Boris Johnson’s government has made an utter mess of COVID: this must have hit home to millions of people as the pandemic passed the official 100,000 death toll this week, with the highest rate in the world of death by population size.
There is one good thing that the UK has led the world on, though: sequencing the genome of the coronavirus. The insights that work has given us show the world’s governments the way forward. What are the chances they will take it?
Whatever they do, there is no early end in sight. The UK may well reach its 15 million target for people vaccinated by mid-February, although a neat sleight of hand by Johnson has meant that target now means first dose, not full vaccination. Even if the vaccination works as well as it can, the UK faces a likely death toll of around 150,000 by mid-year.
