‘Living with Covid’ – a reckless strategy that ignores every lesson of the pandemic
“LIVING with Covid.” The government presents its plans to scrap remaining restrictions, withdraw free tests and end isolation requirements for those testing positive as inevitable.
Covid is endemic now, the vaccine rollouts have given the population a high degree of protection from it.
We can’t hide from the virus forever.
The government’s strategy relies on setting up a straw man — endless limits on social interaction — and knocking it down.
It’s done it before. Freedom day! The worst is over, the sunlit uplands await.
Except they don’t. Boris Johnson’s approach is criminally reckless.
It ignores everything we could have learned from the experience of Covid in this country and others over the past two years, which is unsurprising, since the Conservatives have never acknowledged that Britain’s death toll is among the highest in the world and how that reflects on their handling of the pandemic.
It leaves us vulnerable.
The disabled and those with conditions that mean they need to shield, first of all. Many are already registering their worry at the removal of isolation requirements on people who test positive unless they feel ill when it has been obvious from the very start that this is a virus that affects people differently, with mild or nonexistent symptoms in one person no guarantee that they will not infect others who are not so lucky.
They point out, rightly, that the withdrawal of free testing is a tax on care that acts as an extra financial hurdle for poor families wishing to visit vulnerable relatives.
But it is not just medically vulnerable people who are exposed. We all are.
Because the pandemic isn’t over. It is true that the recent infections peak did not result in a spike in deaths comparable with earlier waves.
That is partly due to mass vaccination.
It may also be because omicron, while even more infectious than previous strains like delta, had milder effects: this is disputed.
What is clear is that the omicron variant was easily able to infect people who had been fully vaccinated and people who had previously had Covid.
The evolution of future variants able to infiltrate our vaccine defences in this way is guaranteed, not least because the same government that now wants to lift all restrictions has played a leading role in blocking a vaccine patent waiver that would help inoculate poorer countries.
As a result, Covid continues to spread across large parts of the world and continues to mutate. There is no reason to rule out the evolution of a strain as infectious as omicron that is simultaneously as lethal as delta.
This is not an argument for endless restrictions. Rather, it makes the case for the kind of measures that would actually allow our society to “live with Covid.”
A more resilient, better staffed health service for one. Which means addressing rock-bottom morale through recognition of health workers’ efforts in the form of a real pay rise.
Better workers’ rights for another. All workers should have access to proper sick pay from day one of illness, or poverty will keep infectious people at work and feed new waves of infection.
And public services designed to meet human needs rather than channel public money into private pockets.
The Prime Minister complains that Covid tests are costing too much: but this government has lavished billions on incompetent private-sector provision of health contracts, billions that could be kept in house to deliver better services and better pay.
Britain’s appalling death rate, the disproportionate impact of the virus on ethnic minorities and working-class people, point to deep long-term inequalities that are getting worse.
For many people, addressing those inequalities will make the difference between living with Covid and dying with it. The pandemic has made a case for radical change.
