Former UK Task Force Head Says Country Should Treat COVID-19 Like the Flu in 'New Targeted Strategy'

Former UK Task Force Head Says Country Should Treat COVID-19 Like the Flu in 'New Targeted Strategy'


The former head of the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 task force is calling for a “new targeted strategy” that treats the novel coronavirus like influenza while also ditching the country’s mass vaccination program.

According to DailyMail.com, Dr. Clive Dix, who headed up the UK task force from December 2020 until April 2021, is also calling for a “new normality” in how the country approaches the pandemic, notably, try to manage the virus rather than halt its spread as omicron, the latest variant, is making the rounds, since it is less virulent and serious than the flu:

The latest vaccination figures showed that 22,526 first dose jabs, 32,455 second doses and 207,801 booster jabs were delivered on Friday. It brings the total number of people to have received at least two doses of a vaccine to 47,632,483, whilst 35,273,945 have received a booster jab.  

It comes as Britain’s daily Covid figures fell for the third day in a row on Saturday, official data showed in a sign the worst of the latest wave may be over.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) figures show there were 146,390 new positive tests over the last 24 hours, down 18.5 percent on the previous week’s figure of 179,637.

It marked the biggest week-on-week fall since the start of November, well before the super mutant strain sent cases soaring across the country.

All said, UK leaders including Prime Minister Boris Johnson continue to double down on the same ‘remedies’ — masks, lockdowns, distancing, and vaccines — despite the fact that literally none of those strategies have brought the pandemic to an end.

“Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on our country and today the number of deaths recorded has reached 150,000,” Johnson tweeted recently. “Each and every one of those is a profound loss to the families, friends and communities affected and my thoughts and condolences are with them.

“Our way out of this pandemic is for everyone to get their booster or their first or second dose if they haven’t yet,” he added.

Dix, who now serves as the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, thinks it is time to change what we’re doing regarding the pandemic.

“We need to analyze whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary. Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end,” he told The Observer.

DailyMail.com noted further:

He told the newspaper ministers need to support research into immunity from the virus beyond antibodies.

The scientist called for them to help study B-cells and T-cells and how they could make jabs to battle certain types of Covid variants. 

“We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective,” Dix said. “We should consider when we stop testing and let individuals isolate when they are not well and return to work when they feel ready, in the same way we do in a bad influenza season.”

Other UK health experts are also beginning to question why their country, as well as others around the world, continue to view COVID-19 the same way even as the latest strain is far less potent even than some cases of flu.

For instance, Prof. Robert Dingwall, a former JCVI member of and expert in sociology at Nottingham Trent University, told DailyMail.com that it will be a few more weeks before omicron fatality rates are known but if they are below what normal flu deaths are, “we should be asking whether we are justified in having any measures we would not bring for a bad flu season.”

“If we would not have brought in the measures in November 2019, why are we doing it now? What’s the specific justification for doing it?” he asked. “‘If the severity of Covid infection is falling away to the point that it is comparable with flu then we really shouldn’t have exceptional levels of intervention.”


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