In a report optimistically entitled “Light at the end of the tunnel“, Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change has come up with a plan to avoid more lockdowns. Speaking to the Today Programme this morning, the former Prime Minister said that efficacy scrutiny for vaccines should be loosened, while maintaining the strict safety criteria. Tony made a cogent case:
“Don’t just leave this to the normal process, interrogate it. Because if you do get to the point where you know that it is at least reasonably effective, there is no point in waiting in order to see whether it is actually 60 or 70 per cent effective. Even if it’s 40 or 50 per cent effective it’s definitely worth having.”
Blair also urged the Government to begin enrolling people for vaccines now, before they are available so the distribution can faster and be more orderly.
The paper posits a four pronged approach covers therapeutics, vaccinations, testing, and data. It suggests that November lockdown should be used to:
- Expand therapeutics. Rather than offering therapeutic drugs only to those in the RECOVERY Trial, any hospitalised patients at risk of serious illness should be offered drugs now that are safe and meet a minimum level of efficacy. We should give these patients the drugs and track the data from them.
- Speed up vaccines. should keep to the vaccine development process envisaged but shorten every element of it insofar as is humanly possible, and aim to get the first vaccinations underway in December. It is reasonably clear there is no safety issue with the vaccines like that of AstraZeneca’s and efficacy even at 50 per cent is worth having.
- Mass Testing. The Government should organise the provision of the rapid tests so that we’re testing people rather than quarantining them for long periods. This needs full-scale organisation for schools, universities, workplaces and other categories to participate, which is not presently in place.
- Data. All the information on patients; recording of every test, including those not carried out by the government; and the setting up of a vaccine registration system so that as we vaccinate, every part of the experience is recorded.
Echoing Boris’s positivity in tone, Blair ended his foreword to the new paper with a surge of cautious optimism:
“Britain ironically is better placed – in theory – for a second wave. We have probably the best vaccine in the world; probably the best therapeutic drug; and at least some of the best testing devices.”
Blair sounded passionate about avoiding future lockdowns. Is he ideologically closer to the Conservative Prime Minister than the Leader of the Labour Party on this issue?
Quote of the Day is from the President of Perugia Airport, who tells the Telegraph’s Nick Squires that:
Boris Johnson “definitely” did not come through here this month and the original press release confused him with Tony Blair, who did.
Tony Blair tells the truth…
“I just don’t think you are going to be able to do that and I think it was hard enough to do the first lockdown. The economic consequences of that are obviously devastating but if you think about doing that in the winter months I just think it is not credible, it is not possible to do. If you track what is happening around the world today I think countries are moving in the direction of this mass testing.”
Speaking to Sky News following Monday’s launch of his Time to Mass Test report, former Prime Minister and recently humbled anti-Brexit crusader Tony Blair has done something remarkable – he has managed to come up with a sensible policy suggestion. Actually using the Coronavirus testing capacity we have…
Testing capacity has been quietly rising in the UK to impressive levels. What is less impressive is the number of tests actually processed has remained essentially flat all month. The UK now has the capacity to perform more than twice as many tests as are actually being carried out…
The most recent testing capacity number stands at 337,089, yet yesterday just 150,174 tests were carried out. It’s all very well having a larger testing capacity, it means nothing if it’s not actually used…
Tony Blair is back on the airwaves again today, plugging his new Time to Mass Test report which argues that testing the majority of the population is “the only way to restore confidence and allow the UK to live safely alongside Covid-19.” The report has a joint foreword by Blair, William Hague, and Jeremy Hunt…
Speaking to the Today Programme this morning, the former PM told the programme that beyond testing the Government needed to be more willing to stop following and start challenging its experts.
“You’ve just got to interrogate the officials properly. And I think that what’s happened is that too much of this has just been as it were accepted, without really trying to get underneath and into the detail of what people are suggesting so that you understand where the science ends and judgements begin.”
The analysis is remarkably reminiscent of what Rory Stewart was saying in June, that the Government has been too reliant on and unquestioning of its scientific advisers. Jeremy Hunt, who co-authored the foreword to Blair’s testing report, clashed with Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty last month over SAGE advice to end community testing back in March. Suddenly it’s fashionable to challenge the experts from organisations with acronyms…
Saint Tony has ordained Sir Keir as the new high priest of New New Labour, saying the party is now politically competitive again. Not necessarily the endorsement Starmer will have been craving…
Blair praised the new party leader’s performance over the last three months, saying he’s done “a good job – a very good job actually – and I think he has put Labour back on the map.”, giving a mere nod to that lingering question of any solid policies from team Starmer. After the settling in court over the Panorama whistleblowers, it’s like New Labour is having a competition to see just how much they can wind up the TrotsApp collective…
