IT is a bleak, bleak prospect. Tiers till April.
A bitter blow after all the optimism that the vaccines might end this waking nightmare early in the New Year.
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The Sun could rail against it. We could point out that the second wave is unarguably in retreat. That the “R” rate nationally is below one. That infections have been falling steadily for a fortnight and that deaths and hospitalisations will inevitably soon follow.
That pubs and restaurants will rapidly fold now in a tsunami of lost jobs.
That restrictions are in some cases unfairly allocated — and taking a terrible toll on Britain’s physical and mental health as well as our economy.
But it cuts little ice in Downing Street. Nothing trumps the fear there that, if we relax, the NHS will end up overwhelmed by Covid casualties by March. That doctors will be forced, agonisingly, to choose who lives and who dies.
So we make these appeals to the Prime Minister:
First, show the public and your own enraged backbenchers hard evidence, both of this threat to the NHS and that tiers will do more good than harm.
Second: Review them every week and err on the side of freedom. Many places don’t have the cases to merit their curbs. And those have deadly consequences too.
Third, move heaven and earth to get the jabs rolled out at lightning speed. The faster the most vulnerable are vaccinated, the lower the risk to the NHS that keeps you awake at night.
The public have been stoic so far.
That may not last four more long months of this misery.
Check it out
GARY Lineker’s advice on Pages 14 and 15 might just save a bloke’s life.
Many are too embarrassed to get their prostates checked — or too worried about what a test might find.
“It’s a dangerous game. It makes it a lot worse if you catch it late,” says the Match of the Day star, who had his own scare but was thankfully all clear.
TV’s Bill Turnbull wasn’t so lucky. He admits his terminal prostate cancer is the tragic result of putting off a test for months after his first aches and pains.
If you’re into middle-age and have trouble or pain down below, get tested.
A delay could be a fatal mistake.
Woke jokes
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THE BBC has been in the grip of “woke” madness longer than almost anyone.
But dropping a footy pundit for calling an ineffectual on-pitch scuffle “handbags” is a new level of foolishness.
Who exactly is offended by this term, so common it’s in the dictionary?
No one outside the imagination of hyper-sensitive producers.
The BBC is growing more distant by the day from the public whose licence fees it needs.
It’s one own-goal after another.
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