‘New ball game’ with vaccination

But quite soon after the start of this pandemic we learned that the vast majority of people who catch this virus are going to get better even without vaccination, and that overwhelmingly the greatest threat of serious illness and death from this virus is to the elderly, and to vulnerable members of younger age groups. And now we know that vaccination will not only significantly reduce our chance of catching the virus, but the severity of any illness if we do.

We have already seen this in the amazingly reduced mortality during this new wave of the virus, even though we had barely done more than vaccinate our very oldest residents when this wave happened.

It is true there is still a good deal that we don’t know about the effectiveness of these vaccines. In particular we don’t have a clear idea of the extent to which the ability of the virus to mutate to new variants may enable it to outflank our vaccination programme.

But whatever the eventual outcome on virus variants, we are going to have to deal with the vexed question of our border controls. It is obvious to all of us that border controls cannot be continued indefinitely. But this is not primarily so that we can go on holiday or meet up with relatives, welcome as that would be. It is because we need open borders to fully support our important export earning economy.

I’m not sure if anybody knows how much we can continue to stress our export economy with recurring lock-downs and continuing border controls before we start doing irretrievable damage. We are talking here mainly about our finance industry, which provides far and away the greatest contribution to export earnings, though a smaller but important measure of diversification to these earnings, and support for finance is provided by tourism and others.

Such is our dependence on the single economic leg of finance to be able to pay for our huge level of imports that it’s not going too far to point out that that if we did significantly damage this industry, then in time more people could die from the economic downturn than would ever die from the virus, if only because we could lose the ability to adequately fund our health and social services. Poppycock? Not necessarily.

As has been the case from the start of the pandemic, like all countries we are still feeling our way through uncharted waters. The last lockdown was no doubt the best course of action at the time, while we waited for vaccination roll-out to progress.

But the coming of vaccination means that we are now in a completely new ball game, and new thinking is required. Last year’s ways of thinking, which culminated in the latest lockdown and continuing border controls, need to be re-evaluated and hopefully discarded. We need to re-orient ourselves to the opportunities to do things differently which vaccination will surely bring.

It seems hopeful that our future response to this virus will not need to be just to minimise its incidence at all costs, and in fact it really can’t be, because it is absolutely vital that a high priority is also given to the importance of sustaining the health of our economy.

We know that the UK is on the same level of vaccination roll out as we are, and has just published a tentative road map out of lockdown with a roughly four-month timescale, which would fit well with what need to be our own border opening objectives, so our border with the UK will inevitably be the best border with which to start. And if our own vaccination programme continues to hold up then it would seem that full openness with the UK could easily be achievable within this sort of timescale.

We should now have the opportunity – which looks like our only realistic course of action anyway – to fully open our borders by releasing all present controls and relying on vaccination (and re-vaccination if needed) to protect ourselves against any severe illness from the virus.

In fact we almost certainly won’t have any other option, since it seems most probable that the virus will continue to mutate indefinitely, and so will become endemic. If we simply stand on the brakes every time the virus enters our community or a new variant emerges, then we will never lift ourselves out of the present very damaging start-stop cycle. We really do need our own tentative road map to give ourselves a target as to how we intend to tackle these controversial matters, as well as to demonstrate this to all and to help with debate. This is a complex social, economic and medical situation, and needs the widest possible consideration.

BOB PERKINS

Les Corneilles,

Rue de la Ronde Cheminee,

Castel,

GY5 7GD.