I watch with trepidation what is going on in Europe right now. Austria has called a lockdown until possibly December 12 and will be the first country in Europe to make the vaccine mandatory as February 1, 2022. In response, Austrian citizens have gone to the street to protest and scream Widerstand. Nearly 40,000 protesters took to the street in Brussels this weekend, and in Amsterdam mayhem erupted with violence on the streets.
In other European countries (Switzerland, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, etc), there have been similar protests against the vaccine passports, public health restrictions and/or the push for mandatory vaccination.
All this is very worrying for us Maltese, and if the situation continues to deteriorate in Europe, the eurozone economies will suffer and this will invariably negatively impact the Maltese economy this coming winter.
To my mind, the way forward ‒ the solution ‒ is simple. I didn’t say easy, I said simple. We need to change the current paradigm.
I notice that most governments, with the exception of a few (UK and Sweden), are following the same approach when it comes to public health, which is based on a flawed logic that ignores recent facts that have turned upside down many of our original assumptions about the virus:
The vaccines have not delivered herd immunity (yet);
The vaccines have had a material and positive effect on the reduced number of hospitalisations and deaths;
The vaccines have not stopped fully vaccinated people from catching or transmitting the virus, especially with the predominance of the Delta variant;
To date, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has only issued temporary emergency authorisations for the vaccines currently in use.
In fact, COVID-19 infection numbers have continued to rise irrespective of vaccination uptake numbers. Take Malta as an example: we have nearly 95 per cent of the population that is fully vaccinated and a booster campaign well under way, yet numbers continue to rise. Why?
The reason is that ever since the Delta variant became the dominant strain, herd immunity through vaccination became impossible to reach, and fully vaccinated people now have an equal chance of catching or transmitting the virus as unvaccinated people. Governments, therefore, must rethink the old paradigm and explain to the people the new changing reality.
To my mind, a country that has a vaccination rate close to 95 per cent, such as Malta, can afford to tolerate rising infection numbers without imposing any new public health restrictions, so long as hospitalisation numbers and deaths remain low. In so doing, the economy and democracy can continue to function normally.
Moreover, governments need not experiment with medical apartheid or discriminatory work policies and/or imposing new public health restrictions, and this will protect our economy and ultimately jobs. In fact, it might actually be a good thing that infection numbers are rising the way they are (‘naturally’), since the vaccine protects people from hospitalisation or deaths but natural immunity is what is getting us closer as a country to eventual herd immunity.
To do this, the government needs to re-educate the people and recalibrate expectations. By this I mean explain that the vaccine does not stop anyone from catching/transmitting the virus but it does significantly reduce the risk of people, particular the elderly or vulnerable, from suffering severe symptoms and needing to be hospitalised.
Our economy cannot afford any more seismic shocks
This is why it no longer makes sense to keep reporting the number of daily infections, to impose vaccine passports in an apartheid fashion or to impose restrictions such as lockdowns until vaccination numbers are close to 100 per cent.
I believe businesses now need to take a position on this matter since peoples’ livelihoods depends on it. We need to lobby, educate and explain that the old paradigm of pursuing a zero infections strategy is impossible and that herd immunity will only be achieved in time thanks to natural immunity post-pandemic.
Admittedly, pre-vaccine, this could not be a credible strategy due to the high price we would have needed to pay as a society, with the old and vulnerable being hit the hardest, but now that we near 95 per cent of the population being fully vaccinated, a booster campaign well under way and the epidemiological situation transitioning to an endemic one, I see no reason why business or democracy in Malta should be held hostage to public health policy anymore.
Like the UK, we need not make the vaccine mandatory, nor call (again) a national public health emergency. In the words of Sajid Javid, who last weekend categorically ruled out making coronavirus vaccinations compulsory in the UK, “…taking the vaccine should be a positive choice…” rather than an imposition.
Furthermore, we can preserve our post-pandemic approach to public health similar to the UK which removed all COVID-19 restrictions way back in July.
I say all this because our economy cannot afford any more seismic shocks; anymore fear-mongering, which undermines business and customer confidence; and a regression to more or new public health restrictions.
It is safe, at least here in Malta, to consider a new paradigm for the good of our democracy and economy.