@GoldenOmber
Our population is now slightly less immunologicallly exposed than England, so our base case rate has nudged up.
Yes exactly. And I suppose they can say this was worth doing previously because it meant more people got boosted before getting infected, or it helped hospitals cope by spreading the total infections out over a longer period. But surely we’re getting to the end of it serving even that purpose now?
I'd argue that such case-shifting restrictions are only ever justified when there is a danger of the health service being overwhelmed, with a loss of ability to provide normal emergency care.
But we're slowly being acclimatised to a world where the bar for impinging on people's freedom is, instead, that the NHS is very busy. That's not good enough. People can have reasonable disagreements about what level of COVID activity constitutes an unreasonable burden on the NHS, but we not be allowing the tail to wag the dog here - the NHS serves society, not the other way round.
Additionally, there are clearly plenty of parts of the NHS (and the wider economy) that have more or less refused to go back to anything like a normal service. Lots of services like podiatry are still reduced.
Why? It's totally self-serving. Half of the economy is operating like this, using "safety" as a complete fig leaf for various special interests.