Rishi Sunak - Moving Goalposts for Lockdown

[LucilleTheVampireBat]

So it is in the news that Rishi Sunak has said he is concerned that government scientific advisers are moving the goalposts in a bid to extend the lockdown.

He is said to have stated that the justification is being shifted from the original and boakworthy "Protect the NHS" narrative, and is now not focusing on hospitalisations, but rather on the number of cases.

This was my concern all along. That they would try to change the narrative in order to justify extending this hideous lockdown even longer.

This quote is from the Telegraph article: "He (Rishi) has told allies that Britain is approaching a "fat lady sings moment" when lockdown must be lifted, never to return". I truly hope that this is the case!

His concerned about the economy and when the furlough scheme ends. It makes sense but you always have to do a balancing act between this and the public's health , which isn't easy.
I bet he was under the impression that things would be a bit more ' normal ' by now too. He was happy to splash the cash last March.

It appears ( from the mail reporting , anyway) that his always been at odds with the PM and Sage regarding the economy but the PM is a bit more cautious about things.
Tough call for them all. The debts the country are mounting up are eye watering.

He is right. The Government needs to stand firm on this. We cannot go on for much longer with so many rights and freedoms removed.

I hope so too. But I do think we need to lockdown just a bit longer. I’m hoping if we get cases down enough by March or end of March that can be it for the year and we can start to get back to normal. I think once this lockdown ends there will be no support for another so they need to make the most of it now.

Saying that there’s no way I’ll support lockdown past March. It will have gone on way too long and it’s not right to have our freedoms taken away for so long. It’s a difficult balance and I don’t envy them.

They've been changing the goalposts ever since day 1.

I think we need to listen to the scientists on how best to get through this.

It is not any good for the economy to have wave after wave of super high cases, deaths over 1000 and variants spreading, so we need to get the best and most effective handle on this. That is what science is for.

Chris Whitty has said all along that it is not possible to separate out the economy from health, We need to be thinking of them both together.

I just really, really hope that the government isn't captured by the Zero Covid movement.

We'll have restrictions forever if we listen solely to the particular scientists on SAGE, who only come from a few specialisms @herecomesthsun

We need to listen to a much broader range of expertise as we start to move away from the sole focus on COVID.

Economics, education, mental health, poverty- all are harmed y lockdown and need to be considered.

@herecomesthsun

I think we need to listen to the scientists on how best to get through this.

It is not any good for the economy to have wave after wave of super high cases, deaths over 1000 and variants spreading, so we need to get the best and most effective handle on this. That is what science is for.

Chris Whitty has said all along that it is not possible to separate out the economy from health, We need to be thinking of them both together.

Yes we do need to be thinking of them both together, but they goes both ways. Obviously it would be bad to open up too soon, but also bad to open up too late. We need the economy to pay for the NHS. No money, no healthcare.

Yeah let's open up and let all the extra transmission create more opportunities for mutations meaning no immunity from previous infections and all the hard work developing vaccines goes to waste.
Great idea.

I know this is hideous. I'm 2 stone heavier, losing my mind trying to work full-time on zoom whilst also getting 3 primary kids to complete the bare minimum of home learning. But if we allow further mutations we will just have this again and again!

Economics, education, mental health, poverty are all harmed by being in a poorly managed pandemic, we need to listen to SAGE, who are in fact quite sizeable and have a broad base.

The countries doing best economically are those who used scientific principles to keep cases low, test and trace etc.

JVT has said he admired the approach from Japan and similar countries. So widespread use of face masks, good test and trace etc.

We need to get schools back, but we would be best advised to pur WHO recommended measures in place, otherwise the more infectious new variants will go right through them and we will be back with very high community spread. We still don't have enough adults vaccinated for that.

Basically, we need to open up but intelligently.

I’m not sure he’s the best person to listen to. Eat Out To Help Out wasn’t exactly the best idea in the middle of a pandemic. If we open up fast before the vaccines are working properly we’ll be back where we started and also risk new variants. I liked Rishi Sunak at the start of this but I now see he was a disaster capitalist during the 2008 financial crisis. His ideology is aligned for the super rich not the masses.

I predict a slow opening from March. Back to almost normal by June.

@EnemyOfEducationNo1

Yeah let's open up and let all the extra transmission create more opportunities for mutations meaning no immunity from previous infections and all the hard work developing vaccines goes to waste. Great idea.

I know this is hideous. I'm 2 stone heavier, losing my mind trying to work full-time on zoom whilst also getting 3 primary kids to complete the bare minimum of home learning. But if we allow further mutations we will just have this again and again!

How are you going to stop virus mutation?

Flu mutates every year and the viruses are tweaked, every scientist I've heard is pretty confident that this will be possible with covid too

Your suggestion would have us on permanent lockdown

Agree with Patty

His help eat out scheme likely was one of the causes of November lockdown

Think this time needs to be a slower lift of lockdown to see the effect on numbers

Otherwise we risk yet another one

@herecomesthsun

Schools will rightly be returning as normal. 'WHO measures' will not be needed once we have the vulnerable population vaccinated.

When this has happened, we need to focus on getting businesses and the economy open if we want to have the money to fund the NHS, never mind prevent millions of families facing poverty.

Lockdown causes significant harms of its own. Just writing these off as being caused by COVID itself is nonsense.

He's right. We need to get the economy moving and fairly quickly.

We owe £2.1 trillion and rising, debt we and our children will be paying back for decades. This just can't go on for much longer.

Scientists are already working on a booster injection for mutations for autumn. The current vaccines work well enough on the current strains. We will be able to open up soon, once the vulnerable have been vaccinated, and we shouldn’t need to lock down again. Booster for everyone in autumn and that should sort winter too. There’s no need for continuous lock downs now.

The government have been too late to lockdown every time and too quick to release restrictions. Sunak has been a big problem in that respect (eat out to help out was a disaster).

However, he's right here. Once the vulnerable are vaccinated we've got to live with the virus. Yes, there'll be some restrictions in place with regards social distancing for a while yet, but no more lockdowns.

[quote FizzyPepsi]@herecomesthsun

Schools will rightly be returning as normal. 'WHO measures' will not be needed once we have the vulnerable population vaccinated.

When this has happened, we need to focus on getting businesses and the economy open if we want to have the money to fund the NHS, never mind prevent millions of families facing poverty.

Lockdown causes significant harms of its own. Just writing these off as being caused by COVID itself is nonsense. [/quote]
I wasn't saying we needed indefinite lockdown.

However, there will still be quite a lot of vulnerable unvaccinated people in the community by, say, the middle of June and we have new more infectious variants. Also, the vaccines aren't 100% effective and we have limited data on how they will affect the very elderly and different groups of very vulnerable people. There are also some people who for various reasons won't be getting the vaccine. Not to mention all the people awaiting their second doses of vaccine.

So if we start relaxing all the restrictions.we will get a lot of deaths going up again - there was an article in the Telegraph recently suggesting that we could quickly have another wave bigger than this one.

Schools should be thinking, rightly, about a new normal and a safer way of doing things.

The safer we are, the more effectively we can get on with re-starting the economy.

@User133847

Eat out to help out certainly wasn't a disaster for the tens of thousands of hospitality businesses that are still here as a result.

And therefore the millions of people who still have jobs, so still have homes and can pay the bills. Or the millions of DC who still have working parents.

Or for that matter HMRC who will have raised millions of pounds in the tax we need to pay doctors and nurses.

In so far as Eat Out increased cases going into the autumn, it may have had the opposite effect to that intended on hospitality.

@herecomesthsun

The evidence shows that the Oxford vaccine stops 100% of deaths and 100% of hospitalisations 21 days after one dose.

Vaccinating the most vulnerable will therefore ensure that hospitals are no longer overwhelmed- which is the purpose of lockdown.

We are not trying to stop anyone every getting ill- that would be ludicrous.

@herecomesthsun

I think we need to listen to the scientists on how best to get through this.

It is not any good for the economy to have wave after wave of super high cases, deaths over 1000 and variants spreading, so we need to get the best and most effective handle on this. That is what science is for.

Chris Whitty has said all along that it is not possible to separate out the economy from health, We need to be thinking of them both together.

No-one needs Chris Whitty's opinion on economics surely! They are also linked in that the NHS is paid for by OUR TAXES. People pay taxes when they are WORKING.

Some balancing up is clearly needed. March must see changes.

I think the trouble is and I say this as a HCP, the Sage experts only think in terms of health & I am not even sure they consider mental health. They are not trained economists.