Nightingale closures, ‘defeating Covid’ & vaccine protection — a few niggling lockdown questions I’d like answered

A NEW year begins tomorrow and this wretched Covid-19 virus is no less prevalent than it was nine months ago.

Probably worse, given this new variant, which seems to be more infectious.

Almost the entire country enters 2021 under an effective lockdown.

While politicians and the unions demand schools must be shut for months, the cast-iron nutters are out and about.

Insisting the virus is a hoax.

And that the vaccine is an attempt to control us all or even kill us.

Never underestimate the depths of human stupidity.

But given our dire situation, the Government could help by answering a few questions.

Being candid and honest in its replies.

So, here are some of the questions which have occurred to me these past few weeks.

And I would guess others have been thinking the same.

I don’t know the answers.

And in many cases maybe nobody does.

But estimates, based on science, might be useful.

Because the population is becoming a little fractious . . . 

1. Is it not the case that there have been many, possibly thousands, of variants of Covid-19? Mutate is what viruses do, in order to advance themselves. How soon, do you estimate, before we have a variant which is resistant to our vaccines?
2. The rise of this new variant and, indeed, the spread of the much-loved original occurred during the November lockdown. Does this not suggest to you that lockdowns are not very effective? And isn’t one minute in lockdown, the next minute out, the worst of all worlds?
3. In some regions our hospitals are in crisis. And yet at the same moment we are busy dismantling the Nightingale Hospitals, set up last spring for precisely this purpose. Why not keep them open? There seemed to be no problem staffing them in March and April. What has changed?
4. For how long will the vaccines be effective? We are hearing more and more stories of people who have been infected twice over a short period. If the vaccines afford protection for only a few months, will we each need several vaccinations per year? I am aware we can’t know for sure now, but what are the estimates of our scientific advisers?
5. Given that, even after the vaccines, we will still need to wear masks and socially distance, how can government keep assuring us that things will be a lot better by Easter? Won’t things, post-vaccines, be exactly the same as they are now?
6. Is the plan still to “defeat Covid”? And if so, what exactly does that mean?

No scientist I have read suggests the virus can be defeated.

It will end up as a pathogen we must live with, every year, much as we do with flu.

In which case, some might argue, why not live with it now?

I don’t ask the above questions out of a wish to be snarky, or to dig at the Government.

Simply because I feel quite a few people are asking the same questions at the moment.

And not getting a wholly honest response.

It’s time to treat us all as grown-ups.

Bit more pres ‘n’ correct

I HEARD Barack Obama on the radio reading extracts from his new book.

I am not a huge fan of the former US President.

I think he was overrated by a lot of people – not least the BBC, which adored him.

I suspect if Barack or his missus Michelle wrote a shopping list the BBC would serialise it, thinking it a work of genius.

But I have to say, it was quite pleasing to listen to a US President speaking with a degree of intelligence and humility.

Rather than the garbled, mangled, borderline psychotic boasting we’ve all been subjected to over the past four years.