Oh how the experts sneered at ‘freedom boy’ Boris. Will he surprise them yet?

 A lot of experts were ferocious in their criticism of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to declare “Freedom Day” in England on July 19. 

Take Gabriel Scally, who holds the esteemed position of president of the epidemiology and public health section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He claimed: “There is no possibility that this will be anything other than yet another failure that will cost lives and livelihoods.” 

Then there’s the high-profile Neil Ferguson from the Imperial College of London who ominously warned last week that it was “almost inevitable that Monday’s final phase of unlocking would bring on 100,000 daily cases, with about 1,000 hospitalisations … We could get to 2,000 hospitalisations a day, 200,000 cases a day — but it’s much less certain.” 

And a paper published by The Lancet in early July by British and Australian scientists (including Australian researcher and vocal elimination advocate Zoe Hyde) argued that “any strategy that tolerates high levels of infection [is] both unethical and illogical. The UK government must reconsider its current strategy and take urgent steps to protect the public, including children … The government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19, 2021.”

The same group later alleged that England’s plan was “unscientific and unethical”. Not to be left out, Mike Ryan — the World Health Organization’s health body’s head of emergencies, claimed that a “big bang” of lifting restrictions amounted to “epidemiological stupidity”. 

The luxury of being able to snipe from your taxpayer-funded gilded tower is that when your hyperbolic utterances are proven completely wrong there’s always something else to gloomily prophesise about. 

Instead of hundreds of thousands of daily infections and waves of hospitalisations and deaths, here’s what happened in the UK this week: 

Meanwhile, deaths remain 95% below the January peak: 

The UK put its faith in vaccines (especially AstraZeneca) and it has been remarkably successful at minimising the impact of COVID-19. Historically, about 17,000 people die from the flu in the UK annually (or about 50 a day if averaged through the year).

Even with near record levels of infections, Britain’s third wave had resulted in about 60 people dying with COVID each day (the second wave led to more than 1,200 daily fatalities). Barring a vaccine-escaping variant (which thankfully so far hasn’t occurred) or a double peak (which in fairness, happened in early December), the UK has shown the blueprint to living with the virus and defeating Delta.

That is by not only vaccinating more than half the total population but, critically, ensuring almost all the high-risk 70+ age group has been vaccinated. 

There is never a perfect time to reopen up a society, especially since Delta has ensured we will never reach “herd immunity”. But as former deputy chief health officer Nick Coatsworth noted, and Johnson showed this week, it’s time to stop praying to the false idol of eradication. 

Adam Schwab has been a Crikey contributor since 2005, is the author of Pigs at the Trough: Lessons from Australia’s Decade of Corporate Greed and the founder of Luxury Escapes.