Tag: Zero COVID

17 million dead mink can’t be wrong.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Last Friday Dr John Campbell’s covid vlog had the title China and zero covid. This is odd, because the vlog hardly dealt with China at all. This is interesting because it illustrates a broader problem in coverage of this issue; that attitudes are often expressed without them then being buttressed by facts. This stands out on Campbell’s vlog because he usually presents it as a simple explanatory space with no particular axe to grind, and he has built up quite a big following here and in the US on that basis.

His style is usually to go through a summary of official stats or reports, slowly enough for people to follow and calmly enough for people not to be put off, while circling key statistics and ticking them – usually in a very reassuring way. He seems to embody an old fashioned deference to authoritative medical knowledge. One of the men (got to be men) in white coats taking the time to explain.

Occasionally a darker view slips into sight. Wikipedia notes that he has put forward one unsound treatment and – possibly inadvertently – given credence to another. A long interview with David Davies MP gave an extended platform to Davies’s view that if only we all took vitamin D supplements all would be well. While vitamin D is helpful with immunity in general – and taking them wouldn’t hurt – this is in the same territory as the assertion by the South African Ministry of Health in the early days of the AIDS epidemic there that this was primarily a disease of poverty that could be cured by better living conditions and better diets. True up to a point, but insufficient on its own and, when counterposed to retrovirals rather damaging. In a post as the Omicron variant was picking up, Campbell noted that rapid and widespread mild infection would be a good thing because it would develop immunity on a bigger scale. Which, of course, presumes that all these infections would be mild, that those for whom it was not could be ignored, and that developing antibodies means immunity from reinfection. Which it clearly does not.

His “China” post started with an uncharacteristically huffy rhetorical question – put in tones that mixed bewilderment with a kind of condescending exasperation. Why is China persisting with its Zero Covid approach in the face of Omicron which, in his view, was bound to overwhelm it. He made no attempt to answer this and, to be fair, seemed genuinely puzzled.

If he wants an answer, there is a clue in the statistics he gave – and the complete lack any China figures in the rest of his vlog. He cited dozens of cases in several cities. I’d invite him to compare that with the number of cases in the UK right now. If we had dozens of cases in several cities the government here would be trumpeting how “world beating” we are all over the airwaves (and it would be hard to argue with it).

All the graphs then cited in his vlog – showing the Omicron wave passing its peak – exclude China data – because, instead of the wild roller coaster peaks and troughs with hundreds of thousands of cases and thousands of deaths that are now reassuringly slightly less bad than they were, China’s line would be a barely discernable flat one running straight along the bottom. To put this another way, China persists with Zero Covid because of the several million people who died of it last year just two died in China. Thats 2. Not really too hard to understand once you look at the figures.

Later on Campbell similarly huffed at New Zealand and Western Austraila for keeping their borders closed – on the bais that “they have to open up” at some point and would then be hit by Omicron all at once. This would only be true if they failed to quarantine people coming in.

The emotional clincher in his introduction was the expression of disgust at Hong Kong killing 2,000 hamsters to prevent inter species transmission after a positive test. Because hamsters are cuddly pets in a different category to the uncountable number of lab rats killed developing the vaccines. Campbell’s moral indignation at this might carry more weight if he had made a comparable fuss when Denmark slaughtered 17 MILLION mink on the same grounds earlier in the pandemic. I may be wrong, but I don’t recall him doing so.

Double standards illuminate blind spots quite dramatically.

“Leading the world in living with the virus”?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Sajid Javid’s bluster is the exact opposite of reality. The UK is 25th in the world in death rates. 182 other countries have done better in keeping their people safe – the first duty of government they used to say – and only 24 have done worse. So, perhaps, leading the world in dying with the virus might be a better way to put it.

Diane Abbot’s article in Labour Outlook pointed out that, when compared with the death rates in countries with an active covid suppression strategy, the UK has done spectacularly badly.

  • The UK has had a death rate of 2,274 per million.
  • Australia’s death rate is 112 per million.
  • New Zealand, just 10.6.
  • China, a minds bogglingly small 3.47.

In the press here, this is used as evidence that these countries have been quite mad in not letting their people die in numbers comparable to ours, with headlines like “China’s Zero Covid Tyranny” in the Daily Telegraph.

The single minded ferocity of this line is explained by a simple calculation that they really don’t want people to do, or think through.

If you multiply the per million death rate for these countries by 65, for the 65 million people who live in the UK, you get some very startling figures for how many people would have died had we adopted their policies and had a comparable death rate.

  • A comparable death rate to Australia would have meant that 7,280 people would have died here.
  • A comparable death rate to New Zealand would have meant 687 deaths.
  • A comparable death rate to China would have kept deaths to just 226 during the whole pandemic so far.

That looks like this.

So, who has got this right, and who has got it wrong?

This policy, that we have to “live with the virus” means an acceptance that we will continue to die from it in large numbers. It invites us all to participate in a gigantic piece of disavowal: to look straight at the reality that this virus is ten times as deadly and infectious as the flu and continuing to evolve, and pretend that it isn’t.

The Labour and trade union movement – despite the line of the leadership (Wes Streeting’s surreal “plan to live well with Covid”) should resist going along with delusions of a “return to normalcy.” There are always elephants in the room, but with this policy, there will be viruses too.

Its not like flu! Or “Infect them all! God will recognise His own!”

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496
Figures for England and Wales from ONS

This is why the comments from Sajid Javid and others that “We need to learn to live with” the virus because “sadly, people die of flu as well” are so light minded and not comparing like with like.

Javid says that “in a bad flu year you can sadly lose about 20,000 lives but we don’t shut down our entire country and put in place lots of restrictions to deal with it.” In a good flu year, however, you can lose a few hundred, as we can see here.

The worst years for flu are far less lethal than any year we have had so far with Covid.

Given that it is

  • more transmissible
  • more lethal
  • evolving rapidly

there is no reason to believe that the casualty rates “for many, many years, perhaps forever,” will be lower than they have been in recent months, during which the UK has, in Sajid Javid world, been “leading the way in showing the world how you can live with Covid”. Every one of the average of 359 people who have died every day in the last week lies in their graves as a rebuke to this vainglorious cynicism.

The notion of “endemic”, ie ever present, disease that the government presents is that it will be faded into the background, not too serious, predictable and fairly regular. The wild roller coaster of the successive waves we have seen, and will continue to see, is nothing like that. His remark that we will have to continue to employ “measures”, however “sensible, appropriate and proportionate” is a backhanded admission of that.

His comment yesterday in scrapping the Plan B safeguards that “We cannot eradicate this virus” (my emphasis) is an abject admission of failure. The ruling class in the West can no longer even claim to lead humanity.

They can’t eliminate it, because they are not willing to. China keeps managing to do it. Only 2 people died of Covid there last year and they have no intention of following the pressure from the US to abandon their zero Covid policy. If they did, between 3 and 4 million people would die. No doubt Javid would consider that a small price to pay.

The effect of letting the genie back out of the bottle as soon as possible will be seen soon enough. It will slow the downward trajectory in cases, hospitalisations and lead to more people dying than need to. Keir Starmer has called for the data on which this is based to be released. This is beside the point, as the overall data is available. More widely, the pretence that acting as though we are back to normal means that we are back to normal is simply deluded. Labour should break its complicity with this approach, which bakes in permanent crisis from here on.

Dr Strangelove or: How they want us to learn to stop worrying and “live with the virus”.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Conservatives are very keen on war time analogies – “Blitz spirit”, Dunkirk spirit” and all that. But in the war against the virus they are proposing to surrender. This is not their finest hour.

Omicron is still surging. Government figures as of 9/1/22 show cases up 6.6% over the previous week – with over 140,000 cases a day – and hospitalisations up 57.7% – with 2,434 a day.

The 7 day average of deaths is also rising and stood at 182 a day on January 8th. Up from 131 a day on January 1st and continually rising in between. There were 313 deaths on Saturday.

Despite this, the government has announced an end to the need for PCR tests for international travellers and is floating two extraordinarily reckless further measures.

  1. Abandonment of free lateral flow tests
  2. Abandonment of mass vaccinations beyond the third dose.

Dr Clive Dix, the former head of the vaccine task force is arguing that “Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end” and – pinch me if you’ve heard this one before – that we should treat Covid “like flu”. Vaccinations should be restricted to the most vulnerable. So far, so Great Barrington. Deja vu all over again.

The problems with this are obvious.

  1. Covid is not like flu. It is much more lethal and much more transmissable. Allowing it to be “endemic” means accepting significant levels of deaths on a permanent basis.
  2. There is no “long flu”.
  3. Not being able to test will keep the figures down – in a rather Trumpian way – but not reduce the actual infections, simply abandon any attempt to keep track of it. Wealthy people who can afford it will, no doubt, buy tests. The people in low paid jobs who are least able to work from home, the front line workers, people who live in overcrowded conditions, in fact the people most likely to catch it and die from it – will not be able to.
  4. Omicron is not the last variant that will evolve, if it is left to do so.
  5. Vaccine immunity wears off. As does immunity from having had a previous variant. Omicron is already infecting people who are triple jabbed. Keir Starmer is a case in point. If he had a badge for every variant he has contracted, he would have an armful.
  6. Having no further vaccines, when vaccines are the primary line of defence being set by the government, means abandoning the line of defence.
  7. The Health Service is already under massive pressure with one in ten workers off work around New Year, more than 20 hospitals declaring critical incidents and 27,000 resignations between July and September last year alone.

Put simply, this approach means that we – and the NHS -are being thrown to the wolves by the sort of eugenicists who thought at the beginning of the pandemic that culling the elderly and vulnerable would be a stimulant to the economy (and no doubt still do).

Now the UK has had 150,000 deaths from this virus, this is no time to abandon the struggle against it. An active virus suppression strategy in China kept Covid deaths there to just two (TWO!!!) last year. Of course, if you listen to the BBC – or worse – this is clear evidence that the Chinese are mad; which makes you wonder just how sane we think we are.

This should be called out and firmly opposed by Labour and the trade unions. We need to be fighting for a zero Covid strategy.

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Zero Covid strategy works and saves lives.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

As the Omicron variant is forcing even the UK government to stop trying to pretend that its all over bar the shouting – and a weary populace starts to realise that “living with the virus” means living with it (and dying from it) forever – its worth looking at what happens when a country takes serious steps to eliminate the virus and contrast it with what’s happened here.

China has had a Zero Covid approach since the beginning and effectively eliminated domestic community transmission by summer 2020. As a result China’s total deaths per million to date are just 3.47. It can barely be seen on the graph. By contrast the UK has lost 2,179 people per million and the USA 2,409 people per million.

To put this more strongly, had China approached this pandemic with the same mix of business oriented fatalism spiced with lashing of denial that we have seen in the USA, and people had died at the same rate, their total deaths would not have been 4849 but 3, 372, 600. (per million death rate of 2409 X 1400, as China’s population is 1.4 billion).

Conversely, had the UK applied a Zero Covid strategy with the same effectiveness as China, we’d have lost just 226 people in the whole pandemic! (Per million death rate of 3.47 X 65, as the UK population is 65 million).

It is an absolute scandal that this is not drawn out by the media debate.

Check out the Zero Covid coalition and the Zero Covid campaign for more information and forthcoming initiatives.

Figures all from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

An argument with Auntie over Zero Covid.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This one will run and run. A second reply that dodges the question of why they just don’t deal with why the per capita death rate here is so awful compared with China and why they instead put the whole issue in the framework of an inevitable drift into living with (and dying from) the virus forever.

My complaint to the BBC on 26 October

A small outbreak of COVID in China was used by your presenter and guest as an opportunity to sneer at China’s Zero Covid policy and to simply assume (not argue) that “Covid is here to stay”. As the application of this policy has kept deaths in China below 5,000 – and, had they applied the same approach as that of the USA they’d have lost 2.7 million people and, had they been as lackadaisical, callous and incompetent as our government it would have been worse – you’d think that they’d be entitled to a bit more respect and – perhaps – we might have something to learn from them if we are not to be in this mess forever.

Their reply

Thank you for contacting us regarding The World Tonight, broadcast 25 October on BBC Radio 4.

Having reviewed the broadcast, Ritula Shah was speaking to Dr Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, after raised concerns over China’s ability to maintain its zero-tolerance approach to the virus, due to a recent surge in infections causing the postponement of the Beijing Marathon.

During the interview she asked Dr Huang about how China would be able to keep up with this approach coming up to the 2022 Beijing Olympics and whether there, “is there any kind of internal discussion going on about the possibility of accepting that covid is here to stay, and lifting restrictions in the way that Australia and New Zealand have began to do?”

In the case of some interviews it is often understood by audiences that the interviewer will play “devil’s advocate” in order to pursue a line of enquiry with an interviewee.

It is important to recognise that a fundamental part of Ritula’s role is to offer analysis, using her experience and knowledge, but this is not indicative of bias.

Please be assured that BBC journalists seek out information and strive to present it accurately, clearly and objectively, we would never intend to mislead our audience, but we appreciate that you feel that we got it wrong on this occasion.

We do value your feedback about this. All complaints are sent to senior management and we’ve included your points in our overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the company and ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.

My reply to them

Thank you for your reply, which I take to be written in a spirit of post modern irony. An argument as a Devil’s Advocate is usually introduced when there is a cosy unquestioned consensus that is sorely in need of a challenge. In the interview, the dominant narrative in the West that COVID is here to stay and we just have to live (and die) with it was taken as read by both interviewer and interviewee. In fact Dr Huang expressed some incredulity that China insists on hospitalising “even mild cases”. Because, as we know, no one with a mild case has never known to infect anyone else with a severe or lethal case. It is this somnambulist and perverse presumption that constitutes the bias. May I suggest that Ritula, or one of your other presenters, tries out the following question on the next Minister who appears trotting out this complacent fatalism. “You say we have to live with the virus. The Chinese have a different approach and have kept deaths down below 5,000. We are currently losing that many every five weeks. Why have we got it so wrong?” This could be done sincerely, or as a Devil’s Advocate, or just in the Laurentian spirit of kicking over the apple cart to see which way the apples roll.

Their reply to me.

We reviewed this again and are confident that Ritula asked the questions most likely in the mind of the listener, and relevent to the context of the Winter Olympics.

Given the rise in cases and China’s zero tolerance policy – which had led to the postponement of the Bejjng marathon – the point was made as to if this tough stance could be maintained when there will be an influx of athletes from all over the world for the 2022 Winter Olympics in a few month’s time.

The exact quote you reference wasn’t so much an assumption but a question, “Is there any kind of internal discussion going on about the possibility of accepting Covid is here to stay, and lifting restrictions in the way that Australia and New Zealand have begun to do?”

It was reasonable to explore China’s zero tolerance approach and whether there would be movement on it – such as we’ve seen in other countries with a zero tolerance approach – so that the Games go ahead.

My reply to them (20 December).

The question that Ritala asked contained the assumption that we should all be bothered about – that China’s “tough stance” on covid might be unsustainable and that the sensible thing should surely be to relax it. That was also transmitted in the tone of the question and discussion, which exuded a sense of wonder that the Chinese should be so stubborn as to prioritise public health over business as usual. That is very much the Western paradigm and is now coming back to bite us with Omicron – and who knows what will come next if we don’t emulate what China has done and go for active suppression.

While it may be legitimate to question any policy anywhere, I have heard no comparable grilling of Western politicians as to why our death rates are so bloody awful compared with China’s. The way you frame your questions and reports has a lot to do with how listeners are nudged to think.

Just to update you on the stats.

–If China had had a per million death rate comparable to the USA, they’d have lost over 3.3 million people (instead of 4,800).

Had the UK had as successful a covid suppression strategy as China, and had a comparable per million death rate (3.47 per million) we’d have lost just 226 people in the whole pandemic (and be pretty much opened up by now).

Do the maths yourself if you like. 3.47 X 65. Startling isn’t it?

Why isn’t this being put to the insouciant, lackadaisical, amateurish buffoons who are in charge? THAT is the question I’d like answered.

Thank you.

Good News and Bad News. Impact of Schools Reopening Week 4.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

There is good news (with a caveat) on the rate of infection in the three areas I am monitoring this week. 
All have declined, with the overall suppressive impact of the wider social lockdown combining with mass vaccination to counteract the upward pressure from schools being open en masse. 

While this is very welcome, the effect in all three places taken together is that infection rates are now only a little below the level they were when schools reopened. This is also true nationally. 


The comparison with an extrapolation of the previous trend shows how this has missed a golden opportunity to bear down on the virus to near extinction point. 


The impact of schools reopening can be seen in the higher rate of infections for school age cohorts than any others – explained very clearly here by the NEU. 

The next two weeks, with schools on Easter break, will reduce that upward pressure.


These are therefore the last weeks in which the reopening of schools is the main upward driver of infections, before the loosening of restrictions from April 6th begins to have an effect from about April 20th onwards – and the scheduled further loosening on April 12th kicks in from about April 28th. 

The government calculation is that a wide enough vaccination roll out will reduce hospitalisations and death enough to be able to reopen on a far wider scale and get away with “living with the virus.”

The attempt to live with the virus in the absence of a high enough mass vaccination rate can be seen in Brazil; where Bolsonaro’s Bossa Nova is an unambiguous dance of death.

A reliance on mass vaccination as a single line of defence depends on the virus not evolving any variants that resist the vaccines. If it does, all countries that have not carried out a zero covid strategy will be back in the morass.

Impact of school reopening on Covid infection after three weeks.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The only way is up?


This week’s figures from the NEU Covid map for the local authority areas around my three exemplar primary schools show an acceleration of the trend that was already apparent barely a week into schools reopening. The rate of infection per 100,000 is increasing in all of them. With just under another week to go to the Easter break, we can expect this to continue; before the impact of that break would briefly take it down again if no other measures are taken to ease restrictions. 


If the government sticks with dates over data and relaxes further restrictions on Monday (29 March) we can expect two weeks or so in which infection rates overall will still be primarily affected by the schools being open. After which the impact will be combined.


None of these measures wll reduce infection rates. Stay as we are and they will rise. Open up further and they will rise more quickly.


The government is gambling that the vaccine roll out will sufficiently reduce hospitalisations and deaths that the increase in infections can be ridden out; and Chris Whitty has argued this week that a zero covid policy is impossible, but that we should be aiming to keep it as low as possible. 


There are a number of problems with this.

  1. A lot of serious scientists disagree with Prof Whitty on zero covid, as you can see here.
  2. The difficulty of keepng track of covid is very different problem when infections have been brought down to a very low level. While it can be assumed that there will be undetected cases out there – if there is an efficient test and trace system every newly identified case can be back tracked to prior contacts, who can then be tested and isolated as required. This has worked very effectively in South Korea, where they have had fewer infectyions than we have had deaths. Had schools been kept mostly shut until the end of the Easter holidays and all the other restrictions kept on, we’d have been at a low enough level to keep a lid on things. A few hundred a day. Having opened up – we won’t be. 
  3. So Whitty’s fatalism gives the government carte blanche and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. 

The wider consequences of a world in which the virus is a permanent feature are incompatible with going “back to normal” – or status quo ante virus – let alone building back better. If we accept that the genie is out of the bottle and can’t be got back in for large parts of the world, including us, a number of things follow. 

  1. Those parts of the world that have suppressed it – and don’t want to let it back in – will have continued border controls/quarantine indefinitely. They will also be able to have a more social society than those that have not and their economies will also grow relatively strongly. At present that is a large minority of the world, with China by far the largest component, but also includes Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.
  2. Those countries trying to “live with” the virus will be in a constant state of evolutionary struggle with it, as it mutates; necessarily becoming more infectious and vaccine resistant as it does. The bottom-line strategy of taking restrictive measures to stop health services being overwhelmed combined with a permanent cycle of mass innoculations is therefore a permanent prospect, as is a built in and residual popular caution – which will feed in to social behaviour and limit cultural and economic possibilities. An alternative scenario – that is not mutually exclusive – is that the Bulldog Drummond tendency gets its way and we let it all hang out in a last days in Nazi Berlin hedonistic frenzy (roaring twenties) in which a load of people die all at once and we go with the survival of the fittest. Either way, there is no quick fix and the next pandemic could be on us before we’ve cleaned up this one – just as the rate of natural disasters caused by climate breakdown will accelerate and intensify and overlap from here on.
  3. Viruses can be eliminated. Polio. Smallpox. Therefore, should be. Like climate change, the consequences of not dealing with it are far worse than doing so. One strategy for so doing was set out very well by Devi Shridar in her recent New Statesman article. 
  1. The economic motivation for what the government is doing is well developed here. The popular view of “the economy” is that the ruling class operates it in a Benthamite spirit, primarily concerned with use values and the “greatest happiness of the greatest number”. In practice everything is subordinated to profit; and, in this crisis, some sectors have done spectacularly badly – hospitality, culture, mass tourism, others have done very well, online retail, pensions insurance; and the balance of forces between the classes has definitely shifted the wrong way and the stock market has boomed.  They are not letting a good crisis go to waste.
  1. Labour’s policy is a classic exercise in what Gramsci would have called corporate politics. Manoeuvring within the framework of your opponent. It helps consolidate the government’s position – because when they do become critical it comes across as churlish. Starmer seems less interested in winning than being a safe opposition on the off chance of being allowed into office as the fall-back option for the powers that be.

UK Daily Covid Death Rate as bad as that of World War 2.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

As Boris Johnson loves his World War 2 references, those who argue that the coronavirus crisis is not a big deal – an argument quite painful to those of us who have lost friends or relatives to it – or that the UK government has done a good job in containing it, so we should all rally round them – should consider the following.

There have been 117,000 deaths since January 31st last year in 380 days; giving a daily death rate of 308.

There were 449,700 total UK casualties in the 2,190 days of World War 2; giving a daily death rate of 205.

The comparison looks like this.

So, in absolute absolute figures the Covid death rate is a third worse than that of WW2

Update 17/2/21

It has been pointed out that, if you take account of the increase in the UK population since the 1940s, the daily death rate per capita of those killed by Covid is about the same as all those killed by the Wehrmacht and Imperial Japanese armed forces between 1939 and 1945. It should not need saying that this is a pretty grim benchmark that no government should congratulate itself for presiding over.

It should also be stressed that British casualties per head of population in WW2 were low by comparison with other countries, just under 1% of the total, compared with 3-4% in China and 13% in the Soviet Union; while and our death rate from COVID is the third worst in the world. (1)

To stop this going on and on and on, we need a zero covid strategy to finish the job.

Check out https://www.facebook.com/ZeroCovidCoalition/

1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

Labour – follow the science and support Zero Covid.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

100,000 now dead. One of the highest totals in the world. Still in the thick of it.

There is a certain sort of Tory who is either in denial about the severity of Coronavirus, or who sees it as an invigorating social Darwinist challenge that will make our society leaner and fitter as part of the bracing new Brexit Britain by killing off the unproductive elderly; or anyone in the workforce with the sort of “underlying conditions” which might require them to claim sick pay from time to time.

Even as the winter wave and new more infectious variants were forcing the government into a far stricter lockdown last week to sustain their bottom line – avoiding a collapse in the Health Service that could prove fatal to them too – a member of the “COVID Recovery Group” of back bench Tory MPs raged in the Evening Standard about Education Secretary. “Gavin Williamson’s saving grace is that he wanted schools to stay open but he was crushed by the Health Department and Cabinet Office. If he had more clout he could have told Health to f*** off.”

Telling Health to “f*** off” indeed.

SAGE told the government before New Year that – with the new infectious variant – it would be impossible to keep the R rate below 1 unless schools were shut. They nevertheless pressed on regardless until slightly beyond the last minute; closing most schools down a day after they had partially reopened. However, unlike in the Spring, they have kept Nurseries open, and initially widened the essential worker list so that more kids could come in. Trying to accelerate even as they were pressing on the brake. The effect was that three or four times as many were in by the end of the first week back; requiring another screeching u turn to get the number down again. With a more infectious virus, and looser restrictions than in the Spring, the trajectory of infections is unlikely to come down rapidly, even if the vaccination programme hits its targets.

This illustrates why Boris Johnson’s Tory government is presiding over a health and economic disaster. Influenced by the sort of libertarian, economy first thinking that sees human life in instrumental terms – and makes a hard nosed calculation that those likely to die are disproportionately not people like them, which allows them to use phrases like “take it on the chin” with a certain devil may care insouciance – they have sought to “balance” economic concerns with health concerns. No such balance is possible. Attempts to reopen the economy before the virus is eliminated can’t fire on all cylinders even before the virus gets back out there and starts spreading wildly again. So we have a sort of macabre hokey cokey approach which prolongs the crisis on all fronts.

Its hard to imagine a Labour government doing half as badly, or being give a tenth as much indulgence – either by the media or the opposition.

Tony Blair – who is advising Matt Hancock – made several comments this week in the Evening Standard which are both revealing and characteristically ignore the fundamentals. He simultaneously drops the bombshell that on current polices it will take “two or three years” to deal with the pandemic – TWO OR THREE YEARS – notes that the UK government has been “behind the curve” every step of the way, then lets Johnson off the hook; arguing that “no government” has done any better. Really? New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, China? All these countries have had a COVID elimination strategy; and it has worked. All are now fully active societies with recovering economies. Hard to imagine from here right now, but its never too late to do the right – effective – thing.

The charge sheet against Johnson is plain. Failure to

  • lock down early when they knew what was coming,
  • shut off air travel from well heeled business travelers,
  • use the potential for social mobilisation shown in the rapid growth of local mutual self help groups,
  • set up an effective track and trace system; outsourcing it to SERCO rather than using GPs and local authorities,
  • and, most damning, failure to press on with the initial lock down to the point that infections were so low and rare that an effective track and trace system could have squashed any further outbreaks.

Projections of the decline in infections in mid May indicated that – other things being equal – sticking with the restrictions in the first lockdown could have eliminated domestic infections at some point in June. Instead they thought they could “manage” the situation and “live with” the virus; started lifting the restrictions and allowed the genie back out of the bottle; with the results that are all around us.

At the moment their approach seems to be a variant on the Great Barrington Declaration. They aim to vaccinate the most vulnerable, then remove restrictions to allow the rest of us to take our chances while explicitly ruling out an elimination strategy. Given that vaccination and having had the virus only confers a certain immunity for a limited time – 5 to 6 months – and vaccinating the entire population will take longer than that, the problem is obvious. This inevitably means that the virus will continue to evolve – probably to be more infectious than it currently is – because that’s how evolution works – unless it is eliminated.

Labour’s policy throughout has been defined by a search for “national consensus”, which has taken the form of tactical criticism on points of detail, but no alternative strategy. At points Keir Starmer was pressing the government from the wrong side, flagging up an “exit strategy” as the key issue during the first lockdown – rather than an “elimination strategy” within which “exit” would have been implicit – and for schools to open before it was safe to do so. This is in contrast with the approach of the teaching unions – especially the NEU – which have followed the science and put health first. Thousands of Section 44 safety letters generated from a 400,000 strong NEU meeting on the last day of the Xmas break will have helped nudge the government in the right direction. Slightly stronger calls from the front bench now are being driven by just how bad things are getting, but are too often phrased hesitantly. Nurseries should “probably” close, and so on.

This approach helps explain why a recent YouGov Poll showed that far more people blame each other than blame the government. This is absurd. An overwhelming majority of people both support and comply with restrictions brought in to stop infections. Despite mixed messages from the top and the campaigning of anti-lockdown head bangers like Nigel Farage, very, very few are breaking them lightly or rashly. Put bluntly, Boris Johnson is getting away with it – and persisting with a strategy that will cost many, many avoidable deaths – because the opposition is not pushing for the Zero COVID strategy we need to avoid them.

This Zero Covid rally at noon on Sunday 24th January should be built as widely as possible.

Confirmed Speakers:

Diane Abbott MP

Howard Beckett , Unite the Union

Richard Burgon MP

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet.

Rokhsana Fiaz , Mayor of Newham

Along with other leading scientists, campaigners and activists to be announced!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stopping-the-virus-it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way-tickets-136004337635

This is a possible motion that could be put to CLPs.

Draft Resolution for GC

XXXX CLP recognises that 

  1. The evolution of a more infectious variant of the COVID19 virus is leading to a rapid increase in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
  2. The government’s approach has led to one of the highest per capita death toll among the larger countries.  The objective of prioritising the economy has also been completely counter-productive as 900,000 people have already lost their jobs and international bodies such as the IMF and OECD forecast Britain will have one of the deepest recessions of any major economy.
  3. the governments approach is exactly the opposite of that needed; which is to drive down infections to the point that they can be controlled and managed until the virus is eliminated, which has been achieved in a number of other countries.

We welcome the deployment of vaccines as a way to speed up this elimination, but it is clear that the government has already mishandled the roll-out and its vaccination programme is not going to prevent new cases and deaths for weeks or months.
We believe that the Party nationally – and the front bench in Parliament – should be calling for a zero COVID strategy – designed to eliminate the virus. ​
That requires

  1. A serious lockdown to squash transmission to a point that the virus can be eliminated, the closure of all non-essential workplaces, schools, colleges and universities.
  2. Full economic support for everyone affected.
  3. Overhauling test and trace through the Health Service and Local Authorities so that it actually works, and full financial support for those in isolation.
  4. An economic recovery plan to regenerate the economy that also transforms it by investing in green transition on the scale proposed by the TUC – which could create 1.2 million jobs, stave off a recession and avert poverty.

Resolves 

  • to send this resolution to our NEC representatives and appropriate Shadow Minsters and circulate members.
  • to investigate Zero Covid initiatives and discuss them at the next EC.