The Government has finally been forced to concede that the Covid-19 Pandemic is not over, and that the virus is continuing to infect our communities.
According to the latest risk assessment by UKHSA, the latest new variant, BA.2.86, has a high number of mutations and has appeared in several countries in individuals without travel history.
Consequently, the autumn vaccination booster programme has been brought forward a month to start on 11 September.
But this booster programme is very limited, restricted as it is just to people in care homes for older people, the clinically vulnerable, those aged 65 and over, health and social care staff, and carers.
No other mitigation measures are proposed to prevent community transmission of this new variant and its mutations. Increasing Covid infection does not just mean more avoidable deaths (152 people died across the UK in the week ending 18 August according to the ONS) and the risk of Long Covid affecting many for years to come, but it also damages our NHS and the whole economy.
“Why are booster jabs not being offered to everyone who wants one?” asks Joan Twelves of the Covid Action campaign. “It’s several years now since the majority of the population were offered vaccination. Depending on illusory herd immunity and assuming everyone has already been infected is bad science, and ignores the reality, which is that one infection does not prevent all future infections. It further ignores the fact that Covid’s variants and mutations make re-infection all the more likely.
“Take-up of previous booster programmes has been low because they were not publicised. Vaccine centres need to be reopened and a mass publicity campaign launched explaining why vaccination is still important.
“Vaccination is not the only protection against Covid we need. Simple measures such as wearing good masks in all healthcare settings and crowded public spaces, and decent ventilation in schools and community buildings should be reintroduced.
“If the government really wants to say that the pandemic is over then it should be taking measures to halt community transmission. For more than a year it has been in denial that the virus is still spreading and infecting us. It has been able to pretend that we are living with covid by withdrawing free tests and shutting down data collection and surveillance. This small concession that we are all still at risk is just that – a small concession.
“With schools and colleges about to open, now is the time for a radical change in government policy on the virus. Offering free vaccinations to all, reintroducing testing and mask wearing, and installing decent ventilation is the least the government should be doing to protect us now as we are about to enter a hugely challenging period for our massively overstretched health service.”
Press release issued by Covid Action, 31 August 2023
Module 1 of the Covid Inquiry has exposed the callousness and uncaring nature of the British state and its institutions.
The first duty of government should be to protect its people, not prepare the body bags.
More than a decade of austerity – imposed on the British people to pay the banks for crashing the global economy in 2008, and justified by Cameron and Osborne in their evidence to the Inquiry as preparing the economy to better face the pandemic – had brought the NHS and other public services to their knees even before Covid hit.
The probing questions of Baroness Hallett’s legal team have revealed a sorry tale of recommendations being ignored, an ideological approach totally at odds to scientific and historical methods of preventing viral infections, Brexit diverting civil service resources, questions unasked and assumptions made.
After the scandal of Partygate, the British public can hardly be surprised by these revelations. But that does not make them any more palatable.
Sioux Vosper a member of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice, who lost her father in April 2020, and who has sat through every day of Module 1, says:
“Bereaved families’ stories were finally heard at the Inquiry at the end of Module 1. This was very much needed to bring the human element into the Inquiry after hearing about statistics, the economy, logistics, groups and subgroups, spaghetti charts and acronyms for six weeks. Everyone was visibly moved by our speakers, who spoke so eloquently, with dignity and from the heart. Bereaved families have been verbally abused online and in person by covid deniers and anti-vaxxers. All we want is for lessons to be learned; we don’t want anyone to go through what we have. It won’t bring back our loved ones but if our stories prepare us for the next pandemic (it will happen again) the last three years of campaigning will have been worth it. Our loved ones won’t have died in vain.”
Joan Twelves from Covid Action UK added: “The purpose of the Inquiry must be to learn the lessons of the tragedy of the past three years so that we are better prepared to stop any future pandemics leading to such a disastrous and heartbreaking death toll. The omens are not good. Across the western world governments are removing mitigations and protections, reducing data collection and the availability of vaccines. Covid has not gone away. We are campaigning along with many other groups for masking in all healthcare settings and care homes, clean air and decent ventilation in all public building, the availability of vaccines for all who want them, financial and practical support for Long Covid sufferers, and the return of free testing.”
Press release issued by Covid Action, 20 July 2023
More than 200,000 people have died from Covid in the UK during Johnson’s rule, 294 of them in the past week.There are 11,500 patients in hospital with Covid – and the number of hospitalisations is rising, adding to the burden on the already overstretched NHS.
3.5 million people are currently infected – a rise of 30% from the previous week.
These grim numbers are rarely reported any more. We have supposedly moved into the post-pandemic era.
Like the Tories, the media have got bored with the Covid plague, now well into its third year. And most of us go along with that because we are all fed up with it as well. We want to socialise, meet our friends and family, go to parties, gigs and demos. Or just down the pub.
And we’ve all got enough to cope with trying to make our money stretch to pay for the weekly food shop, petrol and energy bills without having to worry about finding more to pay for masks or Covid tests.
But we must resist the normalisation of Covid and letting it rip through our society. We cannot and must not accept the continuing deaths, the high infection rates, the reinfections, the disruption to all our lives caused by sudden illness, unplanned absences, shortages, cancelled appointments and holidays. We cannot and must not accept the failure of a government whose first duty should be to protect its population whether that is from disease, starvation or war, especially when there is an alternative to ‘Living with Covid’, an alternative based on well-established age-old measures for protecting communities against infectious diseases through contact tracing and isolation.
Relief at the departure of Boris Johnson has to be tempered by the recognition that, while his famed sloppiness, dishonesty, selfishness and incompetence played their part, the failure of the Conservative government to handle the pandemic is ideological and not primarily a result of him as an individual.
That ideology is embraced by all of Johnson’s potential successors and exposed by their clamour for tax cuts and shrinking the state. Just as Johnson and Sunak have been trying to lay the costs of the pandemic onto working people with their dogmatic refusal to increase pay in line with inflation, so we are witnessing the grotesque spectacle of a line-up of B-list hopefuls competing to cut benefits and public services to pay for their ambitions.
Martin Rowson, The Mirror
In their parallel universe of voodoo economics, where inflation, food banks, hungry children, homelessness, increasing inequality, industrial unrest, soaring prices, energy and petrol costs, a collapsing pound, climate catastrophe, and most certainly a continuing Covid pandemic, do not exist, economic illiteracy is being paraded around the media studios as a badge of pride.
The crisis in our health service is far less important to them than their own faux-sincerity. Their newly vaunted moral principles and integrity haven’t been much on display in recent months when most of them defended the Partygate lies, the repugnant Rwandan deal and the suppression of dissent.
The NHS is not safe in any of their hands!
Martin Rowson, The Guardian
Nor is it safe in the hands of the loyalist Johnson quickly shifted from a short stint as his chief of staff to Health Secretary when Javid resigned.
Javid is a eugenicist who washed his hands of Covid almost as soon as he took over, happy for Johnson to cave in to the demands of the anti-vax, anti-mask Covid Recovery Group to remove all mitigations and protections.
Barclay is deemed to be even worse than his predecessor. The Health Service Journal’s editor, Alastair McLellan, says of him: “A real nightmare, vindictive, arrogant, a bully, hostile to the NHS and all its works, a micro-manager of the wrong things, views NHS management as bloated and profligate …… Never has a politician arrived in the post of health secretary … trailing a worse reputation than Steve Barclay.”
In recent months, the Tories have relied solely on the vaccination programme – and the vaccines have been crucial in reducing deaths and serious illness. But the current dominant strain of Omicron and its more transmissible sub-variants are breaking through the vaccine barriers so that reinfection is becoming increasingly common. And the vaccines have never been enough on their own. Simple, non-restrictive additional protective measures are needed if we are to stamp down on the virus.
Masks in public places, free tests, contact tracing, social distancing, decent sick pay, Covid-safe workplaces, enforceable air quality standards, Long Covid to be classified as a disability, autumn booster vaccinations for all, funding for research, monitoring and the now urgent development of the next generation of vaccines, and for this disgraceful government to support WTO patent waivers so that we vaccinate the world.
With his cut-price Trumpian populist approach to Covid, Johnson is leaving behind a legacy of social murder, waste, corruption and callousness. He is going as the death toll hits 200,000 deaths. 200,000 avoidable deaths. 200,000 people who have left behind grieving family and friends.
On top of that there are at least 2 million people suffering from Long Covid, possibly facing years if not a lifetime of pain, depression, fatigue, lost dreams and missed opportunities.
Not to forget the 4 million or so of those of us who remain at high risk from Covid and who, notwithstanding vaccines and anti-virals, have been abandoned not just by the government but by the rest of society to continue to shield ourselves in isolation behind our front doors.
Having delayed the Independent Inquiry into his government’s handling of the pandemic for so long, we must not allow Johnson and his chums to escape its judgments as it puts the deaths in care homes, the delayed lockdowns, the corrupt PPE contracts, the billions spent on the failed Test and Trace scheme, the fraudulent bounce-back loans, and so much more, under the microscope of public accountability.
The pandemic has caused untold damage to our society. Everybody bears the scars in one way or other. It has been global in its harm, but it has been so much worse in the UK than it needed to be.
We must not forgive, and we must not forget. And, whoever ends up leading it, we must not let this corrupt and callous government get away with pretending that the Covid pandemic is over. However much we may all wish it away, it is still with us, and it is still killing people.
Joan Twelves 