Monday, May 16, will be yet another in the line of ‘Freedom Days’ we have celebrated in the past two years, this time to mark the end of mandatory face masks on European flights.
As it seems, always, there are ifs and buts. Rules may vary on some airlines, particularly those flying to destinations which maintain some constraints.
In France, you must still mask up on public transport, and all indoor public places in Greece require their use. Which can put a bit of a dampener on the Zorba dancing and the plate-smashing celebrations.
While this is a big step forward, some social distancing conventions will remain. Airports have been urged to adopt “a pragmatic approach” and to avoid such requirements if they lead to bottlenecks. Airlines have also been asked to keep their data collection systems on standby.
And that is wise, because we can see around the world that there are still major pandemic issues, particularly in relation to the Omicron variant.
In Shanghai, China’s financial capital, tensions are rising after targeted lockdown measures have remained in place for six weeks in a city of 25m people.
Restrictions include forcible quarantine to meet president Xi Jinping’s demand for achieving “dynamic zero Covid”. Some 25% of the city’s 16 districts have been told that they cannot receive food deliveries or leave their apartments. In Beijing, residents have been asked to work from home, while 15% of the city’s subway is suspended.
In North Korea, a “severe national emergency” has been declared after one confirmed case, prompting leader Kim Jong-un to promise the state will rapidly eliminate the virus. Experts say that the 25m population has not been vaccinated and that offers of vaccines from the Covax distribution programme, backed by the UN, have been rejected.
But, for Europe, the situation is more positive.
In a wide-ranging interview, the eminent Canadian immunologist John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, says that most people who have had their vaccines are “completely safe”. He acknowledged that elderly people and the immunocompromised are at greater risk, but added: “People dying now, since last July, are unvaccinated. That’s tragic.”
Bell said it was sensible to give more booster jabs to people over 65 and to people with poor immune systems, but healthy, younger, people wouldn’t need them unless a more serious variant emerged.
The chances of this were “very low, but not nothing,” he added. He is hopeful that new forms of virus protection, such as a nasal spray, which could stop transmission, will be on the market within two years.
He is damning about “uninformed comments” by politicians about the efficacy and safety of vaccines and says they cost many lives.
That’s a useful lesson that we can put into the rules and regs for next time.