The latest cautionary tale being held up to locked down Britons as the reason we can’t be released, including by Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, is Chile, where an ambitious vaccination programme (albeit with China’s questionable Sinovac vaccine) has not prevented the country experiencing a new surge of coronavirus infections.
But as with other supposed cautionary tales like France and Brazil, are things really as bad as they’re being portrayed by our doom-addicted scientists, politicians and media?
Here’s the actual state of play. The positive rate did indeed start drifting upwards again in mid-Feb and since the end of March has accelerated – though since southern-hemisphere Chile is now in the middle of autumn, this is not wholly surprising.
This is despite the vaccination programme, which rivals the UK’s in speed of rollout, getting going at the start of February. Chris Whitty has backed the vaccinated-people-letting-their-guard-down theory, but in fact Google mobility data shows no sign of that, with a steep decline in mobility beginning in early March. Dr Clare Craig has written an excellent piece in the BMJ on other possible explanations beyond blaming people for letting their hair down (an explanation that hardly works for care homes).
But whatever the explanation, positive cases and deaths in the UK are now very low, suggesting Chile can hope for a similar outcome before long (though it will be interesting to see how its winter affects this).
Importantly, though, Chile is still significantly behind the UK in terms of total Covid deaths, so as a cautionary tale it is a strange one to pick.
Chile’s overall excess mortality is also similar to the UK’s.
In sum, given that the UK’s winter surge, which also coincided with its vaccine rollout, settled down within a few weeks, and Chile’s Covid deaths are currently behind the UK’s, Chile provides no reason not to follow states like Florida and Texas in reopening fully.
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It is circumstances like this that reveal beyond doubt what are the values of the Conservatives. The few who complained include some who did nothing when Ministers but the bulk of the Conservative Party sees no reason to object.
Left wingers are preferred to GB News, in their eyes.
However much this same small band of Tory MPs remonstrate with their Party on various issues they don’t make the slightest difference in the big state, leftwards drift of the Party.
“Good practice”??????????????????? So Cultural Marxism is good? All media must spout leftist progressive dogma to be classed as “Good”? When you only have one narrative you have tyranny. Conservative views are to be criminalised. If only 46 conservatives wrote to the prime Minister then the rest need to just admit they are no longer conservatives.
“If only 46 conservatives wrote to the prime Minister then the rest need to just admit they are no longer conservatives….”
….and Resign their seats.
Right wing?? so, a level headed, common sense, white british male human being like me is right wing am i?
If that’s what you progressive mp’s want to call 80% of your countries voters then,so be it! I’m a right wing racist! and I’ll vote accordingly!
Your apparent belief that level-headed, common-sense, white British men exist marks you obviously as fascist, ie, throroughly despicable opponent of the people who don’t who’s secretly itching to genocide transwomen by excluding them from women’s sport competitions or something likewise horrible, say, torture millions of people to death.
Do you know me?
Can’t we have some sort of truth-in-advertising which stop groups like Stop funding hate!
from using obviously misleading names for themselves to (try to) hide the actual focus of their activities? Would a betting outlet be allowed to advertise itself as Provider of financial services many people chose to trust?
How quickly would things change if all government advertising was pulled from CAN members?
Jim Hacker was meant to represent the typical, spineless Tory MP but he did at least try to fight The Blob, and occasionally won.
These kind of spineless so called “representatives of the poeple” make my f-ing blood boil!
So the government is happy with the bully-boy tactics of CAN. What a surprise.
Pedantic comment: scepticism of or regarding, not “towards”. Sorry.
Is this the same advertising world which regularly over represents coloured and mixed race families in TV advertisements?