Commentary: Looks like the UK is surrendering to COVID-19, not living with it
LONDON: Unhook your mask! Hark the virus-laden thanks! Monday (Jul 19) is Freedom Day, when England lifts coronavirus restrictions in the face of soaring transmission.
Infections now run at 54,000 new cases daily. Still, businesses can throw open their doors. Mask mandates are out and the legal requirements for social distancing binned.
The government, which says a summertime surge in illness is meliorate than a wintertime 1, insists we must learn to live with the virus and is offloading responsibleness for managing the pandemic on to individuals and businesses.
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A WHITE FLAG OF Surrender
In truth Mon is Surrender Solar day every bit England waves a white flag to the virus and embarks on a strategy of mass infection.
In a letter to the Lancet medical journal, more than 100 doctors and scientists condemned the "dangerous and unethical experiment".
Virologists told the Financial Times it was a recipe for disaster, while Mike Ryan of the Earth Health Organization said the approach showed "moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity".
Lifting restrictions ignores the clinically extremely vulnerable, who either cannot exist vaccinated or for whom vaccines work less well. An estimated 3.8m must now shield for their own prophylactic.
Their children, ineligible for immunisation despite an approved vaccine for over-12s, chance bringing home the rampant Delta variant if they nourish school. The restoration of freedoms for some will stop theirs.
A MISUNDERSTANDING OF Science
This hazard is exacerbated by the government's determination to make masks a thing of personal responsibility. This is a misunderstanding of the science.
Face coverings cut the corporeality of aerosolised virus expelled by an infected wearer, besides as cutting the amount inhaled by other wearers. My choice to mask up (or not) influences your risk; your decision shapes mine.
Workers reliant on public transport must at present bear the risk of other people'due south choices. Sensibly, the Mayor of London has intervened to keep masks compulsory on London's transport network; they also remain in Wales and Scotland.
The all-or-nothing framing of "diktat versus freedom" is undermining social solidarity and promoting bad pandemic decision-making, argues John Coggon, a constabulary professor and ideals commentator from Bristol academy: "We cannot and will non get by either with a view of outright legal governance or outright individual freedom."
The thought that freedom means allowing our mouths and nostrils to emit at will, fifty-fifty on rush-hour ship, is an amazing loss of perspective during a pandemic acquired by an airborne disease.
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Ane VACCINATION BASKET
All eggs are now in the vaccination basket: By Jul sixteen, about 35 one thousand thousand were fully vaccinated in the UK; a farther 11 meg had had first doses.
The jabs are cutting, but non eliminating, hospitalisations and deaths. The Us is not at herd immunity and infections will rise among the unvaccinated young.
Though less severely afflicted by COVID-19, exponential spread means minor percentages can quickly scale into large absolute numbers. Under-50s hospitalised with COVID-nineteen are left with organ damage virtually as often as older patients.
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The UK government urges Englanders to be costless just cautious, a mixed bulletin compounded past the prime government minister and chancellor'southward self-isolation debacle. Information technology is asking the public to avoid flexing the very liberties that take been so performatively handed back.
As with speed limits and seat belts, ministers should take responsibleness and ready rules. Israel and the Netherlands reimposed restrictions after taking the same premature path to freedom.
Mass infection risks swamping hospitals, decimating workforces, sickening the immature and weak, and creating vaccine-resistant variants — all of which could lead to further lockdowns and, ultimately, less freedom. This is not learning to alive with COVID-nineteen but caving in to it.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/commentary-looks-uk-surrendering-covid-19-not-living-it-284046
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