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Ross Clark decries the straw-man’s decision to delay by another month his departure from Britain. A slice:

Yet come the hour and the target, yet again, has been changed. When the first lockdown was called, in March 2020, it was supposed to be a case of maintaining social distancing for three weeks so that we could prevent A&E units from being overwhelmed. Then it became a case of suppressing the virus until we had a vaccine. Then we had a vaccine and we were asked to lock down until it had been rolled out among vulnerable groups. That was achieved, on schedule, in the middle of February, but no, we had to stay locked down until the over-50s – who had accounted for 99 per cent of deaths – had been offered at least one jab. That target was reached in early April. But now we are being asked to wait until the entire adult population has had at least one jab.

Will that be enough? No, of course not, because we will still have Covid infections – the virus has become endemic. Yet government ministers have become so obsessed with daily movements in new infections that it is hard to see how they will ever accept even a modest rise in cases. The excuse for further delay is that the delta – or Indian – variant is more transmissible and, it is claimed, more likely to land us in hospital. But is it? While the number of new infections has more than trebled since the low in early May and daily hospitalisations have approximately doubled from the low point in May. Never mind that serious illness is nothing like tracking new infections – the number of patients in hospital and the number of people on ventilators are each up by less than a third. What seems to be happening is that larger numbers of people are being admitted for short periods, with the result the NHS is far less likely to be overloaded – which of course was supposed to be the whole justification for lockdown in the first place.

Bài trước: Liverpool cân nhắc mở lại một số hoạt động thiết yếu