It’s a stark question, but a valid one, given
yesterday’s call
by the party for the whole of Wales to be moved into Alert Level 1 immediately.
It’s in contrast with the continued caution
being shown by Mark Drakeford, who is slowing down the unlocking process so
that more people can be vaccinated, given the potential impact of the new
variant. None of us knows with certainty what the impact of either strategy
will be, but experience to date – and all the scientific evidence – indicates that
the risk of hospitalisations and deaths will be lower the more people have been
vaccinated before the lockdown restrictions are removed.
The underlying question is about how many
hospitalisations, deaths, and instances of long Covid are considered ‘acceptable’.
Very few people would argue that the whole economy should be shut down for a
year to avoid a single death, but equally few would argue against a short shutdown
if it would prevent millions of deaths. Neither of those extremes is realistic
in the current scenario, but we don’t know exactly where we are in between the
two. The best probability, according to the experts, is that an unchecked third
wave involving a more infectious and more serious variant could result in a
number of deaths in the thousands or tens of thousands, and the more
restrictions in place and the greater the number of people who have been vaccinated when it happens, the lower the death toll will be.
Governments and opposition politicians are faced with a very simple question –
what number is considered ‘acceptable’ when balanced against the costs of
maintaining restrictions.
There is no ‘right’ answer to that
question, it’s all about making a judgement call. And I don’t envy those who
have been placed in the position of having to make it. What’s missing, though is
a degree of honesty about the fact that they are making such a call.
Governments are taking decisions which literally mean the difference between
life and death for thousands, even if they can’t identify who will die and who
will live. Underlying those decisions is an opinion about how many deaths they
are prepared to tolerate. It’s a number which they don’t actually know
themselves, although they have a reasonable idea of the likely ranges
associated with different courses of action and different scenarios. It follows
that any politicians arguing for faster removal of restrictions are effectively
stating that they are prepared to see a higher number of deaths than those arguing
that restrictions should be eased more slowly.
So, to answer the headline question – yes,
the Tories are indeed calling for more Welsh people to die of Covid. We don’t
know how many more (it could be a handful, it could be thousands); we merely
know that the number would be higher if the government implemented the Tory
proposal. That doesn’t necessarily make the Tories ‘wrong’, however. If the difference
in outcome between the policy being followed by Drakeford and that advocated by
the Tories were to be provably small, the public (with the probable exception
of those who end up dead or in hospital as a result) might even support their
position. But presenting it as a case of giving people back their ‘freedom’
without spelling out the health consequences is simply dishonest. The public at
large – i.e. those with whose lives they wish to take chances – surely deserve
to be told the likely consequences with greater clarity. We deserve an adult conversation rather than populism.
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