UK Covid live news: minister stresses people pinged by NHS app can choose not to isolate
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As my colleague Jessica Elgot reports, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are considering increasing national insurance - in what might be described as a as a social care and health levy - to fund an overhaul of social care.
Related: Ministers mull national insurance rise to fund social care
There’s been a social care problem in the country for many, many years. We know we’ve got to fix it, the Covid pandemic has shown us the problems in the system, and we understand that’s got to be paid for.
And again, with a tax proposal, which has been briefed to one or two newspapers, the best way to judge it is on two criteria.
This is 1) predictable 2) a terrible idea https://t.co/fxhc0qh2Xn
And here are some more lines from Paul Scully’s interviews this morning.
I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities. The median age is 82 – 81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate.
I don’t think that’s right.
The prime minister has had some really difficult decisions to make.
I’m not comfortable that government is mandating anything frankly, I’m a very libertarian Conservative, I want to be able to back off, that’s why yesterday was an opportunity for government to back off from so many different things and let people live their lives.
But what we have to do is make sure that people will also live their lives safely, the NHS can function safely, and these are the challenges that we still have to do. So it’s incredibly frustrating, it’s incredibly complicated to work through the detail, but that’s the challenge we have.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3zgI8WF
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