So who did the BBC line up as its first and only ‘expert’ to pass instant judgment on the Prime Minister’s televised announcement on Saturday of measures to address the new Omicron Covid variant?
Professor Susan Michie, that’s who. Michie was highly critical of what she saw as the inadequacy of the Government’s response, which includes mandatory face masks in shops and on public transport and self-isolation for contacts of anyone testing positive for Omicron, as well as for anyone arriving in this country until they have a negative PCR test.
According to Professor Michie, who sits on the Government’s SAGE committee as a health psychologist but speaking to the BBC on Saturday in what was described as ‘a personal capacity’, this was simply not enough.
Professor Susan Michie has spoken at events organised by the ‘Zero Covid Campaign’, which has consistently agitated for Britain to follow the policy still operating in the People’s Republic of China
The Zero Covid Coalition says it is ‘jointly convened by Diane Abbott (formerly Corbyn’s Shadow Home Secretary, pictured)
“What we have now is Plan B Light,” Michie stated. Michie stated that Plan B Plus is what we require. This was not explained in detail by Michie.
Let me explain. Professor Michie has spoken at events organised by the ‘Zero Covid Campaign’, which has consistently agitated for Britain to follow the policy still operating in the People’s Republic of China: to lock down whole cities, and even regions, when there is any Covid outbreak.
Predictable
It is not surprising that Michie would support such an approach. For the last 43 years she has been an active member of The Communist Party of Britain.
When she was critical of how the UK didn’t fully emulate the Chinese Communist Party’s approach last year, she wrote: ‘China has an socialist collective system. . . We are not an individualistic, profit-oriented, consumer-oriented society, badly affected by the failed neoliberal economic policies of 20 years.
Similar approaches are advocated by Professor Michie’s “Independent Sage” organization.
The slogan of the group is “Towards a Zero-Covid UK”. Sir David King, a former Chief Scientist of Government, founded it. He has accused Johnson’s administration of “using the Covid crisis in order to privatize sections of the Healthcare system”.
Isabel Diaz Ayuso (pictured), the president of Madrid’s regional authority, observed when attacking Spain’s equivalent of the Zero Covid Campaign, that many on the hard Left ‘think that citizens are better off locked up in their homes and living off subsidies’
Anthony Costello is another prominent member of the group, a professor in public health who describes himself as ‘tothe Left of Jeremy Corbyn’ on environmental and economic issues.
In fact, it is the diehard acolytes of the former Labour leader who constitute the parliamentary membership of the Zero Covid Coalition, which says it is ‘jointly convened by Diane Abbott (formerly Corbyn’s Shadow Home Secretary) and the Morning Star’ — the daily newspaper of the British Communist Party.
Unsurprisingly, politicians from the Labour Party’s Leftmost fringes and similar-minded medical professionals should support a “zero-Covid” policy. This policy is just as real as a “zero-flu program.”
This is because they don’t care about what it would do to business. If profits seem inherently unfair, then why should you care if businesses are plunged further into losses?
Why not simply put workers back on furlough, while the tax payer takes the burden?
Or, as Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the president of Madrid’s regional authority, observed when attacking Spain’s equivalent of the Zero Covid Campaign, many on the hard Left ‘think that citizens are better off locked up in their homes and living off subsidies’.
Angelique Coetzee (chairwoman, South African Medical Association), describes Omicron as a mild disease. Symptoms include sore muscles and fatigue for up to a few days.
They believe that any state can exercise control to achieve their goals.
As someone who has written in support of this lockdown, I can say it.
The situation was different then than it is today. There were no vaccines available and we didn’t know much about the possible treatments for those who had been hospitalized with the virus. It was basically ventilation.
Whereas when, in July this year, the Government removed almost all restrictions — to the fury of the zero-Covid crowd, who claimed it would lead to our hospitals being overwhelmed — the mortality rate for those contracting the virus was only 0.085 per cent.
Startling
As Meaghan Kall, the lead epidemiologist for what was then Public Health England pointed out at the time, this was 20 times lower than the infection mortality rate had been when the virus was at its peak and we didn’t have the vaccines or treatments that are now available.
To be clear: we don’t know how effective the existing vaccines will be in reducing the possibility of serious illness or death from Omicron.
The new variant contains a startling number of mutations in its ‘spike’ protein — and so might make the vaccines we have had less efficient at ‘recognising’ the intruder.
But as Professor Brendan Wren, professor of vaccinology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote in Saturday’s Daily Mail: ‘Even if our vaccines are less effective [against the Omicron variant]This does not mean, however that we are returning to early 2020.
“So far, our vaccines have protected against every variant of the virus discovered.”
Omicron shows signs of a high degree of transmissibility. Delta is more transmissible that the Alpha variant, first discovered in Kent. This was also more transmissible then the original Wuhan virus.
Professor Brendan Wren, professor of vaccinology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote in Saturday’s Daily Mail: ‘So far our vaccines have worked against all variants of the virus that have been discovered’
Professor Wren noted that viruses mutate constantly. And when they do, they don’t always result in more virulent strains. Actually, the reverse is true.
‘Over time, pathogens tend to become less deadly because a virus that kills its host quickly spreads less than one that doesn’t.’
This, according to a leading medical official in South Africa — the country whose scientists were the first to identify the latest new variant — may well be true of Omicron.
Angelique Coetzee is the South African Medical Association’s chairwoman. She stated, “It appears as mild disease with symptoms of sore muscles and fatigue for a few days.” . . Our tests have shown that the infected don’t experience loss of taste and smell. The infected may experience a mild cough.
However, it seems that the majority of South African hospital patients are not vaccinated.
Rudo Mathivha, the head of intensive care at Soweto’s Baragwanath hospital, told reporters: ‘Young people in their 20s to just over their late 30s are coming in with moderate-to-severe disease. Around 65 percent aren’t fully vaccinated while the remainder are just half.
Draconian
Delta, which may still be the most popular variant of the UK’s Delta virus, is clear. It is evident that people who are not fully vaccinated have a greater chance than others.
Professor Stephen Powis was the NHS England’s national medical director. He declared last week that “the overwhelming majority” of those admitted to intensive Care with Covid were not fully vaccinated.
What is the point of locking down or disallowing people from working?
But what about China? China seems to be the last country seeking ‘total elimination of the virus’. Professor Michie says we need to follow their lead.
Professor Stephen Powis was the NHS England’s national medical director. He declared last week that the majority of patients admitted to intensive care for Covid had not been fully vaccinated.
The situation is trickier there because China’s home-grown vaccines, by all accounts, are less efficacious than the ones given in the UK.
And, to be fair, Beijing’s draconian policies, with a seemingly endless series of lockdowns as any outbreak occurs, have resulted in strikingly low levels of Covid deaths (assuming that the official figures are reliable).
However, the Chinese and their medical staff are openly complaining about how this policy is not sustainable.
In the summer of 2008, Zhang Wenhong (a Shanghai-based infectious-disease specialist) argued that China must find a way to ‘live with the virus’. He was called a “lackey” by foreigners.
However, it’s interesting to note that Global Times’ editor in chief wrote, “As China gradually become an isolated island when it comes to exercising [a]It may lose its advantages over an open policy with zero Covid, but it could be gradually lost.
If even Communist China — as that state-sanctioned editorial hints — decides to retreat from its zero-Covid approach, perhaps that regime’s admirers in this country might finally do so, too.