England’s lifting of Covid lockdowns a danger to the whole world: experts

LONDON – Scientists around the world have criticized the UK government’s plans to ease almost all restrictions on Covid-19, calling them unethical and dangerous to the entire planet.

Meeting at a virtual summit on Friday, leading scientists and government advisers from around the world warned Britain was heading for disaster by removing most of its remaining restrictions on Monday.

The event came as more than 1,200 scientists backed a letter to the Lancet medical journal, in which British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans were called “dangerous and premature”.

England will see most of its last remaining restrictions, including mandatory mask wearing and social distancing, removed on Monday, which Johnson says will be an “irreversible” decision.

Johnson fiercely defended his new strategy and argued that now was “the right time to proceed”, before the weather cooled and the “natural school vacation firebreak” approached.

“It is absolutely vital that we now proceed with caution… we cannot just instantly return Monday to life as it was before Covid,” he said at a press conference on Monday.

Speaking at Friday’s panel, Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operations Research Unit at UCL London, warned that it was possible that a new variant of Covid would emerge this summer.

“Any mutation that can better infect vaccinated people has a great selection advantage and can spread,” she said. “And due to our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the UK will likely spread to the rest of the world – we’ve seen that with alpha, and I’m absolutely sure we’ve contributed. to the rise of the delta across Europe and North America. “

“British politics don’t just affect us, it affects everyone – everyone has a stake in what we do,” she added.

Clinical epidemiologist Deepti Gurdasani, who also attended the summit, agreed, saying on Twitter ahead of the event that “the world is watching the current preventable crisis unfold in the UK”

Michael Baker, a professor of public health and a member of the New Zealand Department of Health advisory group, said he was “astonished” by the British government’s plans to lift almost all restrictions on Monday.

Baker suggested the UK government appeared to be reverting to a “collective immunity approach” which he called “completely unacceptable”, arguing that the strategy had “failed miserably around the world”.

New Zealand has been widely regarded as having successfully suppressed the coronavirus within its borders, and life in the island nation has returned to a state of relative normalcy. The country currently has 48 “active” cases, all of which were found in people entering the country, and nine of which were reported in the past 24 hours. There are no cases within the community, according to the New Zealand Department of Health.

William Haseltine, US virologist and chairman and chairman of ACCESS Health International, told the panel at Friday’s summit that the world has “always looked to the UK for good, sensible policies.”

“Unfortunately, this was not the case for the Covid pandemic,” he said. “My fear is that some of the worst impulses in many of our states are following the UK’s lead.”

Haseltine called the so-called collective immunity strategies – where people are allowed to develop natural immunity against a disease by being exposed to it – “deadly”.

“I think that’s a word we should use because it is what it is. It’s knowing that you are doing something that will result in the death of thousands, and in some cases tens of thousands of people. “, did he declare.

“It is a disaster as a policy, it is clear that it has been for some time, and to continue to espouse this policy is unreasonable.”

Jose M Martin-Moreno, professor of public health at the University of Valencia in Spain, echoed Haseltine’s concerns about other parts of the world in the wake of the UK example.

“We cannot understand why this is happening despite the knowledge that (the UK) has,” he said, warning that other countries could start to “emulate” UK policies.

“If we remove the tools that contain the transmission, that’s it,” he added.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, chairman of the New England Complex Systems Institute and founder of the World Health Network, said now is the time for governments to act – but in the opposite direction of UK lawmakers.

“Opening up while the pandemic is still spreading does not make sense for the protection of the public,” he said. “Everyone is affected once the pandemic is out of control. “

Meanwhile, Shu-Ti Chiou, founding president of the Taiwan Foundation for Health and Sustainable Development, said it was unethical to “take the umbrella away from people without a raincoat when it is raining heavily. “. She also expressed concerns that with children unable to be vaccinated, they would be “left behind” due to the high prevalence of “long Covid” among young people.

However, there were also warnings that even those who were fully vaccinated would feel the impact of the high transmission rates.

Meir Rubin, a lawyer who advises the Israeli government on risk management, warned that “even the best vaccines are a tactic, not a strategy.”

In one region of Israel, he noted, more than 80% of the population had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but there had always been a “serious epidemic” of Covid. Rubin told the panel that without eliminating the virus, even a vaccinated population could “collapse under the next variant.”

“An infectious carrier of the delta variant will infect their family even when they are fully vaccinated. If you live with a child carrying the delta, they will infect the parents,” he said, adding that Israel was seeing severe cases. and hospitalizations. even in fully vaccinated patients.

Haseltine also noted that vaccines alone would not end the pandemic.

“Even if you are fully vaccinated, you must continue serious effort and control to try to eliminate, not just alleviate, the problem. Policies that are opening the country amid a growing wave of infections are against it. -productive in the most extreme “, he warned.