Mr Bumble said that today would be our Freedom Day. The day on which Britain would break away from coronavirus restrictions.
On Saturday our new Health Secretary, Mr Spock came down with COVID-19 in spite of being double-vaccinated. Fortunately his symptoms are mild. Towards the end of last week Spock had been in protracted close contact with Mr Bumble and our Chancellor of the Exchequer - The Pocket Dynamo.
Following their own rules, this duo should have gone into self-isolation immediately. For thirty six hours they put about a story that they would instead join a "pilot scheme" which would not require them to self-isolate but they were rumbled. Recognising the growing public backlash they did a "U" turn and pledged to self-isolate like ordinary citizens.
A couple of months ago Britain was doing really well. Our key COVID figures were looking very promising with daily infections dropping below one thousand, hardly any new hospitalisations, the successful vaccination programme proceeding at pace and on some days there were no COVID-related deaths at all.
It's not like that now - ever since Mr Bumble failed to act decisively on the "Delta" variant that arose in India. Our daily infection tally is now worse than anywhere else in the world. Yesterday we had 48,161 new infections - more than any other country on the planet, including India, Brazil, The USA and Russia.
Our NHS driven vaccination programme has gone really well but several million British people remain unvaccinated. Nonetheless, just twenty five citizens died of COVID-19 yesterday which is a very low number when you consider the mushrooming infection rate.
A top epidemiologist reckons that our infection rate will climb over 100,000 a day this summer and hospitalisations and deaths will grow correspondingly. It is all very concerning.
At some stage in the very near future, economies must open up and we must all learn to live with COVID. It is not going away. But right now seems the wrong time for this country to ring the bells for Mr Bumble's Freedom Day. It is a very strange kind of freedom.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/3BsEHOG
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