Happy New Year.
2022 must be the year we start to properly live with this virus.
I must confess I am finding messaging rather confused. The Chairman of the JCVI tells us that only the most vulnerable should receive ongoing booster jabs whilst the Government makes plans for us all to have a fourth.
Apparently 1 in 25 of us currently have COVID and whilst hospital admissions are up, they always are at this time of year. It just illustrates how liberating and effective the vaccines have been.
Surely it is time to get back to normal? We have had two years of restrictions which have stopped businesses from trading and families from seeing their loved ones, at great personal cost. Taxpayers will be paying for these measures for more than a generation and it simply isn’t sustainable to continue with the constant instruction to stay at home. My heart goes out to those hospitality businesses who faced cancellations at Christmas after investing in stock to get them through their critical time of year. This can’t go on.
Of course we need to be careful and to limit transmission as best we can. But we cant continue to restrict people while racking up bills for testing, for jabbing and for business support. That way we will all be poorer. Government needs to break the bad habit it has formed.
Apart from anything else, these instructions to stay at home are looking a lot less effective. People are starting to make their own rational choices about risk and quality of life. If we are to restore a sense of authority to Government and to the rule of law in our great country there simply must be a rest of the approach to this disease.