The good news is that infections are down, the bad news is that there are now an estimated 2 million with long Covid in the UK and nearly 400k who have had symptoms for more than 2 years.
This is going to be an enormous burden on the health service and benefits system going forward.
The good news from South Africa yesterday was that while they are seeing new variants all the time the virus appears to be weakening, becoming less and less serious. The reason being that most people have now been either vaccinated or infected.
Regarding the UK figures for long covid…
“These figures are based on statements collected from a representative sample of people over the age of 2 living in households surveyed during the four weeks ending May 1.”
so they might be “right” or they might not… but IT is certainly still around…
On balance I see no reason to provide an excuse - he was taking no part in the official celebrations anyway so mentioning it in the reportage, if anything, raises his profile a little.
Don’t go anywhere near Nadine Dorries then, she’ll try to eat it
Presumably along the lines of “If I believe what you just told me I might as well believe that …”
It’s a trending topic on Mastodon - typically posts are sying things like
Take Ireland as an example. Currently, the #COVID19 risks are lower than they’ve ever been since I moved here in October 2021. Our hospitalizations and positive rate of testing are the lowest they’ve been in 15 months. So, why do we have record levels of deaths?
It seems it’s happening all over the world (even where health services are no longer stretched). Some are speculating that repeated infections have weakened people, so its an indirect result of the pandemic even though current death certificates don’t mention it.
It doesn’t actually seem all that surprising given that Covid is known to be a multisystem disease with complex, ongoing, problems for a lot of people. I’m sure the stasticans and medical researchers will connect the dots eventually.
Meanwhile, the UK seems to be in for another wave, barely out of the last one