England’s Covid unlocking is threat to world, say 1,200 scientists
International experts say ‘unethical experiment’ could allow vaccine-resistant variants to develop
Thousands of people marching through London on 27 June calling for all restrictions to be lifted.
Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
Boris Johnson’s plan to lift virtually all of England’s pandemic restrictions on Monday is a threat to the world and provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants, international experts say.
Britain’s position as a global transport hub would mean any new variant here would rapidly spread around the world, scientists and physicians warned at an emergency summit. They also expressed grave concerns about Downing Street’s plans.
Government advisers in New Zealand, Israel and Italy were among those who sounded alarm bells about the policy, while more than 1,200 scientists backed a letter to the Lancet journal warning the strategy could allow vaccine-resistant variants to develop.
An adviser to New Zealand’s government told the summit he and his colleagues were astounded at the approach being taken in England.
“In New Zealand we have always looked to the UK for leadership when it comes to scientific expertise, which is why it’s so remarkable that it is not following even basic public health principles,” said Michael Baker, a professor of public health at the University of Otago and a member of the New Zealand ministry of health’s Covid-19 technical advisory group.
Also participating was Prof José Martin-Moreno of the University of Valencia, a senior adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO), who said: “We cannot understand why this is happening in spite of the scientific knowledge that you have.”
Others warned the British government’s approach would be imitated, for political expediency, by authorities elsewhere.
“What I fear is that that the some of the worst impulses in many of our states will follow the UK example,” said Dr William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School researcher and a pioneering Aids researcher who chairs Access Health International, a New York-based thinktank.
“I am extremely dismayed to see the very rapid rate of increasing infections in a population that is vaccinated pretty much like we are.”
Prof Christina Pagel, the director of University College London’s clinical operational research unit, told the meeting: “Because of our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the UK will likely spread to the rest of the globe. The UK policy doesn’t just affect us. It affects everybody and everybody has a stake in what we do.”
The letter to the Lancet said: “We believe the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19, 2021.”
“The world is watching the current avoidable crisis unfold in the UK,” said Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, who is taking part in Friday’s summit.
She added on Twitter: “Let’s be under no illusions – we are in a country where our government is taking steps to maximally expose our young to a virus that causes chronic illness in many. Our govt is ending all protections for our children including isolation of contacts of cases in schools & bubbles.”
The summit, facilitated by the Citizens, a journalism NGO, was being broadcast live on YouTube at noon UK time.
The concerns expressed in other countries comes after Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, warned on Thursday that the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 could reach “quite scary” levels within weeks, as cases soared caused by the more contagious Delta variant and the lifting of lockdown restrictions.
Whitty said in a webinar late on Thursday, hosted by the Science Museum, that hospital admissions were doubling about every three weeks, and that the current low numbers of Covid admissions could rise to serious levels in the next couple of months.
New coronavirus infections in the UK are at a six-month high, according to government figures, and the number of people in hospital and dying with Covid are at their highest level since March. Thursday’s data showed 3,786 people in hospital with Covid and another 63 virus-related deaths.
Downing Street, which has defended the lifting of all remaining legal restrictions on social gatherings in England on 19 July, is hoping the rapid rollout of vaccines will keep a lid on the number of people becoming seriously ill.
Britain’s position as a global transport hub would mean any new variant here would rapidly spread around the world, scientists and physicians warned at an emergency summit. They also expressed grave concerns about Downing Street’s plans.
Government advisers in New Zealand, Israel and Italy were among those who sounded alarm bells about the policy, while more than 1,200 scientists backed a letter to the Lancet journal warning the strategy could allow vaccine-resistant variants to develop.
An adviser to New Zealand’s government told the summit he and his colleagues were astounded at the approach being taken in England.
“In New Zealand we have always looked to the UK for leadership when it comes to scientific expertise, which is why it’s so remarkable that it is not following even basic public health principles,” said Michael Baker, a professor of public health at the University of Otago and a member of the New Zealand ministry of health’s Covid-19 technical advisory group.
Also participating was Prof José Martin-Moreno of the University of Valencia, a senior adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO), who said: “We cannot understand why this is happening in spite of the scientific knowledge that you have.”
Others warned the British government’s approach would be imitated, for political expediency, by authorities elsewhere.
“What I fear is that that the some of the worst impulses in many of our states will follow the UK example,” said Dr William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School researcher and a pioneering Aids researcher who chairs Access Health International, a New York-based thinktank.
“I am extremely dismayed to see the very rapid rate of increasing infections in a population that is vaccinated pretty much like we are.”
Prof Christina Pagel, the director of University College London’s clinical operational research unit, told the meeting: “Because of our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the UK will likely spread to the rest of the globe. The UK policy doesn’t just affect us. It affects everybody and everybody has a stake in what we do.”
The letter to the Lancet said: “We believe the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19, 2021.”
“The world is watching the current avoidable crisis unfold in the UK,” said Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, who is taking part in Friday’s summit.
She added on Twitter: “Let’s be under no illusions – we are in a country where our government is taking steps to maximally expose our young to a virus that causes chronic illness in many. Our govt is ending all protections for our children including isolation of contacts of cases in schools & bubbles.”
The summit, facilitated by the Citizens, a journalism NGO, was being broadcast live on YouTube at noon UK time.
The concerns expressed in other countries comes after Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, warned on Thursday that the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 could reach “quite scary” levels within weeks, as cases soared caused by the more contagious Delta variant and the lifting of lockdown restrictions.
Whitty said in a webinar late on Thursday, hosted by the Science Museum, that hospital admissions were doubling about every three weeks, and that the current low numbers of Covid admissions could rise to serious levels in the next couple of months.
New coronavirus infections in the UK are at a six-month high, according to government figures, and the number of people in hospital and dying with Covid are at their highest level since March. Thursday’s data showed 3,786 people in hospital with Covid and another 63 virus-related deaths.
Downing Street, which has defended the lifting of all remaining legal restrictions on social gatherings in England on 19 July, is hoping the rapid rollout of vaccines will keep a lid on the number of people becoming seriously ill.
Kerajaan Allah in Malaysia will likely follow suit....soon
ReplyDeleteUK government may or may not review its decision, but they are pretty open to conversations with foreign experts.
ReplyDeleteIf this were China, they would angrily pushing back against foreign interference in its internal affairs, and China's Fanboys would be accusing foreigners of colluding to prevent China's rise.
Wakakakakaka…
Delete"UK government may or may not review its decision, but they are pretty open to conversations with foreign experts"
The freedom day is set at 19thJuly 2021 by the Boris administration!
Where was that "may or may not review"?
Where was that "pretty open to conversations with foreign experts"?
Boris didn't listen to those 1,200+ leading local doctors' objection! He would most likely tell those foreign experts to f*ck off!
Can u be accusing of colluding to prevent pommieland's rise-up from the covid-19 pandemic?
And what would an old pommie lover be labelled?
Typical response from the MonstrousLiar who would of course bend over backwards his fat old backbone to defend the indefensible, no matter what shits came out from his white masters. Anything China and Chinese is anathema to this old coot whose hatred would easily challenged even the most rabid of white imperialist supremacists...he had been bellyaching here against China and all things Chinese like for ages, non stop and unrelenting, most without rational justification.
DeleteChina made it a point to never, as far as possible, to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations and naturally, would expect and welcome other countries to reciprocate. But when it comes to harmful unilateral actions like the proposal of Japan to dump millions of litres of dangerous waste waters into the ocean, then China has every right to voice up and oppose.
Boris has NO choice!
ReplyDeleteThe pommie govt has done everything medically possible to clamp the spread of the covid-19 pandemic.
Yet, it couldn't override the indoctrinated dogma of individual right reigns supreme over everything else - including the right to choose the way to die!
Moreover, anymore lockdown would completely impair the economic activities based on servicing model that the pommie economy is fully dependent on. Be it financial, tourism or commercial - where close human to human interaction is a MUST.
The only way left is to reverse back to natural herd immunity that was original proposed by a deranged scientific advisor!
Boris hopes against hopes that the aftermath score wouldn't be any worst than the India covid phenomenon caused.
They might be wrong, very wrong. The lesson of the India mishandling of the covid-19 pandemic is the more virulent mutated Delta & Delta+ valiants.
The f*cked "freedom day" would most likely be a perfect environment for the currently pernicious Delta valiant to mutate further - either into a permanent valiant like flu with tolerable toxicity to healthy human OR into a super killer valiant that no current available vaccines could handle!
Brace for it. It could be the long expected pommie karma.
COVID cases in Netherlands rise by 600% in a week to 52,000 after nightlife reopening.
ReplyDeleteCoronavirus infections in Netherlands jumped by over 600% in the past week following the scrapping of almost all remaining lockdown restrictions and reopening of nightclubs. Almost 52,000 infections were confirmed in the week through Tuesday, health authorities said, up from 8500 a week earlier. Dutch PM Mark Rutte apologized for the relaxation and called it " an error of judgement ".
We should be more worried about the 6 million Malay-sians who are vaccinated with Sinovac. This means 25% of all vaccinated people walking around with dodgy “vaccinated” status.
ReplyDeleteJust look at what’s happening in Indonesia now, the epicenter of infection, replacing Yindia. Some experts think 50% of Jakarta’s population is already infected. And Indonesia relied almost totally on Bully-vaccines, now only starting to switch to other vaccines.
Wakakakakaka…
DeleteBlurred mfer is playing immunization data acrobat with the helps if insidious western propagandas!
cf: https://youtu.be/_dCpT0LyQVY
Blurred mfer, let some expert to enlighten u about how to interpret vaccine efficacy lah!
BTW, do remember to reject sinovac when yr vaccination appointment comes up! Must no 'die' with yr own fart.
I believe there are rebuttals in previous threads to debunk your lies about Sinovac in Indonesia, but still you persists in regurgitating the same old lies...pekak ke you Tong Sampah ? Malas la to layan you further in your desperate bid to smear Sinovac because it is from China. Podah!
DeleteThere once was a girl who was trapped in a glass jar.She could still see everything through her transparent prison, hear the sounds of joy and music, but that world was no longer for her.
ReplyDeleteShe dreamed every waking moment of what her life outside was like, of the person she’d once been. She screamed for help, but no one came. So she pushed and pushed against the glass for what felt like a lifetime, in the panicked desperation of an animal that finds itself trapped in a cage.
But no matter how hard she pushed, she could never escape; the glass was strong, and she was weak. Eventually she just lay there and stared into space, and her eyes felt so heavy she could hardly see. Like so many caged animals and people before her, her spirit finally broke.
But one day, she opened her eyes wide, fueled by memories of being just a girl, not a girl in a jar. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her face shining through the glass. She felt revived; she remembered what hope was. From that moment on, she decided that she would fight, that she refused to waste her precious life wasting away as an ornament.
Suddenly, she saw her confines with fresh eyes, and she realized that the power of escape had been within her the whole time: the jar had no lid and a ladder on the side. She’d pushed back against her confines when she should have climbed. She’d assumed defeat too early. She didn’t believe in herself; somewhere along the lines she’d been told that she was weak and worthless, and she never thought to question it. She was too broken to realize that the key to freedom lay within herself.
At first she was furious with her own perceived incompetence and thought that it was yet another example of how she wasn’t good enough: after all, what sort of fool lets themselves be trapped in a glass jar, she asked herself.
The world can’t be locked down forever.And it can’t be the long term solution.It can only be for short 2-3 days or even for 2-3 weeks but to continuously locking down for 1-2 years ?
Where are all the thinkers and scientists?
Is this the best we can do ?