LONDON – When Prime Minister Boris Johnson stumbled on his initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, his political fortunes faltered, returning quickly thanks to Britain’s surprisingly effective vaccine implementation.
With his popularity now dwindling again (this time after an unfulfilled promise not to raise taxes), Johnson hopes history will repeat itself.
On Tuesday he announced a campaign to offer booster vaccines to people 50 and older, as well as first shots to 3 million children, ages 12 to 15, reiterating their vote to prevent future blockades.
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If the winter brings an increase in new cases, however, it could reintroduce the mandatory use of masks, deploy vaccine passports and urge workers to stay home if possible, according to what the government calls its “Plan B.”
“We are now in a situation where so many people have some degree of immunity, the smallest changes in the way we ask them to behave can have a greater impact,” Johnson said at a news conference.
For now, the Prime Minister is confident of a redoubled vaccination campaign to protect the British health service and not save it from having to order new closures that will depress the economy and infuriate a noisy group of lawmakers.
“The bounce of the vaccine helped him the first time and if the reinforcement plan (which will be a massive story in British politics) goes well and he is able to say that the launch will be planned, that might help him,” he said. say Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent.
But, Goodwin added, “he is certainly vulnerable in terms of his internal criticism.”
For a leader who often seems to defy political gravity, the risks are high because, for the first time in months, poll scores are falling for Johnson’s Conservative party. Last week he announced plans to raise taxes and there are growing doubts about his promise to “level up” economically disadvantaged areas.
There are also indications that some of the new voters Johnson attracted to the 2019 election could be moving away.
“His presidency doesn’t seem to have currently fulfilled the things these voters want,” Goodwin said.
It was a funding crisis approaching health and social care programs that forced Johnson to break his word and agree to raise taxes on workers, employers and some investors. This has not only jeopardized the reputation of his low-tax party, but has also infuriated several prominent party donors.
According to a recent opinion poll conducted by YouGov, support for the Conservatives fell 5 points to 33%, with the Labor Party rising by 1 point to 35%, which put it in the lead for the first time since gener.
Part of Johnson’s difficulty is that while polls generally show that the British public favors strict measures to contain the virus, blocking restrictions are anathema to a noisy libertarian wing of its own Conservative party.
Thus, while the government did not rule out the possibility of restricting the restrictions, it made it clear that they would be the last resort after exhausting “basic closure” measures, such as the mandatory use of masks or passports. vaccine.
On Tuesday, Johnson highlighted the success of the vaccination campaign, which he said produced “one of the freest societies and one of the most open economies in Europe.” He added: “That’s why we are now continuing with our strategy.”
Public health experts generally supported Johnson’s announcements, although some noted that Britain, as usual, seemed to lag behind other countries on issues such as vaccinating young people or encouraging the use of masks. facials.
“They always get there, right after what they should be doing,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh.
Britain, he said, “was going in the same direction as other countries, but with a significant delay” in vaccinating those aged 12 to 15, drawing up contingency plans for the mandatory passport for masks and vaccines, and increase the tests to get the country through what will probably be a difficult winter.
Monday’s decision to vaccinate children up to the age of 12 was controversial, although many other countries, including the United States, France, Italy and the Netherlands, began doing so months ago. The British government’s advisory group, the Joint Vaccination and Immunization Committee, had previously concluded that the health benefits for these ages 12 to 15 were marginal. This sparked a debate about the ethics of vaccinating children to prevent the spread of a virus that poses a health risk to the adults they live with and encounter.
On Monday, medical chiefs in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland argued that by reducing school disruption, a vaccination campaign would bring other benefits to young people.
Similarly, the decision on the drivers places Britain among a growing group of countries that offer additional traits to their own citizens before many people in large parts of the world have even received a dose, provoking criticism from David Nabarro. , a special envoy to COVID by the World Health Organization.
“I am frankly upset, frankly, to know that Britain is taking boosters, when this will simply eliminate the very valuable vaccine of people from other parts of the world who cannot get their basic doses and therefore be at risk of death. he told Times Radio.
Johnson’s question is whether vaccines and their light focus on other restrictions will be enough to prevent more draconian measures.
Graham Medley, an epidemiologist advising the government, said that in England, the rate of reproduction of the virus was around one, meaning that the epidemic was still circulating widely but not spreading exponentially. He said he did not expect the return of high levels of infection last January.
However, Medley said divergent experiences in other parts of the UK, especially Scotland, where infection rates have fluctuated dramatically, demonstrated the unpredictability of the virus. None of the models predicted that cases in England would fall, rather than in July, he said.
“We are still waiting for the full effect of the reopening of schools and the return of work,” said Medley, a professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Britain continues to report more than 25,000 virus cases a day and hospital admissions are close to 1,000 a day. This is enough to stop the National Health Service, which also has to deal with a huge accumulation of procedures that had to be postponed during the pandemic.
Johnson’s bet to lift most restrictions in July seemed to bear fruit when new cases fell instead of growing. But with schools open across England over the past two weeks, this increase in infections could still come. Cases were shot in Scotland, where schools were opened earlier.
Johnson’s bet is that a new vaccine implantation, with minimal restrictions, will be enough to prevent a large increase in hospitalizations.
Avoiding more closures is critical for the prime minister, Goodwin said, adding that some of Johnson’s own lawmakers would be in their arms even if measures such as the use of masks to combat the spread of the virus were reintroduced.
“They really want to see us move forward and learn to live with it,” he said.
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