Most of those likely to die are vaccinated, so it doesn’t matter if everyone else catches Covid, right? Mmm not quite, for three reasons.
- There’s many who can’t vaccinate. With few infected they’re probably safe, but when there’s lots of it about they’re at big risk. Some of them are refusers and we mightn’t feel much sympathy for the stupid, but it’s not a capital offence. But many aren’t because they can’t.
- We don’t know much about Long Covid, except that it’s doing a lot more damage than we anticipated. The proportion who get it isn’t age-related. What we do know is we know too little, it doesn’t look good, and leaving a proportion of the workforce with a range of permanent chronic illnesses mightn’t be a good idea.
- Diseases mutate. Letting it proliferate means a bigger infected pool to mutate in, potentially (as we’ve been watching daily over the last 18 months) into something more dangerous: like where the young aren’t safe or the vaccines don’t work.
Data-Not-Dates Johnson avoided lockdowns more than the plague at every opportunity last year. Following the Science has been more honoured in the breach. There’s a lot of paying lip-service, but the Tory Cabal aren’t big fans of keeping the masses away from spending money. Saint Rishi even spent public money subsidising people to go out and spread the disease before we had a vaccine. That STEM subjects aren’t their thing might be why they were surprised at the second wave of infections.
(Is it a good idea to have a chancellor of the exchequer who doesn’t understand compound interest?)*
A year ago, as soon as lockdown had proved its worth in limiting infection and the inevitable death, the same Tory Cabal set a date and met it. I’m sure the Fourth of July had nothing to do with sidling up to Trump in the hope of better noises about a trade deal. But they made unlocking into a frenzied target and celebration. The Conservative media loved it; that’s one thing important to Honest Boris. Meeting that date killed thousands, maybe tens of.
They’re being a lot quieter this time, but it looks a lot like they’re floundering for every excuse to make the 21st of June a done deal. That’s the date provisionally set by the Data-Not-Dates UK Government to remove the last Covid restrictions.
They’ve removed most. Covid’s R here is now about 1.2. That means the infection is spreading rapidly. But it doesn’t matter, the vulnerable are vaccinated… or have we mentioned that?
*Chancellor, while you’re looking up compound interest, the compounding frequency for SARS-CoV-2 infection could be 80 to 90.