elbows
Well-Known Member
It sort of came up a few times, Vallance was asked about the modelling twice and did his best not to answer with any detail the questioner wanted. I think the closest he got to an answer involved how much of a push down on the peak this delay might enable.
The main theme of this downbeat press onference where Johnson was pretty subdued and disheveled was mostly a comtinuation of the themes introduced in February or whenever it was that they announced the unlocking plan. Where the main theme is to show the limits of their ambition, and how learning to live with the disease forever will mean plenty of hospitalisation and death. A world where vaccines are asked to carry almost all the weight. A demonstration of how much of the old, classic, establishment orthodox approach in this country would rebound as soon as options from the vaccination playbook were available.
They also set the scene for how awkward the July relaxation date will be, since they expect it to come at a moment where we have rather high numbers of cases, hospitalisations etc and were quite prepared to say that today.
Even if Johnson had been in a boosterish mood today, which he clearly was not, any happy sounding future featuring the old normal that he tries to conjure up is permanently in the shadow of him feeling the need to mention that a dangerous new variant could always come along and eat their homework.
Apparently part of returning us to the old normal involves not bothering to underline any of the public health messages that used to get repeated all the time in press conferences. This side of things is also mostly about vaccines only as far as they are concerned, dont bother to explain the current rules or what people should do other than get the jab.
I suppose in many ways I see this stage as a test. A test of how much people will accept this approach. A test of how much vaccines can actually do on their own. A test of their ability to hold their nerve with this attempt to get away with a return to the old attitudes. Even if one of more of these things fail again this time, they will surely try again with the same shit next time.
I dont know how many times this country will be prepared to go round that loop before either finally reaching the establishments choice of destination, or giving up and trying something else. I dont know as we'll ever find out where the limit of peoples political patience is to be found, especially given the unknowns about the size of hospitalisation and death wave we face this time, let alone what happens far beyond that point, whether the cycle repeats yet again at a scale that cant be coped with in the absence of restrictions. In theory there will only be a finite number of times that they can try this approach before people decide that something else, even something currently considered unrealistic, offers an alternative way out and is worth a try.
But they may eventually get their way some cycles before we reach that point, hard to say due to unknowns regarding how much room variants have to keep spoiling the immunity etc picture. eg if mutants keep pissing on their parade, eventually even stuff like zero Covid (or at least low covid, controlled covid, properly controlled borders) might start to sound like the common sense approach to a far wider range of people. Or maybe the virus evolution realities will be more forgiving and this new wave will be the last one for ages that is big enough to exceed the levels government think can be coped with.
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