The lifting of all legal restrictions on COVID-19 yesterday, so-called freedom day, is perhaps Johnson’s biggest and most reckless gamble so far. On Newsnight last night, a scientist (I’m sorry I didn’t catch his name) said all pandemics end when herd immunity is achieved either by vaccination or by the population getting the virus naturally. This is obviously true from a scientific sense. The problem is how to get to that point without a lot of unnecessary deaths.
What Johnson is doing is entirely consistent with his own beliefs that COVID is not really a serious problem. At the weekend, The Sunday Times, carried an extract from a book (The Virus v The People: The Inside Story, to be published by Profile Books on July 22 at £14.99.) by Sir Jeremy Farrar, a director of The Wellcome Trust, where he quotes Dominic Cummings from July last year as he tried to convince the prime minister to listen to scientists;
“In July I said to [Johnson], ‘Look, much of the media is insane, you’ve got all of these people running around saying there can’t be a second wave, lockdowns don’t work, and all this bullshit. No 10’s got to be far more aggressive with these people and expose their arguments, and explain that some of the nonsense being peddled should not be treated as equivalent to serious scientists. They were being picked up by editors and by pundits like ‘Bonkers’ Hitchens [Peter Hitchens, the Mail on Sunday columnist].”
According to Cummings, Johnson rejected the idea of being more aggressive with the media, saying “The trouble is, Dom, I’m with Bonkers. My heart is with Bonkers, I don’t believe in any of this, it’s all bullshit. I wish I’d been the mayor in Jaws and kept the beaches open.’
All of the restrictions have been put in place so far despite Johnson not because of him. He has never believed in any of it, so lifting them now is entirely natural to him. Can anyone imagine John Major or Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair saying such a thing or even thinking it? Thatcher was a chemist for heaven's sake.
A lot of other countries are now looking at the UK aghast, as cases rise exponentially and we throw off the restrictions as if the figures were all going in the opposite direction. The move has been described as a ‘dangerous and unethical experiment’ which it is. Nobody knows what the next few weeks will bring, but many fear the figures will continue to rise exponentially.
Remember, the numbers are going up while a growing majority of the adult population has been vaccinated and the restrictions were still in place. How much each was contributing to limiting the rate of increase is unknown and perhaps unknowable - until now. We are about to find out, by abandoning the rules that have been in place for months. It seems madness to me.
When you are dealing with a pandemic and perhaps thousands of people’s lives, you owe it to the country to proceed with caution. But Johnson is throwing caution to the wind.
The deaths may not be quite as high as in earlier waves but hospitalisations are rising rapidly and deaths are also going up. Nobody expects the lifting of restrictions to reduce the numbers.
The NHS are coming under pressure because of staff shortages, staff isolating and a growing waiting list for elective surgery. Many COVID patients will go on to get long COVID, debilitating effects of the virus which might affect them for years to come, adding to the burden on the NHS.
The Health Service Journal are claiming this morning that CEOs of some Trusts (and presumably all of them) have been told not to speak out. Why do that if the action is driven by scientific advice?
"Three trust chief executives have told HSJ that NHS England has refused to let them discuss the lifting of covid restrictions on 19 July in the national media.
"All three had planned to warn the move risks putting potentially unsustainable pressure on the NHS by increasing the number of covid positive patients. The service is already struggling with record emergency care demand, high staff absence due to clinicians who have come into close contact with a covid positive person having to isolate, and the effort to restore elective activity."
Cummings’ latest revelations in his interview with Laura Kuenssberg, are bound to create more difficulties for Johnson:
Agree with him or not, Dominic Cummings's words matter - BBC News… https://t.co/wkSZAVGyaP
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 19, 2021
The full interview is being broadcast tonight so no doubt Downing Street will be watching nervously.
Johnson apparently said it was only those over eighty who were dying and the country couldn’t sacrifice its economy for them. This has been seen by the BBC in Whatsapp message so hard to deny. But he was not just wrong in fact, because plenty of younger people were also dying, it was also even more shocking given most of that age group are Tory voters who supported his Brexit!
He just doesn’t care about his supporters or friends, never mind his enemies, they are all the same to him.
I leave you with another extract from Farrar's book which seems to me to be the right way to proceed:
"On balance, I support the very gradual and cautious easing. However, it is premature to talk of 'freedom day': we must appreciate that the pandemic is far from over.
"Thanks to extraordinary scientific advances in vaccines, the UK’s remarkable vaccine programme and improved treatments, the link between infection and severe illness has, here, been weakened. It is not yet, however, broken. The virus continues to circulate in this country at high levels, as it does globally. It is essential that we are cautious as restrictions are lifted, and that we act responsibly and considerately; as individuals and as a nation.
"Wearing face coverings on public transport, in shops and crowded indoor spaces, continuing to work from home if possible, and using and respecting the test and isolation system are all still important for protecting ourselves and others. There are many who remain vulnerable, including people with weakened immune systems due to other illness or treatments."
