Vaccine could help Covid become an 'unpleasant illness' rather than a killer, MP says
A Staffordshire MP has likened the current phase of the Covid pandemic to the invasion of South America by Spanish Conquistadors four centuries ago.
Michael Fabricant said that during the colonisation of the Americas more native Americans were killed through "disease than by conquest" as they had no resistance to illnesses such as measles.
Comparing it with the coronavirus pandemic, he said vaccines were now building up people's resistance and that he hoped in the months ahead catching Covid "will become at worst an unpleasant illness like measles and not necessarily a killer".
Infection rates across the country have shot up ahead of the axing of most Covid restrictions on July 19, although hospital admissions are still considered low.
Mr Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield, said: “When 400 years ago the Spanish Conquistadors invaded South America, they killed more native Americans through disease than by conquest.
"Illneses like measles were killers because natives had built up no resistance to this ‘new’ disease. This is similar to today.
"The Covid vaccines are building up our antibody and T cell resistance so I hope that in the months to come, catching Covid will become at worst an unpleasant illness like measles and not necessarily a killer."
Boris Johnson announced that Covid rules such as mask wearing and social distancing will be relaxed after claiming the link between "infection and serious disease and death" had been severed.
However, Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser to the Government, said the link had only been "weakened" and warned that hospital admissions were likely to rise in the coming months.
Mr Fabricant said the current daily death rate needed to be put into context.
"The latest data shows that in Staffordshire – and reflected elsewhere – for the last 12 out of 13 weeks for which data are available, the number of deaths has been substantially lower than the five year average before Covid," he said.
"Fewer people are dying than normal. So while I understand that the Government does not want to stop publishing daily Covid death and infection rates because people may think the Government is hiding something, I have suggested to the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, that deaths through other causes should be published too to put this all in context.
"Every day people die from communicable diseases like viral pneumonia and influenza and we take it as a fact of life – or death."
