11th January 2021 – Covid Variant, Rising Cases and Panic in the UK. What’s Going On?

As of late December, early January, it’s hard to tell what’s going on in the UK’s pandemic; has something changed?

We know that the rate of hospitalisations has increased, which is the cause of the third national lockdown.

We know that the NHS has around 7000 fewer beds compared with this time last year so bed capacity is much lower than in the ideal world.

We know that a more infectious variant of Covid is spreading rapidly and that NHS front-line staff are stretched again.

So why are there large numbers of people presenting at hospital with Covid?  Who are these (by definition) vulnerable people?

Have the vulnerable failed to appreciate they need to shield until effectively vaccinated and relaxed their guard too much?

Well, we also know that December, January & February are the peak months for respiratory infections and that since the autumn people have relaxed their guards, plus schools and colleges restarted.  All of which leads to increasing transmission, heading into the peak months.

Is the Covid variant impacting a wider demographic than the original virus; so is more dangerous?

Is the NHS’ battered condition and reduced bed count simply unable to cope?

What’s actually happened?

Unfortunately you won’t get a straight answer from a politician and the government’s scientists aren’t currently providing an explanation either.  They’re all panicking about the stress on the NHS and threatening draconian penalties on everyone, because it’s all our fault. Really.

It appears the hospitalisation rate is higher than before, which suggests the Covid variant has a more serious impact on a wider demographic.  This would be the Sod’s Law, Worst Case Scenario.  Whether this translates into higher death rates, we’ll have to wait a few more weeks to find out.  The government’s current panic could be interpreted to reflect their knowledge that the variant is more dangerous, but they are not prepared to admit this publically.  It’s easier to ramp up the fear factor to try and dampen down the infection rate… of a more highly infectious virus…which doesn’t appear to be working. Oh dear.

Unfortunately the government and NHS have failed to boost capacity, which is very disappointing. I’m sure there are many reasons to explain this; however, an efficient and effective organisation would be expected to boost capacity.  I seem to remember that NHS staff haven’t had a pay cut, unlike other public sector workers, which is something I’m sure the NHS staff will be really, really pleased about.  The staff have not seen much, if anything, of the £300-400 Billion spent on supporting the rest of the economy; no extra pay, or significant, game-changing resources.  Why is this?

What a different world it would be if the elderly and medically vulnerable had been supported properly from the beginning of the pandemic.  Had this been done, the UK would not have had the large number of deaths and would not have an over-stretched NHS, because these people would not be getting infected, in the first place.  The current approach started off with the wrong priority of protecting the NHS, when in fact the emphasis should have been on preventing the vulnerable from needing the NHS, in the first place.  This is something officialdom appears to have no concept of?

The absolute Worst Case Scenario may be incubating as I write this; the vaccine efficiency turns out to be less than with the original virus, restrictions are relaxed only for a new wave to kick-off further decimating the vulnerable, which may be a much wider demographic than in 2020.  In this scenario, 2021 could be worse than 2020, particularly if the government returns to the sledge hammer approach of lockdowns, rather than preventing the vulnerable from getting infected.  Oh dear.

I’m off to Sweden.

Again.

March 2021: Here's an interesting read on behind the scenes in the UK government during 2020: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56361599