2021-06-17
In this recent clip from the House of Covidians, the Prime Minister is very clear what he intends to do:
"... I think we can have a high degree of confidence that our vaccination programme will work and I think we need to give it a little bit more time (as I've explained) to save many thousands more lives by vaccinating millions more people"
For one thing these is no obvious reason why the Prime Minister's brilliantly successful vaccination programme would not still progress regardless of the lifting of Covid restrictions on 21st June, and so still save all those thousands of lives going forward.
Below I reproduce the latest Covid deaths chart for England as published today by Public Health England:
Although the recent numbers are too low to estimate from this graph, the ONS chart reproduced below shows the latest Covid deaths tracking in the region of 100 per week.
As may be seen, there was no discernable spike in deaths as a result of the initial relaxations and as far as I know there is no plausible reason for thinking that removal of the remaining restrictions would cause any demonstrable change at all, let alone change on the scale required to imbue the Prime Minister's claim that thousands more lives can be saved with any semblance of plausibility.
Bearing in mind that (according to the ONS figures below) only around 6% of the Covid deaths in week of 4th June (wk 22) as charted above were below the age of 44 (ie: of the order of 6 deaths per week), and the current vaccination cohort, (21 years and over) is likely largely within this age group, I will leave it to you to judge how many weeks the Prime Minister is likely to have to retain Covid restrictions in order "save many thousands more lives by vaccinating millions more people" . . .
