The Pandemic-What's Happening in the UK in February 2021

So, the people of England are lucky to have a roadmap out of lockdown, taking us from late February 2021 to mid-summer and potential release from somewhat draconian restrictions (the UK was recently assessed as having the third harshest restrictions, Venezuela & Lebanon being harsher than the UK: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker ).  What’s interesting is that the government appears to have learned from previous failures both in implementing and releasing restrictions.  In March 2020 the government was panicked into lockdown having had poor scientific advice and then, as you’d expect, was too slow releasing restrictions in the spring.  Then came the farcical autumn policies sending schools and universities back just at the beginning of the respiratory infection season and trying to apply regional suppression (the famous Tier system), which was a shambolic failure in England, but appears to still be a favourite ...