More questions than answers

Like most of the nation, I’m heartedly sick of lock-down, and becoming increasingly impatient for restrictions to be lifted. I’m in need of a haircut, a new pair of shoes, plus some new walking boots, and related to the latter is the ability to walk further afield than an eight-mile radius of my home.

It seems incredulous that things as everyday as hopping on a train and heading off for a spot of walking in the English countryside, have been denied to us, as have the opportunity of extending the walk with a couple of overnight stops along the way.

I understand the reasons why freedoms we once took for granted have been temporarily removed from us, but that still doesn’t make it any easier, but not wishing to dwell on this, and looking forward to a return to some semblance of reality, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the subject and asking a lot of questions.

Countries such as Israel, where the government’s stated aim is to provide a coronavirus vaccine to everyone over the age of 16, by the end of March, are already feeling the benefit. The bars and restaurants are reopening, with night clubs said to be hot on their heels. Closer to home, the devolved nations of Scotland and Wales, have also started easing restrictions, several weeks in advance of what is planned for England.  

These developments have been made possible by the continuing roll out of the vaccine, and with more vaccines set for approval, there is no reason why the United Kingdom as a whole, cannot follow Israel’s shining example.

Why then was the UK’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, so downbeat when he addressed the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, at the beginning of last week? Po-faced Whitty, who looks as if he’s about to burst into tears at any moment, told MP’s he was expecting a further surge in Covid-19 infections, “Involving significant numbers, but much fewer deaths.” This would occur either in the summer or, more likely, the autumn/winter, and would be due to the vulnerability of significant numbers of people who either couldn’t have the vaccine, or because they had refused it.

I really don’t know what it is with this man who, along with his cohorts Sir Patrick Valance and Professor Van-Tam, takes such a delight in being a harbinger of doom. The reported 90 percent vaccine take-up rate doesn’t tally with Whitty’s “significant numbers” of vaccine refuseniks and, more to the point, seems to contradict the idea of so-called “herd immunity” put forward by him and Valance, just a year ago.

Last March, our learned “experts” were saying the pandemic wouldn’t fade away until around 60 percent of the population had been infected, or immunized – even though no vaccine existed back then. Authorities in the US have since upped this to 85 percent if, as seems likely, the more transmissible "Kent variant" becomes the dominant strain of Covid. But with real life studies demonstrating that just a single dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine is 80 percent effective in preventing hospitalisation among the over-eighties, it is hard to see where this pair of jokers are coming from.

It’s now five weeks since Mrs PBT’s and I received our first dose of the vaccine, and whilst we feel much more relaxed about the situation, we will continue to follow guidelines such as mask wearing and avoiding close contact with others. We do wonder though, why we are not now permitted to meet up with friends and family members who have also been vaccinated, especially as we suspect there is no valid scientific reason for this ban.

It all calls into question the snail’s pace of Johnson’s “road map” out of lock-down. I would go as far as saying that significant numbers of people are now only paying lip-service to the restrictions, although the evidence for this is still anecdotal. There are certainly far more people out and about, and a lot more traffic on the roads – back to pre-March 2020 levels in the mornings, with the return of the school run.

This all begs the question, who is right and why haven’t factors such as the damage to the economy caused by lock-downs, and the serious effects on people’s mental health, caused by locking them away inside their own homes, been taken into account by those driving government policy.

Whitty and Valance also need to come clean and explain why their previous predictions for herd immunity haven’t so far come to pass, a disturbing question given the predictions was based on the same type of computer modelling they are still using to scare us into staying at home and living like hermits - answers that are long overdue.

Much of the Covid-related information in this post came from an article that appeared earlier last week in the Spectator, a publication seemingly unafraid of asking a few searching questions, of those who would rule over us.