In March, with fatalities already emerging around the world, Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK's chief scientific adviser, said the following: "If we can get this down to 20,000 [deaths] and below, that is a good outcome in terms of where we would hope to get to with this outbreak."
Ten months on, we've reached five times that number, and are currently witnessing a rolling daily average of 1200 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. While Vallance's counterpart Professor Chris Whitty offered some respite yesterday, revealing that the death rate was flattening, the UK is still experiencing the equivalent attrition of ten medium-sized airliners crashing with all on board every single day.
I'll admit, the virus has filled me with crippling fear from the outset, ever since I discovered - ironically around the same time as it reached British shores - that I was extremely clinically vulnerable to it. My own brush with COVID in November was mild, but could have easily gone another way. A piece in The Times today picks out a handful of disparate victims. It includes a 21-year-old care home worker with no known underlying health conditions; a 25-year-old, healthy GP surgery administrator; a fit, 6ft 5in hospital worker aged 52; and so on. There's little denying that some 97% of all virus deaths have occurred within people with such underlying problems, but there is also a frightening rate of death amongst the young and the healthy, complicating the view that COVID-19 only affects the old, those from ethnic minorities or those with so-called co-morbidities. In other words, any one of us.
My clinical vulnerability led me, last week, to have a vaccination, for which I am truly grateful. My near-91-year-old mother had hers a few days before, for which I am even more grateful. My partner, a primary school teacher, still required to go into work every day, has to wait in the queue like everyone else under the age of 50. You can't help feeling that vast sections of the population are simply ticking timebombs. The vaccination programme, however, is not the point I have quarrel with. Frankly, it's been amazing that we've gone from 0-60 as it is in getting the vaccines developed and administered to almost seven million people in Britain, given that it was only at the end of December 2019 that the coronavirus was identified as a potential danger to global life. Throughout the pandemic, a vaccine was seen as the exit path out of the crisis, and once it is administered to everyone, there's no scientific reason to think that it won't be. But that's of little comfort to the bereaved families of the 100,000 victims COVID-19 has cut down in this country.
However, when the public enquiry comes - and come it surely will - serious questions need to be asked of how the Government handled the outbreak. Lessons must be learned and implemented. It's no use Boris Johnson apologising and saying that he did everything that could have been done: because political decisions were made which, without any doubt in my mind, enabled the virus to spread. Why, for example, are we only now talking about borders being shut and strict quarantine rules being put in place, when last March our airports were operating as normal, with passengers arriving at Heathrow from any hotspot in the world, getting on the Tube and heading off into the community? Why was Track & Trace such an unmitigated disaster? Why was the distribution of PPE so badly handled? Why were care homes treated as fodder for the virus to reap its worse through patients discharged from hospitals? Why were schools not closed when they could have been? And just what impact did the Prime Minister's tolerance of Dominic Cummings' Barnard Castle jaunt have on public attitudes to following the rules?
The UK now stands with countries of significantly higher populations - like the United States, India and Brazil - as having one of the world's highest death rates from the coronavirus. When the pandemic broke out in places like Spain, Italy and France we all drew breath sharply and hoped that it wouldn't happen here. Well, it has, and now the UK has Europe's highest death rate. An island.
It's not so much an issue about politics versus expertise. You can take the COVID-sceptics' view that the likes of Witty and Vallance are doom-mongers, but they are also just doing their job, to the best of their ability, in providing objective medical and scientific facts. Political decision-making has been clearly behind every intransigent delay in putting critical measures in place. Whether it's Johnson's perennial need to appease his backbenchers, or simply his own desire to be a people pleaser, there are fundamental flaws in his character which have played their part in the UK's response to the pandemic.
I don't envy anyone in government right now - genuinely. The oft-repeated statement that we're facing the greatest crisis since the Second World War is fully justified. But what got the UK through those six years was a mixture of human resilience, application and a collective spirit. When I've seen people refusing to wear masks, or holding christening parties, or any of the other breaches of lockdown rules, I see more than just examples of miscreants needing to be told to "put that light out", but a societal failing that requires greater enforcement. And that has needed tougher decisions made sooner rather than later. Because, at risk of appearing selfish, I have no desire to go out of this world in the same way as 100,000 of my fellow citizens have done, and I certainly don't wish it on any of the people I love.
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