Covid-19

How totally stupid are the people of the UK who celebrated the news yesterday from Boris Johnson that effectively Covid-19 will be over in the UK next month?

People won’t need to test any more, that they can be positive and as long as they feel able they can then go where they like. Work, cinema, theatre, gym, pubs … absolutely anywhere and that will be totally legal.

Omicron is just one variant. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to terrible on the vaccinated and the majority of those in intensive care are unvaccinated, more fool them but, just those people are still having a knock on effect for the whole NHS. What if the next variant is the worst of the lot? It turns up in the summer just after we have had everything covid related dismantled here in the UK? We will be unprotected, unprepared.

We are still having issues getting to see our GP. All waiting time expectations have now been dismissed. People waiting on vital treatment are dying because of the extra wait for a bed taken up by someone suffering from Covid-19.

Many ‘routine’ surgeries are cancelled for an indefinite period. These are surgeries, any surgery which is not deemed life saving and that is the majority of what the NHS does now.

As time passes our vaccines become less effective, for many they will just not protect them at all even with the booster and yet, there are no plans to give top ups heading into a period where we just won’t know how safe we are wherever we go.

More people will get sick, need time off work meaning, more of us already waiting months for repairs will wait longer.

The decision about Plan B was meant to be next week. Boris has had an awful week over his ignoring his own laws on covid, he needed to distract the country and it seems to have worked. He has announced with no scientific back up, that Covid-19 will be reduced to endemic status by the end of March at the latest, much sooner if he can arrange it.

The expectation that COVID-19 will become endemic essentially means that the pandemic will not end with the virus disappearing; instead, the optimistic view is that enough people will gain immune protection from vaccination and from natural infection such that there will be less transmission and much less COVID-19-related hospitalization and death, even as the virus continues to circulate.

This all supposes that we all will have that immunity and that also, we know and keep on top of the variants and that our protection, such that it will be, will cover any new variant.

This announcement yesterday has no scientific basis, we are the only country in the world making this decision whilst having one of the highest infection rates. We have over 3.5 million active cases of covid19. Over 700 of those are currently critical. Boris says we are the best in Europe, the only European countries with more daily cases than us are:

Andorra

  • Andorra
  • Gibraltar
  • Montenegro
  • San Marino
  • Slovenia
  • Czechia
  • Faeroe Islands
  • France

Every other country in Europe has fewer daily confirmed cases of covid-19 and most have very similar rates of vaccination and testing as we do. The only other European country with more active cases than us is France. Every other country in Europe is managing better than the UK.

To balance it (by a tiny bit) we are number 7 in Europe for the most critical cases with the following countries having more critical cases than us as of Wednesday this week

  • France 3881
  • Germany 2664
  • Russia 2300
  • Spain 2230
  • Italy 1688
  • Poland 1391
  • UK 703

Is this the picture Johnson is painting of how well we are managing covid?

Not enough evidence yet? Let’s look at Daily Deaths because, if Boris is right, we must have some of the lowest in Europe so, here it with the worst at the top:

  • Russia 698
  • Italy 380
  • Poland 376
  • UK 359

Remember, they are DAILY deaths 2500 a week. If this is the new normal then every year we will lost 130,000+ people to covid and this is us, under control and ready to ditch all our further protection, as things currently stand, that is our new normal whilst other countries are in lock down with better statistics than we have.

I heard on the radio yesterday from people who voted for Boris and said never again after all the lies and parties, how him getting us out of Covid had probably changed their point of view.

God Help us