Months ago, in this column I pointed out that the successful virus variants become more transmissible by being less virulent. Clearly, by sending your hosts to bed, to hospital, or even to their deaths, there will be fewer opportunities to spread than if you keep them up and about mixing with others.
Despite the alarming graphs and charts, presented -as ever- without proper context, the success of the delta or Indian variant has become our dominant variant based on exactly this strategy.
According to the NHS’s own data hospital cases have risen significantly since 27 May, but comparatively very few of these patients are actually occupying hospital beds. So, the rest probably pitched up at A&E -presumably because they couldn’t get an appointment with their GP – before being sent home.
For days however, establishment voices have been demanding an extension of restrictions to prevent even the smallest increase in hospital admissions so that the NHS can get on, uninterrupted, dealing with all the backlogs of other illnesses and conditions that have built up over the last 18 months. So it has come to this: enterprises are to be restricted, to remain closed, basic freedoms and social interactions remain banned, all as a means of managing NHS waiting lists.
Is England just an NHS served by a nation, rather than a nation served by an NHS?
By this logic there is no chance of the restrictions being lifted as we approach the flu season this autumn. Indeed, a number of the Government’s Scientific advisors have been sounding-off that we will have to abide by their dystopian distancing and masking regulations forever!
By rolling over and implementing their latest advice, the Government has transformed the victory of the vaccination campaign in to the defeat of their road map to the lifting of the restrictions.
But if you thought you were ok because your wedding can now go ahead with more than 30 guests… before you celebrate, read the small print; only where the venue can accommodate higher numbers including the full distancing requirements. How cruel to raise hopes, only to dash them.
I never believed that the Government’s response to the epidemic was proportionate: it had no right to the freedoms it took from us; now it continues to withhold them despite the emergency having passed, accordingly it has set the most disastrous precedent for the future of liberty in England.