Should we delay 21 June?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

On Monday, the Prime Minister will announce whether the 21 June unlocking is to go ahead. Because of the increased transmissibility of the Indian Covid variant, cases in the UK are continuing to rise. Does it make sense to wait for data to confirm that the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths has been broken, or should we confidently reopen? Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls, Kate Andrews and Cindy Yu discuss.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:26.0	Hello and welcome to a special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews.
0:33.6	The decision on June 21st is looming with Boris Johnson to announce his plan on Monday.
0:39.1	So what will he decide?
0:40.9	The mood music isn't too good for those hoping for a lockdown easing.
0:44.8	With 8,125 cases recorded on Friday, there's much talk amongst scientific advisors that
0:51.8	has to be delayed for two to four weeks. So what's going on?
0:56.4	Kate, you write the daily COVID email. What's your prediction? Oh, well, if I'm really forced to make a
1:03.8	prediction, I suppose I would just have to look at what's happened so far over the past 15 months and
1:08.3	say that it's not too good. The government is acting in an
1:12.0	extremely cautious way. It's very, very nervous about taking any risk at this point. And it does
1:18.0	seem, as you said, Katie, like the mood music would suggest some kind of delay. But as you point
1:22.5	out in your fabulous blog, Katie, on Coffee House Now, there are multiple ways that they could delay it. So the lesser of two
1:29.7	evils, I suppose, is they set a new Freedom Day. Boris Johnson says two to four weeks, ideally two,
1:36.1	we just want to get more second jabs into the arms of the most vulnerable, and then we're going to
1:40.6	open regardless of what the infection data is showing. The, I think, far
1:44.8	worst case scenario is one where he says we are going to postpone for at least two to four
1:50.1	weeks and then we're going to look at the data again. Because the question, Katie, one that the
1:53.9	government has never answered in the 15 months of this pandemic has been going on is really what
1:58.8	data they're actually looking at. If they're looking at
2:01.2	hospitalizations and deaths at the moment, there's a lot of reason to be positive. Hospitalizations
2:06.4	are still almost 97 percent below their peak, deaths 99%. What we saw in Bolton, where the Indian
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