How Pandemic Restrictions ended in the Nineteenth Century: Profit Before People
Boris Johnson announced the end of most compulsory COVID restrictions in England on 19th January. On the same day it was announced there were 96,545 COVID infections in England and 301 reported deaths. The figures were a reduction but remain high. In 2021 it was suggested in the other three UK nations that to lift restrictions entirely would mean infections had dropped below 50 people in 100,000. In my area of North London cases have dropped to half of what they were at the start of January and now stand at 760 people in 100,000.
The impact of deaths from COVID, long COVID and economic hardship has been felt in all sections of society. If it hadn’t been Johnson would have done nothing as the ruling classes of Europe did on cholera in the nineteenth century until they started dying from it as well.
Getting on for two years in certainly in England we are also at another stage familiar to nineteenth century historians. Namely that it has been determined that the economic cost of the pandemic outweighs the importance of controlling it and so ‘let it rip’ in a phrase Johnson may or may not have used at some point.
The difference thankfully with the nineteenth century is that thanks to science and the NHS we have an effective vaccine which means that while infections remain high at the moment, serious illness and death are much less.
But hundreds are still dying from COVID each day. The disease doesn’t discriminate but class society does. It’s a fair bet that as in the COVID first wave, many of those dying will be the less well off, those in poor housing and poorly paid jobs that can’t be done from home. Numbers may not have been vaccinated but in many cases that won’t be because they have ‘researched’ matters on the interweb but because they are from sections of society whose interface with official society is very limited. In places that is recognised and addressed by local Councils and health authorities. In No.10 it is a world and a people of whom they still have no conception.
Meanwhile whatever their status they are people with names not just numbers, except obviously to Boris Johnson
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