UH-OH. The scientists are getting twitchy again.
They’ve got their graphs out and are warning that lockdown must not be lifted on June 21.
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All manner of woe will betide us.
A third wave of Covid. Plagues of frogs and locusts. Health Secretary Matt Hancock looking shifty at press conferences.
They are trying to get Boris Johnson to push back the date of our emergence from lockdown.
By “a few weeks”.
What possible good will that do?
Our answer — and Boris’s answer — should be very clear. If not now, then when?
Because once it’s been pushed back by a few weeks, then it will get pushed back again.
It will be like Groundhog Day
Because there are no figures that will keep the scientists happy — and there never will be.
There will always be a new variant around the corner.
VIRUS WILL NEVER BE ‘BEATEN’
The new Essex Variant, which has a tattoo of a dolphin on its back and a gold ankle chain.
The French variant, which smells of Brie and runs away when it hears the word “vaccine”.
The virus will never be “beaten”.
But somehow we have to emerge from this nightmare and get on with our lives.
The boffins parade about some frightening statistics.
Infection rates have risen by a startling 32 per cent in the last week, for example.
That sounds scary.
But only really because the infection rate the week before was very low.
These are comparatively very small numbers we are talking about.
Here’s another statistic for you.
Of all the people in England and Wales who have died in the last couple of weeks, what percentage do you reckon died of Covid?
Maybe 80 per cent? Or 50 per cent?
Nope. It’s actually 1.5 per cent.
In fact, less than that.
Because that’s the figure for people who died and had the word Covid mentioned on the death certificate.
Having just been hit by a bus because they were coughing a lot.
Or being 85 years old and suffering from a total 560 ailments — plus Covid.
By June 21, everyone who is in a vulnerable category will have received two doses of the vaccine.
So will most of the rest of the population. And this is the point.
If we cannot get back to normality under those circumstances, then we might as well accept that we will never get back to anything approaching normality.
Covid will have become the one thing British people aren’t allowed to die of.
They can die from loads of other stuff, but not Covid. That is forbidden.
Did you know, incidentally, that the death rate from everything for the last three months has been well below average?
Fewer people are dying in the UK right now than at any recent time.
This isn’t an attack on the scientists. They have their stuff to do.
But it is narrowly focused — just on Covid.
And their advice is, of course, interesting and relevant.
But the decision to free us from lockdown completely on June 21 must be a political decision.
One in which everything is taken into account.
So take that decision, Boris.
Then you can swan off with your gimmer (Teesside slang) on a honeymoon almost certainly paid for by somebody else.
And the rest of us can get on with our lives.
Moans hot up
MAY, usually my favourite month, was horrible this year.
Wet, cold and windy.
But it only took two days of June’s heatwave to get me moaning again.
And then I wondered why I used to go on holiday to hot places when I don’t like the heat.
Climate-wise, my ideal break would be a week in northern Poland.
Now, someone make those temperatures drop a bit.
Query virus ‘facts’
SEEMINGLY every day scientists discover another fact about the pandemic that goes directly against what we heard before.
The latest is that vitamin D supplements will not help to fight the Covid virus.
Thank Christ for that – I can stop eating herring every day. I’ve had seagulls following me for months.
Here are a few more pandemic facts that have been overturned:
- You must wash your hands and sanitise after touching any surface because of the risk of catching Covid. Nope. The chance of transmission through inanimate surfaces is very small. It is spread through the air. All that cleaning!
- There is no link to an increased risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine. That’s what we were told. Oh yes there is, we now know. A smallish risk, but a risk nonetheless.
- Ibuprofen makes the virus worse. Nope. There is insufficient evidence to link the two.
- People who say the virus was man-made in a Chinese lab are conspiracy theory racists. Um . . . it now seems possible that this was the case.
There are loads more of these. I’m not blaming the scientists for getting it wrong initially.
They were working in the dark.
But it does suggest to me that we shouldn’t censor people who advance a different point of view, which is what is happening at the moment.
Summer time?
A WOMAN called Lara Hogan wants us to stop using discriminatory words like “summer” and “winter”.
Lara tweeted that she is trying to avoid “Northern Hemisphere specific language”.
So instead of saying “summer” she now says “Q3”.
I really don’t know what we do about these people.
I would suggest a landfill site, but they’re all full.
Jodie’s talent rules in Anne Boleyn
JODIE TURNER-SMITH was great as Anne Boleyn, even if the Channel 5 drama itself was dumb on a kind of epic level.
Jodie is black.
And many commentators said that the colour of her skin emphasised what an “outsider” she was in Henry VIII’s court.
Hmmm.
It would only suggest that to me if I considered black people “outsiders”.
Which I don’t.
When will we lose this obsession with race?
Isn’t it enough Jodie was picked because she is a fine actress?
Rescue Karen
THE lovely name “Karen” is dying out.
Latest studies suggest almost nobody calls their newborn Karen any more.
That’s because it has become woke slang for a middle-aged white woman of vigorous opinions.
I like middle-aged white women of vigorous opinions.
There have been some great Karens.
The novelist Karen Blixen.
The actresses Karen Black and Karen Allen.
The singer Karen Carpenter. it’s time we rehabilitated the name.
It is your duty, if you are about to have a baby, to call it Karen.
Even if it’s a boy.
Truss to end farce
BEST news this week is one by one, government agencies are withdrawing from Stonewall’s ludicrous and expensive diversity scheme.
Stonewall is the LGBTQ+ campaigning charity.
For reasons that entirely elude me, its transgender-obsessive agenda was taken on board by organisations such as the DVLA and the Crown Prosecution Service.
Now the DVLA has pulled out along with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Even right-on Channel Four has had second thoughts.
The CPS is reviewing its membership.
Meanwhile, the excellent Equalities Minister Liz Truss has urged all government departments to bin Stonewall.
Hardly anybody in the wider world actually agrees with Stonewall.
People often ask me: “How do we stop the so-called progressive rot which infests every bit of our country?”
Well, Liz Truss is showing how.
Axeing Stonewall will begin to change the entire culture of our Government.
Well done, Liz.
