Malta has 80% of adults vaccinated but has seen a spike in infections including 3 in hospital, all unvaccinated. From Wednesday they are changing their travel policy to only allowing fully vaccinated people to enter. Currently it is only UK visitors that are required to be fully vaccinated but they are extending the rules to everyone.
Pardon what became a very long post...
I live the UK as well. The UK government has been a hot mess at times during this pandemic, but they get an A+ on the vaccination effort and I'm largely in agreement with their move to press ahead with the re-opening. (As an expat, I have selfish reasons to cheer for their decision to eliminate quarantine for vaccinated travelers to "amber" countries.)
If it isn't the right time to try and move forward when almost everyone over 40 is vaccinated, with the overall vaccination rate racing towards 100%, deaths are small and not rising substanitally, when is?
We are NOT going to kill covid out of society. It is here to stay. In fact, successful vaccination efforts will only accelerate variant production because the virus will work to evade the vaccines. Delta will be followed by Epsilon and Gamma. And the Delta variant IS going to rip through the US. No stopping it.
The production of variants that can make a vaccinated person unwell for a while but don't meaningfully contribute to deaths is not a reason to keep society closed in perpetuity. This thing isn't quite the flu (yet) but in a well vaccinated population, its also not ebola and its not polio.
The ultimate bar has to be aggregate effect on health and the healthcare system. You may recall that DW was in critical care with the NHS when it was being ravaged by Covid. I'm very alive to the risks of an overwhelmed healtchare system -- but that is not where we are. To the contrary, what risks overwhelming the NHS now is all of the people who haven't been getting care for anything except Covid.
The other reality is that many Covid restrictions are turning into Covid theater.
Most people have long since blown off the NHS app because the restrictions are silly draconian if you follow them. I once got a notification to isolate because I might have been in a mall with someone who had covid. The isolation notice meant I should pull my daughter out of school for 10 days. Insanity. I was definitely in a mall with someone who had Covid...but it almost certainly was someone else who wasn't using the app. Same thing for masks in airports and on regional trains. Its just driving coffee sales...amazingly everyone is drinking coffee all the time to keep their masks off. But finding a seat on an airport shuttle bus is like playing frogger to get around all of the seats that are taped off to enforce distancing. People wind up standing next to each other. Complete theater.
I was in Scotland two weeks ago where the restrictions are supposedly more severe than England. It was like Marti Gras in New Orleans. Only the Scottish rules told everyone to change bars every two hours and then the 11p mandatory shutdown forced 100% of them onto the streets at the same time.
The only thing I think they're really getting wrong is that they haven't authorized people under 18 to get the vaccination. There is a legitimate long covid risk in that population. The US has gotten on with it below the 18 year olds, UK should do the same.
My $0.02.
