Some days I have to scratch my head at what gets said by public officials. Professor Christopher Whitty is the Chief Medical Officer of the UK where he functions as the primary medical advisor to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
The UK is planning to lift most COVID mitigation measures on July 19 which is entirely puzzling given that they are in an exponential growth phase in cases and 90% of the genomic surveillance samples from the UK are showing the more contagious and potentially more deadly B.1.617.2 Delta variant, the same variant that is resulting in a severe critical care resource crunch in Missouri and Arkansas right now.
So what exactly did Professor Whitty say that sparked outrage in the medical community? I had to get the transcript of the July 5th press conference. Here is the relevant quote from Professor Whitty:
"On the first one, I mean, firstly, to make the obvious point that decisions are made by ministers not by scientific advisors or medical advisors, but within the scientific views on this, there was a really clear consensus that under all circumstances some degree of further social distancing will be maintained, needs to be maintained even after the restrictions are lifted in law. And that’s been part of the roadmap all the way through, and that is widely supported by the scientific views."
"There was a pretty high degree of scientific agreement that the delay of four weeks that ministers chose to take was an extremely sensible thing to do. And I think the fact that things are played out as they have, I think reinforces that. But the view is more mixed about exactly what the right timing is from a technical point of view even before you get into issues that the Prime Minister has to deal with more widely. And these really come from the fact that at a certain point, you moved to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalizations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them."
"So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen. And there is quite a strong view that by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal to opening up into the autumn when school is going back and when we’re heading into the winter period, when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons. So it’s a very much more difficult technical decision now, even before ministers have to grapple with all the other things than it was in terms of the four week delay, where I think there was a very substantial degree of scientific agreement."
So he didn't explicitly say that there were advantages to letting people die sooner from COVID.
But what he did say was "you moved to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalizations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you're not actually changing the number of people who will got to hospital or die, you may change when they happen."
Where Professor Whitty has missed the mark is that the delay is a chance to get more people vaccinated who might otherwise be unvaccinated and run a high chance of COVID morbidity and mortality.
We already see in the US data that the vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are occurring in those who are not vaccinated.
What are the fully vaccinated percentages for the UK?
From the BBC's own tracking of the data, Wales is at 71%, Scotland is at 64%, England is at 65% and Northern Ireland is also at 65%. For context, only four US states have a fully vaccinated fraction of the population over 60%- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. All the other US states are below 60%. Thirty US states are below 50% of the population fully vaccinated.
There are four vaccines in use in the UK right now- Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca.
What we are seeing in the UK is a precautionary tale for the United States- loosening of mitigation measures in the setting of a much more contagious COVID variant resulting in exponential growth in cases IN A POPULATION WITH GREATER VACCINATION RATES THAN MOST OF THE UNITED STATES.