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1 in 129 people in England likely now infected. Covid levels currently plateauing High risk of meeting someone with Covid. This is our 200th Covid Risk Assessment!

Covid-19 Risk Assessment: Week Ending 3 November 2024

Ben Clark

The current wave of Covid in England is plateauing, but the risk of meeting an infected person in your everyday life remains High. Covid infection levels in England have fallen to around 1 in 129 people in England infected as of 3 November. We are still predicting a Christmas and New Year infection peak, as we have seen in every year since 2020.

This is BuDS’ 200th Covid risk assessment since the beginning of the pandemic. Our first risk assessment was issued on 6 July 2020, and we have released one nearly every week ever since. A minimum of 10,000 people use our information every week, and we often reach well over 100,000 people. We’ve never received any specific funding for any of this work, and it has all been carried out by a very small and very dedicated volunteer team. To safeguard our work for the future, we are raising funds to continue and develop our Covid information project for 2025 and beyond. If you are able to contribute, please visit https://www.peoplesfundraising.com/fundraising/buds-covid-info.

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A group of disabled people sitting and standing together at a bench in a park. The person on the far left of the image is seated in a wheelchair.

BuDS Response to Tom Shakespeare’s Letter Supporting Assisted Suicide

Ben Clark

The disabled author and broadcaster Tom Shakespeare, and some of his colleagues, have written to MPs supporting the legalisation of assisted suicide. You can read more about their letter below.

BuDS has always recognised that disabled people, like people everywhere, have different views about assisted suicide. Tom Shakespeare and his colleagues are certainly entitled to theirs. However, every disabled-led organisation in the UK has come out against assisted suicide and, in our own experience as a large network of ordinary disabled people with all types of impairment and condition, it is only a small minority of disabled people who support assisted suicide.

The very fact that there is public argument about what ‘disabled people think’ underlies the need for this frenzied rush to legalise assisted suicide to be paused to allow proper research and analysis. It is extraordinary that Parliament is being asked to make a far-reaching change in the criminal law without there having been any proper consultation with dying people, disabled people, hospices, family lawyers, the judiciary or the medical profession.

BuDS has called for a Royal Commission to be convened to consider whether assisted suicide should be legalised. Such a Commission could examine international practice, properly consult interested parties, analyse the form of any law change, and bring forward properly researched recommendations based on evidence, not slogans and emotion. Tom Shakespeare’s letter underlines the critical need for such a wide-ranging study before the law is changed.

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An elderly man lies in a hospital bed. He is gazing wistfully out of a window, and holding a mug in his hands.

Assisted Suicide: Five Hours Is Not Long Enough

Ben Clark

Kim Leadbeater MP has introduced a Private Members Bill (PMB) to legalise the medical killing of patients in certain circumstances. BuDS has once again called on Ms Leadbeater to withdraw her bill to allow time for a Royal Commission to be set up to thoroughly explore the issue of Assisted Dying and make evidence-based recommendations for a change in the law. We think dying people deserve nothing less.

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