In our war against Covid, jabs are the D-Day Landings
IF we can’t keep calm and carry on when a new variant of coronavirus emerges, then – to paraphrase Chas and Dave – Covid loopy nuts are we.
Because the jabs work.
Getting vaccinated usually prevents you from becoming seriously sick, keeps you out of hospital and stops catching Covid becoming a death sentence.
And the UK has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.
Even as Covid cases hit a five-month high, deaths and hospital numbers here continue to fall.
Even as the Omicron variant has gloomy Government ministers telling us to do our drunken Christmas party snogging on Zoom, we can see the shining light of freedom ahead.
All thanks to our world-beating vaccination programme.
We should be feeling a warm glow of national pride, rather than vowing to work from home until 2022.
Most read in Opinion
We should be rejoicing rather than cancelling Christmas parties, travel plans and nativity plays.
In Europe, only Malta and Iceland with their itsy-bitsy populations have higher vaccination rates than the UK.
Panicky European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is yakking about making jabs compulsory, although she can’t explain how that would work in free countries.
Because it wouldn’t.
But the British have embraced vaccination as our path to freedom.
Nearly 50million of us are double-jabbed.
Almost 19million have had the booster jab — the vaccination that provides 93 per cent protection against serious disease.
Overwhelmingly, it is the unvaccinated who are at higher risk of dying now.
It’s true we do not yet know everything about the Omicron strain of Covid.
But early indications suggest that all the doom-mongering is premature.
“Nothing I have seen about this new variant warrants the extreme action the UK Government has taken in response to it,” writes Dr Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who alerted the world to the Omicron variant.
Dr Coetzee points out that nobody in South Africa is known to have been seriously ill with Omicron, although their R-rate has lurched from 1 to 3.5 in a matter of weeks.
Yet the UK, US and EU have imposed draconian rules on extended quarantines, mask-wearing and the irresponsibility of snogging under the mistletoe.
SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE
“In South Africa, we have retained a sense of perspective,” says Dr Coetzee.
“We’re waiting to see what the variant actually means.”
Are we going to have a collective panic attack every time a new variant of Covid emerges?
Definitely! Because there are so many vested interests in this never-ending state of emergency.
Bossy politicians who have developed an addiction to levels of social control that would have been unthinkable two years ago.
Bungling organisations, from your local council to your bank, use Covid as a cover for appalling customer service.
Civil servants are using the virus as an excuse to skive from home for ever.
Left-wing teaching unions and devolved governments use Covid as a big stick to beat Boris.
And this Tory Government can blame historic levels of taxation on Covid.
Oh, what a lovely virus!
The horrible, unspoken truth is that a lot of people are absolutely loving it.
The power-mad, the lazy, the incompetent.
And if they have their way, then every time the virus mutates — as it surely will — schools will be shut, offices abandoned, healthy businesses shuttered, planes grounded, operations cancelled, cancer patients told to fend for themselves and youngsters with their hormones raging advised to do their courting on Zoom.
And they are sucking the joy out of what it means to be alive.
SUCKING THE JOY OUT OF LIFE
They are condemning a generation of students to a stunted, tenth-rate education.
They are destroying healthy businesses and condemning hard-working grafters to the dole queue.
And this country is overreacting to the point of madness.
Because our vaccination roll-out has already put the worst of this pandemic in the UK’s rear-view mirror.
Yet Mason Wilby, age four, was isolated from other children at Wigton Infant School because he had a minor cough and a snotty nose — not unknown in four-year-old boys, as I recall.
Mason’s mum Chloe says that when she went to collect Mason, he was being isolated in an outdoor shed.
She later had to call 999 because Mason looked like he had hypothermia.
Is isolating a four-year-old boy with a runny nose in a freezing shed REALLY what we mean by “living with Covid”?
We need to get a grip. We need to stop the covert Covid-lovers from controlling us.
Whatever Omicron, Delta and all other variants of Covid chuck at us, the British are well placed to face it.
Cancelling Christmas parties, imposing harsh travel rules and isolating a four-year-old kid because he has a runny nose is not living with Covid.
It is surrendering to Covid.
Our booster programme is being massively ramped up, with all over-18s to be offered that life-saving, game-changing third jab by the end of next month.
Should we be wary of new variants?
Yes, but we should also stop acting as if mass vaccination has never happened.
History will record that in the war against Covid-19, vaccinations were our generation’s Normandy landings.
It is time to stop waving the white flag of surrender.
And to start living again.
Bias is a BBC bonus
AMOL RAJAN, who presented the BBC documentary The Princes And The Press, is revealed to have a fine collection of rabid republican rants in his closet.
Amol once called Prince Philip a “racist buffoon”, the Diamond Jubilee a “celebration of mediocrity” and Prince Charles “scientifically illiterate”.
I spent the Silver Jubilee on a boat trip with the Sex Pistols sporting a “God Save The Queen” T-shirt from punk shop Sex, and even I gasped with shock.
But none of Rajan’s anti-royalist rants will hamper his career at the BBC.
The BBC does not really do the impartiality thing any more.
I might have a fiver on bling-laden Amol – the man has more jewellery than Ratners – becoming the next Director-General.
Starmer's sausage rolls
THE cost of living soaring. Migrants dying in the English Channel.
The world still gripped by the worst health emergency in 100 years.
And Labour’s Keir Starmer uses Prime Minister’s Questions to berate Boris about a Christmas party for Downing Street staff – a year ago.
The planet is on fire.
And Starmer wants to talk about stale sausage rolls.
On side of West
ACCORDING to a new poll, Grease is the best film musical ever.
If you think Grease is the best musical ever, then you have never seen West Side Story.
I bow to no man in my admiration of Born To Hand Jive and Beauty School Drop-Out.
But West Side Story is a cinematic masterpiece, the pinnacle of Hollywood musicals.
And Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake – out next week – is reportedly even better.
Back to the fags 4
IF you grew up in the Sixties, you were surrounded by two things – cigarette smoke and the music of The Beatles.
So Peter Jackson’s epic documentary on the last days of the group comes with a health warning.
Each episode of Get Back starts with a caution that what we are about to see contains, “explicit language, mature themes and smoking”.
There is actually not much profanity or mature themes in Get Back.
There is no sex, no drugs – just plenty of rock and roll.
And more smoking than I have witnessed for 50 years.
In 1969, when The Beatles were recording Let It Be, smoking in the UK was approaching its all-time 1970 peak.
An astonishing 35 per cent of deaths in men were attributable to smoking.
And though there has been some guffawing about Get Back’s smoking warnings, there is no denying the fag ash Fab Four make cigarettes look cooler than they have been for a long time.
One impressionable old music fan confessed to me that after watching Get Back, he feels like starting smoking again.
But while the music is still great, the fags still kill.
Just say no, grandad.
Thanks always, Norway
EVERY year since 1947, Trafalgar Square has been adorned by a giant Christmas tree given to the British people by the king of Norway.
It is his way of saying thank you for the part our country played in restoring freedom to the Nazi-occupied country.
Between you and me, this year’s tree is not quite as magnificent as the trees of the past.
“Where’s the rest of it?” cried one plaintive Londoner.
But it’s the thought that counts.
And isn’t it heart-warming that one nation in Europe never forgets where their liberty comes from?
One to watch
SOME say that Dan Walker dances like an ironing board in a bow tie.
Some say that Dan should not be in the quarter-finals of Strictly Come Dancing.
But I don’t know how anyone can call Dan boring.
The Strictly fan who is tired of watching Dan’s pro partner Nadiya Bychkova is tired of life.
We pay for your stories!
Do you have a story for The Sun news desk?
Email us at exclusive@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4104. You can WhatsApp us on 07423 720 250. We pay for videos too.
Click here to upload yours.
Click here to get The Sun newspaper delivered for FREE for the next six weeks.
* Read the full story...This article was originally published h
Who will be Next to leave the EU? Check out who is leading in our exclusive poll Poll
Comments
Post a Comment