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Two weeks ago, when the clamour for Plan B was at its zenith, Europe was held up as an example of what could be achieved with “modest” restrictions. The case is not particularly strong for either. Those who support vaccine passports and mandatory masks should argue for them on their own terms rather than threaten us with implausible lockdowns if we don’t adopt them. We need to get away from the 2020 mentality of assuming that a rise in cases will continue inexorably, just as we should not expect a fall in cases to continue for weeks on end, as previous declines did under lockdown. The phrase “if current trends continue” is a red flag in economic forecasting and should be treated with the same scepticism in Covid modelling. The logic of exponential growth served modellers well last year, but immunity delivered by vaccines and infection have made mathematical formulas redundant. If the summer and autumn surges help to “flatten the curve” over winter, we may look back on them as a blessing in disguise. The logical conclusion to be drawn from Whitty’s motto is that we no longer have an epidemic – rather, we have an endemic virus that everybody will catch sooner or later, possibly more than once. Rates have gone up and down in defiance of Sage's projections, for reasons that nobody fully understands. Since July, Covid in the UK has done neither. Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, is fond of saying that epidemics are either doubling or halving. It is true that if the recent rise in hospitalisations continues throughout the winter, Covid will put the NHS under intolerable pressure. We cannot make a habit of staying home to protect the NHS. It is almost certain that the NHS will be in crisis this winter, as it is every year, but it will not be the public’s fault. A quarter of these people are not even being primarily treated for Covid-19 and there are fewer people with Covid in mechanical ventilation beds than there were at the end of August. One answer is hospital capacity, but while the number of people with Covid in English hospitals has risen from around 5,000 at the end of July to 7,000 today, it is a far cry from the 14,000 last November, let alone the peak of 34,000 recorded in January. If the government didn’t go to Plan B in July, why should it go there now? Moreover, the number of new cases is lower than it was on Freedom Day. This didn’t happen without lockdowns last year. “Waiting and watching just doesn’t work with Covid,” she says, “as we have learned repeatedly over the past 22 months.” But are the last ten months really comparable with the 12 before them? Cases are falling in England and this is the fifth time they have been on a downward trajectory since “Freedom Day” in July.
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