‘Plague island’ wasn’t so reckless after all
TThere is no reason for the UK to follow Europe down the path of increasingly draconian measures
As the Continent heads for a ‘serious emergency’, it’s clear its supposedly mitigating measures have not worked
he hills are not alive with the sound of music in Austria, where the authorities this week took the quite extraordinary step of locking down the unvaccinated before deciding to shut down the Alpine country altogether.
An entire nation von Trapped all over again – 20 months on from the first coronavirus case being confirmed there in February 2020, amid unconfirmed reports of corpses being stored in overcrowded hospital corridors. The Austrian chancellor has also announced deeply authoritarian plans to make it a legal requirement to get vaccinated against Covid by next year.
Swathes of the rest of Europe are also getting tough in a bid to tackle a fourth wave with yet more restrictions – even though the need to do so suggests that the restrictions didn’t work well enough in the first place.
Warning that “unspecified” rules would be introduced in some of Germany’s worst-hit states, Chancellor Angela Merkel set the tone for the Continent on Thursday as she dramatically declared: “It is absolutely time to act.”
She announced that the unvaccinated would be stopped from visiting bars, restaurants and theatres if hospitalisation rates got too high. This is happening as hospitals in Bavaria come under so much pressure that patients are having to be transferred to neighbouring countries for treatment.
The problem is even more acute in parts of Eastern Europe, where endemic corruption has led to a distrust in the medical system that makes concerns about the PPE contracts awarded to Matt Hancock’s pub landlord look piffling by comparison.
All of which make Britain appear rather less of a basket case than the world has been making out.
Since the summer, the UK has been condemned internationally as “plague island”.
The New York Times trashed Freedom Day, arguing that it was “too soon to declare victory”. Overcautious Americans from Democratic states have tiptoed over the Pond with trepidation since travel has been allowed again, nervous about Britain’s apparent sense of Covid carelessness.
Meanwhile, our fellow Europeans have treated us like a petri-dish of coronavirus infection, ever since we ditched mandatory measures.
At one point over the summer, British travellers to countries like Croatia found themselves singled out – and asked to take an extra Covid test, along with travellers from Russia, where only 35 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, and tourists from India, where the rate is just 28 per cent.
Yet without wishing to sound complacent, which would be foolish given that UK infections are still among the highest in Europe, it now seems that Britain wasn’t quite so reckless after all to embrace freedom over the summer.
Rather than mandating scientifically questionable measures like face-masks, we have followed the actual science of inoculation – vaccinations such as the Oxford Astrazeneca jab that Angela Merkel initially refused to take after the German authorities had declined to approve it for those over 65. Remember the reputational damage French president Emmanuel Macron sought to inflict on the jab by deeming it only “quasi-effective” for older people?
The figures, however, speak for themselves. A study by the UK Health Security Agency this week found that at least 20 weeks after being fully vaccinated with two doses of the Astrazeneca jab, vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease was
44 per cent, while two weeks after receiving the booster dose, protection against symptomatic infection increased to 93 per cent.
There appears to be a common theme running through the countries that are now toying with the idea of lockdowns in the post-jab era – and it is their comparatively low rates of vaccine take-up.
Germany’s 67 per cent vaccination rate is higher than in Austria, but not by much. In Saxony, just 58 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated. Eastern European nations mistrustful of the state after communist rule also have hesitancy rates proportional to bed occupancy.
Britain’s total vaccination rate is no longer world-beating, but it is still relatively high. And on boosters we are doing well, with 24 per cent having received a third dose – crucially focused on those most vulnerable to falling seriously ill from Covid.
Yes, we wrongly delayed vaccinating children, but the truth is that while Boris Johnson has spoken of storm clouds gathering over the Continent, our hospital admissions, which have fluctuated at between 700 and 1,000 a day for nearly four months, now also seem to be starting to trend downwards as the boosters take effect.
It was also, arguably, not unhelpful for people to have acquired immunity naturally during the summer and autumn months.
As Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, put it: “The UK is now in a better position in terms of immunity than most of Europe because we’ve had a lot of infections and we’re now rolling out the booster jab.”
Of course, we must remain vigilant, since there is always a chance that a new Covid variant or a flu epidemic could once again overwhelm the NHS, which struggles to cope even in a normal winter. But it would be absolute madness to slavishly follow Europe down the path of yet more lockdowns. It was one thing to do it when the country was unvaccinated – but quite another to do it now.
Moreover, the UK surely provides Europe with all the evidence it needs to realise that it is vaccinations – rather than passporting and mask-wearing, let alone lockdowns – that have reduced serious illness and hospitalisations. What is clear, as Europe heads for a “serious emergency” and a “terrible Christmas” is that their supposedly mitigating measures have not stopped the virus from spreading.
So the time has surely come for our continental cousins to accept that there isn’t much more they can do besides encouraging the minority of people who remain resistant to accept the jab.
Had they followed Britain’s lead on vaccinations in the first place and not indulged in political attacks on the Astrazeneca jab, I doubt they would need to lock down again, or resort to making jabs mandatory, which many will view to be a breach of people’s right to choose.
There also needs to be a shift in thinking across the Channel. Thanks to more than three months free of restrictions, the British have gone some way towards once again accepting death as a consequence of life. Of course it is tragic that hundreds of people still die of Covid every day – but many of us have come to realise that Covid is likely to become endemic and that we cannot continue to live in fear.
It is perhaps worth remembering what the Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty said about this pandemic at the very beginning.
“The great majority of people will not die from this,” he said during a Downing Street press conference on May 11, 2020. “A significant proportion of people will not get this virus at all ... Of those who do, some of them will get the virus without even knowing it ... Of those that get symptoms, the great majority, probably 80 per cent, will ... not need to go to a doctor.
“An unfortunate minority will have to go as far as hospital, but the majority of those will just need oxygen and will then leave hospital. And then a minority of those will end up having to go to severe and critical care and some of those sadly will die. But that’s a minority – it’s 1 per cent or possibly even less than 1 per cent overall.”
That was long before anyone had even come up with a jab. It’s a sad statistic, but one the vaccinated majority can live with.