On 27 January 2022, the British government ended its ‘Plan B’ Covid-19 public health measures at a time when there was still an average of 100,000 positive tests per day. From 24 March, people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will no longer be required by law to self-isolate. With no legal requirement to isolate, most people will see no point in getting tested. This will allow the virus that causes Covid-19 to spread unchecked through the population. The government has chosen to take this criminally reckless course because of its absolute determination to keep the economy open whatever the human cost. The government now claims Covid-19 is ‘endemic’ and the pandemic is essentially over. Other ‘endemic’ diseases include malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Together, these diseases killed almost three million people across the world in 2021. CHARLES CHINWEIZU reports.
The revelation that British government departments and staff were partying every week throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 while the country was in lockdown or under other tight public health controls showed the degree of Tory contempt for those who suffered and died from Covid-19. Throughout the pandemic the Labour Party leadership has colluded with the government in prioritising the economy at the expense of public health. As a result, over 152,000 people in the UK have died of Covid-19, over 26,000 of them since ‘Freedom Day’ on 19 July 2021 when the government abandoned all previous public health measures and, with the help of complicit scientists and a corrupt corporate media, normalised social murder.
Omicron wave
The Omicron variant of coronavirus emerged in November 2021 after being detected in Botswana and South Africa where vaccination rates were 20% and 24% respectively. The variant was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on 24 November, and was designated a variant of concern on 26 November. Despite the imperialists immediately imposing a futile and racist travel ban on African countries, the virus was already in the UK by 19 November, and within four weeks it was the dominant variant in the US, UK and Europe. Britain entered the Omicron wave with an already high daily case rate of 50,000. Omicron is more transmissible than previous variants and so is more infectious. Infections were doubling every 1-2 days in December, reaching a previously unimaginable level of 246,000 cases on 29 December. 24 of 137 NHS Trusts declared critical incidents and many stopped all elective and routine care and surgery, with heart surgery patients told to make their own way to hospitals.
The ONS Infection Survey in the week ending 6 January 2022, which randomly samples households rather than people coming forward for tests, estimated that 4.3 million people in the UK had Covid-19, 6.85% of the population or 1 in 15 people. There were 2.7 million positive tests in December 2021 and over 3.5 million in January 2022. This may mean hundreds of thousands more people will suffer from Long Covid.
Freedom for Covid-19
Despite all this, the Tory government, determined to do nothing that would jeopardise Christmas-generated profits, delayed implementing its so-called ‘Plan B’ measures until 13 December. Only then were ‘face coverings’ in shops and on public transport made compulsory in England, as well as self-isolation for positive Covid-19 cases. The plan was of course too late to curb the Omicron wave. Instead, the government continued to rely on vaccination as the only route out of the pandemic, urging all adults over 18 to get a third booster jab. Were it not for the public modifying their behaviour, avoiding social contact and cancelling Christmas parties, the Omicron wave would have been even more devastating.
By the time ‘Plan B’ came into force there were already 8,000 people in hospital with Covid-19 and nearly a thousand people being hospitalised daily. By its end, there were 16,000 in hospital, a daily admission rate of around 1,700 people, and a weekly death rate of nearly 2,000. This burden of suffering was predicted, and it was preventable. In late December 2021, 3% of the UK workforce was on sick leave or not working as a result of Covid-19 symptoms, self-isolation or quarantine, including 10% of hospital staff. 315,000 school children were also off school, rising to 400,000 in January, their education disrupted especially in deprived areas with less access to internet and electronic devices.
No more self-isolation
To tackle the devastation to the workforce, the government has systematically reduced the period of self-isolation following a positive test. It has ignored WHO advice which requires isolation for 10 days from symptom onset plus an additional three days without symptoms i.e. a minimum of 13 days isolation, and 10 days from a positive PCR test for asymptomatic patients. The 10-day period of self-isolation was reduced on 22 December 2021, to seven days with two negative lateral flow tests (LFTs) on Days 6 and 7. Then on 17 January 2022, the isolation period was cut again to ‘five full days if they test negative on both Day 5 and Day 6 and do not have a temperature’. Labour Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting welcomed the reduction in Covid isolation to five days.
There is no pretence of ‘following the science’; the government admits that 7% of people remain infectious on Day 6, but states quite baldly that this has been ‘aimed at maximising activity in the economy’. A 5 January report by the Japanese National Institute of Infectious Diseases shows that peak infectiousness with the Omicron variant is 3-6 days after diagnosis or onset of symptoms ‘gradually decreasing over time with a marked decrease after 10 days’. The ‘science’ doesn’t support reducing the Covid isolation period. The government is once again putting profits ahead of public health.
Consistent with treating Covid-19 as endemic, the government will end the supply of free rapid LFTs from June 2022. Poor working class people will no longer be able to afford the £30 for a box of seven tests and will go without, unaware when they are infected. Like other viral and bacterial infections, Covid-19 will become a disease of the poor and dominate in deprived areas. The government has been trying to limit testing since it announced its Winter Plan in 2021. Ministers oppose testing of children and travellers, especially vaccinated travellers. Omicron’s assessment as ‘mild’ in its effects has given them the excuse they needed.
Omicron is not ‘mild’
The description of ‘mildness’ now being used in relation to Omicron-generated Covid-19 could be equally well applied to another vaccine-preventable viral illness, polio. With polio, 70% of infected people are asymptomatic while 25% have mild symptoms such as fever, headache, sore throat, abdominal pain, aches, and nausea which pass within a week, rather like flu. ‘Only’ 1% have severe symptoms (paralytic polio). 5-15% of the severe cases end in death corresponding to an overall fatality rate of 0.005%. The estimated Covid-19 fatality rate in the US is currently 0.23% and for influenza it is 0.05% with strong age dependence. Covid-19 infection fatality rate is 40 times worse than polio.
Omicron is so immune evasive that the React study recently found that two thirds of people with an Omicron infection reported that they had previous suffered Covid-19. Previously infected people are 16 times more likely to be reinfected with Omicron than with Delta, and a Denmark study shows the Omicron variant is about 2.7–3.7 times more infectious than Delta in vaccinated, boosted and previously infected people. Children under five years old and especially babies are being infected by Omicron. In the US, over 150,000 children have been hospitalised, with child hospitalisations rates almost doubling from 2.5 per 100,000 in December 2021 to 4 per 100,000. In England, 800 children a week are being hospitalised; the rate was 14.3 per 100,000 in mid-January. How can a virus that infects previously immune people and sends thousands to hospital and kills thousands be called ‘mild’?
Omicron also has a shorter incubation period of three days as opposed to Delta’s four days, and so is passed on more quickly before precautions can be taken; it stays and multiplies 70 times faster in the upper respiratory tract, which all add up to increased transmissibility. Omicron’s rapid exponential spread far outstrips any supposed ‘mildness’. As it is, the majority of people infected with Covid-19 have always had a ‘mild’ illness: as reported in February 2020 by Chinese scientists in Wuhan, 15% of patients were hospitalised and 85% had a mild illness. The fatality rate however was 4.5% in Wuhan and 0.66% in China – in other words, it was still a deadly disease.
20,000 children aged 0-9 were being infected daily in England during January. 135 children have died of Covid-19 since February 2020 compared to 30 flu deaths in 2019. We vaccinate against ‘mild’ polio and flu, and yet the British government refuses to vaccinate children under five, or 5-11 years olds against Covid-19, and has now removed all mitigations including masks in schools. Children who are largely unvaccinated returned to school in January 2022 with high levels of infection: 1 in 12 primary and 1 in 17 secondary school children infected.
The ONS estimates 117,000 children have Long Covid, 20,000 for more than a year and 1.3 million people in all. If allowed to spread unchecked Covid-19 will kill and disable large numbers of people of all ages. Long Covid proves Covid-19 is dangerous. The long-term consequences of mass infection remain unknown. Post-polio syndrome for instance can affect polio patients years after recovery. Telling us ‘Omicron is mild’ is rather like calling torture ‘enhanced interrogation’, or kidnapping ‘extraordinary rendition’ or mass murder ‘targeted killings’. As Deepti Gurdasani has pointed out ‘Government policies are driven by short-termism, economic interests of lobby groups, and self-interest (corruption and profiteering) – nothing to do with what’s needed to protect people, and deal with the problem.’ What happens when a new variant emerges that could be more virulent than Omicron, which is guaranteed given the low levels of global vaccination? Boris Johnson and co believe they got away with ‘riding the Omicron wave’, but the working class is paying the price.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 286, February/March 2022
