It’s good news that there might be a vaccine available soon which works against Covid-19. This is exactly what’s needed to save lives. Because the bad news is that the official British death toll from Covid-19 has now passed the 50,000 mark - and that the rate of death is not falling as fast as it should, under lockdown measures.

   No wonder. The government’s current restrictions are as half-hearted as ever. As many point out, what’s the point of staying home if kids are going to school? Construction, manufacturing, transport - all carry on, keeping the virus circulating, for the sake of “business and the economy”. Shops will reopen just in time, on 2 December, to allow the Xmas rush to take place, along with another rush of viral infections. Yet even so, Tory MPs are openly rebelling against lockdowns. That’s the level of ignorance and cynicism amongst this “cream” of the political crop!

   So let us hope the hype is not overstating the case of this Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is still not fully evaluated and will not be ready for roll out, even with “emergency use authorisation” for at least another month.

   In the meantime it’s already done its bit for the capitalists: on Monday, Pfizer shares soared 15% and BioNTech’s skyrocketed by 26.5%!

   Johnson, delighted to be able to draw attention away from his too late and too little 2nd lock-down, announced that 40m doses are already bought and what's more, 300m doses of a mix of all the other vaccine candidates are also on order... And that Britain is ahead in the queue for more! Yes, jumping in front of the poor countries who don’t even have ventilators or basic medicines for their Covid patients!

   Well, we can only hope that the inevitable third wave can be curtailed by vaccination - as long as Johnson and his ministers don’t find a way to cock this up, as they have cocked up everything else.