Let's dance

‘Freedom Day’ as it was called, turned out to be a damp squib. It was supposed to be the day when we were released from all constraints and life returned to almost normal.

It was symptomatic of how abnormal our new normality is that on the big day, the prime minister, the chancellor and the health secretary were all in self-isolation – along with hundreds of thousands of others.

Much as we long for pre-covid days to return, we are also sceptical about ever getting there. But should we be so fearful? It’s true that the virus will be around for a very long time but it seems already to be heading towards becoming endemic, rather than a pandemic.

The vaccines have been an incredible success story and with 70% of the population double-jabbed, the risks are far smaller that any one of us will end up in hospital – of course, if you refuse to be vaccinated (or cannot be) your chances of being hospitalised are higher.

But many people are still panicking about the growing numbers of cases of the Delta variant and the number of deaths. They shouldn’t be. First of all, because there are good grounds for believing that the current wave has reached its peak already and will now slowly decline – it’s still too early to be sure about this (figures will be lower in part because schools have broken up so fewer tests are being done), but we should know within the next two weeks.

Secondly, deaths are still low. There were 64 deaths in the UK on July 23. If indeed we have reached the peak of this third wave, then this is incredibly good news – in the last wave, on January 20, we saw deaths rise to 1,820.

Armed with this information, I’m a great believer in opening society up but with two caveats: first, it seems sensible to me that we should carry on taking precautions – so I continue to wear a face mask when taking public transport or when in crowded spaces (crazy to make this now a matter of ‘personal judgment’), and I continue to sanitise the area where I work, keep the space well ventilated and wash my hands more often than usual. These are hardly infringements on my freedom. In the Netherlands, nightclubs reopened on June 26 but the government soon regretted the decision, performing a U-turn just two weeks later, closing them down again on July 10 as Covid cases surged in the country, particularly among the young. The same could happen here so is it not sensible to ask people attending such crowded, poorly ventilated events to show a vaccination passport or negative covid test?

Second, we need the government and science to be preparing for the possibility of vaccine-escaping variants. Such a variant is a real possibility but we’ll be in a much better position this time round than we were last year – it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be trying to come up with a completely new vaccine and much more likely that we’ll be able to modify the ones we already have.

And in the meantime, those of us lucky enough to be in good health should go about our lives unshackled from fear.  

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