Walloping Cods

 Two blog posts in one week?! I can hear your sharp intake of breath. But I saw something in the news that just drove me to commit my thoughts in some form or other.

‘ Boris Johnson has warned that the reduction in coronavirus infections, hospitalisations and deaths "has not been achieved" by the rollout of COVID vaccines.

The prime minister, speaking the day after the latest easing of lockdown restrictions, instead said it was the national shutdown that had been "overwhelmingly important" in driving down COVIDrates.’

This was from Sky News. And I challenge it unreservedly.

If the reduction in coronavirus infections were achieved by lockdown we would’ve reduced the infection rate months and months ago. Lockdown might work if it were observed properly by the majority of the population but it isn’t. It seems to me that there are various categories of lockdown “compliance“.

• People who follow the guidelines to the absolute letter as far as possible. (I’m in that category.)
• People who wilfully manipulate the guidelines to suit their own circumstances and desires.
• People who manipulate the guidelines to their own ends because they don’t actually understand the guidelines fully or have trouble interpreting them.
• People who are not complying out of sheer ignorance.
• And then you have the Covid deniers, anti vaxers and refuseniks who would thwart any directive given to them because no one is going to tell them what to do. And they didn’t vote Tory anyway so why should they do what they say. Blah blah blah.

And if I’m not mistaken infection rates started to drop before the easing of lockdown began. So I would say that is purely due to the vaccine rollout. And it’s because lockdowns haven’t worked that we have to rely on vaccines. I am incredibly sceptical and cynical about the vaccines. They’ve not been around long enough to be properly tested. The long-term effects can in no way be known. But where you’ve got a population that simply won’t do as they’re told you’ve got to have some way out and vaccine is the only way as I see it. Unless you live in a country like New Zealand of course. 23 deaths in total from Covid! I know you can’t make a viable comparison between our two countries. New Zealand were able to close their borders because they are a self-sufficient country. Our country is not self-sufficient and closing the borders would have meant an imposed starvation because we don’t produce enough food to feed our population. But national compliance went a long way to make New Zealand a bastion of Covid excellence.

Okay. So I guess this is more of a rant than a blog post. But I needed to get it off my chest.