DOES anyone truly believe shutting pubs and restaurants will cut new infections?
They bust a gut to become Covid secure. Now they are copping the blame from chief medic Chris Whitty.
The reality is surely just that too many of us became complacent over basic precautions once deaths and hospitalisations plummeted in the summer.
Then students returned to university and, to no one’s surprise, thousands got infected at parties and in Covid-riddled halls.
They are driving this second surge. Few, if any, will die or need hospital treatment — but others older and fatter will as the virus spreads to them.
Will closing pubs and throwing staff on the dole sort that? No. We see scant evidence such bewildering, piecemeal, job-wrecking curbs make a difference.
The full lockdown worked for a while but a repeat is unthinkable, ruinous and ultimately futile. Without a vaccine we would be doomed to repeat it forever.
What’s left? We’re inclined to agree with the admittedly stark solution set out by ex-Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, backed by 12,000 eminent scientists and medics worldwide:
That we protect the vulnerable but live as normally as possible, with strict social-distancing, masks and hand-washing, while reopening the economy.
Yes, heartbreakingly, people will die as we strive for some measure of herd immunity. But there’s no avoiding that now.
As Lord Sumption says, more could die — from non-Covid disease, mental problems and deprivation — if we permanently wreck our economies.
Boris Johnson has no good options. One will just be the least bad — and Lord Sumption’s looks like it.
It’s trawl over
FRANCE’S fishermen should have twigged in the early hours after the Brexit vote that their lives would radically change.
They have had four years since to plan for us leaving the EU and, inevitably, reclaiming sovereignty over our waters.
True, there was doubt for a while that we would actually leave. You may recall it.
But that unpleasant misunderstanding is behind us. And it is absurd for France still to demand the exact same fishing rights they have had since the 1970s.
Even Brussels’ negotiator Michel Barnier knows that is indefensible if a trade deal securing millions of other jobs is to be done. How, then, can we put it?
Non, Messieurs. Ce n’est pas possible.
Check it out
WE have become so used to “protecting” the NHS from Covid that many have forgotten it’s there to protect us.
Half of us avoid it for fear of being a burden, or catching the virus at a surgery or hospital. It could be a fatal mistake.
So we applaud the celeb-backed campaign for us to get cancer symptoms checked out without hesitation.
The NHS is safe and open for business.
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