Nicola Sturgeon and Gregor Smith are not among life’s shiny happy people.
No one tunes in to the weekly Covid briefing expecting a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, of course, but even for the solemn subject matter the First Minister and her Chief Medical Officer are a fantastically miserable pair. If their performances were any bleaker, they’d be directed by Peter Mullan on a grant from Creative Scotland.
Even by their usual standard, Tuesday’s briefing was a downbeat affair. Sturgeon was the primary bearer of bad news but Smith, the matinée idol Jason Leitch, chimed in to bring the mood lower when required. You might say they were working with the material they had but the First Minister’s attempts to accentuate the positive — greater uptake of the vaccine — were parenthetical and with screeds of miserable developments either side.
Infections had hit 4,323 the previous day, which Sturgeon noted was the highest figure in a single 24-hour period since the pandemic began. While ‘to some extent what we are seeing now is not entirely unexpected’, she described ‘the scale of the increase’ as ‘a real cause of concern’. New infections had more than doubled in the space of a week and there were 364 in hospital.
Under 25s now accounted for half of cases. A regrettable situation but, given what we know about lower vaccination rates among the young, not wholly unpredictable. Ah, but the podium of pessimism wasn’t done with its volley of glum statistics: one third of those testing positive have already been double-jabbed. The First Minister stressed that the vaccine was lessening the damage done by the virus but it was a gloomy reminder that vaccination does not confer immunity from catching Covid.
Though the young and healthy seem to offer doughtier resistance to the virus if they do get it, the same doesn’t apply for youngsters in vulnerable groups or with pre-existing conditions. For fans of Dictionary Corner, word of the day was sequelae, as deployed oh-so-casually by Gregor Smith to refer to health conditions caused by prior health conditions. It’s the plural of sequela and is Latin for ‘that which follows’ and ‘I have more degrees than an industrial thermometer’.
For the first time, a smattering of reporters were allowed in the room and one asked the dreaded question: could we be heading back to restrictions? On her way to answering, the First Minister admitted: ‘I can’t even bring myself to think how bad things would be right now if we didn’t have a vaccine.’ There are Radiohead albums with more upbeat lyrics.
This teed us up for what was coming: ‘I’m not asking you yet— I hope I never, ever have to ask you again to stay at home all the time. But I am asking you to wash your hands regularly, wear your face covering when you’re indoors, just be sensible about distance…’
The word that jumped out was ‘yet’. In fact, it didn’t so much jump as thunder into the air like the discharge from a cannon and land with an ominous thump. Sturgeon proceeded to characterise the situation as ‘fragile and pivotal’, by which point even the most optimistic viewer will have been watching with one eye and scanning Amazon for the best bulk toilet roll deals with the other.
To her credit, Sturgeon was explicit about the risk of a return to the sorts of measures that have plagued our lives over the past 16 months. If the spike in infections ‘accelerates’ and ‘we start to see evidence of substantial increases in serious illness’, she stated, she couldn’t ‘completely rule out having to reimpose some restrictions’. An honest admission, not least since it won’t be popular, but a grim one all the same. We all thought 2020 was the worst year we’d ever live through. Now it might turn out to have 24 months in it.
The big news line from the briefing was that a public inquiry into the pandemic would finally be held. Sturgeon wouldn’t be drawn on when it would begin. The more salient question might be: when will it end?
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on August 25, 2021.
England unrestricted earlier and had peak which flattened off...
Scotland “hoping” that happens with our later reopening...thats it hope!
We smaller, less people thank England, try something other than slower copycat moves...
We need ppe for kids and elderly - who cant use mobile phones.....
Wristbands? A scottish innovation wubands.com unused by SNP who just follow boris
Leaders lead,sheep follow