Here we go again. It’s the middle of summer and the leading opinion piece in the Guardian today calls for the return of restrictions in response to rising infections and hospitalisations. In a piece introduced with, “a few small changes would make a big difference to millions of vulnerable people”, journalist Frances Ryan writes:
If you’re reading this in the U.K., odds are that by now you’ve had coronavirus: seven in 10 of us have watched the dreaded red line appear. You may have been stuck in bed with it twice or even three times by now; by April 2022, England alone had recorded almost 900,000 reinfections. When the public asked to “return to normal”, I’m not sure a regular hacking cough was what they had in mind.
Almost 900,000 reinfections? How will 1.6% of the population have coped with getting another cold?
Ryan continues:
It is an odd situation. Last week, Covid infections were reported to have soared by 43%, while hospitalisation from the virus rose by 23%. An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.K. tested positive over those seven days. Two million of us now have long Covid, with about two in five of those – or 826,000 people – having symptoms for at least a year.
What Ryan fails to mention is that Long Covid studies frequently find small to negligible numbers of additional symptoms compared to a control group, meaning the quoted figure is unlikely to be an accurate picture of the real impact of COVID-19.
Ryan again:
Back in February, Johnson said the Government had created a plan to start “living with Covid”, but what it really did was form a plan to catch and spread Covid. After all coronavirus prevention measures were dropped on April 1st – from the legal obligation to isolate if you had Covid, to the end of most free testing – the public were left wide open to mass infection. Even hospitals were told by ministers to ditch mask mandates, though some worried trusts have defied the rules and kept them. That all precautions were pulled back just when most people’s vaccine immunity was beginning to fade, and the virus was evolving to be more transmissible, gives a hint at how little logic ministers applied.
Since Ryan accepts that vaccine protection wanes, she evidently intends restrictions, sorry, precautions to continue indefinitely. Indeed, the plummeting of the infection fatality rate makes no difference to her argument, as “excessive focus” has been placed on deaths, she says.
One of the biggest problems facing Britain’s attempts to quell the virus is that this Government doesn’t really want to. There is hope – the number of people dying from Covid has reduced since its peak – but excessive focus on this has long hidden the fact that loss of life has never been the only thing that matters: how many people are infected with the virus matters too. A strategy that lets the virus rip through the population increases the risk we all face, be it from surges, new dangerous variants, or in developing long Covid. Fundamentally, it means accepting a reality where it is deemed normal for many of us to be (possibly severely) sick, from a virus whose long-term effects – and the effects of repeated reinfection – we still know little about.
Once again, the plight of the vulnerable is deployed to justify indefinite restrictions on everyone – a logic which would destroy most freedoms given the opportunity, as we have seen in the last two and a half years.
There will be few greater casualties though than the 3.7 million clinically extremely vulnerable people, especially the 500,000 who are immunocompromised and can’t get much or any benefit from a booster jab. Trying to avoid the virus in a country that has forgone all safety measures means risking your life when you pop to the shops. Ministers who are content for repeated coronavirus infection to just become part of British life are content for isolation to be part of clinically vulnerable people’s.
What does Ryan propose? The reinstatement of free lateral flow tests – as though there isn’t an economic crisis on, and we haven’t spent enough over-testing ourselves for colds; the return of the legal requirement to isolate for those with a positive test – a measure extremely disruptive to education, employment, health care and everything else; and financial help such as sick pay for those isolating – more magical money. Plus more of the vaccines she has acknowledged don’t work for long.
And, inevitably, masks: “Wearing masks in busy and enclosed spaces again is the right thing to do; just under half of Britons (48%) reported wearing a face covering when outside their home last month, down from about 95% during the January Omicron wave.”
From a sceptical point of view, it’s depressing that nearly half of people still say they’re wearing a mask – though since far fewer than half the people I see out and about are actually wearing a mask, this poll probably reveals more about the biases of polls (and what people say to them) than the reality on the ground.
Then Ryan lays it on thick:
Unless we wish to sign up to getting repeatedly sick for the foreseeable future, and to the risk of long-term disability from long Covid, we are going to have to bring back low-effort protective measures to curb it. A recent public health campaign in Ireland, which encourages people to think of clinically vulnerable people in their daily interactions, shows how easy it is to do things differently.
Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam recently said the rise in infections was nothing to worry about and that even he had stopped wearing his face mask. But will he think again now, if respectable opinion starts to shift in the direction Frances Ryan and others would like?
Let’s hope this is just an anomalous op-ed and not the start of a trend. After all, if this is what they’re saying in June, what will they be saying in December?
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Just as well that I don’t subscribe to the Grauniad. In the old days, I used to read the printed version every day.
In the meantime, according to the ONS, in both areas I watch there were zero Covid-19 deaths in week 24.
Maybe that’s why the Guardian hack told us to look past the deaths and to focus instead on fluffy unmeasurable things like limiting long covid and ensuring the well being of the vulnerable.
This is the modus operandi of collectivist tyrants like Frances Ryan. They want us all to pursue a common goal that is defined not by any hard clear objectives, but rather by a narrative which they control. Elusive things like the end of poverty, the fight against climate change, racial and sexual tolerance, the well being of the vulnerable, etc. They dangle these crusades like carrots in front of us and then scold us we don’t pursue them with enthusiasm. And only through them and their ever shifting narratives are we able to know whether we are living up to their high minded aims.
Of course, we never get there, because to get there would mean release from their control.
They’ll be saying the same in December unless they get their beloved small measures back.
In this case, they’ll be pushing for a full lockdown come October and restart pushing for Zero COVID should they get it. At the core of her rotten heart, Ryan wants people starving to death in residental compounds monitored by biosecurity police forces.
Indeed, if we give these zealots an inch, they take a mile. You cannot meet tyranny or insanity in the middle, as we learned the hard way two years ago.
Funny, resolutely unjabbed me has never had any form of respiratory disease since all this kicked off, despite nursing jabbed husband and daughter through their bouts of ‘covid’ and not being particularly fussy about ‘infection control’.
Guess I’m just lucky
No sorry not lucky – just sane and sensibe.
I fear this lady is mentally ill. Yet, I cant believe how many of my friends and acquaintances are still sticking tests up their nose at the hint of a sore throat.. We will never be allowed to move on while these loons are still loose.
What’s in it for the Guardian? An upturn in sales, perhaps? Kingmaker status? Tell ’em, the remedy is the disease.
The Guardian is a regular recipient of Bill Gates’s largesse. That’s really all you need to know.
Even Dr Death Anthony Fauci has said the best remedy (immunity) is getting the disease itself. This must of course be qualified by saying don’t have the immune system impairing vaccine.
That said, there are a few intelligent thinkers still able to comment ( not me on either count..)
One said :-
” So we should all just sit indoors, shaking with fear. Got it.”
Priceless, he/she/it/whatever, nailed it. Shortly to be banned no doubt.
Couldn’t have said better myself.
OMG
If only everyone had been vaccinated.
Sadly I am banned, so could as many as possible let them open their eyes and see this :-
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X
If I’d been jabbed I might be a tad worried….
We should expect plenty more of these sorts of calls for measures to come back from now until the end of winter. And they will be much louder and much more forceful than this.
It is inevitable. But it is part of what we are going to have to endure and overcome if we are ever truly going to put this madness behind us. We are going to have to beat back the inevitable push back into covid hysteria.
As it’s inevitable, I say bring it on and let’s take it on and let’s finally kill this beast. If we can get through this winter without any measures coming back, we will be able to say we are truly past it.
Immunocompromised people are at danger from all kinds of usually harmless pathogens because it’s not really the pathogens which are usually harmles but our immune systems which usually kill them off without us taking much notice of that. Consequently, Sars-CoV2 didn’t make the situation these people were already in any worse.
Despite the terrible cost, the terrible damage, the terrible division and everything else terrible about all of this, it is going to be very funny watching grauniad journalists and their readers jab themselves out of existence.
We live in hope CG.
“Guardian Pushes for Return of Masks, Mass Testing and Quarantine”.
Groan…
Quite… it really is rather draining. A friend died last night – suspected suicide. Got more far important things to worry about.
So sad, may he/she rest in peace.
Perhaps we should insist they do that themselves, and see how they get on before they impose it on the rest of us. All grauniad journalists locking themselves down in communicationless quarantine so sparing us of their utterings would be a joy
It’s hard to take Long Covid numbers seriously when tardiness covers about half the symptoms.
” A strategy that lets the virus rip through the population increases the risk we all face,”
But we don’t all face a risk from “covid”. And lots of us face a risk from “precautions”, lots of us have suffered horrendously from the human rights abuses the Guardian has supported, not least the black lives that apparently don’t matter if they’re African ones. Who pays them to write this rubbish?
“Who pays them to write this rubbish?”
Now that is exactly what I thought when I read the excerpts of drivel. Who indeed? The message that we have to, must, must, must sacrifice the healthy to make the more vulnerable ‘feel’ safer (not having miraculous powers of healing, we obviously cannot actually make them safer) has been doing the rounds ever since it became clear the vaxx was failing and thus the measures were pointless and we’d just have to get on with life. ‘Wear a mask for the vulnerable, get 50 more shots for the vulnerable, sacrifice fundamental rights, the rule of law, your health, wealth and sanity for the vulnerable’.
Gosh, to see one of the ‘vulnerable’ shilling for the rich and corrupt, what a time to be alive.
Insofar COVID justice warriors like Ryan are at least honestly deluded (debatable), one can safely substitute because I’m scared witless for each occurence of for the vulnerable in your statement. Or, wording this in a more loaded way Because I’m a coward who’s unwilling to live with the slighest, personal risk, your lives are all forfeit! The giveaway is the increases this risk we all face, ie, not just the so-called vulnerable but all of us. That all includes Ryan herself is certainly just coincidence.
If we take Professor Desmet’s theory of Mass Formation, these people will be scared of life going back to normal – they will have to once again experience the ‘free-floating anxiety’ that lead them to the Cult of Covid in the first place,
I have no doubt that the people who always used to test themselves loads with free tests are still doing so, even though they have to pay for them. The worried well will always be with us. Meanwhile, if the attitude of this journo was adopted there would never be an end point – it’s like someone saying, pre covid, that we needed to take similar measures to combat ‘flu in the community. Well, you’d never get rid of ‘flu, and you’ll never get rid of covid. Learn to live with it.
Perhaps she should be asking herself why, if the vaccines are so good, is there so much covid in the community (allegedly). And I wonder how many of these people actually have a cold or hayfever instead? I have had 2 bad fluey colds since 2020. Perhaps they were covid. I have no idea. I have never tested myself and am not the slightest bit interested whether or not it was covid.
Move on. There are much bigger and really frightening things to worry about now. A cold in the community is just a distraction.
“Fundamentally, it means accepting a reality where it is deemed normal for many of us to be (possibly severely) sick, from a virus whose long-term effects – and the effects of repeated reinfection – we still know little about.”
Aah, so we should worry ourselves sick about the unknown long-term effects of Covid, but the long-term effects of repeated so-called vaccination are no problem ‘cos it’s Safe ‘n Effective (TM).
I still don’t get what’s really into authors who think (if that’s what you call it) like this. If everyone felt as she does, there’s nothing stopping us wearing masks 24 hours a day. I suppose her’s covers her eyes as well.
The IFR for alleged C1984 is between 0.15 and 0.2% and those that die typically have two or more comorbidities.
C1984 isn’t going to kill us.
Fundamentally, we should all be forced to do what Ryan wants us to do Because The Future Is Unknown And Could Well Be Dangerous[tm], the usual attempt of Corona’s Witnesses to justify something based on them being ignorant about something else.
https://twitter.com/JeremyVineOn5/status/1541703540120424449
On depressingly similar vein, another dangerous bastard speaks out, in “something must be done” mode.
Pathetic excuse of a human being, “a pointless streak of piss”, as the late Sean Locke noted.
The test Vine showed at 48 seconds was missing the U and N from *un*
The Guardian and their ilk will be defeated sooner or later because what they advocate is contrary to nature.
Purlease can we stop calling it ‘long covid’ it is post viral fatigue syndrome. In some cases also known as a skivers charter.
The Guardian calls for?. That should make its readership of 4; very moist.
Follow the crackpot “social” science says The Guardian. Covid is a coronavirus like the common cold and should be accepted as such. If they want to protect the vulnerable come up with practical ideas (not face nappies) to prevent the virus being caught and spread in hospitals and care homes. As for long Omicron, what is it exactly?. I have never met one of these 2m people who have allegedly contracted it. They want to turn us into a nation of neurotics.
“They want to turn us into a nation of neurotics.” Already succeeded with around 80% of the nation.
It’s been a while…
.
Love it.
Sadly believable though.
Wait, the NHS one re online health care really is true
Dear Ms Ryan, before you start trying to impose the same-old same-old on us again, first try to get your head around the multitude of untruths we’ve been subjected to already…
• That masks are effective
• That people who are asymptomatic can transmit
• That asymptomatic transmission was a pandemic driver
• That the vaccines are “safe and effective”
• That it was just “3 weeks to flatten the curve”
• That the NHS was far more important to ‘save’ than the people it treats
• That you just needed 1 vaccine shot
• That you only needed a 2nd vaccine shot
• That you only now need to have a ‘booster’ (and all the subsequent ones no doubt)
• That the existing vaccines (boosters) are effective against Omicron
• That there was no conflict of interest between Big Pharma, government advisers and uber organisations and individuals such as WEF and Bill Gates
• That washing hands whilst singing Happy Birthday was a rational response to a ‘lethal’ virus
• That the virus came from nature (bats)
• That the vaccines are fully tested
• That the vaccines are approved
• That full information about the vaccines and their side effects is available to enable fully informed consent
• That there are no early stage safe and effective (and cheap) therapeutic treatment alternatives to the vaccines (Ivermectin, HCQ, etc.)
• That the virus is transmitted by surface contact
• That lockdowns work
• That everyone is equally and very susceptible to the virus
• That we can eliminate the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the zero-covid policy)
• That vaccines are more effective and longer lasting than natural immunity
• That vaccines protected you from the virus
• That vaccines are a ‘one size fits all’ solution
• That everyone who tried to discuss, debate or voice a different opinion was selfish and doesn’t care for anyone else
• That the Great Barrington Declaration was dangerous nonsense
• That only SAGE are the ‘experts’
• That computer models were good predictors of the virus trajectory
• That the computer models, e.g. from Imperial College, were even vaguely correct
• That the vaccinated are safe in society
• That health based discrimination is a good thing, aka: vaccine passports, and will control the spread
• That the unvaccinated are a danger to society
• That hospitals have never been stressed during winter before
• That closing schools for so long was necessary
• That children were effective human shields for the elderly
• That forcing children to suffer ‘protections’ (masks, social isolation, vaccines) is effective or kind
• That any or all of the responses has caused any virus wave to decline
• That no preventative measures, e.g. vitamin D, are worthwhile
• That paracetamol and ventilators (forced oxygen) were effective treatments
• That govt is “following the science”
The Groan needs to just take the L and move on already. The virus is endemic now, and no amount of voodoo kabuki theater will change that fact and make it go away.
Shamelessly and disingenuously using “the vulnerable” (however defined) as a fig leaf for endless restrictions on everyone forever, in other words. Everyone but the elites, of course. SMH.
As usual from the Guardian, there’s the assumption that masks and other non-Pharma interventions actually work and thus we should all be doing them.
What are the facts?
Thus, all that the daft woman asks us to do is mere virtue-signalling, and does nothing to help the vulnerable except to give them the illusion of “safety” because, “the man on TV said that masks work, or that Covid Jabs are ‘Safe and Effective'”.
Anyone who makes the effort to read the actual Scientific research can easily verify all that I’ve written. The pseudo-Science that Fauci, Witty, Valance, and various TV “experts” have trotted out is easily shown to be false.
Staying indoors and shutting off the sunlight from your skin is not good for you, either. Dietary supplements are available if short of vitamin D (and all the other ones), but we are able to make our own if out and about enough, at this time of year.
This woman is making the grand assumption that all these measures worked in the past. Masks make absolutely no difference to rates of infection and cause harm, the tests are fraudulent and quarantine (lockdowns) is harmful to society, the economy and mental health. Personally I think she should be locked up and the key thrown far away.
I and many others would like to read the scientific data results that correspond with the ineffectiveness of masking, test and trace efforts and lockdowns rather than a journalists thoughts on any of the above. Legacy media is dead. Let’s acknowledge that and move on.