When I began this blog in March 2020 I was not expecting to still be writing it 18 months later. COVID-19 is still very much with us but life is returning to normal as we learn to live alongside it.
This final piece for the blog looks back on four of the pieces I wrote at the start of the pandemic to see how accurate (or indeed inaccurate) they turned out to be.
When Will Lockdown End? - April 2020
At the start of the pandemic I was asked this question again and again. The piece “The Exit Strategy...or When Will Lockdown End?” tried to address this although the honest answer was always “I don’t know.” I concluded that particular piece with the four points below.
1) Based on the similarities between the disease trajectories in Italy and Spain with the UK it is highly likely our lockdown periods will be similar, a minimum of 5 to 6 weeks in full lockdown, possibly longer. That takes the UK to early May.
2) When lockdown is lifted it will be a gradual process and not an overnight reopening of the country, possibly with schools reopening first.
3) If and when there is a surge in new cases of COVID-19 lockdown may have to be re-implemented in order to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed.
4) The development of widespread population testing, a vaccine and/or a cure will play a major role in forward planning and alter the timescale considerably.
On reflection the first point now seems impossibly optimistic as lockdowns went on in some form or another for over a year. The other points however proved to be more percipient than I realised at the time.
The Search for a Vaccine - April 2020 onwards
In April 2020 I first started writing about the search for a COVID-19 vaccine. At that time there were 47 trials taking place with just four in the clinical stage of testing them on humans.
I predicted that it could be 12 to 18 months before a vaccine would be available unless a new process known as mRNA technology proved successful. This was a completely new way of producing vaccines and, if it worked, would allow rapid production of large quantities of vaccine. It did work, in fact it was hugely successful and the first vaccine using this technique was released by the joint USA and German companies Pfizer-Biontech. On 8th December 2020 a 91 year old UK grandmother became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer vaccine through a mass vaccination campaign. (1)
The most likely vaccine contender in the UK was being developed by The Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford. The team working on it under Professor Sarah Gilbert had already developed a ground breaking vaccine for the coronavirus that causes Mers-Co (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) and because of this many scientists and doctors, myself included, predicted that they would succeed in developing one for COVID-19. This proved correct and Oxford joined forces with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to launch the AstraZeneca vaccine. On 4th January 2021 an 82 year old UK man was the first recipient of the AZ vaccine as its UK roll out began alongside the Pfizer vaccine. (2)
These two vaccines, along with a second mRNA vaccine – Moderna - have been offered to the entire UK adult population (age 16 and over) with 90% having received one dose and 82% having received two doses of one of these three vaccines. (3)
The speed of vaccine development and deployment exceeded all expectations and a way out of the pandemic was now in sight.
Many scientists also predicted that the COVID-19 vaccine would not necessarily prevent infection but mitigate against the severity of infection and that booster doses of vaccine would be needed. As we now see cases of COVID-19 in the double-vaccinated it is clear that this prediction was accurate, and the UK has already begun its roll out of booster vaccines.
However, despite the disappointment that the vaccines have not stopped people becoming infected with COVID-19, between 95% and 98% of COVID-19 deaths are in those who are unvaccinated and the vast majority of seriously ill people in hospital - around 90% - are also those who have not been vaccinated. The vaccines are, without doubt, altering the course of the illness in the vaccinated and protecting them against serious illness and death. (4) (5)
Claim: The UK has one of the highest death rates in the world - May 2020
From the early days of the pandemic the UK was regularly criticised for both its high case numbers and high death figures.
The piece “Why We Cannot Compare Figures From Different Countries...Yet,” written in May 2020, was a response to the headlines at the time. The Financial Times had run an article with the headline "UK suffers second-highest death rate from Coronavirus."
The UK was compared unfavourably with most of the world but at the time I made the point that many places were yet to reach a peak in their outbreaks and such comparisons were therefore premature. The UK was also reporting all suspected as well as proven COVID-19 deaths (as mass COVID-19 testing was not yet available) whereas many countries were only reporting proven deaths so we were not comparing like with like.
The Coronavirus Worldometer has recorded every country’s overall numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths on a daily basis throughout the pandemic. It has also adjusted the figures for population size and reports every country’s rates per 1 million of its population.
The UK is not now in second position where its death rate is concerned, it is in 25th position. There are 24 countries ahead of it including the USA and 12 European nations. (6)
Not a single nation on earth has been spared the pandemic; the death toll worldwide is creeping up towards 5 million people. Analysing data from different countries can identify patterns that help with understanding and planning in a pandemic.
The tables of cases and deaths created by Worldometer have been invaluable for that purpose but they were never meant to be weaponised by the media and some political leaders for their own gain.
Will There be a Second Wave? June 2020
Of course we now know that there was not only a second wave in the UK over the winter of 2020-21 but also a third wave which we are still in.
Back in June 2020, the requirement for visitors to quarantine on arrival in the UK was raised as a way to prevent the importation of infection from abroad. However it did not become a legal requirement until eight months later in February 2021 and only applied to certain countries. (7)
Failure to put some countries on the so called “Red List” meant that new variants were brought into the UK, in particular the Delta variant which originated in India. Despite India suffering a catastrophic second wave of COVID-19 from March to May 2021 the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority reported that 42,406 people travelled in both directions between India and the UK in April 2021. Quarantine on arrival from India only became mandatory from 23 April 2021. The Delta variant is driving the UK’s third wave but it is possible it could have been avoided had India been placed on the Red List in February 2021. (8)
In the June 2020 piece, I finished by saying “We know it [the virus] can be imported by international travel.... It will likely be human actions, rather than anything the virus does, that allows a second wave to happen.”
International air travel provided the ideal means for the virus to spread and if firmer and swifter action had been taken sooner over international travel the UK may have fared better over the summer of 2021.
So, What Now?
This blog is now finishing unless COVID-19 throws mankind another as yet unpredicted challenge that merits discussion.
COVID-19 will never disappear. The world has had three distinct peaks of infection and there may be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth.....but eventually we will stop calling them “waves” and start referring to them as “another outbreak.”
No country has come through the pandemic, whatever its particular circumstances.
The low income countries are yet to receive an equitable share of the vaccines; the heavily vaccinated countries are yet to see their COVID-19 cases drop down to single figures and nations such as Australia and New Zealand, which successfully kept the virus at bay by shutting themselves off from the rest of the world, are yet to see what happens when they re-open their borders.
The pandemic is far from over but to paraphrase one of Winston Churchill’s most famous wartime speeches we may not be at the end of the pandemic, or even at the beginning of the end, but we are probably at the end of the beginning.
