influenza and COVID-19 Report: week 6 report (up to week 5 data)
25
1,007 new ARI incidents have been reported in week 5 in the UK (Figure 19):
• 601 incidents were from care homes where 503 had at least one linked case that
tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and 1 tested positive for RSV
• 176 incidents were from educational settings where 104 had at least one linked
case that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2
• 37 incidents were from hospitals, where 22 had at least one linked case that
tested positive for SARS-CoV-2
• 13 incidents were from workplace settings where 12 had at least one linked case
that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2
• 1 incident was from a prison and had at least one linked case testing positive for
SARS-CoV-2
• 1 incident was from food outlets or restaurants, and tested positive for SARSCoV-2
• 178 incidents were from other settings where 132 had at least one linked case
that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2
It does look like focussed protection is in order for care homes. How that should be delivered is open to debate, but it cannot help that so many are ignoring this and focussing on ventilating schools. Any HEPA, ventilation resources should not go to schools when the risk is as skewed as this towards care homes. The Deepti / Pagel axis of misdirection should hang their heads in shame.
Why not both?
I have never heard an exclusionary argument
Indeed, I hear argument for going further and fir extending provision to high risk social settings
Your accusation is wholly inappropriate, misplaced and feels deeply misogynistic
For that reason I will not be allowing a reply
More or less encouraging infected people to go around spreading infection. Deliberate killing by government. No half respectable epidemiologist/virologist/modeller has recommended this. There is no government action to make schools, work places, transport and public premises safe. Culling the vulnerable.
There is no other way of saying it is there.
But it also shows just how desperate things are now for Johnson – that’s the other way to look at it.
He’s not out f the woods yet and this may not be enough.
Thin gruel I know but there you go.
I am seeing anger in the older generation in my community directed at their fellows. For supposedly being careless as they have stopped the mask wearing and social distancing as directed by the Government. Half the quizzers came down with a positive from a single evening!
There are people still self isolating because they are vulnerable or restricting their socialising because they care for these vulnerable. They blame the quizzers.
They fail to see that it is the government’s fault directly that we have endured way more Excess Deaths as a rich nation than many others.
That it is the government’s restrictions or lifting of or directives on booster cure all’s that has led to the gatherings again.
We have not increased our icu capacity which still lags other equivalent nations.
We have not built the 40 hospitals Bozo and his minions promised at the last general election
And we have been brainwashed to live with way more than 100 daily deaths – when everyone was sure that if we ever reached that again it would be the end of the Government!
The latest buzz on Bozo from these that bought into getting it done is that he may be a naughty boy for getting caught partying and with his pants down with the Acouri woman – note it is all in the relative distant past, nothing about what was happening last autumn and Xmas, surely they weren’t n monkish lockdown? – ‘he may be naughty but he did a GREAT job on Covid and getting us all the vaccinations so fast!! ‘
I kid you not. They still think that, but blame their fellows because everyone is getting positive in Feb when they were told it was safe and all over especially with the boosters!
The dissonance is spread throughout society and it is hard to see where the opposition is on this as we are diverted daily with anything, from the truth directly in front of our eyes. Why am I not surprised that the Sage sages are not as straight as we were led to believe?