I don't usually write about covid-19 because it's not related to Brexit, the primary reason for this blog. However, I think the two things are shortly to become even more disastrously intertwined than they have been up to now. The new variant is becoming the dominant form of the virus across the country with rapidly rising infection rates. The increased transmissibility is worrying and it seems that even with harsh lockdown measures it will not be possible to suppress the spread to the point where infection rates begin to fall.
The upshot is that we will see the curve going ever upward - until we are all vaccinated. This Twitter thread from Deepti Gurdasani, Senior Lecturer in epidemiology at Queen Mary University London explains it.
I wrote yesterday about the spread of the UK B117 variant based on data up to the 13th Dec warning that it could become dominant across much of the UK & across most age groups. Recent data released up to end of Dec now suggests that this has already happened. Short thread. https://t.co/BqhfEVlgMx
— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) January 1, 2021
The talk of changing the vaccination regime to extend the period between jabs from 3 weeks to 12 weeks, and even using different vaccines, not supported by any clinical trial data, is a sign that the authorities are extremely concerned. It's the sort of desperate action you would take when the pandemic is totally out of control. The New York Times calls is Britain's mix and match policy.
I think there is a growing realisation that the second wave is going to be significantly worse than the first, simply because there are no tools left, apart from vaccination, that will halt the increased infection, hospitalisation and death rates over the next few weeks.
Gurdasani, thinks we may be looking at 20-25,000 deaths in January alone.
This is probably behind the recent U-turn from education secretary Gavin Williamson (Lord help us) to close all primary schools in London, reversing his decision to reopen some from next Monday. It looks like panic when such a decision is changed inside two days, and it probably is.
Those who will die over the next month or so are already infected, whether they know it or not. Their fate is already decided.
Vaccination, even with a single dose and not the second dose to give higher levels of immunity, is the only possible solution but it won't come soon enough to save thousands more from dying.
The peak will arrive in the next couple of weeks, coinciding with the impact of Brexit finally being felt in the Channel ports as stocks of fresh food and other supplies, built up before Christmas, run out and need to be replenished.
If we thought 2020 was bad, this year is going to be even worse, at least in the first half with the terrible effects of coronavirus exploding everywhere while the country struggles to manage Brexit, with everything that means for food supplies and other supply chains.
It is looking very bleak. What it will expose is the reckless folly of not extending the transition period and Johnson's own chaotic handling of the pandemic.
Yesterday my old vote-leaving friend called us up to wish us a happy new year. I've known him for about 55 years and I'm very fond of him. He's 82 years old and we don't usually talk about Brexit. He knows I don't agree with it.
We used to discuss it and I know he voted leave because "we managed alright" before we joined the EU and we couldn't report 'the man with the hook', Abu Hamza. I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to explain this was because of the ECHR - which we will remain a part of - and not the ECJ and hence will have no impact on our ability to deport people.
Anyway, he asked me how I felt, having left the EU and I said I was disappointed and it would be a very costly mistake, trying to keep it low key. He then said something which many people like him, leave voters I'm talking about, probably think:
"I don't think it will affect me," he said. I bit my tongue but I wanted to ask him if that was the case why he voted for it in 2016!
I think the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 made it appear that the cost of leaving would be negligible and the gains would be massive. Brexit was a bargain, a gift horse who's mouth shouldn't be looked in.
As the process got underway it became clear Brexit wouldn't be quite like that, the costs would be higher and the gains less. Now, as the WA and the TCA now make clear, the cost of leaving is absolutely massive, plus a permanent drag on the economy, while the 'gains' are mostly in things which have no intrinsic value like sovereignty.
If you want to read a neat demolition of the sovereignty chimera, The Irish Times HERE has a very good editorial. If only the British press were more like the Irish.
