Opening The U.K. To 'Normal'

"[The British people must learn to live with COVID and] reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths."

"I don't want people to get demob-happy [to go] berserk [over opening up the U.K. but if not now then when?]" 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

"We have to be honest with people about the fact that we cannot eliminate COVID."

"We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of COVID and find ways to cope with it -- just as we already do with flu."

British Health Secretary Sajid Javid

"You need to tell people' We're going to get a lot of cases."

"And that's part of the plan -- we have to let it go."

Dale Fisher, head, National Infection Prevention and Control Committee, Singapore Health Ministry

"With flu pandemic, you're into your third or fourth year before pandemic influenza becomes seasonal influenza. COVID is harder than that, but it's like that."

"I think the consensus opinion is that the Brits are crazy -- that it's too early to think we can get back to normal."

"I think Canadians will feel that the price of going back to normal right now is too high."

"There is a bunch of things we can do, without being nearly as disruptive as we were in lockdowns, that I think we can hope will be enough."

Dr.Allison McGeer, infectious diseases specialist, microbiologist, Sinai Health, Toronto

"The flip side, the counter-arguments to that is, we just don't know enough about the long-term consequences of the mild infections."

"I think it's important for us to try to minimize the cases and not just minimize the severe outcomes."

"It's [breakthrough infections; fully immunized people contracting COVID] definitely within what we're expecting."

Dr.Jeff Kwong, epidemiologist University of Toronto

Runners make their way to the start line for the ASICS London 10K on July 25. English people are celebrating their renewed freedoms after restrictions were lifted. (Hollie Adams/Getty)

 

COVID; the Delta variant and all others that may surface as the original SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates and variant strains emerge, appears to be here to stay. And the world's population is being informed that there is little option but to accept that fact; COVID as yet another circulating eventually seasonal virus. Certainly we're not as panicked, frightened and confused as we once were when the pandemic was new and raw; we've gained confidence that we will survive and we must adapt and learn how best to live with its presence among a panoply of other threats to human health and longevity.

Britain has, as it were, taken the bull by the horns. Even though the government health minister has himself -- though fully inoculated -- contracted COVID and his close contacts -- including Boris Johnson must self-isolate, Britain is fully committed to opening up, and it has shifted gears to that state of acceptance and adjustment. Most laws mandating face coverings, social distancing and work-from-home orders have been lifted. And Brits are celebrating. For the most part.

Israel, like Britain, has experienced its hills and valleys; a large percentage of the population inoculated with the Pfizer vaccine, but yet Delta has thrown the country back to emerging daily cases after it too had spurned masks and social distancing, fully opening its businesses and resuming normalcy. It has shifted gears, toward a "soft suppression" strategy, foregoing daily case counts focusing only on severe disease. Singapore has reached a similar conclusion in its surprise repeat of the contagion.

It had lifted its COVID safety rules and then a karaoke cluster sent it back to the drawing board ("heightened alert"), suspending indoor dining and social gatherings capped once again to 'two'. Britain has its skeptics, those who feel that "learning to live" with COVID is a reckless and premature choice; the game plan released by the U.K. will invariably lead to hundreds of thousands of new infections, and possibly it will. Others are confused about just what "living with COVID" means in practical terms.

Bars and clubs are packed as COVID-19 cases continue to fall. (Rob Pinney/Getty)

Yet the knowledge and belief that COVID isn't prepared to burn itself out of existence is plain to be seen. American epidemiologist Dr.Michael Osterholm is confident that the SARS-CoV-2 virus plans to become a permanent resident on Planet Earth. And COVID will be recognized as a permanent seasonal contagious respiratory risk. In Canada, 80 percent of the eligible population has been vaccinated with one dose, while close to 60 percent have been double-dosed; one of the most-vaccinated countries globally.

What's next is uncertain. In acknowledgement of Delta's high reproduction rate "we're going to need extremely high vaccine coverage -- up in the 90 percent range -- for this pandemic to peter out in more locales", advised Dr.David Naylor, co-chair of Canada's COVID-19 immunity task force. In the U.K. the general consensus is that numbers of cases are not as relevant as the number of serious cases requiring hospitalization. And to date Delta, now the leading infection, while proving to be heavily contagious fails to deliver serious cases in contrast to the original strain of COVID.

 

Confirmed cases are seen to be rebounding in the U.S. and in Israel. While in Israel with 61 percent of its population fully vaccinated, even as weekly hospitalizations are now a mere fraction of their peak in January with the original COVID. The good news is that the vaccines are effective even in the face of COVID's evolutionary trajectory, an unknown yet, to reveal itself at some future date. The  Pfizer vaccine is able to prevent infections by 64 percent and symptoms by the same percentage, with two doses protective at 93 percent in preventing serious illness.

 

Sport is also back, with crowds gathering at Old Trafford to watch the cricket. (PA Images via Getty Images

 

Only "modest differences" were found in vaccine effectiveness against Delta compared to Alpha, the once-dominant 'U.K. strain, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two Pfizer doses gave 88 percent protection against symptomatic disease with Delta, and two shots of AstraZeneca provided 67 percent protection. Up to the present, breakthrough infection numbers are not alarming. The elderly and health-compromised remain most at risk.

"We are slowly transitioning to a better place. This is why living with this virus makes absolute biological sense -- it's not going anywhere as long as it can jump into new humans."

"All sorts of people are saying 'Oh it's going to get less pathogenic.' Some people are saying more, or it's going to be resistant to all the vaccines. We don't know that. We absolutely don't know."

"[As Canadians begin travelling once again] we will all get exposed to one of the variants. And if you do get infected the most likely scenario is the symptoms will be like a bad cold, or, in the worst case, like flu."

Dr. Marc-Andre Langlois, virologist, University of Ottawa; head, Canada's Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network

"[Exhaustion is driving the] 'learn to live with COVID' [narrative]. And the realities of Western society, that, economically, we cannot carry on like this. I just don't think we can go on much longer with lockdowns."

"Opening nightclubs [in Britain], I mean, wow. Really? It's great everyone is having fun, but when you look at the age cohort, the vaccination rate of that cohort, the fact that it's indoors, that fact that there are no rules and there's alcohol -- I have nothing against partying by the way. But when you load all those things together that sounds like giving up to me."

"[The situation is] awful [in other part of the globe; sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America]. And if it's awful out there, we've got risk."

"I can't see it getting better globally for quite some time because we're not doing much about it."

"But there's much less anxiety. People are a lot more relaxed. I think there's kind of an acceptance that this is the way it's going to be, an element that this is the best we can do. And we have to move on."

Dr.Kerry Bowman, bioethicist, conservationist, University of Toronto