How nice to see that economic expert* Simon Wren-Lewis agrees with This Site’s appraisal of the effect on the UK of Sajid Javid’s Covid-19 policy.
In brief:
Greater strain on hospitals.
More people suffering Long Covid.
Disruption of education (mitigated by the summer holidays).
He makes an excellent point that the government has thrown away the advantages of vaccination because Boris Johnson wanted to sign a trade deal with India…
… which hasn’t happened yet.
We have a race between vaccination and the Delta variant, and the government by delaying putting India on the red list gave Delta a big head start.
This provides ideal conditions for a new variant to emerge that could seriously diminish the effectiveness of a double dose of vaccine.
So Johnson has put us in danger of being sent back to Square One, while demanding that lifting the restrictions that have saved so many of our lives will be irreversible and we’ll just have to “live with Covid” from then on.
I wonder if tribal Tory voters are still happy with their choice at the 2019 general election.
Do they even know their prime minister deliberately endangered them for the sake of a few quid?
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Boris Johnson: He’s all ‘blood and thunder’ in Parliament but analyse what he says and it turns out to be ‘bull**** and bluster’ instead [not This Writer’s words].
Even the BBC is criticising Boris Johnson. Well, at least it’s sitting on the right side of the fence.
The Corporation fact-checked Johnson’s comments about the delta variant of Covid-19, made during Prime Minister’s Questions on June 16.
Criticised for failing to close the UK’s borders to travellers from India after delta was discovered, Johnson said: “We put India on the red list on April 23 and the Delta variant was not so identified until April 28.”
But the BBC fact-checkers pointed out:
It had been identified through genetic sequencing as being in the UK in the week beginning 8 March.
And it had been designated as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 4 April.
While health bodies are constantly monitoring large numbers of emerging mutations, they are given these designations only if they seem to be making the virus spread faster, making people sicker or escaping the defences put up by vaccines or prior infection.
At a meeting on 21 January, the government’s scientific advisers, Sage, said: “No intervention, other than a complete, pre-emptive closure of borders, or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors upon arrival in designated facilities, irrespective of testing history, can get close to fully preventing the importation of cases or new variants.”
And in its weekly update on 30 March, the WHO pointed out India had the third highest number of new cases in the world, with a 55% increase on the previous week.
So we see that Johnson allowed the delta variant into the UK from India for a month and a half before actually doing anything about it at all.
It is lies like this that undermine trust in the Conservative government – rightly. And this is likely to be what is motivating Tories (and former Tories) to speak up against him.
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Jabber Johnson: Boris Johnson has invested everything in the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccinations – but a quarter of new infections are in people who have had both injections.
The weekend turned out to be a disaster for the Tories, after all their crowing about getting Covid infections and deaths down.
On Bank Holiday Monday the government recorded no Covid-19 deaths for the first time in more than a year – but the euphoria over that was short-lived.
It was a statistical blip caused by the fact that the people who record deaths had been on holiday.
Since then, with the arrival of the Indian delta variant in the UK due to Boris Johnson’s ridiculous insistence on keeping our borders open to anybody with the virus, infection rates have skyrocketed – on Saturday, 70 per cent more people were recorded to have contracted it than the previous Saturday.
The disease is being transmitted most commonly through secondary schools after Johnson said pupils there should take off their masks.
And now we discover that one in 25 people who have been infected with the new strain are supposed to be fully inoculated against it, having had both the required vaccination injections:
Former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, says one in 25 new #COVID19 cases are people who have been vaccinated twice, which is the equivalent of 400 new cases a day.
So now the Tories are having to backtrack on their plan to finish lifting lockdown restrictions on June 21:
Matt Hancock says 21 June is a “not before” date for ending England’s remaining restrictions.
They are going to extend the agony for all of us – and, incidentally, harm the economy that has been their “sacred cow” throughout the crisis, because they keep making the same damned stupid mistakes.
And they’re stupid enough to think that we haven’t noticed.
Are they right, though?
I fear they may be.
After all, they’re only in power because people were stupid enough to believe the Tories’ claims that Jeremy Corbyn would be worse. And now we know he couldn’t possibly have been.
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The only sensible course of action: but it seems thousands more UK citizens may have to catch Covid-19 – and may potentially die – before the tribal Tory electorate accept this truth.
It seems we have a prime minister who is not only ignoring all the evidence that another wave of Covid-19 is coming – he is steering us into it while trying to distract us from it.
How is he being allowed to do this irresponsible – homicidal – possibly genocidal thing without a whisper against it from the mass media that govern the opinions of most of us?
Well, that’s easy. He had a “secret” wedding last weekend and got them all to make a big fuss about that instead.
In fairness, Keir Starmer tried to tell us all that the delta variant of Covid-19 could cause a new wave of infections and deaths, worse than in the winter. Did you even know that?
The latest Mainly Macro blog from Professor Simon Wren-Lewis has set out some of the most damning details in what I think is an effective way. Consider [boldings mine]:
“We are at the beginning of a new COVID wave. Yet rather than stop further relaxation of the lockdown (not doing stage 3), this government carried on regardless. It reduced lock down restrictions because the PM and the rest of the cabinet were prepared to see another wave of cases, hospitalisations and a fair number of deaths in the UK.
“When cases in another country start growing rapidly, you quarantine in hotels people coming from that country. If they have existing variants of concern, you do the same. You do not wait because the PM has a state visit planned hoping things will get better.
“Once a variant of concern enters the country, you direct all resources to isolating that variant and preventing spread. You do not persist with a failed test and trace system because it is politically embarrassing to overhaul it. You make payments to those asked to isolate automatically.
“The new variant is spreading rapidly in schools in areas where it is concentrated, so what did the government do? It told people in secondary schools they didn’t need to continue wearing masks.
“We know the Indian variant spreads a lot more rapidly than anything we already have, and it has become the dominant form of COVID in the UK in mid-May. It is now the dominant form in most regions. We also have evidence that one dose of vaccine offers less protection against this variant than against other forms of COVID, but two doses does offer a similar amount of protection. Around half of the UK adult population has had two doses of vaccine, meaning the other half have one or none at all. That, according to SAGE projections available before the government went to stage 3, could cause a wave of hospitalisation similar to what happened in the New Year.
“The number of deaths should be less than past waves, but we are still talking about many people dying who didn’t need to die. But hospitals are only just beginning to reduce the backlog from other diseases like cancer created by previous COVID waves, and another wave of hospitalisations will reverse that process, leading to yet more deaths from non-COVID causes.
“The Prime Minister cannot know that things will not be so bad in this new wave. He is following dates rather than the data, and yet again not following scientific advice, because he is more interested in giving people the freedom to spread the virus to others.
“A new wave is also highly likely to stop the UK economic recovery in its tracks.
“A wave in cases with most people vaccinated is about the most irresponsible thing you could possibly do. It invites new variants to be created that are far better at bypassing the vaccines we have. The more cases you allow when most of the population is vaccinated the greater the chance that a variant will emerge that vaccines are far less effective against.
“Much of the gains of the vaccination programme could be lost, and we will have to start all over again.
“Cummings’ message was that this Prime Minister is exactly the wrong person to be leading us in this pandemic, and most of the media chose to ignore his warnings.
“Will the broadcast media start holding this government and its Prime Minister responsible for past and possible future deaths? Will voters finally realise that they are being lied to by this government all the time, and their lives and livelihoods are at risk as long as Johnson continues as Prime Minister?”
Sadly, I think we all know the answer to both of those questions.
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Still going strong: the delta variant of Covid-19 is now dominant in the UK after more than a year of Tory refusal to close the nation’s borders – and is almost three times as likely to put you in a hospital as the original strain of the virus.
When you learn that the dominant form of Covid-19 in the UK now is the ‘delta’ variant that was discovered in India only recently, what does that tell you?
It tells This Writer that Boris Johnson’s insistence on keeping the UK’s borders open was an act of homicidal stupidity.
And it shows that the silly ‘traffic light’ system to indicate which countries are safe to visit does not work at all.
That’s because this new variant of Covid-19 has not only beaten all the supposed safeguards that Johnson’s government has imposed; it is now infecting more people than any other strain of the disease.
And it is more likely to cause serious illness than any other variant, too:
Not great. New variant has over twice risk of hospitalisation. Cases increasing rapidly. Lots can be done NOW, including in masks in schools next week given high case rates there. Increasing vax deploy in hotspots. With exponential spread why wait? https://t.co/Eh5Ymnt3w9
The facts show that 75 per cent of new cases are of the delta variant – and that it is being transmitted most commonly through schools.
This should end the debate over whether it was a bad idea to reopen schools while the pandemic was at its height; of course it was.
And it still is. Parents are now 1.6 times more likely to end up hospitalised if their children bring the delta variant home with them than they were with the original version of the virus last year.
It also shows that press releases from Public Health England should not be treated as factual. Consider:
here are this week's ONS numbers by age.
Marked increase in secondary school age children. And starting to see an increase in their parents' generation too.
Cannot understand how PHE think schools are just fine.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 4, 2021
this is quite astonishing in how it takes the rosiest possible data and spins it. https://t.co/nPxVsvp3sw
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) June 4, 2021
Possibly the worst part of all this is that many Tory MPs seem determined to finish the “unlock” (as Grant Shapps referred to it in the Guardian article) on June 21, no matter how many people suffer as a result:
You see, your health doesn’t matter to these people. It never did.
Money matters to them.
You are stock. You are a commodity that they use in order to make money for them. The granting of billions of pounds of public money to Tory donors via PPE contracts that went unfulfilled – causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths – is an example of that thinking.
And if some of the stock dies out due to disease, it will replenish itself in a few years’ time, so they’re not bothered about that at all, either.
Don’t you wish you lived in New Zealand?
That country had a sensible, socialist prime minister who locked down properly, as soon as she heard a whisper about how bad Covid-19 might be – including closing all that country’s borders.
It was then able to carry on as normal, with the minimal number of cases that did present themselves receiving proper treatment, correctly isolated from the rest of the population. I believe there was a functioning test and trace system there, too.
So New Zealand has been able to function more or less as normal while other countries scrabbled to develop a vaccine – and now the vaccine is available, it is running an efficient injection programme.
The people of New Zealand chose their leaders wisely.
The UK’s diehard Tories (coupled with Labour traitors who hated Jeremy Corbyn) forced Boris Johnson on us.
They gave us the incompetence and corruption of Matt Hancock, Dominic Cummings, Gavin Williamson, Rishi Sunak and all the other ministers who have ignored their duty to the public in order to line their pockets and those of their friends.
They’re giving us the delta variant.
They’re giving us the potential of a premature end to all lockdown restrictions that would trigger yet another wave of Covid-19 infections in the summer or the autumn.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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