Open our pubs
A DAY after the debacle over the over-sold infection rates used to justify the second lockdown, we discover pubs really have been thrown to the wolves on a whim.
Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance admits there was no evidence the 10pm curfew in September stopped Covid spreading.
Nor, he concedes, is there anything concrete to prove that forcing bankruptcy-inducing restrictions on pubs and restaurants will help much either.
Which Trending In The News and the pub trade have said repeatedly, given the tiny percentage of infections caused in hospitality settings that are already Covid-secure.
A report for Holland’s health ministry says shutting their bars did nothing to slow the “R” rate.
In fact, it moved transmission into homes, where far less social-distancing took place.
And yet our own curbs continue to hammer the industry and close more than half our pubs. The rest barely make a penny.
What is the basis of all this, if not science? It’s a hunch. A gesture.
Yet it is destroying businesses, hundreds of thousands of jobs and is ripping the heart out of communities.
Stop the madness now, PM. Catastrophe is imminent.
Get your jab
IT’S easy to get spooked by a new vaccine.
Especially with conspiracy theories rife on social media.
And when, for example, the Pfizer jab triggers an allergic reaction in isolated extreme cases.
But such setbacks are common with new drugs.
The Pfizer/BioNTech patients who had a reaction were two out of thousands so far — both known to be highly sensitive, both now fine.
Canada yesterday approved the drug, as Britain did last week. It’s safe for the overwhelming majority of us.
Yet one in four Brits still don’t want it.
Our advice? Don’t heed the scaremongers.
Keir’s unclear
GIVEN his hype as the “forensic” QC, it is staggering to find Sir Keir Starmer so ignorant on Brexit.
Boris Johnson never claimed a trade deal was “oven-ready” and just needed signing.
His “Get Brexit Done” election pitch was based on the Withdrawal Agreement, which WAS ready to go.
He needed a majority, he told voters, to see off the Remainer resistance, get that agreement through and finally make Brexit irreversible. Which he did.
Anyone following the Brexit debate knew a trade deal, the second half of the process, would be harder.
So Starmer’s attempt to paint the failure to secure that, so far at least, as a Tory broken promise is a blatant rewriting of history.
And, let’s face it, it’s his own Brussels chums who have held it up, not Boris.
Labour have so little worth saying on Brexit that they are reduced to pretending Red Wall Tory voters were sold a pup.
They weren’t.
