Joan Twelves

The Tory government is trying to gaslight us into thinking that Covid is over!

The Tory government is trying to gaslight us into thinking that Covid is over despite infections being at record levels and rising.

According to the Office of National Statistics just under 5 million people in England – 7.5% of the population – have Covid this week. This is 1 in 13, up from the previous week’s 1 in 16, which itself was a rise of 1 million from the week before.

The figures in the UK’s devolved nations are no better – 1 in 12 in Scotland, 1 in 14 in Wales and 1 in 15 in Northern Ireland.

This level of infection is the highest recorded by the ONS Survey since it began looking at the situation in April 2020, and surpasses the previous high at the start of 2022, when 1 in 15 people in England were estimated to have Covid.

Hospitalisations and deaths – while less than during previous peaks – are rising; and disruption to education, the health service, business and the economy as a whole is having a significant effect as staff (and pupil) absences rise. The pressure on an NHS under orders to deal with waiting lists is becoming unsustainable.

And yet the Secretary of State for Health says the rise is ‘not a concern’ and ‘is to be expected’. His advice just a few days before Tory MPs gathered for a slap-up dinner? ‘Socialise a bit less’.

The latest variant, Omicron BA.2, is even more transmissible than the original Omicron, BA.1, which caused the December surge; reinfection is possible and vaccine protection is waning. Just the moment, then, for all measures to protect us from continuing infection to be scrapped!

The UK is not alone in trying to brush the rising tide of Omicron BA.2 aside; the USA and most European countries are similarly removing all precautions and protections, and moving to a policy of ‘living with the virus’ (or rather ‘let’s just ignore the virus’) as BA.2 surges.

This policy is based on the belief – one without any scientific evidence – that each variant of the SARS-CoV2 will become milder. But as Christina Pagel wrote in the Guardian on 30 March:

“It is … simply not true that viruses always evolve to become milder. What drives evolution is transmission: variants that infect more people will thrive. Because most Covid transmission happens while people have no or few symptoms, severity is not a driver of evolution but instead a by-product of whichever mutations improve transmission and how they interact with existing levels of immunity. For Alpha and Delta, this led to greater severity and for Omicron (somewhat) less severity, but this was an evolutionary accident. The next variant could easily be more severe again.”

And for many people BA.2 is not that mild, especially if they are immunosuppressed or it leads to Long Covid. The most infected cohorts at the moment are unvaccinated primary aged children and the over 70s. Despite a high level of vaccination, the latter group in particular are at risk from a bout of Covid leading to all sorts of complications.

I have to wonder whether the people who tell us that Covid is ‘just like the flu’ have ever had any kind of influenza more serious than ‘man flu’? Do they even understand that flu is also a killer, albeit a much lesser one than Covid? The World Health Organization estimates that 290,000 to 650,000 people die of flu-related causes every year worldwide. 6,168,174 have died from Covid-19 so far.

I also have to wonder whether they understand what Long Covid can involve. Months if not years of incapacity, pain, fatigue, frustration, depression. ‘Brain fog’ may not sound very serious if you’ve never experienced it. But just try driving, handling machinery (even a power tool or an iron), trying to read a book, let alone write anything, when your concentration has gone out the window.

While we are exhorted to get vaccinated, or to get another booster (the fifth for some of us), the fact that the latest variant has breached the vaccine’s defences should be of much more concern than we are witnessing. As Prof Danny Altmann argues, instead of relying on frequent boosters of the same vaccines, we must develop better and longer lasting ones. But instead of investing in the necessary research this government is rewarding the UK’s scientists by selling off the £200 million Oxford Vaccine Centre.

I fully support the vaccination programme but depending solely on it – this government’s only ‘strategy’ – is surely being undermined by the virus’ ability to evade our immune systems. Other protections are essential – the ones which they call restrictions and I call freedom. Mask wearing in public places, ventilation, social distancing, self-isolation are all essential mitigations which we must demand are restored.

So it is in the context of the government’s gaslighting strategy that we have to understand not just the removal of all mandatory mitigations but in particular the withdrawal of free testing and the cuts in funding for academic research and surveillance.

At £2 for a single lateral flow test, a family pack of five is a tenner most people can’t afford on top of all the other price rises this week. And don’t even think about getting a PCR test!

The introduction of charges for a vital medical test in the same week national insurance goes up to, we are told, “help the NHS” is not just a sick joke but a dangerous precedent. What other NHS diagnostic tests will we be charged for next? HIV tests? Mammograms?

The list of those eligible for free tests is extremely restricted and only includes a few of those who were previously advised to shield – many of whom continue to do so to this day. As Frances Ryan so eloquently wrote in the Guardian on 31 March,

“Some high-risk people who need to have Covid treatments, such as antivirals, will be granted free tests, but government guidelines say they are only to be used once they are ill and already showing symptoms. It’s the public health equivalent of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. This fundamentally misses what has been so valuable about large-scale testing over the past two years: it’s not that high-risk people can see if they have Covid, but that those they’re due to come into contact with can.”

This last point is one I have been making. I don’t need to know whether I have Covid – I need to know whether you have and are therefore likely to infect me. It’s a similar message to that for mask-wearing – a message this government has doggedly failed to get across – ‘Your mask protects me; my mask protects you’.

So where is the data going to come from if only a few people are doing tests? Will the numbers drop dramatically next week? After pressure the ONS survey will continue but with a reduced sample of participants. Other surveys will lose funding. Without testing the government’s data dashboard will quickly become meaningless. And without contact tracing the virus will keep infecting and mutating.

However many times I write that this government’s approach to the pandemic has been callous and corrupt, I still find I am taken aback by their approach. Are they really trying to pretend Covid has gone away? Are they really saying that it is legal to infect others?

But this is a government who has shelled out over £700m, with the Department Of Health and Social Care continuing to spend £7m a month, storing useless PPE, much of which came through that Tory- chums VIP channel; who are cutting benefits and pensions while the cost of living and inflation soars and think a loan is the way to help with fuel prices; who issue orders to drown refugees then talk big about saving Ukrainians lives but don’t deliver visa waivers. So why am I surprised at their continuing cruelty and contempt for others? Why are we all not so much more angry?

Republished from Labour Outlook and zerocovid.uk

Can one arrogant, privileged egotist fighting to save his job wish this global pandemic away?

Remember when the Prime Minister repeatedly told us he was ‘following the science’? Remember those televised press conferences when he was flanked by the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser providing the expert advice on what we all needed to know and do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus?

There was no press conference, no updates on the gov.uk website, no sign of Chris Whitty or Patrick Vallance, when the Prime Minister announced in Parliament on 9 February 2022 that he was planning to bring forward an end to England’s rules on self-isolation later this month.

‘Following the science’? But the scientists and medical experts of SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) didn’t meet until the day after this announcement. And by that time the press was reporting that it wouldn’t just be self-isolation that would end – the days of free testing and even the ‘gold standard’ ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey are limited.

Everyone around the world wants this pandemic to end, to be able to live without restrictions and to meet, love and touch without fear. That doesn’t necessarily mean a return to normal; for millions that normal isn’t something they have any desire to return to. But does that mean we abolish all measures? Is the pandemic over? Can 200 people dying every day in the UK just be written off? Or the over 2 million people currently sick with Covid?

Can one arrogant, privileged egotist fighting to save his job wish this global pandemic away?

Covid is no respecter of borders or British exceptionalism.

Nor is it now a ‘mild’ disease like a cold or the flu. For some fortunate people it’s not too bad. But others can end up facing months, years, even a lifetime of debilitating and chronic illness.

Testing is more than the inconvenience of sticking a swab up your nose to see whether you have Covid. As Professor Christina Pagel of Independent SAGE has said: ‘Without data we are blind’.

And that blindness could include no longer being able to determine whether the virus has mutated yet again, and what effect any new variants are having.

SAGE warned at that meeting the day after Johnson’s announcement that ‘new SARS-CoV-2 variants will continue to emerge … including variants that are less susceptible to current vaccines, resistant to antivirals, or are associated with altered disease severity. … There is no reason why future dominant variants should be similarly or less severe than Omicron, which may be an exception in having lower severity. The next dominant variant in the UK (and internationally) could have similar pathogenicity to previous variants, such as Delta.’

Not being able to identify new variants is just one of the problems associated with Johnson’s plans to declare the pandemic over next week.

Allowing – indeed, encouraging – infectious people, many of whom will think they just have a cold, to mingle freely is a recipe for disaster. It takes us back to the early days of the pandemic when we had few tools to protect ourselves and others against infection, when key workers and those who could not afford to do otherwise were travelling to work in close contact with each other in poorly ventilated workplaces.

Remember Belly Mujinga, who died in April 2020 after being coughed and spat on at work in Victoria Station? Remember the deaths in care homes? Shopworkers already report problems with abusive, unmasked customers; they and other public-facing workers, especially those with unsympathetic employers or on low pay, will be at even greater risk once more if the legislation on self-isolation is abandoned.

The key difference between now and two years ago is of course the vaccines, of which I am a great fan and advocate. But Omicron has exposed the fact that vaccination on its own is not enough to protect us and stop community transmission. And SAGE is warning that ‘there is significant potential for transmission to increase if behaviours revert rapidly to pre-pandemic norms and mitigations are removed’.

Vaccine-Plus

A strategy of Vaccine-Plus, as advocated by Independent SAGE and campaigns such as Zero Covid, is essential. Protecting each other from infection through mask-wearing, good ventilation and effective contact tracing is hardly the restriction to our freedoms the right-wing like to make out, especially not when only 65.6% of the UK population aged 12 and over have had the currently needed three doses, and the highly infectious BA.2 subvariant of Omicron is breaking through to push up case numbers again.

Official figures say one in 19 people are currently infectious. Go on the bus or to the pub or cinema and you’re likely to be alongside several people who may be unintentionally spreading the virus.

This is especially dangerous for those most at risk from infection, those millions of us designated ‘vulnerable’ and those who live with us. Most at risk are those with weak or compromised immune systems who could become seriously ill or die if they catch Covid.

It is a commonly held misconception that those who are at risk are less likely to be in work or education, but this is most certainly not the case. Many will be key workers in retail, hospitality, transport, delivery, education, care homes and the NHS. Many will be children or parents, the groups with the highest infection rates at the moment. And those who can stay at home will be locking themselves down yet again, unable to enjoy any kind of fake freedom.

Not that the government seems to care about that. It stopped all support for shielders many months ago. Appeasing the Covid Recovery Group to keep the Prime Minister in power is the top priority, closely followed by the Tories’ ideological favourites, shrink the state support systems, blame everyone else, and make the poor pay.

It’s not over yet

The pandemic is not over, not in England, not in the UK, and not across the world. While the scientists work on new and better vaccines, the existing ones are saving lives and protecting against some of the worst illness. But there is still a long way to go.

61.8% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but only 10.6% of people in low-income countries have. This means the virus could continue to rampage through communities, mutating as it does so, and spreading rapidly across the world yet again.

The Prime Minister’s plan to declare an end to the pandemic has been met with outrage in many quarters. SAGE scientists can no longer be relied on to be onboard to back him up. Within minutes of the announcement, the Daily Mirror had called it out as the ‘dead cat’ it so obviously is. But it is a dangerous disease-carrying defunct feline which has to be stopped. At the very least, we must demand our MPs ensure self-isolation, testing and mask-wearing continue for as long as they are necessary protections. You can write to your MP here.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/defend-self-isolation

Published in Labour Hub, 15 February 2022 and on the Zero Covid UK website

Save lives now, then we can all live well!

Much in Labour’s 10-point plan for living with Covid is welcome, but it ignores the immediate crisis – we have to stop people dying from the virus before we can live with it.

More than 350 deaths per day, over 100,000 daily positive cases and nearly 20,000 covid hospital patients is neither acceptable nor normal.

The Tories’ narrative that the pandemic is over, their removal of even the weak Plan B protections (mask-wearing, working from home and the limited use of covid passes), and – even more worryingly – their plans to shortly end self-isolation for those testing positive for Covid, have to be challenged by Labour.

Johnson and Javid’s rejection of infection control measures in order to assuage their right wing backbenchers, is reckless to the extreme, and is based on eugenicist theories rather than any regard for science or the public’s health and wellbeing.

The brilliant NHS vaccination programme has reduced our risk of death dramatically. But there are no guarantees that Omicron’s inevitable successor variants or mutations will not be more vaccine resistant and deadly.

Not only do we need to keep promoting vaccination – including by calling for employers to give staff paid time-off to get jabbed and recover – we need the protective and mitigation measures of a Vaccines Plus strategy.

These include continuing personal protection measures such as:

social distancing and wearing masks in indoor public places, including schools, colleges and workplaces;
setting indoor air quality standards, with CO2 monitors and HEPA filters being installed in all classrooms and indoor public venues;
all NHS, social care, teachers and those deemed at high risk being issued with free FFP2/3 masks;
financial support for all those required to self-isolate or shield, and for businesses and self-employed who are taking a hit from the economic damage caused by the continuing unpredictable high levels of employee and customer absences.

Labour rightly says the test and trace system needs fixing. The first step there must be to dismantle the current discredited outsourced system and hand it (along with the necessary funding) over to the public health professionals in local authorities and the NHS who should always have been in charge of it.

It should go without saying that both LFD and PCR tests must remain free and readily available to all UK residents.

The right to work from home or flexibly has been a long-term demand by many, especially parents and carers, and the experience of the past two years means that now is the time for it to be legislatively enforced.

Adding these immediate essential measures to Labour’s longer-term plans and opposing the UK government’s lethal approach means we can stamp down hard on the virus and make it possible for us all to live our lives without the constant threat of chronic disease or death hanging over us.

But unless and until this deadly virus is suppressed to the lowest levels possible both in the UK and globally, we won’t be able to say we are living with it.

Omicron – Time for a Circuit Breaker

Eighteen months ago, we were applauding our NHS heroes and celebrating a renewed sense of community as neighbours and volunteers went out of their way to help each other.

But today the UK bears a horrific resemblance to countries like Brazil and those red states in the USA where the virus is being allowed to let rip in the name of ‘living with it’, and conspiracy theorists and fascists spread their lies and fantasies through social media to influence those who are fed up with restrictions or nervous about vaccination. This corrupt, contemptuous and callous Tory Government ignores the science, puts profit before people, lurches from one inadequate and tardy lockdown to another, and is now more concerned with placating its hard-line right-wingers and making sure its seasonal piss-ups go ahead than doing everything necessary to protect people from illness and death.

Although it is clear that the majority of the population have more trust in the scientists than the politicians – as can be witnessed by the immediate queues for boosters and the majority who say there should be a Christmas lockdown (Savanta ComRes poll) – without clear, urgent leadership, as well as substantial financial and practical support, the current societal chaos will continue. Shortages, sudden closures and company collapses will get worse as Covid surges yet again.

I have lost count of the number of times I have written or said ‘this government has blood on its hands’. But I will say it again.

It is hard to overstate the scale of the Omicron crisis. Recorded cases are hitting new records every day. Omicron is extremely transmissible and more able to evade existing immune responses. Despite all the talk of Omicron being ‘milder’, there is no evidence of this thus far. And even if hospitalisations and deaths are less than resulted from previous waves, the effect on the NHS and other emergency services is just as dire. Those at work are being stretched beyond exhausted breaking point by the absence of co-workers, and resources are being diverted from trying to catch up on that six million-long waiting list as well as the 7-9 million ‘missing’ patients who have not sought treatment during the pandemic. Omicron will result in yet more avoidable sickness, hospitalisations and deaths.

Before Omicron took off, the UK was already running at about 50,000 new Covid cases a day. Today that has doubled to around 100,000. Lambeth, where I live, has the highest rate in London, itself the Omicron epicentre of the UK, and there has been a 90% increase in the past week. The Mayor of London has been forced to declare a Major Incident to help ease the pressure on the capital’s hospitals. My local hospital, Guys and St Thomas’, where there was a seven-hour vaccination queue last week, has cancelled non-essential services and redeployed staff. GPs, nurses, and community health workers have either been diverted to vaccination centres or are volunteering out-of-hours.

Despite Johnson’s claim that ‘we are throwing everything at it’, the move to Plan B is far too little too late, and most of its measures are ineffective. While the boosters are a real advantage, they will take time to have an effect, and we urgently need to drive down transmission of the virus now. The Tories are refusing to face up to this because any action has a price tag.

The Zero Covid campaign has repeatedly called for sensible mitigation measures – improved ventilation (especially in schools, colleges and workplaces), mandatory mask-wearing in all public places, social distancing, the right to work and study from home where possible with all necessary practical, psychological and financial support, including increased sick pay and the restoration of the Universal Credit cut, for those required to self-isolate or shield. We also need an effective publicly-run Test & Trace system.

The campaign is backing Independent SAGE’s call for an immediate circuit breaker. No one wants to cancel Christmas. But equally no one wants to risk infecting their family. We need everyone to be able to cut down their contacts now. Advice to limit contacts is meaningless for many of us if it isn’t backed up by financial support, and companies compelled to allow workers to stay home. That means grants, VAT relief and the return of furlough so that businesses which lose custom or have to close can afford to keep staff on the books.

We have repeatedly said that we do not favour lockdowns to prevent community transmission of the virus other than as a last resort. The Tory Government’s failure – yet again – to follow scientific advice and to mandate the implementation of the most basic public health protections means that they will be guilty of leaving no other option than to impose one – yet again – in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Nobody is safe until we are all safe

The emergence of something like the Omicron Covid-19 variant was entirely predictable – and predicted by international scientists, health experts and campaigners. As the heads of both the World Health Organisation and the United Nations have repeatedly said: Nobody is safe until we are all safe.

Since the brilliant and speedy discovery of vaccines against Covid-19, the rich countries of the world have practised vaccine apartheid against the Global South. Repeated calls by South Africa and India, supported by Biden’s USA, have failed to overcome dogmatic opposition by a group of high-income countries including the EU, the UK and Switzerland, to their landmark proposal to temporarily waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medical products.

Without that patent waiver, along with a willingness by Big Pharma to share know-how and expertise and for the G7 rich countries to honour their promises to provide funding and equipment from labs to syringes, the people of every country of the world are being condemned to wave after wave of death and disease.

To date, 42.6% of the world’s population has been fully vaccinated. But only 3% of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated. Lower middle-income countries have fully vaccinated 26.6% of their people. That’s a huge difference compared with 67.3% in high income countries, and 62.9% in upper middle-income countries.

African countries have administered 234.7 million doses. That means 7.1% of the population of the continent is fully vaccinated.

There isn’t a shortage of vaccines. 9.1bn vaccines have already been manufactured and 12bn are expected by the year’s end – enough to vaccinate the whole world. The problem is one of capitalist politics and distribution.

Here in the UK, we are faced with a government which will always put profits before people, whether at home or abroad. Having let the virus rip since ‘Freedom Day’ on 19th July – and nonchalantly presided over around 1,000 deaths per week and 40-50,000 new cases per day since then – the threat of Omicron has forced it to take some baby steps to look as though it is heeding the warnings of its chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, that they should “go hard and go early”.

Hard? A mask mandate in shops (but not pubs), on buses and trains, and in school corridors (but not classrooms) is hardly hard. All these mitigatory measures and more have been in place in the UK’s devolved nations for months. Early? That’s questionable given that they are the least of the measures that should have remained in place to fight Delta, not wait for the predictable Omicron to arrive.

While we welcome the extension of the vaccine booster programme in the UK – and would welcome it even more if it went hand-in-hand with the UK supporting the TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organisation – the Zero Covid campaign is not alone in calling for an immediate change of strategy and for less reliance on solely pharmaceutical solutions.

While nobody knows how resistant to the existing vaccines and how deadly Omicron may prove to be, the speed of its community transmission in South Africa shows that it is extremely infectious. To stop not just the spread of Omicron but also of the dominant Delta variant, we have always supported sensible mitigation measures – ventilation (especially in schools), mandatory mask-wearing in all public places, social distancing, the right to work and study from home where possible with all necessary practical, psychological and financial support, including increased sick pay, for those required to self-isolate or shield.

We also need an effective Test & Trace system – and it is very worrying that the government is looking to charge for LFT tests and start dismantling the whole system -which, however inadequate, is all we’ve got, unless they finally recognise that this is best done by local authority public health teams and give them the funding to do it. PCR tests for travellers should be free and carried out priorto travel.

These measures are needed to avoid the lockdown that no one wants. But the government continues to ignore the science, including advice on how to tackle new variants, and to refuse to mandate the implementation of the most basis public health protections. It is their mixed messages, their disastrous policies that could very well lead to another lock down this Xmas as the fourth/fifth wave hits, whether that goes by the name of Omicron or Delta.

Published in Labour Hub, 6 December 2021

The Covid-19 Pandemic Isn’t Over Yet

Reckless?

The polite description of a strategy which is currently averaging over 1,000 deaths a week, over 7,000 hospitalisations, and the highest number of Covid-19 infections in Europe with over 35,000 daily cases.

Murderous is my non-polite description.

A return to normality?

Only if you think those 1,000+ deaths are normal.

Labour has an absolute duty to the people of this country to call out the Tories for their deadly, eugenicist policies; and Conference is the perfect opportunity for the Leadership and Shadow Health Team to put forward a robust alternative to the government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To date, Labour’s approach has been marked by timidity and mealy-mouthed, piecemeal criticisms. The Tories’ scandalous strategy of ‘living with the virus’ has barely been challenged – and no alternative has been put forward.

The Tory government has ended shielding, furlough, and business rates’ holidays. It refuses to provide adequate ventilation in schools. It has failed to increase the absolutely miserly levels of statutory sick pay and is cutting universal credit. It cannot even bring itself to mandate masks in crowded places. Johnson, Sunak and Javid are acting as if the pandemic is over.

The idea that that we must learn to live with high levels of Covid-19 has to be challenged. It is unprecedented in the modern era for government policy to allow preventable deaths of its own citizens on a mass scale. We do not live with cholera, we do not live with polio, we do not live with tuberculosis, and we do not live with typhoid. Like all these diseases, Covid-19 can be managed, and community transmission eliminated.

Medical science and technology have progressed rapidly in the past decades; the speed at which the Covid-19 vaccines were developed is testament to that, so why on earth should we accepting a strategy which does not just allow, but encourages, people to continue to spread a virulent and deadly disease?

I am a great fan of vaccination – and as socialists we should all be supporting it as a collective societal good. But we must not forget that 20% of adults have not had even one jab – one in five of us; breakthrough infections occur even after two jabs; over 100,000 children missed school last week (a figure undoubtedly heightened by the Government’s delay in authorising teenager jabs); and business and industry are facing unpredictable staff shortages as those thousands sick or isolating can’t work.

Vaccine-Plus

But vaccination on its own is not enough. It must be backed up by a range of mandatory mitigation measures, which focus on protection and support rather than restrictions on activities. They include an effective, local and fully-funded Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support operation run by the NHS and local authorities; all workplaces, including schools, colleges and hospitality venues, being made Covid-safe; and continuing precautionary measures including self-isolation, social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing and good ventilation.

As Independent Sage scientists say in their recent Covid Winter Protection Plan (https://www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Winter-Plan-final.pdf)

“Unless such protections are implemented immediately there is a serious danger that more intrusive and wide-ranging restrictions will become necessary later”.

When we talk about vaccination we mustn’t just talk about the UK – a global pandemic requires global vaccination.

No one is safe until everyone is safe

Many on the left have questioned whether the UK should be giving boosters and teenager jabs when poorer countries are crying out for vaccines. But the ‘beggar my neighbour’ approach of the rich capitalist countries isn’t really a supply issue. It is political.

Countries like the UK are turning their backs on the poorer parts of the world; countries they have not hesitated to plunder and wage war in for centuries. Vaccine apartheid and cuts in overseas aid go hand in hand. It’s no surprise that a government which refuses to ensure British children are safe when they go to school, hoards vaccines and refuses to support patent waivers, profit restrictions, prices at cost, or sharing technology, science and know-how.

So rather than engaging in a factional civil war, the Labour leadership should be talking about issues that really affect millions at home and abroad. Conference should be showcasing a different approach to dealing with the pandemic that has dominated all our lives for over 18 months, and that has not gone away – however much we all wish it had.

This is an edited version of my article in the Morning Star on 27 September 2021 during the Labour Party Conference.

Has the government gone down the pub?

The replacement of the philandering Matt Hancock by hard man Sajid Javid has opened the way for eugenics to take over the UK’s pandemic policy.

No longer in the land of on-off delayed lockdowns, faulty PPE, dodgy contracts and helping your chums get rich; we are now on Plague Island where the living-with-the-virus, individualistic tough guys survive and the poor, unfit and weak cower and die.

Society has become increasingly polarised – and much nastier – in the past decade.. For me, the way the assassination of Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist in the run up to the Brexit referendum was quickly swept under the carpet was as much a marker of a societal shift as the referendum itself. Instead of our political classes and media seeing that wholly exceptional event as one over which we needed to pause and reflect, the only changes have been an increase in lies, corruption, undemocratic practices, and the denigration of political opponents.

In the early months of the pandemic, while the government’s ineptitude and failures led to the disaster of care home deaths, lack of PPE, increased inequality, and the world beating mortality records, at least (under pressure from the unions) they provided business grants, furlough pay and support for shielders. Civil society demonstrated an unexpected but most welcome neighbourliness and community spirit. NHS and key workers were valued, young mutual aiders helped with shopping, and most people understood we were ‘all in it together’.

But now, 16 months later, that spirit has dissipated as the government has washed its hands of any responsibility for the lives and livelihoods of its citizens. It is as though, just as we are all fed up with the pandemic, they’ve got bored of dealing with it and have decided to move on to all the other stuff they want to do like privatise the NHS, attack asylum seekers and migrants, restrict voting rights and the right to protest. If the pandemic can be depicted as a war with the virus, the government has raised the white flag and gone down the pub.

Government messages are powerful. Personal responsibility is now the watchword. The kind of personal responsibility that can lead to an asthmatic self-employed single mum not being entitled to any sick pay or welfare payments when she catches covid; allow mask-less drunks to spit on transport staff; and encourage a speaker at an anti-vaxx rally to compare doctors and nurses with those who were hung after standing trial at Nuremberg.

Javid is such an admirer of the right-wing US philosopher Ayn Rand that he reads her work twice a year. So the man now in charge of the NHS, the lynchpin of our welfare state, is someone who believes that the only proper functions of a government are the police, the army, and the courts.

Which brings me to ‘Freedom Day’. The past week has been full of news about how the Track and Trace system is forcing workers to quarantine. In other words, it’s doing what it is meant to do. With mitigation measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing now our personal responsibility, it is the only defence we have against the virus. Despite all its faults – not least SERCO, Baroness Dido and that £37 billion – a functioning FTTIS system is the essential partner to vaccination.

But the failure of government and the press to explain that the avalanche of pings are a direct and predictable result of letting the virus rip through the community, where the delta variant is particularly hitting the young, means that trust in the system has collapsed – more and more people have switched it off and are not bothering to test themselves or their children. No wonder the official statistics in respect of case numbers are being questioned.

I speak to so many people who are in despair. They don’t know who to believe or what to do for the best. The hope the vaccines offered is being undermined by doubt and confusion. Most vulnerable and disabled people are locking themselves down again. This is not cowering; this is common sense.

Last weekend the London Labour conference overwhelmingly backed the alternative strategy of the Zero Covid campaign; based on public health not free market principles. Mitigation measures need to be reinstated; workplaces made safe; practical and financial support provided for self-isolators, and super-spreader events put on hold for a few weeks. Conference also supported an immediate independent public enquiry and the speedy international deployment of vaccines. Delegates called on the Labour leadership to support this strategy.

Ayn Rand said: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” There is no doubt that Javid and Johnson have to be stopped, and that we, the labour movement, have to be the answer.

Joan Twelves

Published by Labour Outlook, 28 July 2021

The awful truth confirmed

Dominic Cummings is not a reliable witness but much of what he has said to the select committees about this Government’s catastrophic and criminal handling of the Coronavirus pandemic rings more than true to those who were on the front line or closely following the Government’s actions, reactions and inactions from January 2020 onwards.

Disregard

A contemptuous disregard for the lives and wellbeing of elderly, disabled, at risk, poor, black and brown people, as well as low-paid key workers whether in the health or social care services, schools, supermarkets, delivery or public transport sectors, has characterised the Government’s approach throughout. A decade of Tory austerity, cuts and privatisations mean that the public services we need and expect to support and protect us have been either non-existent or woefully inadequate.

Ignored

130,000 deaths and thousands condemned to a life of chronic illness have been the result: many of them our friends, workmates and relatives. For the past 18 months we have endured delay and prevarication, lies, corrupt procurement practices, a now-denied herd immunity policy, the economy being prioritised over public health, sick and infectious people being shunted between care homes and hospitals, many forced to work and learn in unsafe, unventilated environments, insufficient help and support being provided to those needing to self-isolate, the experience and knowledge of other countries, let alone the UK’s own scientists and experts, being repeatedly ignored. Cummings has confirmed what we have been saying for months.

Responsibility

Dominic Cummings bears as much responsibility for the social murder he has exposed as those he now castigates. His catalogue of errors, while extensive, omits much that he was responsible for – most significantly the £37 billion failed Test and Trace system, purposely set up as an outsourced, centralised system to bypass local public sector expertise.

Roadmap

Nothing Cummings has said will stop a third wave of the virus engulfing us unless the Government is prepared to change its approach from one of mitigation to one of elimination. This requires it to delay lifting the existing restrictions until all four steps in the roadmap have been fully met; to take effective action to fix the test and trace system to stop the spread of the B.1.617.2 and other variants, by handing it over to local public health experts; to make all workplaces and schools Covid-safe; to retain measures such as face coverings and social distancing; and to take effective measures to manage international travel – including free testing and quarantine – based on public health requirements not immigration control.

Inquiry

The Government is hiding behind Cummings’ lack of credibility with the public. The truth has to come out and come out now. Without truth there can be no justice. This means an immediate start to the promised statutory public inquiry, with a short, sharp interim review so that its findings are not delayed for years. The families of the tens of thousands of people who died deserve no less.

Zero Covid statement

Stop the Third Wave!

Einstein is purported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

A shiver went down my spine and I thought of Einstein when Johnson said that the Government would be sticking to its Roadmap and planned to lift all restrictions on 21 June.

What has happened to ‘Data Not Dates’?

When the Roadmap was published back in February, it said:

“Before taking each step, the Government will review the latest data on the impact of the previous step against four tests.

The tests are:

1. The vaccine deployment programme continues successfully.

2. Evidence shows vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated.

3. Infection rates do not risk a surge in hospitalisations. which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS.

4. Our assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new Variants of Concern.”

Test 4 has not been met.

Variant B1617.2 (the “Indian” variant) was designated a Variant of Concern on 7 May (there are rumours that it wasn’t designated sooner so as not to divert attention from the 6 May elections…), and yet Step 3 – the opening up of indoor hospitality and entertainment, and the introduction of the Green List for foreign holidays – went ahead on 17 May. Since then the “Indian” variant has been surging across the UK, particularly in our poorest, most deprived communities. Its speed of transmission is greater than previous variants and, while vaccination seems to be working, 60 percent of the adult population have yet to be fully vaccinated, and the variant is spreading exponentially among younger people.

While young people are less likely to die from Covid, they are highly vulnerable to the devastating and life-changing effects of Long Covid. And they can spread it to their peers and unvaccinated at-risk adults. As the WHO explains: “When a virus is widely circulating in a population and causing many infections, the likelihood of the virus mutating increases. The more opportunities a virus has to spread, the more it replicates – and the more opportunities it has to undergo changes.”

At the moment, the UK’s vaccination programme is in a race against the virus’ ability to spread, mutate and vary to a point where the vaccines may not work. This is why local public health experts are crying out for more vaccines and for permission to vaccinate younger cohorts. Even though the vaccines take time to work, without a functioning Test and Trace system they are this Government’s only defence against Covid.

We are on the cusp of a third wave.

Germany recognises this and has barred UK travellers. Spain and Portugal may soon regret valuing their income from UK tourists more highly than the health of their citizens – understandable though their desire to restart their tourist industry is.

Alongside going ahead with Step 3 and then sticking to their plan to ease all restrictions on 21 June, there has been a marked shift in the Government’s approach. Some rules are being changed to guidance. So, you can only have 30 guests at your UK wedding but you may go on that holiday to an Amber List country – it’s your choice and it will be your fault when you infect your hosts or bring another variant back with you. And not only will you get the blame, you may even get an early morning welcome home knock on the door from Priti Patel rather than a friendly local health worker or mutual aider (she does so love going round with her enforcers, so do give her a hug from us all!).

There is an alternative to waiting for the third wave to hit us – and it doesn’t mean staying in lockdown – although it does mean not throwing those masks away and hanging on a bit longer before hitting the beaches and bars.

That alternative is to pursue a comprehensive elimination strategy, based on tried and tested public health principles, rather than this Government’s chaotic policy of “living with the virus”, with its on-off lockdowns, 4.5 million cases of Covid-19, 127,710 needless deaths (as at 22 May 2021), and untold numbers of people with long-term chronic illnesses.

New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan and countless other countries have pursued this strategy, and it has led to far fewer deaths and much less economic damage. People in these countries are going to cinemas, rock concerts and football matches, enjoying socialising and meeting friends without restrictions.

This is the Zero Covid approach. And it is the surest way to Stop the Third Wave.

We must combine the UK’s mass vaccination programme with

an effective, local and fully funded Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support operation run by the NHS and local authorities, providing full financial support and practical assistance to all those required to shield or self-isolate.

all workplaces, including schools, colleges and public transportation, being made Covid-safe, and certified as safe by trade unions and/or public health authorities; and continued working from home to be encouraged and supported;

continuing personal protection and mitigation measures such as social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing, and good ventilation;

effective measures to address international travel – including free testing and quarantine – based on public health requirements not immigration control;

Quick action to stamp out any new outbreaks.

The scandal of “NHS” Test and Trace epitomises this Government’s approach. Having bunged a staggering £37 billion of taxpayers’ money to the private companies running this joke of an organisation – a body that should be in the vanguard of our defences against the spread of the virus – we now learn that just last week it managed to “lose” the details of hundreds of people infected with the B1617.2 variant, thus helping its spread. Yet Serco’s contract to run this dangerous and expensive failure has just been renewed.

A major problem is that the lack of real financial and practical support provided for those who are asked to self-isolate means that Test and Trace is increasingly disregarded, as are the lateral flow tests we are being asked to administer to ourselves. If you can’t afford not to go to work, what’s the point of getting tested?

And when you do get to work, the odds are that your workplace won’t be Covid-safe, especially if there is no trade union to argue for protection, but you daren’t complain because you could be fired and not rehired. There have been 3,872 Covid outbreaks in workplaces and 4,253 outbreaks in education settings yet not a single employer has been prosecuted for breaching Covid regulations. The lack of enforcement of proper protection for workers by the Health & Safety Executive is just one of the many outrages of the UK’s handling of the pandemic.

George Monbiot has spelt out the tragedy of the Government’s policy towards the UK’s borders: “During the first three months of the pandemic – from 1 January until lockdown on 23 March last year, 18 million people arrived in the UK from abroad. But only 273 of them were obliged to quarantine. By contrast, across the 12 months to March 2020, 23,075 people were thrown into immigration detention centres: prisons for people who have not been convicted of any crime but are suspected of entering – or remaining in – the country without the correct paperwork. Astonishingly and incomprehensibly, on 13 March 2020 the Government dropped any obligation on passengers arriving in this country to self-isolate. As a result, we know that on 31 March 2020, a week into lockdown, there were 895 people in detention and none in official quarantine.

Only on 8 June was quarantine reintroduced, and even then the system was so leaky and ill-enforced that it might as well not have existed. While other nations imposed strict border measures from the outset, preventing widespread infection, an analysis by the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium discovered that, as of 22 May 2020, the virus had been introduced to the UK by travellers on at least 1,300 occasions.”

A year later, things aren’t much better. The stories from returning travellers of the long waits and enforced mingling in the arrival halls of our airports, as well as the recent delay in limiting flights from India, are down to a Home Office and Border Force which would rather persecute and jail refugees and EU citizens than safeguard our collective public health.

Nobody is safe until everybody is safe.

A global pandemic must be fought globally. The UK’s hoarding of vaccines is disgraceful, as is its failure to support vaccine patent waivers and to make substantial donations to Covax. Its cuts to overseas aid are already having a harmful impact on the ability of countries in the global south to protect their populations against the pandemic.

Speedy deployment of vaccines internationally without trade or patent restrictions, funded by developed countries and global corporations, is an essential part of a comprehensive worldwide public health strategy to minimise infections and the mutations/variants they enable.

Labour’s leadership needs to move from supporting the Government’s failed, deadly approach to supporting and advocating the only strategy which can Stop the Third Wave – Zero Covid.

22 May 2021

Scrap Serco’s Test and Trace: fund public health not private profit

Thirty-seven billion pounds. £37,000,000,000. Yes, that’s billion, not million.

That’s how much the government has thrown at the misleadingly named, centralised, outsourced ‘NHS’ Test and Trace operation.

That’s three times the £13 billion allocated to the hugely successful, public sector run vaccination programme.

After 130,000 deaths and three lockdowns, it’s time to kill off Johnson’s ‘world-beating’ demonstration of how not to fight a pandemic and replace it with a system run by professional, locally based, public health experts who know what they are doing.

The last few weeks have seen a stream of revelations about how the Tories have used the cover of the pandemic to enrich themselves and their friends – Cameron’s lobbying for his mate Lex Greensill, Dyson’s texts to Johnson, Hancock’s shares in his sister’s company, the VIP fast lane for firms with Tory connections. In February, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government had broken the law by not publishing contract awards within 30 days. And now Transparency International UK has identified 73 contracts worth more than £3.7 billion – equivalent to 20% of all contracts awarded between February and November of last year – whose award would ordinarily be treated as red flags for possible corruption. 27 PPE or testing contracts worth £2.1 billion were awarded to firms with connections to the Conservative party, it claimed.

But let’s not forget that £37 billion in the flurry of new outrages.

When the pandemic first struck, Public Health England set about doing what the WHO was demanding: ‘Test, test, test’. But as the virus took hold, testing was stopped and the Government decided to set up a brand-new operation – a centralised, outsourcing agency.

All its components – administering tests, processing samples in laboratories, and contact tracing – are contracted to private companies such as Deloitte, Serco, Sitel, Mitie, G4S, and Sodexo. As an example of where the money is all going, a year later 2,500 private sector consultants are still working with ‘NHS’ Test and Trace at an estimated daily rate of at least £1,100 per head.

Cronyism and chumocracy have become watchwords for this government. It is no surprise that ‘NHS’ Test and Trace is run by a Tory baroness, and Serco by a scion of one of the most famous Tory families.

‘NHS’ Test and Trace has been a hideously expensive disaster – from the first failed app to sick families were being told to drive hundreds of miles for a test last summer – and it is time the government admitted that. The availability of tests has improved dramatically but (leaving aside the differential accuracy of PCR and RLF tests) testing on its own is meaningless if it is not followed through. There is little point in getting tested, and no incentive to do so, if you can’t afford to stay off work or keep the kids out of school. Tracing the contacts of positive cases promptly and then supporting all who are required to self-isolate are absolutely essential.

These components are now (quietly) being handed over to some local authorities – the ‘Local 0’ project helps their public health team to contact positive cases at the same time as the case is entered into the national ‘NHS’ Test and Trace system. Practical help and support can then be offered when and where it is really needed.

My home patch of Lambeth was the first London borough, and one of the first in the country, to take over complete contact tracing .

Because they are local, experienced, and steeped in the ethos of the public sector, Lambeth’s teams can quickly locate and contact people to offer support and help. A network of local authority, voluntary and charitable bodies provides support that includes not only food shopping, medication collection, and help with claiming the government’s £500 support grant, but also dog walking and, if appropriate, separate accommodation. In an area of multiple languages and ethnicities, mother tongue speaking contact tracers are integral to the teams.

This kind of positive development is what Zero Covid UK means when we talk about an effective Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support (FTTIS) system being needed to go hand in hand with the vaccination programme and Covid-secure workplaces if we are to eliminate community transmission of the virus.

Those billions still being paid to private companies and consultants must urgently be redirected to the NHS and local authorities so that they can not only set up and expand local contact tracing and support but also receive funding to increase pay and cover budgetary deficits.

Baroness Harding, appointed by Matt Hancock, has now ‘moved on’ to Public Health England’s replacement agency, the UK Health Security Agency. Serco’s contact tracing contract ends on 17 May – and must not be renewed.

Now is the time to demand change.

We Own It and Zero Covid UK are holding a Day of Action on Tuesday 27 April to tell the Government to end Serco’s contract for contact tracing and give the money to the public sector.

Join us in demanding that the government fix contact tracing and scrap Serco. The money should be given to the real NHS and local public health teams.