The Guardian appropriately reports this morning that:
Covid vaccines should be made available for people to buy privately in Britain, leading scientists have urged, amid concerns over a new wave of the virus which could worsen in autumn and winter.
Unlike flu jabs, which individuals or employers can buy for about £15 from high street pharmacies, Covid jabs are only available on the NHS in the UK.
They add:
This month the UK government announced that the Covid autumn booster programme would cover a smaller pool of the population than earlier vaccination drives. The age limit has been raised from 50 to 65 and above, with some younger vulnerable groups also eligible.
The politics of this are staggering, and I stress that it is politics that matter here.
Only just over three years ago, we closed the economy because of Covid. We know more now. We might (I stress, might) not do that again, but no one can be sure about the pre-vaccine era if we get another pandemic.
What we can be sure about is that Covid is still prevalent. It is still nasty for many of those who get it. Hospitalisations are happening. It is still causing excess deaths. It is, through changes described as long Covid, increasing risks of early death from other diseases and the rate of incapacity. It is a massive issue in public health. Many deeply rational people remain rightly concerned about it, and many public health professionals are concerned about the risk it presents this winter.
In light of that, it would make sense to provide as comprehensive a vaccination programme as possible for Covid. Why on earth would you do anything else? And yet the programme we are going to get is grudging and specifically excludes some vulnerable groups, such as children, where the UK is a decided outlier.
And why too the refusal to make this vaccine available privately? Remember, it is a Tory government that believes in private healthcare that is doing this. So why this particularly strange approach?
There is only one possible explanation. It is that the Tories wish us to forget Covid and their massive mismanagement of it, as well as the corruption, the unnecessary deaths and the waste. So desperate are they that we do forget those things that they are willing to put lives at risk again.
You cannot make callousness on this scale up. It has to be witnessed to be believed.
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Thanks Richard
Is the calculation that theTories will therefore have to spend less money on their triple lock commitment ?
David
Who knows?
I believe their callousness and cruelty go much further than that, they are thinking only of themselves and their advancement. They truly are an Orwellian government.
If the Government thinks that Covid deaths will save it money, it is sadly mistaken, I fear. The treatment costs for Long Covid could massively outstrip pension savings. And for extra dumb-points, those most likely to die are probably Tory voters.
The triple lock “commitment” that they break whenever it suits them?
We now seem to have politicisedm and infiltrated ‘independent’ supposedly professional institutions – including the UKSHA Health Security Agency and the JCVI Joint Committee on Vaccines – which have recommended this reduced coverage of booster vaccines this autumn.
This seems more terrifying than the overtly authoritarian Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Chinese systems – which don’t pretend to have ‘independent’ institutions.
Why do so many of our senior professions seem willing to be compromised in this way?
Excess deaths are running at 30,000 this year to date, and many of those will be related to previous or current covid infections – as well as the collapsing NHS..
This is how the NHS is going to cope this year with all these covid patients.
https://lowdownnhs.info/explainers/what-are-virtual-wards-how-are-they-being-used/
It’s NHS Week this week. I only found out because I get emails from KONP. They say it’s NHS week every week for those who work in it, who are becoming fewer and fewer as the weeks pass.
Covid has come back to my workplace recently in the SMT and was by all accounts very unpleasant.
It’s amazing that this world we live in is OK with normalising horror (Covid, austerity, global warming), but has become useless at dreaming of and realizing something better.
This lack of imagination and hope is the real end of history of problem we as species face.
Even now, I’m incredulous at this.
The Guardian clearly thinks info on Covid protection provided by NHS England applies everywhere in the UK. Things are different in Scotland where Covid protection /boosters are available FOC to ages 65 and over. 64s and under can still apply until 25th August for a free vaccination if they’ve already had a first dose.
https://www.nhsinform.scot/covid-19-vaccine/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccines-youre-eligible-for
The Grauniad also got it wrong about Covid test kit (lateral flow) availability. I bought 2 packs in Boots yesterday as my wife is currently in isolation with Covid so, if Boots are doing it, it’s a safe bet the other pharmacies up here are doing it too. NHS Scotland seems to be aware of an oncoming threat to public health, as indeed are noted virologists across the UK.
Thanks Ken
For me the explanation for this stupidity is that the over 65’s vote Conservative (I think >60% of votes at the last election if I remember rightly), so just another desperate attempt to keep them onside.
How do they reckon this decision will do that? These people don’t live in a vacuum. Although perhaps they should, a social one.
David Byrne says.
The issue raised here is very serious. It is another example of government inaction that is killing people.
Why, then, do we choose to be polite and make excuses for this repeated failure.
Those in government that are pursuing policies that are killing people are killers.
This might be behind a paywall at the New York Times, but it appears that Ecuador are holding a referendum on banning drilling for oil. The current polling shows that those wanting to ban the drilling for oil in the lead. Still not a majority as about 40% are undecided.
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?productCode=CLIM&te=1&nl=climate-forward&emc=edit_clim_20230818&uri=nyt://newsletter/3aa775fc-4c76-563f-b4ea-76ed8b230491.
I also saw polling which suggested that support for net zero in the UK is currently at over 70%.
All I can think is that the Tories know they have lost and are now trying to find small pockets of support on a range of wedge issues in the hope that they get enough votes to avoid a total disaster at the election.
I agree the sentiment.
I don’t like “There is only one possible explanation.” It would not stand up in court.
General penny-pinching normal incompetance runs just as well.
I entirely agree that Covid vaccination should remain free for all those over 50 and then for everyone. I therefore do not follow your statement that ‘And why too the refusal to make this vaccine available privately?’ That is precisely what the Tory government is doing. Probably at a high price, only affordable to the well-off. This is a callous policy and fits with the privatization agenda and of softening up the public to a divide for between those who can and cannot afford healthcare, ie. pre 1948 NHS. Have I misunderstood what you have said? Please could you explain?
See today’s post