Lockdowns continue
Britain's seemingly endless cycle of lockdowns continues, with schools remaining shut and in some cases citizens even being arrested for daring to step outside of their dedicated travel zones for exercise!
Oh yes, the lockdown and extended isolation of the healthy population on and off since 23 March 2020 and the shock removal of civil liberties have been emotive subjects nonpareil, but logically an end must surely be in sight as in brilliant news the four most vulnerable cohorts will have all been vaccinated this week.
Predictably, and depressingly, the narrative in some parts has shifted towards a 'zero COVID' target (which makes little sense in isles with forever open borders), the need for permanent mask mandates, restrictions on travel, and even the right to work...dangerous trends which urgently need to be quashed.
The financial impacts are one thing. UK government borrowing hit its highest level on record in December, and at about 100 per cent of GDP the national debt has already exploded to arguably its worst position since the period after World War II, following years of now-worthless attempts at austerity.
But the looming higher taxes and repayment of the national debt pale into insignificance against the potential toll of seemingly endless lockdowns and human inactivity on loneliness, anxiety, depression, and mental health, job losses and destroyed businesses, delayed surgeries, domestic abuse, education dysfunction, and the destructive sense of hopelessness being inflicted on our youth.
The UK somehow needs to plot a path out of all these unplanned lockdowns, and hopefully well before the warmer summer months suppress the virus as they did last year.
Vaccine powerhouse
On the positive side of the ledger, post-Brexit Britain has surprised almost everyone in emerging as world-leader in respect of its vaccine rollout.
As virus numbers continue to improve dramatically, the critical question - which can't yet be answered conclusively by the data - is whether the vaccine itself accounts for much of the tremendous results seen to date.
Daily vaccinations have continued to climb higher each day, with new persons vaccinated climbing to a fresh high this week 441,000 per day or 3.1 million per week, which has been a spectacularly strong trend.
Over the past 24 hours 549,708 persons were reported to have had a first vaccine dose, against 15,845 new COVID cases, a healthy ratio of 35:1 which has continued its impressive climb.
More than 12 million persons in the UK have now received at least one vaccine dose, meaning that the four priority 'most vulnerable' groups will be vaccinated at least once by this week, theoretically accounting for about 90 per cent of COVID deaths.
With almost a quarter of the adult population now vaccinated with at least one dose, the plan now appears to be to vaccinate all over 50s and other vulnerable groups over the coming weeks, which should account for closer to 99 per cent of COVID deaths.
Depending upon whether you measure by case date or date reported, new daily cases have declined by about three-quarters since peaking a month ago in the first week of January...and that's in spite of weekly tests continuing to spiral to record highs of more than 4½ million per week.
A more conservative assessment of rolling weekly new case numbers still points to an ongoing decline of about 25 per cent week-on-week, and a rolling weekly total decline of more than two-thirds from the early January peak.
Hospital capacity has reportedly been reduced over the past year rather than increased, partly due to the requirement for more space between beds, but it's good to see hospital admissions from COVID now declining, with new admissions halving over the past three weeks.
The number of COVID cases still in hospital has declined by a quarter over the past 17 days of available figures (these figures are reported with a a lag and are some way out of date).
Cases occupying MV beds have also declined, but more slowly, down by 14 per cent over the 12 days to February 5.
The vaccine effect
Due to the lag effect - vaccines are believed to be effective at countering serious cases after 21 days - it's still not possible to say for certain whether these across-the-board declines represent the impacts of the extended lockdown, the early signs of success from the mass vaccination programme, or a combination of the two.
Hospital admissions do tentatively appear to be declining faster among Britain's over 85s age cohort, at 22 per cent per week, but it's still early days, and the figures for both hospital admissions and deaths overall are falling rapidly.
Results from Israel show that the vaccines have been very effective in reducing serious cases and deaths in the most vulnerable older cohorts, but this can only be known definitively in Britain by mid-February at the earliest, and perhaps two or three weeks or more from now.
Fingers crossed, for everyone's sake!
