All over bar the shouting

Yesterday, the Daily Mail lead with the above headline, quoting an un-named "senior minister", that the worst of the pandemic was over.

Today, news that the last of restrictions on visitors from the EU and US are to be lifted,a nd cruises from UK waters were to begin again. The Mail leads with "end of pandemic "nailed on""

Let me start by saying, I hope they are right.

Although I very much doubt they are.

Yesterday's new infection rate saw a slight increase, but the rolling daily figures are still showing 30% drops. But hospitalisations and deaths, though still at fairly low increases, but are increasing. And atual number of people in hospital are at levels not seen since January, they are for mostly unvaccinated people.

The question that the continued drop (until yesterday) of the daily infection rates is, do I trust the Government figures? Maybe. But the National Audit Office (NAO) publishes figures on actual data, though there is a lag of some weeks in this, so the Government would be hiding the truth for only a few days or weeks, but enough for some positive headlines today, which evidence has showed they are more than willing to do.

The relaxation of the mandate puts the responsibility of slowing the infection on those who still wear masks, while the unmasked are unencumbered by thoughts of caring for their fellow human beings. That shouldn't surprise us.

I want this bloody war to end as much as you do, but we either reach herd immunity by vaccination or infection. The former is safer, and to do that, we need to be cautios and protect our vaccines.

Johnson is bored by COVID and wants things back to "normal", so he can wage culture wars on lawyers and the RNLI.