Covid-19 is a nasty disease, causing people to be seriously ill, even killing them.
I work for an Acute NHS Trust. Although my work isn’t clinical, I know just how dangerous caring for COVID patients can be, not only for our clinical staff but those who support them in the “COVID” areas but also those in care homes and elsewhere.
To stop its spread, the Government has imposed restrictions on the like of which we have never seen in this country and, for the most part, people have accepted them because they know that these restrictions will save lives.
Many are using the coincidence of the 75th anniversary of the VE day to draw an analogy between dealing with Covid-19 and the WWII, asking for sacrifices, talking about winning the fight against “the enemy”, saying that those who break the restrictions are “fighting for the enemy”.
However, this analogy is not just wrong; it is stopping us realising that Covid-19, not an “enemy” that can be defeated, Like other deadly viruses, we need to learn how to live with it, not “defeat” it, because this virus will be with us for a long time.
Until an effective vaccine has been developed and rolled out across the world, it will be there, we may have periods when it is under control, but there will also be periods where it gains tractions and starts to take off again.
Even when we have a vaccine and we have eradicated it in the UK completely, it will still be around in countries that do not have our capacity for testing and vaccinating. It took nearly 200 years from the first smallpox vaccinations by Edward Jenner until smallpox was eradicated, 70 years on from the development of the Polio vaccination and there are still some cases in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
For now, we are still in the first phase on Covid-19, it has come out of the blue and, rightly, people are scared of it so are willing to accept draconian (justified but still draconian) restrictions on normal lives. However, we cannot carry on like this indefinitely. We cannot spend the next 12 months (or longer) waiting for a vaccine to be developed and made available for all, under these restrictions. People need to earn a living; the country needs to have a working economy to generate taxation to pay for services; we all need social lives outside our immediate family.
The reality is we need to learn to adapt to the new norm, how to live, work and play where COVID remains a danger.
This is not an attempt to justify the efforts by the Johnson Government to relax the Lockdown published in the last few days, far from it. These plans have not been thought through carefully and seem to be predicated on the idea we can still defeat Covid-19.
It is a call for a proper debate on the way forward, how we can change the restrictions to both stop Covid-19 from spreading out of control but also allowing people to live a life not dominated by fear of it. This debate must be led by science, yes, but taking into account also the effects of Lockdown, realising that we cannot hide from this disease until there is a vaccine.
* Leon Duveen is President of Liberal Democrats for Peace in the Middle East (ldfpme.org.uk), a group of Lib Dems working to support those trying to a solutions to the Palestine/Israel conflict and other conflicts in the region and to providing information about those working for peace there.
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7 Comments
The key to coping with CoVid-19 has to be testing then disseminating and acting on information. This is needed to restrict transmission rates. Some countries, including the UK and France, have been particularly poor in this regard.
There is a Liberal issue here: information about people’s health status and their contacts is a privacy issue, however undisclosed information will cost lives. We have to acknowledge that those who carry the disease whether symptomatically or asymptomatically, have a responsibility towards others who do not have the disease; therefore we need to work out how information is effectively disseminated and in a way that minimises privacy concerns.
Masks and efforts to ease congested areas (particularly public transport) can help but are not sufficient, short of a vaccine, only intelligent use of reliable information can control spread of the virus.
Possibly we can eliminate the virus without a vaccine. So the OP may be a little defeatist.
However, and as Martin says, testing then disseminating and acting on information is going to be essential – ie hunting down the virus and preventing it from replicating. Inevitably it will mean “hunting down” individuals carrying it and compulsorily quarantining them even if they are asymptomatic. This will present ethical difficulties for all.
The app for smartphones presents a good opportunity, but also presents concerns about personal privacy. I saw a suggestion that the code be open sourced, to allow scrutiny from the coding community. The flip side of this is that hackers have the access to spot any vulnerabilities. Over time this works quite well – Open Source Code is a big area of growth, as its rate of acceleration – enhancement & bug fix – is fast. There is also the issue that the app would need to make use of some deliberately protected functions in the OS (iOS or Android).
Assuming it could be made to work, Open Sourced, and stabilised to some degree, I would be willing to use it, on some very strict GDPR conditions (who can access the data, what it can be used for, how it is secured, and how long it may be retained). This would require cross-party oversight.
If we are to interact socially, we have to accept participation in this temporary social monitoring, but as individuals and liberals, we have a right to control how it is done.
Yes of course we need better testing (and getting results back within a few hours not the days it currently takes) and a contact tracing system that works. Most of all though we need to build trust in the public arena by being open, inclusive and transparent (unlike our current Government).
Even the most optimistic predictions for a vaccine that is effective and can be manufactured in the quantities needed is 6 months, however it is likely to be longer. Before we can bring down the number of infected people around the world will be even longer. It is like;y we will have to live with the threat of more waves of Covid-i9 for that time.
What really worries me now is the growing number of deaths not form the virus but because of the virus. Already, there are about 10,000 of the 30,000 excess deaths (i.e. those more than the average number of deaths for the year so far) that have not been linked to Covid. More research is needed to work out why these people died but anecdotally, there are many less Cardiology & Stroke admissions than would be expected . Also, there have been reports of suicides linked to the Lockdown and, as peoples economic situations worsen, the possibility of real poverty & deaths in the community.
Even if we get a vaccine ready for use in 12 months, we cannot keep the lockdown going that long without the number of those dying becasue of Covid getting bigger than the number of those dying with Covid.
I don’t think we can eliminate or even control the virus without a vaccine, certainly we can by being alert,, and essentially a vaccine is a rapid route to herd immunity. At the moment we aren’t sure if prior infection conveys immunity, but it does for most similar viruses. I don’t think we know yet how fast this virus mutates. If it’s like flu, we will be in a Permanent catch up. If it’s like the common cold we are toast unless we find an effective treatment and cure. Testing and subsequent isolation at the level that will reduce transmission to acceptable levels is not a feasible long term solution. We are currently discussing testing all patients die for elective treatment in hospital and then isolating them and their entire household for 7-14 days. Think about that outside the context of an emergency. Conversation with boss, oh indeed 2 weeks off cos my mam is having a hip operation, ok?
Some one mentioned about stroke and heart attack referrals, well urgent cancer referrals are currently about 20% of normal, not down by 20% – only 1 person in 5 that we normally expect to be checked out for a. Suspected cancer is being referred to hospital.. that is a time bomb we will see slowly explode over the next 2-5 years. Some of those people will die because of covid not from covid
Everything we do in life has consequences, whatever way we turn with this virus they are there. Being Alert is one thing, but what I have noticed in Supermarkets that however well set out and organised they are, and credit to them they have done an excellent job in that respect, the human fallibility switches off that alertness when it focusses on something else, such as a worrying search for a particular necessity, suddenly meeting a friend in the same aisle and staff, bless them, trying to be extra helpful, in all these and many other instances social distancing goes.
Peter Martin 13th May ’20 – 2:02pm
The genie is out of the bottle. The solution needs to be worldwide.
During the coalition we managed to put 0.7% of GDP into legislation, although a few Tories regret that now and want to spend the money differently.
This is something on which we might be able to agree with the Newer Labour Party that exists until their next conference.