British doctors now openly beg for more lockdowns because they say they can’t rely on vaccines
This new piece from Reuters - hardly a outpost of anti-vax fanaticism - should terrify vaccine advocates.
And, honestly, scare the rest of us.
A reminder: Britain has pursued a mass vaccination strategy as aggressively as any country. It approved Pfizer’s vaccine even before the FDA. More than 80% of Britons over 16 are now fully vaccinated.
But Britain is in far worse shape than it was at this time last year, when no one was vaccinated. It is now averaging about 140 deaths a day, roughly 10 times as many as mid-September 2020. And hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise.
But Britain - which had a very strict and economically damaging lockdown last year - has essentially given up on lockdowns and other national control measures. Over the weekend, or even dropped the plan for a vaccine passport (though it has since backtracked a bit).
Now Reuters reports British physicians are warning the vaccines don’t work well enough to allow the country to return to normal:
The piece is an unfortunate exercise in unintentional irony, as when it sincerely refers to the “success” of vaccinations two paragraphs after explaining that “relying largely on vaccines… could put unintentional pressure on hospitals.”
And then there’s this:
Imagine how much higher - I mean lower, of course, definitely lower - hospitalizations would be if Britain could just get to 100% vaccinated!
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
[NOTE: The original article failed to explain that the 80% fully vaccinated figure refers only to eligible Britons - those over 16. I have corrected the error.]