Johnson has caved in to his right wing. This Freedom Day is a populist ploy to court popularity which is backfiring horribly.
Thousands will die. It could be worse. We could find ourselves with a killer variant and no vaccine.
We are back to herd immunity. It’s an experiment, like they started right back at the beginning, and, in my opinion as big as mistake as back then. Here’s why:
a. We have 3.4 million vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated because of health problems impacting on their immune systems. It is impossible to completely shield them. They are now in prison.
b. The vaccine is around 93% effective at preventing serious illness and death. 7% of our population is over 4.5 million.
c. The hospital entry rates seem to be rising at the same steepness as on the previous wave. That killed 100,000 people.
d. The number going down with long covid is extremely large. A lot of our youngsters might not die or need hospital treatment but will be damaged – many for life. They estimate there are over two million people already affected. That it affects 1 in 20. The results of allowing our kids to catch it could be dreadful.
e. The more virus there is the more mutation. Allowing the virus to flourish in a partially vaccinated country is a recipe for culturing variants. We only need one nasty one to evade the vaccine and we’re in lockdown at square 1.
f. The immune response to virus infection is much weaker than that of the vaccine and fades after only six months.
g. Then we have the antivaxxers – a group of vulnerable people who are becoming more at risk by the minute. A group who have, up until now, been protected by the law, the responsible behaviour of others, the level of vaccination and the low level of virus. A good number of those will become severely ill and die.
This is an experiment with no scientific basis. It’s political. Johnson has caved in to his right wing, abandoned science and heading for a disaster.
I’m double vaccinated and back in isolation.