Covid: Amid politicians' bickering, comes a sign of hope – Scotsman comment

In these gloomy times, when the country is weary of Covid and the lockdown and when politicians in Edinburgh, London and, most recently, Manchester are descending into unhelpful bickering, it is important to hold on to signs of hope.

The UK's political leaders must work to ensure the public are given a clear message about the lockdown and the prospective coronavirus vaccine (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Scotland’s national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch may have caveated his suggestion that the rise in coronavirus cases had been “blunted” with remarks about delays to testing data making it too early to determine an overall trend, but it does seem as if the feared doubling of cases in nine to 11 days has not taken place.

On Wednesday last week, there were 1,429 cases, but this fell to 1,196 on Friday and the figure was 1,456 on Tuesday, including some results from the weekend.

"It would appear that 11 days into the restrictions in the Central Belt, the doubling time is not as it was,” said Professor Leitch. “We haven't gone from 1,400 positive cases to 2,800 positive cases… so it would appear that we have blunted the acceleration. I think people can be reassured that the sacrifices they are presently making are worth it and they will serve us well going forward.”

The sting in the tail was that we would need to continue to make more sacrifices for some time yet if the virus was to be controlled.

Speaking to MPs, Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at Edinburgh University, said she expected a “really bad” winter and there was a need to prepare to “get through this without a lot of death and a lot of restrictions in place”.

For many, hope is based on a vaccine, but Professor Stephen Reicher, a St Andrews University psychologist, warned the vaccine itself would stop “nothing”; only if people agreed to be vaccinated would it have an effect. “Polling shows about 50 per cent of people are dubious and a lot of that has to do with lack of trust which is a huge issue we need to address. The loss of trust in the UK Government is catastrophic,” he said.

If we are to have hope, we need to trust our leaders on the vaccine and lockdown and they need to reassure us our trust is not misplaced. Just one reason why the bickering has to stop.

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