You Can't Choose Endemicity

Before I get to today’s post, I want to invite you to to the Wicked Problem Collaborative’s first ‘Twitter Space’ tonight (January 10) at 9 pm Eastern Time. We’re going to have a discussion with multiple WPC contributors that will dive into some of the big issues of our current moment. It should be loose and fun.

Update: We had a great time discussing ongoing challenges, including the pandemic, US politics, and more. Click on the tweet below to check out the recording. The conversation starts around the 6:15 mark.

Please excuse the few technical hiccups. It was our first time out…

I believe that, while many Western leaders — like Joe Biden — have performed abominably in the pandemic, Boris Johnson has set himself apart. His willingness to downplay the circumstances and remove controls meant to mitigate transmission has set humanity on a destructive path. The latest revelations have his team invoicing over 100 staff members for cocktails at No. 10 during the UK’s lockdown, while regular people were not allowed to visit dying relatives.

Update: A Tory MP has admitted that the party occurred and that people will be angry at the news. Labour MP Ed Miliband responded by calling for Boris Johnson to answer for himself. (He should've called for Boris to step down.) I wonder if the MP stepping forwards might be the first move in a coordinated effort to remove Johnson. We'll see.

That alone should be enough to end Johnson’s time as PM, but shame doesn’t seem to be a thing Boris can muster. Given that, he’ll have to be chased out of office. And there’s plenty of reason for doing so.

On July 12, 2021, Johnson shared his government’s plan to drop most of its remaining COVID-related restrictions. As he put it, they had “come to a stage in the pandemic when there is no easy answer and no obvious date for unlocking. We have cases rising significantly, with more than 30,000 per day.” The chart below shows the daily confirmed cases for the UK back on July 12, the day of Johnson’s announcement. Even if you buy his claim about “no easy answer and no obvious date” for unlocking, that’s still a far cry from thinking that moment was as good as any for the maneuver.

Johnson then announced that they were going forward with plans to open up on July 19, 2021. The excuse given was that they were taking advantage of a school term break as if you could somehow sneak the changes past the virus while the schools were closed. (If you can somehow make sense of this claim, please reach out.)

This is where the UK is now. (Note the change in scale.)

A few weeks before his announcement, Johnson met with a group of influential donors who pushed him to end the nation’s pandemic-related restrictions, and he reportedly promised to do so. The UK had fewer than 17,000 confirmed cases on that day, roughly a tenth of the latest figures.

For better or worse, the United Kingdom is viewed as a world leader. So when its leaders decided to act like the pandemic was over, the barn door was left open, and many others followed (including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the US).

Here’s how those nations have performed since the UK ripped off the band-aid. (Most of the moves in these nations that followed the UK’s lead occurred between September and November.)

To be sure, the recent meteoric rise in cases was driven by the Omicron variant, but the opportunity was created by the relaxing of restrictions. All of those nations are now experiencing over 1,000 cases per 1,000,000 people. Meanwhile, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and New Zealand, countries that have worked to eliminate transition, are all below 40/million.

Now, the UK’s education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, just made a call for the UK to lead the shift “from pandemic to endemic,” while repeatedly claiming that he would defer to scientists on this. The full statement is in the video below, but this final sentence is something to behold, “I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how to transition from pandemic to endemic, and then deal with this however long it remains with us: five, six, seven, ten years.”

Does that instill you with confidence?

The man in charge of the UK education system is talking about a choice of endemicity at a time when global daily confirmed cases are roughly three times as high as they ever were prior to late December.

Once again, the Tory government sets low expectations for its people while throwing them under the bus. As professor Christina Pagel notes, “A virus isn't endemic just (because) a govt minister says it is and just (because) people want it to be.” If it were a choice, the pandemic would already be over. Instead, it is raging out of control.

It’s worth noting that the man responsible for the education system is talking about the virus becoming endemic when the number of children hospitalized with the virus is skyrocketing.

Is Omicron Mild?

I recently wrote a post looking at the claims of whether the Omicron variant was mild in severity. I think this is an open question, and it might depend on circumstances (places with high levels of vaccination might have lower average severity). Anyway, I thought this tweet from Ola Rosling was interesting to consider. Whether or not this is an anomaly is something we’ll know before long. Let’s hope it is, but let’s also keep our defenses up.

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