Mick Hartley

Even the BBC is beginning to doubt the wisdom of the continuing coronavirus panic. Or at least it's giving voice to the doubters. Health correspondent Nick Triggle – Covid: Is it time we learnt to live with the virus?

The constant mantra is the virus must be suppressed and contained. But how do you do this when people can be infectious without knowing they have it? Where it can be passed on silently because people do not develop symptoms?

The nation has been brought to a standstill once at immense cost to the economy, education and health more generally. And now with cases rising there is the threat of new national restrictions, while large parts of the country have already found themselves back in partial lockdown. But are we fighting a losing battle? Do we instead need to learn to live with the virus?

Prof Carl Heneghan, the head of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, says the current situation is "utter chaos" with a constant stream of new restrictions and schools sending whole year groups home when just one person tests positive. All this at a time when the level of infection is still very low.

This, Prof Heneghan says, is the consequence of trying to suppress the virus. Instead, he argues we should accept it is here to stay and try to minimise the risks, while balancing that against the consequences of the actions we take.

In particular, he's concerned the Covid test is actually so sensitive it's picking up what is effectively dead virus as it spots traces of it months after the person has stopped being infectious.

"We need to slow down our thinking. But every time the government sees a rise in cases it seems to panic," he said. […]

Some years are worse than others. In 2017-18 there were 50,000 extra deaths over winter compared to the rest of the year, mainly because of the cold weather, a virulent strain of flu and an ineffective vaccine.

In fact, Prof Robert Dingwall, a sociologist and an adviser to the government, believes the public may well be now at the stage where it is "comfortable" with the idea that thousands will die from Covid just as they are that they die of flu.

He believes it is only a particular element of the public health and scientific leadership who worry about driving down the infection level and is critical of politicians for not being "brave enough" to be honest with the public that the virus will be around "forever and a day" even with a vaccine.  […]

Prof Mark Woolhouse, an expert in infectious disease at Edinburgh University,…argues the government must carefully "balance the harms" of Covid with the consequences that come from trying to contain it. He says there is already growing evidence the "cure has been worse than the disease" because of the wider societal costs.