Covid: sorting the men from the boys

By Richard North - December 28, 2021

Greater irony hath no man, than prime minister Johnson putting the emphasis on “personal responsibility” as the latest weapon in the battle against the Omicrons. It does rather invite the question though, as to who should bring the cheese and wine.

Yet this, it seems, is Johnson’s response to the Covid Mafia’s call for tighter restrictions, despite having been warned by hospital doctors that it would be “ludicrous” not to act.

“Nothing in the data around hospitalisations is showing we need to put our foot on the accelerator”, a Number 10 source said. “It is not accelerating as quickly as it might have done. We just need to keep a close watch”.

As of early yesterday, however, the doctors’ trade union had urged Johnson to bring in further measures immediately – including limits on household mixing and table service only in pubs and restaurants – to stop the NHS being overwhelmed.

Whether the prime minister is sound in rejecting this advice we cannot tell directly, as the government has not published the full suite of figures on the “dashboard“. In particular, there are no recent data on the all-important hospital admissions, with nothing new since 20 December.

Helpfully though, the Telegraph is providing the political cover for Johnson with the headline: “Far fewer people in hospital with Covid this Christmas despite cases being three times higher”, having doctors “cautiously optimistic” that no new restrictions would be needed.

The data on which the paper relied was a lot more recent, covering 26 December, which showed there were 7,536 patients in hospital on that date, compared to 18,350 on the same day last year, and well below last winter’s peak which reached 34,336 on 18 January.

Cases currently recorded stand at 98,515 (down from a new high of 113,628 on Christmas Day), compared to 47,694 this time last year. Testing at that time, incidentally, reached 352,702 compared to the 1.5 million level currently being administered, suggesting that at least some of the extra cases being recorded could be a function of the increased testing.

London, as before, continues to present its own problems, although they do seem to be under control. While the number of patients needing ventilation has risen slightly in a week from 206 to 232, there are still fewer patients in hospital than this time last year – 2,640, compared to 4,591. Furthermore, the number of people in hospital primarily for Covid has also fallen from 85 percent in November to 75 percent currently.

This picture is endorsed by Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, representing hospitals and other NHS trusts in England. Hospitals, he says, “are not seeing the numbers of older people who’ve got real respiratory problems, needing critical care, needing very large amounts of oxygen support”, adding that: “We’re just not seeing those numbers at this point that we saw in January 2021”.

Hopson also cautions against over-interpreting rises in omicron hospital admissions. He attributes much of the increase to patients testing positive for Covid “incidentally” after having been admitted to hospital for different issues.

Needless to say, the Guardian is doing its best to make a bad job worse, focusing on the “perilous state” of public services as staff desert their posts after testing positive for Covid. The paper refers to “new grim warnings” about the impact of omicron on the NHS workforce, citing modelling expert Alison Leary who says that as much as 40 percent of NHS staff in London alone could be absent because of rising Covid-19 infections.

“We’d hope that’s a worst-case scenario, but because we are already seeing an increase, I think it wouldn’t be unrealistic to expect that to go up significantly”, she says.

Overall though, according to the Telegraph, NHS staff absences due to coronavirus in England are lower than last year, with 18,829 off work compared to 23,965 at the most recent count, as of 19 December. Where there is a problem, it is in London, with absences having passed last year’s levels: a total of 3,874 healthcare workers off, compared to 2,422 last year.

Despite the BBC’s Nick Triggle suggesting that London “gives us an indication of what to expect”, it stands alone with its own unique set of circumstances.

Furthermore, Rupert Pearse, an intensive care doctor from Queen Mary Hospital London says he expects the case peak to be half that seen last January. Prof Tim Spector, of King’s College London, sees “the hint of a slowdown”. “Still looking mild with no surge in admissions to hospital yet”, he says.

Also, much as the likes of Ferguson are loath to take South African data into account, this country still continues to provide early clues as to the direction of travel.

New infections, we are told, have continued to decline sharply, with the seven day rolling average for new infections having plummeted by 35 percent from an all-time high of 23,000 nine days ago to 15,000 on Monday. And while the data must be interpreted with caution, local experts are convinced that the country has passed its omicron peak with “substantially lower” death rates than with the delta variant.

Despite all this, though, the Guardian manages to find some “scientists” to criticise Johnson’s decision, complaining that yesterday was the moment of “the greatest divergence between scientific advice and legislation” seen since the start of the pandemic.

Simon Clarke, an associate professor in Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading, is one of those given space to have a good whinge. He cautions that the latest case figures did not include data for samples taken between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. It will only become clear how the virus had moved through the population over the Christmas period in the coming week or so, he says.

Toeing the standard Covid Mafia lines, he adds: “While nobody wants to live under tighter controls, the public need to realise that if we end up with a significant problem of hospitalisations and mass sickness, it will be worse than if authorities had acted earlier”.

Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London – home of the egregious Ferguson – then complains: “It does feel hard that, at a time when we need to all pull together to maximise all possible mitigations, we seem to have our greatest divergence between expert clinical/scientific advice and legislation”.

Pride of place, though, must go to Wes Streeting, shadow health secretary. He demands that government publishes the very latest data on hospitalisations and NHS staff absence rates, as well as up-to-date advice from SAGE, “so that the public can be reassured that they are genuinely following the data and scientific advice and that Boris Johnson is not simply capitulating to his own opponents in the Tory party”.

Therein lies the divide of divides. While Johnson may have begun to learn something of the art of politics, where advisors advise and ministers decide, Streeting is still in the grip of “the science” dogma, where ministers should unquestionably obey the diktats of their advisors.

Even if Johnson is a drag on his party, therefore, Labour has still to show that it is fit to govern. The Omicrons, it seems, are sorting the men from the boys.