george hello can you hear me yes i can hi there um yeah i'm sure i'm just outside of london about an hour away from london to the west coast not the most uh glamorous town but uh still pretty good that's good um i have a question about um covert restrictions especially in the post-vaccine world yep um so countries like the uk and australia what we've done is you know once the majority of the population is vaccinated especially older people yes we've kind of had a let it rip approach um and obviously it's very different in the us um in the because of the kind of political situation and the decentralized system there but here in the uk yeah a bit of a let it rip approach um and i'm not the biggest fan of boris johnson there's lots of things you know to criticize him for but i think this is one thing that he's got right in the case where you put your faith in the vaccines and then you yeah you open up the economy and you basically let the virus do its thing and i think my understanding is on balance when you balance health economy et cetera i think that's the right thing did you but did you have an opinion on this approach do you think it's better to be more cautious or kind of just let things happen the answer is different depending on what is happening at the time there was a moment where the vaccines were very good at preventing people from getting sick at all but now we have a situation where the vaccines are better at preventing people from getting seriously ill and dying on average remember on average and the virus is now so transmissible that there really is no containing it so i think the right approach changes as the circumstances on the ground change now as far as the uk moving in the direction of removing all coveted restrictions including masking which remind me is it in NUMBER_TOKEN days that that's happening or when is that happening that is now happening uh in about NUMBER_TOKEN days in about NUMBER_TOKEN days okay when it comes to that when you look at you know you guys are ahead of the us in terms of the omicron wave you're already well on the decline if you believe that at this point it is becoming endemic that omicron has burned through the population and at least until next flu season things are going to be well controlled it doesn't seem crazy to me to say listen the vaccines have been available for a year we have a less severe but very contagious variant which is still more serious than a cold but much less serious than the previous ones if we can keep the medical system from being overwhelmed while removing restrictions at a certain point i understand that countries are going to do it and it doesn't seem crazy now if in the fall there's a much more deadly variant and there's a different situation my opinion might change but the numbers point to me understanding why the uk is doing what it's doing now yeah i agree and i think it's it's a good gamble politically as well because you have all these um you know the opposition last year in the face of the delta wave we didn't really do too much and then in omicron we didn't do you know we changed hardly anything as well yes um and you have now you know the opposition we're calling for
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