If you’re reading this in the UK, chances are you’ve had a coronavirus so far: 7 out of 10 of us have watched the dreaded red line appear. You may have stayed in bed with him two or even three times so far; by April 2022, almost 900,000 re-infections had been reported in England alone. When the public asked to return to “normal,” I’m not sure they meant a regular hacking cough.
This is a strange situation. Covid infections were reported to have increased by 43% last week, while hospitalization by the virus has increased by 23%. Approximately 1.7 million people in the United Kingdom tested positive during those seven days. Two million of us already have long Covid, and about two out of five – or 826,000 – have had symptoms for at least a year.
Still, listen to Boris Johnson or his ministers and you will be forgiven if you think none of this is really happening. As a new wave of coronavirus threatens to strike the country again, the government seems more interested in abolishing human rights than in protecting human lives. Welcome to the sick Britain: where the public is left to catch the coronavirus repeatedly, and ministers pretend that everything is fine.
As early as February, Johnson said the government had devised a plan to start “living with Covid,” but what it really did was devise a plan to capture and distribute Covid. After all coronavirus prevention measures were lifted on April 1 – from the legal obligation to isolate, if you have Covid, to the end of most free tests – the public was left wide open to mass infection. Ministers even told hospitals to give up mask mandates, although some worried trusts opposed the rules and complied with them. The fact that all precautions were lifted just as most people’s immunity began to fade and the virus evolved to be more transmissible suggests a hint at how little logic ministers are applying.
One of the biggest problems facing Britain’s attempts to suppress the virus is that this government doesn’t really want to. There is hope – the number of people dying from Covid has dropped from its peak – but the excessive focus on this has long obscured the fact that loss of life has never been the only thing that matters: how many people are infected with the virus. meaning. A strategy that allows the virus to penetrate the population increases the risk we all face, whether from peaks, new dangerous variants, or the development of long-term Covid. In essence, this means accepting a reality in which it is considered normal for many of us to be (probably severely) sick with a virus whose long-term effects – and the effects of repeated re-infection – we still know little about.
The likely long-term impact on the economy and society is just as bleak. This means more pressure on the NHS, which is already squeaking under the weight of accumulated cases. This means sick leave in key sectors and front-line workers, from nurses to teachers. Children miss more school. Not to mention the rising social security bills of long-suffering Covid patients who are too ill to work (the government’s decision seems to be to deny them disability benefits).
However, there will be slightly larger casualties than the 3.7 million clinically extremely vulnerable people, especially the 500,000 who are immunocompromised and cannot benefit much or no benefit from a booster. Trying to avoid the virus in a country that has missed all safety precautions means risking your life when you go shopping. Ministers, pleased that the recurrent coronavirus infection will simply become part of British life, are pleased that isolation is part of the clinically vulnerable.
There is an alternative. Campaigners are calling on the government to reinstate free side-flow tests, the isolation requirement for those with a positive test, and financial assistance, such as sick pay – few rational votes might disagree. Adjusting our heavy hospital rates is only becoming more urgent in the face of the cost of living crisis, which means that low-paid and insecure workers are likely to feel obligated to work when they have Covid. We also need to start a long-term investment in ventilation and air filtration, which can help make schools and workplaces safer, as well as make life-saving antiviral treatment more accessible to clinically vulnerable patients.
It is also time for a renewed public health campaign for boosters; as of this month, about one-fifth of people aged 75 and over in England have not yet received a fourth Covid prick. And as difficult as it is, wearing masks in busy and enclosed spaces is again the right thing to do; just under half of Britons (48%) reported wearing face cover when they were away from home last month, up from around 95% during the January Omicron wave.
After two long, difficult years, no one still wants to deal with the coronavirus. I do not want to write this column. But unless we want to register for multiple illnesses in the foreseeable future and for the risk of long-term damage from long-term Covid, we will need to return protective measures with low effort to limit it. A recent public health campaign in Ireland, which encourages people to think of clinically vulnerable people in their daily interactions, shows how easy it is to do things differently.
The government may want to stop thinking about the coronavirus, but in doing so it ensures that we all have to think about it for a long time to come. This is something that will surely make us all sick quickly.
Francis Ryan is a Guardian columnist
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