For & Against UK Govt Ending Lockdown On 21st June 2021

Okay, it's Friday, 4th of June, and probably a familiar face you've now come to recognize, Mike Ivey, is with us. How's it going, Mike?

Very good, good morning.

Good. I was just complimenting Mike on his new camera, so he's looking good and he's sounding good, and, uh, and his slides are recommended by you, uh, Anthony Cheung.

So thank you.

Yeah, I mean, getting the lights and the camera, and now also I've got this new microphone. It's been a bit of a journey. But I feel like finally I'm getting to a point where it's coming together, as you rightly said, just in time for going back to the office. So such are these things. But look, I've got Mike back because for those who've been with the Amplify Live community for a while, Mike's quite kindly come on a couple of times over the last couple of months. And he's talked specifically about COVID-19. Because it is a fairly complicated thing to, to try and track and make sense of. There's a lot of moving parts, particularly on a global scale, and there's no better person to get us up to speed than Mike. So he's kindly put together some slides which I can distribute as well to everyone. I'll attach to the video. I've got a Q&A and a chat box open So as we go, absolutely feel free to leave a comment, question, anything like that. We're both here to help, so I'm happy to do so. But to kick things off, Mike, let me share page 1.

Okay, fantastic. Um, okay, so we'll start, um, quite narrowly with the UK and the Delta variant, which I'll come on to explain in a second, but I think towards the end we'll sort of open it out because there are repercussions, implications for the global community as well as the UK. So starting with the first slide, we have The World Health Organization has decided that they want to sort of change the names of all the different variants, all the different COVID variants, which is, which is fair enough. So rather than use the country of origin, which it thinks leads to stigmatisation, and rather than use the scientific name, which it thinks is confusing, it's decided to use the sort of Greek alphabet to define the various variants of the COVID-19.

So I can pretty much guarantee you now— sorry, I can pretty much guarantee you the national UK press will not refer to the World Health Organization's name. I'm sure they get much more readership through calling it the Indian or Chinese virus than they ever do through the WHO name. But, uh, there we go.

I think we might slightly disagree here. I mean, I don't— do you feel stigmatized by, by the Kent variant as an inhabitant of Kent?

Do you know, it's, it, it is funny because, you know, why should something be called an Indian or Chinese but then saying Kent is okay? But I do know that, um, I obviously, I have some Chinese family, some who do live in Britain, and I have I've had people tell me about racism they have actually confronted or been met with because of none other than being Chinese. And my wife went back to Belfast to see her parents last week. And she said there was a guy there who's perfectly lovely. And obviously my wife is Islamic, as her— all of her close friends are Islamic as well. And when she goes back home, this is an Irish chap hanging out with them. But then he's refusing to go to the Chinese takeaway now because of the Chinese virus, which I thought, crikey, are we actually— is this actually real? But I guess it is. But appropriate to rename, I feel.

Yeah, OK. I'm not going to die on this particular hill. I mean, I think that— I think Trump did a lot around that, a lot to sort of stigmatize the Chinese with the way he politicized it. I don't feel quite the same about the other variants, but I accept what you're saying. And maybe in the long run, it is simpler and better to use these Greek names so long as We'll see if it adds confusion or not, we just have to see. But certainly for the purposes of this presentation, I'll probably get confused and mixed up, but we'll try and use the Greek names. So the Kent variant, the UK variant, is now Alpha. The South Africa, the B.1.351, is Beta. Brazil, the P.1, is Gamma. And India, the Indian variant, which is the main topic of this presentation presentation will be that the B.1.617.2 is the Delta. So, okay, so we can go to the next, next page. So thinking about the Delta, the Indian variant, the problem for the UK and potentially the rest of the world— one of the things about the UK is we know more about it and we know more about the degree to which it's penetrated the population because we do so much more sequencing, genome sequencing here. Approximately 50% of the world's genome sequencing is done in the UK. So we know more than a lot of other countries about the prevalence of these different variants. It's not that we're just somehow, you know, somehow these variants crop up more here, they penetrate here more, or that they originate here more. It's just we know more about them. So, and the problem, the main problem with this, this Delta variant is it's got two traits which are potentially in combination problematic. So we know it's more transmissible than the ancestral variant, or which is the original coronavirus, and we know it's more transmissible than the, the, the Alpha, the Kent variant, and in combination with that, it seems to have a degree of added immune escape, so it can sort of potentially penetrate vaccines and overcome immunity that people might already have from prior infection. Now, as we learn more about the immune escape, it's potentially more worrying, and we'll come on to that in a second. Now, the, the interesting thing, the most interesting, one of the most interesting things on this particular chart is if you're looking at the, the B.1.351 which is the South African variant, is this is the variant that has the most amount of immune escape. That's the bad news with this variant. The good news is it's not very transmissible. So wherever it has started to appear, it quickly, it's quickly died out as it's been outcompeted by other variants. So there have been little clusters in the UK of the South African variant, but it can't compete against either the Alpha variant or the Delta variant, so it's tended to die away, which is extremely good news because potentially in terms of its ability to overcome immune systems or escape the protection given by vaccines, it's the most dangerous variant. But, but so far so good on the South African one. But as I say, the worry at the minute is the Delta variant, which is very transmissible and has a reasonable degree of immune evasiveness. Okay, so go to the next slide. Okay, so Public Health England have been sort of producing regular updates on, on the Delta variant, and we're getting a clearer picture of how much more transmissible it is than the Kent, the Alpha variant, and the latest figures I was looking at yesterday, they're suggesting potentially between 60 to 70% more transmissibility, if that's a word, so that's quite, that's quite a lot more. Than is comfortable actually. So the original estimates were something like 30 to 60, but that's sort of edged up in the latest Public Health England estimates. So we now know, or we suspect, it's much more transmissible than the Kent variant. The other problem, or another problem, is we think that if you do get it— so not only more likely to get it, if you do get it, you're more likely to get seriously ill. So two problems: more transmissible, more likely to cause serious illness. We also know that from the, the figures published by the government that there's this degree of vaccine escape. So the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines seem to be only 33 to 50% effective after one dose, The Pfizer vaccine is 90% effective after 2 doses at 2 weeks, but the Astra vaccine is only 60% effective after 2 doses at 2 weeks. Now, the majority of vaccines— vaccinations in this country are using the, the Astra vaccine, so 60% effectiveness potentially causes a problem. There is the scope for some good news here in, in that the, the way the AstraZeneca vaccine works using this adenovirus vector, the vector itself seems over a period of time to confer a degree of immunity. So the suggestion is that the 60% effectiveness at 2 weeks should continue to increase, and I've seen estimates of, you know, 80 to 90% over a period of 12 weeks, but we don't know, we don't have the data yet, so that's, that's an estimate, and that's a sort of, you know, we hope that that's what's going to happen, but we don't have the data yet. The reason for thinking that is if we know that after the first dose the effectiveness of the, the AstraZeneca vaccine increases, and that's one of the reasons that there was a 12-week gap between the first and second doses, is we knew from the data we had that the effectiveness of the vaccine increased over that period and they could safely leave it. Not only could they safely leave till 12 weeks, there was a benefit to leaving the second vaccination at 12 weeks. So we're hoping we don't know that the 60% effectiveness figure will increase. Okay, but the problem with all of this— the increased transmissibility, the potential to cause more serious illness, and the potential for vaccine escape— means that there is scope here for increased hospitalisations and deaths. Okay, go to next slide. Okay, there's a very clever mathematician called James Ward who is on Twitter, and I'll put his Twitter handle in the room after I finish doing this, but he's done various modelling of what might happen with the Delta variant depending on what the government does. It's very, very clever stuff. This is the base model which he did 2 weeks ago when there was a suggestion that the Delta variant was 50 to 60% more transmissible, and he took the middle figure of 55. So it may be a slight underestimate if the Delta variant is 70% more transmissible, but it's not going to be so far out. So So this is his model assuming a 55% increase in transmission rates over the Alpha variant. This is what might happen if the government goes ahead with Stage 4 on June 21st, i.e., decides to open up the economy altogether. And in this scenario, he's saying that there may be 34,000 additional deaths caused primarily by the, um, the alpha— sorry, the Delta variant. And if you look at the graph underneath, you'll see that we get what's called— no, no, sorry, go back, go back— so the graph at the bottom. Yeah, you'll see that, um, uh, in the autumn you've got this big what he calls exit wave hopefully the last wave we'll get of COVID but it's a substantial wave of peaking in October at 25,000 hospitalisations a week, slightly less than the second wave in January, but it's still a fairly chunky wave of hospitalisations.

Yeah, that actually surprises me in a bad situation way. That looks quite, quite large, that peak.

Yes, it's fairly scary, um, but this— what he's done is he's a very, very clever guy, and, and his, his Twitter thread is really worth reading. I'll put the, um, the details in the chat room. That's the guy. Yeah, cool. Um, so, so yeah, so he's plugged in, you know, once he's plugged in the extra transmissibility the scope to get more ill, the vaccine escape, the immunity escape if you already had, say, the original COVID, the wild COVID, you know, the chances of being reinfected, and so on and so forth. Once you plug all of that in, these are the figures he comes out with. So, so this is if the government decides to go ahead. So it's, it's potentially pretty scary, and at 25,000 hospitalizations a week, it's fairly significant.

Okay, in the incoming slides, are we aware of yet the timetable of the resupply of vaccines? Because I know when we last spoke that was the big issue, the lack of supply.

So, well, yeah, if you go on to the next slide, I'll talk a little bit about vaccine supply. Yeah, so The government has a fairly difficult decision to make about June 21st, and there's a political decision, and obviously before that happens there's a sort of scientific decision or scientific advice. Now if you go on Twitter lots of scientists are actually arguing with each other. Tim Spector of the Zoe Project, who probably have the largest amount of privately accumulated data about the virus, is talking about a third ripple as opposed to a wave, and he doesn't see anything to worry about. Some scientists agree with him, lots of scientists take the sort of more pessimistic view that we're in for a really, really big third wave. So one of the problems is that the government may have when it comes to make a decision is the scientific advice, rather than being cohesive and coherent, may be fairly mixed. There's going to be a really, really tough decision to make, I think, about what we do on June 21st. They've done the first thing they've done correctly is just sort of shunted the decision down along the road to June 14th. So I think they were going to make the decision earlier, but they've moved it to June 14th, which is a clever thing to do. And I think they'll just wait for as long as possible to get all this data in about hospitalization.

Yeah, they're re-emphasizing, uh, data over dates all the way in the meantime, I guess. To soften the delay if it happens.

Yes, exactly. So the arguments for the government going ahead with opening up Stage 4 on June 21st is, well, the death rate is still incredibly low. You know, COVID accounts for 1% of all deaths, and at the weekend it was a slight statistical anomaly, but there was a day with no deaths in the UK. Which we haven't had since, I don't know, before the pandemic started. I don't know.

But yes, yeah, yeah, it was.

Yeah, yeah. So, so, you know, so it's very difficult to say politically, I think, to say, right, we're not, we're not going to go ahead and open up. We've literally got— hang on a minute, you know, you just had no deaths, you've got a handful of people dying every day. Um, you know, politically it's quite difficult to justify And you've got people like Steve Baker in the Conservative Party who are very, very anti-lockdown, who want to open up as quickly as possible. And there are others like him, so that they, you know, there is a wing of the Conservative Party that doesn't want any more delays. So those people have to be sort of talked around, I suppose, in order to stop any sort of dissent or difficulty within the Conservative Party. So that's, you know, politically it's difficult to stop, I think, this, given what I've said about people like Steve Baker and commitment in terms of what you've told travel companies, what you've told the general public, you know, politically I think it's very difficult to stop this opening up. Without really, really good reasons. An argument for continuing on June 21st is the NHS can cope. So in the scenario which I just gave you, you know, 25,000 hospitalisations in the autumn, the peak, you know, it's not great, but the NHS can cope. And we were told right at the beginning of this process that that one of the driving factors was not overwhelming the NHS, and although it would cause difficulties for the NHS, the NHS should be able to cope. And then we come on to what you, what you're referring to, which is this sort of vaccination. So the government is desperately trying to increase the pace of vaccination in order to get as many people as possible to have their second doses, and the reason for this is, as on one of the earlier slides, is there's a big difference between the effects of the, of the Delta variant on people who've had one vaccination as opposed to have two vaccinations. It appears that you get a relatively low degree of vaccination— sorry, low degree of protection with one dose. So, you know, we can see that the government's desperately trying to increase the pace, particularly of second vaccinations, to get everybody over the age of 50 and everybody with an underlying health condition vaccinated with two doses by June 21st seems to be the goal. Yeah, um, and helping them with that is there does seem to be increased vaccine supply. Um, so the last week, which is 31st of May on the charts, uh, bottom there, and there's something like 5 million doses made available in the UK. Which is above the base of 3 to 4. So what we think is happening here, we don't know, is the base AstraZeneca supply, which is UK supply, is 2 to 2.5 million doses a week. So if we think last week it was 2.5 million AstraZeneca doses, then we've got 2.5 million mRNA doses coming in, and presumably the bulk Pfizer, but potentially quite a few Moderna vaccines. Now, there hasn't been a lot of Moderna in the UK, partly because there's been problems with the production plant in Switzerland, but the hope is that that Moderna supply is now coming on stream. And this— if this supply of mRNA vaccines continues, it will enable the government to, to keep up this pace of vaccination and also quickly vaccinate younger people who it doesn't want to give the Astra vaccine to because of the blood clot risks. So this potentially is good news. And we'll just have to see how this pans out in the next 2 or 3 weeks. So if this vaccine supply continues at this elevated level, the increased supply of mRNA vaccines will mean that you can move quickly down the younger cohort to inoculate, to vaccinate them as quickly as possible.

Yeah, I'll keep you posted with the— I'm getting my first vaccine on Wednesday.

So where you have—

they give me, uh, not too far, it's in Kent, so not too far from where I am in Tunbridge Wells, so, um, just up the road.

Uh, are you under the age of 40?

I am indeed, yeah.

Yeah, well, yes, it'd be interesting to see. I mean, you should—

I'm at the top end, I'm 38, so I'm on the fence.

Should get the Pfizer or the Moderna, so that'd be interesting to see if you get the Moderna. That'd be really interesting because I think that would be evidence that there's more Moderna coming upstream. The figures we have from Wales and Scotland who publish these figures, I mean, it's infuriating that the British government is almost, the English, we have no data for England. It's really infuriating. Every sort of country in Europe publishes data, Wales publishes data, Scotland, but England doesn't. So we have to sort of guess and extrapolate from what everyone else is doing. So we know that there are Moderna vaccines coming now in increased quantities in Scotland and Wales, and the assumption is happening in England too, but we don't know because the government won't tell us. So it will be interesting to see if you get the Moderna vaccine.

Yeah, I'll keep you posted.

Okay, so these are reasons for going ahead with Stage 4. So go to the next. Slide. And then the, you know, the arguments against going ahead with Stage 4, the government opening up, is what we knew about the Delta variant is that initially it was confined to sort of small clusters, and there are clusters with large British Asian populations, clusters of multi-generational households, clusters of communities that were unvaccinated, and also communities that were to an extent deprived in the sense that the people, people who were going out to work, people putting themselves at risk from going out to work, rather than working from home. So all of these factors sort of combined to make the sort of these local clusters, but the evidence from the last week seems to be that the virus, the Delta variant, has sort of broken out of these clusters and is now just spreading generally in the population. And one of the problems is politically doing local lockdowns is actually quite difficult now because the government is very wary about being seen to sort of act solely in areas of the north or solely in areas which have high immigrant populations. It doesn't really want to go there, so rather than do these local lockdowns, it's sort of it's probably letting it go. And I think it was— it had suggested it was going to— there are going to be travel bans to these areas, which caused a wave of sort of protests, so quickly backed down. So there are no travel bans within the UK, but I think it probably would like to do that, but it's not going to happen. So I think having broken out, the evidence now seems to be that the Delta variant has broken out and is now spreading quite widely. The other, so the third point there is the economy now is simply more resilient, and the economic imperative for going ahead with Stage 4 is perhaps less than, less than it was. The economy doesn't seem to be doing too badly. And with the latest sort of loosening, it seems to be doing pretty well actually. It's as if people have found— big difference between the first lockdown, second lockdown, is people seem to have found ways of working. The economy's found a way of functioning in a way that it didn't in the first lockdown. And Sunak, who is the guy who— the chancellor who is has the purse strings, apparently is fairly relaxed about a 2-week postponement in the decision. So he was quoted by Sebastian Payne, an FT journalist, saying, you know, if we have to wait another 2 weeks to find out what's going on, he's happy about it. And I, you know, you can all make the— of course, he's the guy that matters. Another argument for going against, sorry, the government going ahead is this: is the NHS— so having said that the NHS can deal with the Delta variant, it's trying to do other things. So there's a huge backlog of routine cases, so things like you know, hips and knees that weren't done last year, which have got to be done. They weren't done last year because, because of COVID but they have to be, they've got to be done. So the NHS currently is trying to get on top of this backlist. And in addition to these routine cases, there is apparently a large number of complicated cases like cancers where people didn't come forward during the, during the last year because they were scared of going into hospitals. They put off making decisions or reporting symptoms because of their fear of going to hospital, but they're coming forward now. A lot of these cases are very complicated and requiring increased hospital stays, so hospitals are rapidly filling up with the, with the routine cases, which there's a backlog for, and these complicated cancer cases that have been sort of bubbling away for a year and not being treated. So there's a decision here which you need to make, is you can't— the NHS is not able to do both. The NHS cannot cope with a huge influx of COVID patients and do this other stuff. So you've got to choose, you know, what do you want the NHS to do? The NHS has explicitly said we want to do this, we want to concentrate on the routine cases and these complicated cases so we can get on top of this, you know, get on top of the backlog caused by COVID. So the government has to bear that in mind, and that's a reason for not opening up more than it is currently. And then finally, young people are now the primary transmission source of COVID and if you delay for 2 or 4 weeks the opening up, if as I suggested there's this increase in mRNA supply, you may be able to get on top of vaccinating these younger people with these vaccines, and that should just mean that if you do— when you do finally open up, you've just got more of these young people vaccinated and hence less of them to transmit the virus. So that may go into the government's thinking. Okay, so go to the next slide. Okay, so I I don't know what the government's going to do. I honestly don't have a clue, and perhaps we can talk about that in a minute, Ant. I mean, I am perhaps starting to lean to the idea that it will postpone for a few weeks, the opening up, but we can have a chat in a second. There is now a massive complication, if that wasn't bad enough, with this so-called Nepal variant. People have seen yesterday that Portugal was moved off the green list, and the reason for that is the discovery that in Portugal the Indian variant and this so-called Nepal variant are starting to increase. In fact, they've doubled over the last week in Portugal, and scientists in the UK are very worried about this Nepal variant. And the reason they're worried is that it combines the worst aspect of the Beta South African variant which is its ability to escape vaccines, and it also has the worst feature of the Delta variant, which is it's incredibly transmissible. So it's a sort of nightmare scenario potentially—transmissibility plus the ability to defeat vaccines—and the reason for this is it's the Delta vaccine, the— i.e., the transmissible Indian— sorry, the Delta virus, the transmissible Indian virus combined with this B.1.351 mutation, which is highlighted in red, is the K.417N. That is the mutation that gives the South African variant the ability to defeat vaccines And this mutation has combined with the Indian mutation, the Delta mutation, the Delta virus, sorry, to produce the Nepal variant. And in particular, the K417N mutation appears to be able to defeat the AstraZeneca vaccine. So it's a very, very worrying development.

You've almost, I had an opinion based on the pros and cons of the previous two slides, and now you might have tipped me over the edge slightly.

You will be hearing a lot over the next few weeks about the Nepal variant because it is potentially a nightmare scenario, particularly for the UK, which has a very, very high degree of reliance on the AstraZeneca vaccine. So we don't know yet for sure, but certainly the reason that Portugal was booted off the green list was because suddenly the appearance of what, what people in this country, what Grant Shapps was calling the Nepal variant. I mean, the World Health Organization said, we haven't heard of the Nepal variant, what is it? But this is what it is. So it's It's the worst of the Delta variant and the worst of the South African Beta variant. And we're just going to watch this very, very closely.

But I suspect— In it? Yeah, sorry, go on.

No, I suspect— so there are problems here. I suspect traveling in Europe is going to be very, very difficult this summer now. I wouldn't book a holiday if you're thinking of doing it. And everything that is reported in the UK, we know about it because of the genome sequencing. But all of these variants, the Indian— well, sorry, the Delta variant and now the Nepal variant will appear in Europe and they will cause problems for Europe. They may be a little bit behind, but it's going to happen. So I think Yeah, I think travel this summer is going to be tricky, and I think potentially this variant may complicate the picture for opening up in the UK on the 21st.

Do we have any idea about the numbers of Nepal virus yet at all, or is it too early?

I think literally in this country, I think it's less than 100. So far. Okay. And I don't know the absolute numbers in Portugal. The only reason the Portuguese know about it is actually their genome sequencing is actually pretty good too. And then you could almost say they made a mistake in telling people that they had it because suddenly, you know, the UK was thinking, oh my God, you know, 'we don't want our, you know, we don't want UK travelers going there now.' So if they kept their mouth shut, you know, we wouldn't have known about it.

Yeah, but it almost feels like in a very naive, unscientific way, in my mind, this is how viruses behave. I mean, their success is built upon adaptation, or mutation in this case. Yes. And it's almost like a battle between penetrating humans to then transmit and spread themselves as a enemy, let's call it, and then us as the other side of the battle being we vaccinate and it cannot spread beyond that individual, let's say, in a very simplistic way. But so it almost felt like— it almost feels like this was inevitable in a way that as we reopen and global travel does tentatively start to resume and people start to move around the globe again, that someone in geographic location A is going to inevitably meet someone from location B. And the virus is a clever, clever little chap, right? It's going to adapt over time. But where are we with the booster shot side of things? These people have got 2 shots. Because it— because this isn't going to go away, right? I mean, COVID is long-term, and surely there'll be evolutions beyond Nepal. I'm sure we'll run out of countries we can rename these things over a period of time. But well, this, this would be an ongoing thing, right, as a risk factor?

Yes, I think, I think— well, a couple things. I mean, the reason it's called Nepal is, is, um, Sorry, Mike, I think I just muted you by accident.

You have to click unmute again, sorry. Should be on the top of your Zoom. That's it, thank you.

Okay, yeah, the reason it's called the Nepal variant is I think it was first sequenced in Japan when 15 travelers turned up from Nepal. They were quarantined, they were tested, and they were the first to have been found with this particular variant. I think that's why it's called the Paul variant. But there are, yeah, I mean, there are two things I think, I mean, commonly we're led to believe that as viruses mutate, they become less lethal or less infectious was always the idea. That we were taught about viruses, but it doesn't seem to be the case here with Corona.

It's almost like the virus is acting like survival of the fittest. It had a really good performance in wave 1, and therefore we adapted and we did a good job of vaccinating on a global level to a certain extent, and it's now had to evolve in a way to stay alive. Yeah. And what it does so is it kills off the less transmissible. That's not useful for its survival. And it's got more— if you can combine the potency, as you say, with South Africa, with the transmissibility of India, it's just kind of refining itself into a better weapon in that sense.

That's right. And I think the encouraging thing is actually wherever these mutations have occurred. I was reading something— yeah, do you know how many mutations there are?

Can you give me a guess? Oof, I'm gonna imagine there's a lot, but perhaps we don't know about all of them.

Well, we know about a fair few. There are something like 350,000. Wow. But of course, a lot of them are irrelevant. They're dead ends, or, you know, they're tiny cases, you know, so So, you know, we only really concentrate on, know about, where we have large numbers and large clusters because that's what we focus on. But essentially it seems that wherever the virus has appeared and mutated, it's taken similar directions, you know, it's always turned right in the spike protein, you know, and then you've always had similar mutations in outbreaks thousands of miles away which have had nothing to do with each other. So the, the good news may be that there are only a limited number of useful mutations it can make to survive and prosper. That may be the good news. But as I say, most concerning at the minute is this, this idea of the the South African beta variant and the Indian delta variant. And coming quickly on to boosters, and there's a whole thing we could do on boosters but maybe another day, you know, I think we know that the government is now working frantically with AstraZeneca to produce a booster that works against the South African variant, and I think we now know why there's an urgency about that. And there are other vaccine programs in play, so The UK government has a deal with Novavax. The Novavax vaccine is fairly useful against the beta variant. It has a deal with Valneva, who are working in Scotland to produce a variant— well, to produce a vaccine that works across the whole range of coronaviruses. Which actually might be the golden ticket out of here if they can get it to work. So it will crush the whole virus, not just the spike protein. And then the other company in play is— they're working with— the UK government is working with a German company whose name eludes me, but they're building an mRNA vaccine with a German company. Based on the sort of sequencing data. So the UK government's given sequencing data so that they can sort of put together this complicated mRNA vaccine which will hopefully deal with all variants. So I think we're going to get booster shots, whether it's in the autumn or spring, I don't know, but it is going to happen.

So going back to the UK government, There was a point there where you said about the banning of travel, which we've already kind of softly seen with Portugal and some other areas, and then the roadmap of the 21st of June and the reopening. And for those other reasons that you covered, for me, what I find difficult, or let's say would be palatable to put to the public, would be no travel and a rollover of lockdown. I wonder if the management here is that they're going to restrict the travel to stop inbound mixing of introduction of new variants whilst they can work on then, as you say, speeding up this newly deployed supply in whatever form it might be. But then perhaps rolling— well, perhaps going ahead on the 21st of June is what I was going to say, sticking to that date. I find it hard that they— if they start pulling away from travel and they go into like a rollover, it's a difficult one to spin on those different fronts that you said. I just find— I don't know how the internally in the Conservative Party or publicly that, that, that would fly. However, my counter-argument for myself is, well, Whenever I, you know, as a consumer, as a citizen, I go out to town, things are pretty normal in the current state of lockdown. And actually, even if we had a renewed state, I mean, look, if I want to go to a restaurant or a pub, I got to book. It's a pain, but I can go to the pub. Like, it's not a problem. And so on the flip side, kind of playing devil's advocate, perhaps it's more palatable now than it would have ever have been because this actual current status of lockdown feels pretty open at this point.

And I think that that's right. I mean, for you and I, life is actually not bad. But if you're working in hospitality, if you're working in the airline sector, if you're running a holiday company, that sector of the economy, if we don't open up on June 21st, and that sector, even if it's a small sector, is going to continue to be in trouble. And, you know, Michael O'Leary was sounding off this morning on behalf of Ryanair. So, yeah, it's going to cause a massive problem for the leisure and hospitality industry. Of course, we don't feel that because we're not part of those industries, so we can hope.

Do we have any insight as to potential— I guess this would be calculated from the data, like from James Ward, for example, you mentioned as a mathematician looking at all the variables. But if there is an extension, what does that extension look like? What type of time frame are we looking at there to roll that over? To then revisit that decision?

Potentially 2 to 4 weeks. Okay. So as I said, Sunak has publicly said, I can live with another 2 weeks. And he's the guy who's collecting the taxes. So he said he could live with another—

I think I misunderstood. I thought he was referring to the fact that delaying the decision about June 21st, he kicked the can down the road for 2 weeks to say yay or nay. But he's actually said he's comfortable with a 2-week extension. Extension beyond the 21st? Let me have a look. Um, because if that is the case, and that's coming from him, as he said, um, and he's probably going to be the most in the know about, as you say, squeeze.

He said a reopening. So this is according to Sebastian Fain, FT journalist. Yep. Um, so he, he's relaxed over a 2-week delay to reopening.

Okay, well, I think that's a Done deal then. It'll be rolled for 2 weeks. I mean, I do see benefit in that. I mean, my wife, who's 5 years younger than me, she's also already received a letter a week and a half ago to book in for the vaccination. So it's already down. As you said, they're trying to accelerate that vaccination phase. I mean, people in their literally late 20s, 30s now getting the call. So yeah, it's quickly gone from like the '50s to then the '40s, and it's just gone straight down, that they've really tried to push it. So I think a 2-week period buys them, if you're right and that supply side picks up, quite a big difference, in fact. Seems sensible.

I think it potentially does. Yes. And maybe that's the way the way it will happen is, is, yeah, we're going to open up in another 2 weeks, but you're still not going on holiday. I mean, you know, that may— yeah, but there are so many variables, and, and, you know, it's really, it's really tough. And, um, you know, Boris's instincts are, I think, all against this, uh, in terms of stop— you know, Boris will just want to open up. That's where his instinct But I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, well, in Boris fashion, I think he's bought himself a big enough buffer where he can be— he could make that call to delay, and whether that— whether that being because of the situation of the opposition parties or not. But I just think that He's built that. I mean, the number of things that have materialized through his so-far term, I don't think other people could have possibly quite got away with. But he has, due to him as a personality, and I think also the opposition.

We had this conversation before. He's a unique politician. He's a lucky politician. And, you know, at the minute he's getting the credit for the vaccine rollout. Actually, it's an interesting thing about the UK in general is incumbency in Scotland, Wales, and England have been very helpful to all of the administrations in terms of getting elected. So, you know, Sturgeon did very well in Scotland and Drakeford's done very well in Wales because he's perceived to have had a very, very good pandemic. Yeah, well, look, let's wrap it up there.

I'm just conscious of your time. So yeah, I know we've got non-farm payrolls in just a short while.

So yeah, and we can do boosters at a later date as we get more information. But I think boosters are going to happen. And if the Delta variant and the Nepal variant do become troublesome, then they'll happen in the autumn. Yeah.

Well, I think the next conversation for sure is we are going to open up at some point, whether it's this month, next month, whenever it's going to happen. And at that point, there probably will be a meaningful wave anyway that's going to hit, as the data would suggest, in the autumn. So I guess at that point of the trajectory then showing we're on that path, I'm sure it'll be due for us to have another conversation to see how the land lies then.

So You have— I hope you haven't booked a holiday.

No, I'm— the only place I'm going is Dorset, um, to a campsite.

So, uh, yeah, where are you going?

Uh, as ever, being unplanned for these things, my wife takes care of all of the, the artillery, so I have no idea the actual place, although I have been shown, uh, and there's a nice seafood restaurant right on the— okay, little coastal line, so That's what I'm looking forward to.

Very wise, I think. I, I, yeah, cool.

All right, thanks very much, Mike, as ever. All right, you speak later. Take care. Speak later on.

Bye.