Britain must find a new way out of its Covid doom loop | Larry Elliott

Focusing on double jabs and boosters ignores the global picture from which even this island nation is not immune

Britain is caught in a Covid doom loop, the pattern of which is becoming depressingly familiar. A new variant of the virus appears. It spreads rapidly. Restrictions are imposed to slow transmission rates and to take pressure off the NHS, but the economy suffers. Case numbers eventually fall and life gets back to something like normal. For a while, anyway.

For a government that constantly trumpets the idea of global Britain, the political focus is scarily narrow. A year-end target has been set for jabbing every adult in England, and every night the BBC dutifully reports how many more people have had their booster.

Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editor

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Coronavirus | The Guardian

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