“The argument is already over” about there being an extension to lockdown, according to one cabinet source. The real question, then, is “for how long will restrictions continue”. Reports suggest that the Government is considering extending lockdown by a month rather than by two weeks so as to give businesses “certainty” that “Freedom Day” won’t be delayed again. Er, come again?
For many businesses – including those which have yet to reopen since the easing of restrictions last month due to the continuation of social distancing guidelines, and those which are taking in little money compared with pre-lockdown levels for the same reason – a four-week extension to lockdown would provide only the certainty that survival will continue to be a great (and potentially impossible) struggle.
The Times has more.
Plans are being discussed for either a two-week or a four-week delay to the final easing of restrictions on June 21st, if the Indian variant of the coronavirus continues to lead to a significant rise in infections and hospital admissions.
The variant now accounts for nine in 10 cases and health leaders called yesterday for delay to prevent hospitals filling up with unvaccinated patients.
Ministers are concerned that a two-week delay would not give businesses the certainty they need because it might have to be extended. They said a four-week delay would ensure that more people in their forties have received two jabs and that the vaccinations have had time to take effect. “This is about giving people certainty,” the source said. “The worst-case scenario is that we ease restrictions and then have to implement them again. This has to be a one-way ticket.”
The Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi today said that the Government must be “really careful” with reopening, telling Times Radio that officials must “continuously learn about how the virus is behaving”.
“We had a very big opening on May 17th where people could meet friends indoors, in a restaurant, in a pub, and socialise indoors as well,” he added. “And I think it’s important that we look at the data very carefully over this weekend and then share it with the nation.”
Some scientific advisers believe a month-long delay that pushes the end of restrictions into the school holidays will allow vaccination to catch up with the faster-spreading strain.
Another cabinet source said that they believed a two-week delay would be sufficient. “By June 21st everyone over 50 who wants a second jab should have had one,” the source said. “You just have to wait another couple of weeks so that they all have full antibody protection. At that point you really have protected the vulnerable.
“Of course there are businesses that want us to stick with June 21st but when Rishi [Sunak, the Chancellor] is letting it be known he’d be happy with a delay you know the argument is already over.”
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
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‘Certainty for businesses’… to go bust.
Really, c’mon is there anyone on here or in the staff who still believe any of this hokum ?
Toby seems to be taking a back seat lately, perhaps he’s away getting orders from HQ on the developing disinformation campaign.
this site is just a psyop to diffuse middle class anger and stoke bewilderment.
The sooner everyone realises they’ve been comprehensively lied to for the benefit of the elites and global corps the sooner we can turn this around.
Boris isn’t going to save us,
Toby isn’t going to save us,
no one is coming to save us.
They are intent on wrecking our lives and changing everything beyond recognition simply for ideological reasons and a piece of the emerging global power structure.
The politicians are corrupted and or compromised.
The state institutions have been intellectually infiltrated by Marxists ideologs systematically for the past 30years at least.
All critical infrastructure is now controlled by Rad group.
The Belt and Road initiative is being constructed at all levels and the center of power is shifting, do your own research.
Middleclass people working from home – you are next, they won’t need you , just like the bar tenders and others.… Read more »
Could you please refrain from having a go at Toby Young?
Without Toby this site would not be live so pack it in.
I trust you contribute to the site’s upkeep?
Thank goodness for the Covid Recovery Group of MPs, without them there’d be a never-ending cycle of lies and lockdowns. I’m sure many of them would resign the Whip if 21st June were to pass by without restrictions ending, and vote ‘no confidence’ in the government. Parliament working as it should.
Jester
“if 21st June were to pass by without restrictions ending” There was never any chance they would end. Track and trace, mass testing, international travel restrictions, covid advertising, vaccine madness, covid safety marshals, furlough – hundreds of millions of pounds worth of contracts all signed long into the future.
I’m so glad all the ‘danger’ in this country hasnt stopped the G7 shindig and that none of them had to isolate when they arrived 🙄
I guess they will announce as late as possible, as the government know they will be unpopular and face opposition from many Conservative MPs. It has also been Boris’ style to announce any controversial decision at the very last minute, when it is too late to do anything about it.
How will the Recovery group of MPs react? Sir Graham Brady? Sir Charles Walker? I hope they will be sharply critical. What is even more worrying is that after a delay, we still might get another delay or only a partial reopening. The best strategy would be to try every way possible to box in the government to reopen fully without any legal restrictions on the given date.
“Stringent guidance” replacing lockdown rules seems, to me, fair enough, because guidance is guidance, and I can make my informed choice as an individual, without fear of arrest.
Labour and the Lib Dems will support the PM (his name is not Boris – that’s a stage name) so a few dozen rebellious Tories won’t scare him.
I strongly disagree that “stringent guidance” is appropriate. What the govt ought to do is provide accurate, unbiased health information that is not driven by a political agenda.
Even if it’s just “guidance” and not law, it will continue to frighten and pollute sensible discourse about covid, and cause havoc, forever. It will be used as a pretext by every jobsworth and safety nut and risk-averse boss, lawyer etc etc to take a “cautious” approach and implement covid safety bollocks without being forced to by the government. At this point, making an “informed choice” given the level of lying from “Boris” is impossible for most.
Recovery Group? Brady, Walker ?
you hope they sill be sharply critical WFT ! The time for being sharply critical is long passed.
In Canada the Junta lead by Castro’s son is busy passing laws to postpone elections while a “pandemic” is “happening” , where do you think their orders come from ?
Forget Fatso’s election prospects, we’ll be lucky if there are anymore elections. Even if there are do you seriously think the results are to be relied upon?
The duly elected president of the US is playing golf while a puppet regime is barricaded into it’s offices.
Brady, Walker are diversions , mass street action , non violent resistance and non compliance is the only way this is going to end in our favour.
Team up with who ever is like minded prepare to be part of the resistance because , god knows, if we don’t do it no one is coming to save us .
I’ve just had this Twitter panicdemic text chucked at me …. essentially claiming that the ‘overwhelmed’ winter ICUs were really, really, really massively overwhemed beyond any precedent.
Now – I can’t be arsed, to be frank.
But would any other data hounds like to give this a critical sniff?
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200811303055364
Not a direct answer to your request but I was debating hospitals being overwhelmed with an acquaintance of mine who is a senior manager in the NHS. He maintained hospitals were overwhelmed and when I asked him for some evidence, compared to previous flu seasons etc, he just sent me a link to a news report from some regional paper with a “people dying on the trolleys” scare story. If the NHS does have any meaningful data on this, he certainly didn’t have access to it (I asked him this and his answer was that he wished they did have such data).
I remember that one from the FT journalist, it’s easy. COVID displaced flu AND other respiratory infections such as the common cold that lead to many fatalities in the elderly via pneumonia. By looking at flu alone, which is a fairly small component and in any case has never been measured in the same way as COVID, they are giving a very misleading picture.
This PDF https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/992424/EDSSSBulletin2021wk22.pdf shows the number of people turning up at A&E with various ailments over the year to June 2021. Bronchitis (Fig 6), flu (Fig 7) and pneumonia (Fig 8) practically disappeared – compare them to the orange dotted line which shows the normal level. Acute respiratory infections (Fig 5, which would have included COVID) were also well below the typical number (again, the orange dotted line) for much of the winter. The reason the hospitals were “overwhelmed” was that too many of their staff were using the track and trace app and were therefore obliged to stay home for a couple of weeks because of somebody else’s false positive PCR test.
Apart from a brief blip in September last year, it’s only in the last few weeks that emergency attendances for acute respiratory infections have been above normal, it’s something going around in the under-5s rather than COVID.
Just looking at the charts in that EDSSS bulletin, flu normally accounts for about 5% of the people showing up to A&E with acute respiratory infections. Which is how the FT journalist on Twitter was able to use a comparison between flu and COVID to convince a cheering mob that hospitals were super-overloaded, even when they weren’t.
The FT journalist on Twitter does make a fair point that ICUs in London hospitals (not in the country as a whole) were 2-3 times as busy as normal during late Jan-early March, although nothing special outside that period. Even then, we need to remember the context in which that happened: HCQ had been demonised, ivermectin and quite a list of other low-cost treatments with good safety profiles were banned or otherwise sidelined.
Also, the breakthrough infections following vaccination would have peaked during late Jan-early March.
.
Another point that was made in the Twitter thread is that ICU capacity was substantially increased, which perhaps should have happened anyway, so the 2020-2021 numbers may not be directly comparable to earlier years; they may in part just reflect the increased capacity or a change in policy. As NICE noted in its critique of the Spanish calcifediol trial, whether somebody is put in ICU is not a decision that is made on rigid criteria that never change.
This could well be the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever read
I’ve just looked up how many hospital beds there are in the UK and its 163000 and in 2000 it was 240000. According to ONS there are just over 1000 people in hospital with covid (doesn’t say how old they are or if it’s of or with covid), so the lockdown will almost certainly continue because there is a 0.6% bed occupancy of patients with this killer disease.
BTW I’ve personally know of 8 people who have died over the past 15 months none with covid, all elderly except 1 who was 62 and was over 30 stone, heart failure.
The factthat we have more hospitals than “covid” patients tells you all that you need to know.
There were 550,000 hospital beds serving a population of 50 million when the NHS founded in 1948. We now have the lowest number of beds per capita in the OECD. It’s shameful.
For it to be delayed again, and again, and again, and again; playing for time until flu season. Saint Boris thinks we’ve forgotten:
“Three weeks to flatten the curve.”
“We can turn this virus around in twelve weeks.”
“Normalish by Christmas.”
“It would be inhumane to cancel Christmas: oh look, I’ve just done it.”
“Schools are safe.” (The same day, they were then closed.)
“Masks in the classroom would be farcical.”
“Significant normality by Easter.”
I’ve got my bingo card ready for “alas” and “squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze the brakes”, which we had last August.
Our only hope is that this latest broken promise will cause the red mist to descend on the public once and for all, and they will rise up in anger, instead of subservient fear.
Time to resist. Stickers everywhere. Bare faces in shops, buses and trains. Rip down any remaining notices about social distancing.
It was announced by the vaccine minister that all over 50 will have been offered their second jabs by the 21st. So, again, why wait?
80% antibodies in adult population.
99% or death corridor already offered double jabs.
100% or businesses would benefit from a return to normal.
0 – the number of studies showing significant benefit from masks.
But still we wait.
The framing of the question has subtly shifted this week from “Will June 21 happen?” to “Do we need a delay of two weeks or four?”. As usual, it is the Times that “has the story” (that it is being fed from inside Cabinet by the usual suspect(s)). It’s just people playing politics. When G7 is announcing its big plan to save the world through vaccination, it wouldn’t really do for the UK to say straight after the conference is over – “Hey – everything is cool now, lift all restrictions in a week’s time. Have our left over jabs – we don’t need them any more. Just take them yourselves please so we can come on holiday as savours to your poor little countries…
Whenever you think, ‘but the deaths are so low’ or ‘how can they justify this?’ etc, say to yourself: it’s not about the virus.
The variant now accounts for nine in ten cases and health leaders called yesterday for delay to prevent hospitals filling up with unvaccinated patients?
Here we go, blame the unvaccinated for the delay.
Any evidence of that statement????
Just more lies on top of all the other lies.
How do they know it’s the variant?
Of course, for the sane, one way of reducing uncertainty is to stop constantly telling lies.
I think that studiously ignoring any diktats that you can avoid is the only sane response. Some of us have been doing it for eighteen months.
This is the only way, I’m afraid. Petitioning nor protesting will not change things one jot.
Certainty.
Lying turds.
Polishing my Doc Martins…
At this stage I’d take an extra month if it meant all restrictions are gone, especially mask mandates.
But we’re going to end up with the worst of all worlds aren’t we?
There’ll be a months delay and once unFreedom Day comes in July, we’ll still have social distancing and mask mandates.
For a month.
It will then be September and Freshers Flu will ensure we repeat this endless cycle of economic and social destruction.
“At this stage I’d take an extra month if it meant all restrictions are gone…” And then a month after that and a month after that and month after that and a month after that…
Why not just buy London Bridge from whoever makes you the best offer?
What is it that we think they are waiting for, given that most of us would agree it’s never been anything to do with public health? Is there some big financial event in the offing? When will lockdowns have achieved their desired objective, do we think? If ‘vaccination’ and digital ID is the ultimate objective, they won’t be able to keep applying the pressure if things appear to go back to normal; if they are trying to disguise a financial collapse, they can’t unlock without triggering hyperinflation (apparently). What are your thoughts?
Opportunistic power grab
They are not waiting for anything
No intention exists to end the madness
We are boiling frogs
First Maximise the state debt, then maximise the interest we pay on it, make us used to not going anywhere, doing anything, just without any spare cash because the taxes are sky high.
We already had the inflation of financialisation (look at the collapse in land affordability i.e. wages over house prices minus rebuild). You’re just responding to the nudge to accepting high interest rates.
By giving businesses certainty, I think they mean giving Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Deliveroo et al certainty that the traditional economy is in no danger of making a return.
Got to ask but who’s actually getting tested for all these so called “cases” to be reported?
There is a testing centre close to where I live and I hardly see anybody there. Last week the wife and I went away for a few days and opposite the hotel was a testing centre and whilst loading the car the centre opened at 9:00 there were 4 cars waiting to go in. We left at 9:30 and there was nobody there and the staff looked like they were settling down to a hard days boredom.
People I know get tested at home with LFT
NHS, care home and other workers
We have perfectly healthy people getting tested at home with these tests who are ‘failing’ resulting in large numbers of people going into quarantine all adding to the stats for something that isn’t really there. Institutional madness.
RIDICULOUS
The government said these punches were to prevent domestic abuse being needed again.
“We need to burn the village in order to save it” sort of reasoning springs to mind.
It is still 21sy June as far as I am concerned, whatever the government says.
Ministers consider having Frank Bruno punch people to prevent injuries.
Zahawi thinks that officials must “continuously learn about how the virus is behaving”.
He added that if Covi refused to behave the Government would have no other choice but to “smack its bottom and send it to bed early without any supper”.
A poll from YouGov showed that 72% of respondents favoured this action, whilst FullFact have disproven those who say you can’t smack a virus’s bottom as “ignorant of the science.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.669432/full
Masking Emotions: Face Masks Impair How We Read Emotions
Is masking to distance children from their parents?
Marx wrote something like ‘That the abolition of the family economy is inseparable from the abolition of the individual economy, is self-evident’.
just in case, we should delay reopening by 9 years
This is now beyond parody.
Do you think they’re all in fits of hysterics behind closed doors?
It’s a bit like a fraudster saying to their victim, “now I know I fucked you over the last 16 times, but this time really is different. OK?”