Of course I share concerns about variants and long covid, I just don't think yesterday's announcement makes the situation much worse than it already is. On the list of bad decisions (assuming they don't backtrack before next week) it ranks quite low - way behind failing to stop travel to/from India soon enough allowing 42k to travel in April, way behind removing masks in schools on 17th May, way behind going ahead with steps 2 and 3 on schedule - by dates not data. The real chance to prevent this wave was back in April, but even only delaying step 3 from May would've made a big difference to the R and hence the scale of the problem.
Delta Plus already exists and would be worse, but hasn't become dominant - presumably at least in part because it can't outcompete Delta. It's perhaps more likely that the next worrying variant arises in 40 to 65 year olds (almost all had AstraZeneca), and/or in young people who have only had one dose (of Pfizer), since neither group is well protected against Delta. Considering it still might not be able to outcompete Delta, I'd hazard a guess that the likely time for one to appear would be when Delta cases have fallen - exactly when we don't want it, in Autumn/Winter.
Related to that, we desperately need a variant-tweaked vaccine. I think the booster that will be given this Autumn will be something of a waste of time and money (and also deprives somewhere else from benefitting from those doses), except that there may be some use in giving a dose of Pfizer to those who've had AstraZeneca (if we haven't already got a Pfizer evading variant by then).
Long covid is already a real problem for about a million people according to the ONS data. There's some debate on whether all of those should really be counted as long covid, and it is a maximum figure since it's self-reported, but even half would still be a significant number. This wave, even if it remains mostly in young people, will likely add at least 100k more (much higher estimates are valid, but looking at worst-case).
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On a different tack - but still another case of "things that could've been done but weren't" - there's
a paper out studying the mechanism for AstraZeneca causing blood clots
when accidentally injected into a blood vessel rather than muscle. Avoiding that happening is as simple as drawing back a little through the needle to check for blood before injecting ('aspirating') - a preventative measure that could've easily been recommended as soon as the blood clot cases first appeared. So there's a fair chance that not only could lives have been saved, but also that we needn't have stopped using AstraZeneca in younger people - something that has slowed our vaccine rollout by a month or two ('our' here meaning both UK and EU).
Looking back, I posted John Campbell's video on aspirating
way back in March. (The Danes recommended aspirating, but then stopped using AZ - so we didn't get any data out of it). Here's his video in response to the recent paper (rather long, clicking through to youtube and reading the bullet points in the description is enough for a quick overview):
