Vaccine passports: Politicians love the hype of deadly Covid — it's time for them to free us

No-one in their right mind would head to Accident and Emergency, notorious for lengthy waiting times.

And where exactly do you go now if you have a non-life threatening broken arm? Should you stay away if you have a poorly toddler with a temperature who can’t stop coughing? Does the person with excruciating stomach pains remain stoically at home so as not to bother the NHS?

I suppose we should interpret this NHS guidance as an admission of defeat. It’s tantamount to saying: “A&E can’t cope. Don’t rely on us”.

My friend, an A&E consultant, is going to retire next year, aged 55, ending his 30 years service in the NHS. He could work on but he has had enough.

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Since GPs were told to implement the “total triage” system, which means that hardly anyone gets to see a GP face-to-face any more, A&E queues are surging.

It’s getting really bad, the consultant says. Recently he noticed some people waiting as he went home in the evening at the end of his shift. When he came back in the morning, they were still there.

Covid isn’t the issue. His time is taken up with patients who are suffering from everything else.

Our already creaky, underfunded NHS was pushed to breaking point when Covid was elevated over all other disease. Now we need courageous politicians to tell us that although the virus will never go away, it no longer poses a mortal danger to the vast majority of us.

Rightly or wrongly, Covid once seemed to represent an unparalleled, off-the-scale danger. Not now. In the week ending August 22, only 41 out of 1,163 deaths in Scotland were recorded as ‘involving’ Covid-19.

And NHS statistics show that one in four of those classified as a Covid patient is admitted to hospital for non-Covid reasons.

We’re mainly dying of other serious illnesses. Dementia and Alzheimer's, cancer, and heart disease are each killing four times as many people as Covid.

Yet more than 100,000 patients in Scotland are waiting for diagnostic tests for such serious conditions, that’s almost 20 per cent higher than it was in February 2020. Meanwhile healthy people with no clinical symptoms are pressed to have repeated Covid tests.

This obsession with directing NHS resources to fighting Covid at the expense of all other illness is not justified by the relative risk.

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The latest analysis of Covid infection mortality rates, from Stanford University in the US, shows that up until the age of 70, no demographic group has less than a 99% chance of survival. Over 70, your chances of coming out the other end alive are still 94.5%.

The median age of death of those who sadly pass from Covid is 82 for men, 84 for women. That’s better than UK life expectancy at 81 – and much higher than male Scottish life expectancy at 77.1 years.

An estimated 95% of the population now has antibodies that afford a degree of protection to Covid.

So if public health in its broadest sense is really what is at stake, we have surely reached the point where responsible politicians would level with the public. They would state the risk that Covid poses in a proportionate way, and explain to us that 18 months on, it’s time for other illnesses to get attention.

“Go back to living your lives alongside Covid” – that should be the message. But our leaders stoke our fears when they should put them in perspective.

You could be forgiven for thinking that they never want the crisis to end.

Crises favour incumbent leaders. Appearing strong, and apparently in control, wins hearts and minds. In a crisis, who wants to think that the government of the day hasn’t got a grip? The very thought is too depressing. Better to go along with the latest Draconian edicts in the hope that those in charge have got it right.

The Covid crisis has given Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon vast amounts of airtime. In Johnson’s case, the successful vaccine roll-out – portrayed as the magic bullet that would slay the Covid monster – has served him well in the opinion polls.

Whether you put it down to their inability to change tack and moderate their public health message as scientific understanding of Covid evolves, or attribute it to the instinct to cling onto unprecedented levels of power and public biddability, neither Holyrood nor Westminster seems in a hurry to draw a line under Covid anytime soon.

The way the A&E consultant sees it, what happens next is, “purely political, nothing to do with health”.

Recognising that vaccine-induced immunity lasts no longer than six months, our governments can press on with a six-monthly treadmill of boosters designed to outsmart rogue variants.

But game-changing Israeli research has changed the tone of the discussion around the limits of vaccination by showing that natural immunity – gained by exposure to the virus – is seven times more effective against Covid than vaccine-induced immunity.

While vaccines can reduce your risk of serious illness for a period of time, they are not an impermeable shield. Fully-vaccinated people can both get and transmit Covid. “Two jabs to freedom” rings hollow now.

So it’s time for Holyrood and Westminster to look north.

Last week, the Danish government offered a precedent for how governments can move on. Health minister, Magnus Heunicke told Danes that Covid is, “no longer a critical threat to society” and that “the epidemic is under control”.

While Scotland retains its mask mandate, Denmark started phasing out masks in June, and from next Friday, with the exception of entry requirements, remaining Covid rules in Denmark – including controversial vaccine passports – will expire.

The SNP has long had aspirations for Scotland to be more like Scandinavia.

Here is the perfect opportunity.

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