 and ban families from mixing, until the government's Covid doves swooped in to stop such madness happening in post-vaccination Britain. Sensing the cataclysmic impact such a decision would have on the hospitality sector, let alone the wider economy, the then chancellor Rishi Sunak flew back from the United States to argue the case for keeping the UK fully open. The revolt came after Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, had warned that there would be an 'inevitable increase in hospitalisations', because omicron cases were doubling every two days – even though evidence from South Africa suggested that the variant was actually linked to a substantial reduction in the number of patients ending up in hospital. Being socialist headbangers, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her Welsh equivalent Mark Drakeford brought in new restrictions anyway, including cancelling Hogmanay and fining Welsh people who refused to work from home £60 – decisions that now look beyond absurd. Yet it isn't with the benefit of hindsight that we know many of the UK's coronavirus measures were not only wholly unnecessary but also a worse cure than the disease; some of us had been saying that all along, only to be ridiculed and demonised for it. Not that the fiercest proponents of lockdown would care to admit this, of course. On the contrary, there is now a call for the people who got it so spectacularly wrong on Covid to ge){kind=link}
It’s not just in retrospect that we know the Covid measures were a disaster. We were vilified for pointing it out at the time
There is at least one tiny consolation to the misery we are likely to endure this Christmas, as we prepare for even higher inflation, more crippling taxes and the prospect of Matt Hancock outdoor-showering on primetime TV. At least we aren’t facing the fear of yet another Yuletide spent in the Scroogefest that was lockdown.
It’s easy to forget that it was only last Christmas – not the one before, but Christmas 2021 – that omicron threatened to once again derail our festivities. Boris Johnson was about to cave in to doom-mongering scientists (and Michael Gove) and ban families from mixing, until the government’s Covid doves swooped in to stop such madness happening in post-vaccination Britain.
Sensing the cataclysmic impact such a decision would have on the hospitality sector, let alone the wider economy, the then chancellor Rishi Sunak flew back from the United States to argue the case for keeping the UK fully open.
The revolt came after Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, had warned that there would be an “inevitable increase in hospitalisations”, because omicron cases were doubling every two days – even though evidence from South Africa suggested that the variant was actually linked to a substantial reduction in the number of patients ending up in hospital.