Coronavirus
Debate between Peter Bone and Tim Loughton(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Happy Sussex day, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like every good, horny-handed son and daughter of Sussex, I am afraid I “wunt be druv” into the Government Lobby this evening.
The hashtag #i’mdone was the overwhelming message on social media on Monday when independence day, so tantalisingly close, was again cruelly whipped away from my constituents. Madam Deputy Speaker, I’m done with making excuses to my constituents about when their lives might get back to some degree of normality.
We are constantly told that these decisions are about data, not dates—quite right—but we have the imminent dates by which the vaccination programme will have achieved effective herd immunity, which is well ahead of what was imagined when the lockdown road map was designed. Now, 80% of adults have had their first dose. We have data showing that the Pfizer vaccine is 96% effective against the delta variant after two doses, and that the AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective. We have data showing an average of nine deaths a day at the moment, and 136 hospitalisations—a world away from where we were at the start of the road map. We have data from Public Health England that only 3% of the delta variant cases have received two vaccinations.
We also have dodgy data from three modelling studies by the University of Warwick, Imperial College, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. They show widely different scenarios, with the most pessimistic warning that the UK could experience a further 203,000 deaths by next June, which is around 50,000 more than the first and second waves combined. Yet how can that be when we know the vaccine works, and the data show a likely 90% take-up rate?
Those doomsday models by largely anonymous wonks with no remit for considering the impact of further lockdown on life at large seem to trump all the other data, and the Government put them on a pedestal above all others. They are confusing modelling for scientific forecasts.
Tim Loughton
The trouble is that there are lots of different scientists and they do not agree with each other, yet only certain scientists seem to have an impact on the Government. Usually, it is the most doomsday of those scenarios.
Where is the data that shows that allowing six people inside a pub has increased infection rates, and by how much? Where is the data that shows how much faster an infection has spread because up to 30 people have been able to meet outside since the original journey out of lockdown? Where is the data showing that the NHS is being overwhelmed, not by covid patients, but by a huge increase in children and families suffering mental illness, including many worrying episodes that we have seen as constituency MPs, or by the surge in advanced cancer cases that could not be diagnosed and treated early? Where is the data showing how many businesses, particularly in the hospitality sector, cannot wait a further four weeks to be profitable and are likely now to fail, with the accompanying impact on people’s jobs, livelihoods and wellbeing? Where is the data showing the impact on the wellbeing of children now denied sports days for another year and school proms? Students are again being denied graduation ceremonies for a second year, having missed out on so much of their university experience. Where is the data on the impact of domestic abuse, which has risen so much, as we have seen? Where is the data showing the continued impact on babies? The problem is that the only data considered seems exclusively to be the worst-case scenarios about the spread of covid, regardless of the current single-figure average death rates.
No covid strategy is risk-free, but a further delay is by no means a victimless decision. It is time that we trusted people to live with covid just, as the Prime Minister announced in February, in the same way that we “live with flu”: we do not let flu get in the way of living our lives. The Government promised at that stage that we would move to personal responsibility. My fear is that if the Government continue to try to nanny people, they will just not take any notice and no amount of retained rules will make any difference. People are already increasingly making their own risk assessments. As somebody tweeted the other day:
“I had Covid. I have antibodies. I have had both jabs. I’ve worn a mask. I’ve sanitised to within an inch of my life… But now, #ImDone no more. It's over.”
My fear is that this will become a much more widely held view if the Government just keep delaying freedom day, without the evidence to back it up.