Omicron variant and the measures implemented in response to it

[DelayRepay]

At the moment we have 40,000 odd positive tests a day and about 700 people admitted to hospital a day. Make that 4 million positive tests a day - then you're talking about 70,000 people admitted to hospital per day, going by the current rate of hospitalisations per positive test, with Delta predominant and a largely vaccinated population. But what if Omicron turns out to be much milder, and the number of people testing positive who end up needing hospital treatment reduces tenfold? Then we're "only" looking at 7,000 hospitalisations per day - but that's still well above the peak (about 4,500) we saw in either of the previous waves. And if it turns out to be true that cases could double every three days? Then do the maths to see how many people are showing up at hospital a week later.

If we have four million cases a day in England, we have a really horrendous week. Then it's over. Nobody left to infect.

 

[adc82140]

Dr Mike Ryan, WHO pessimist-in-chief, has said that the vaccines work against Omicron, and disease could be milder.

Covid: Vaccines should work against Omicron variant, WHO says

A small study in South Africa suggests the new variant could partially evade the Pfizer jab.

www.bbc.co.uk

But the WHO's Dr Mike Ryan said there was no sign Omicron would be better at evading vaccines than other variants.
"We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalisation, and there's no reason to expect that it wouldn't be so" for Omicron, Dr Ryan, the WHO's emergencies director, told AFP news agency.
He said initial data suggested Omicron did not make people sicker than the Delta and other strains. "If anything, the direction is towards less severity," he said.

I await the grovelling apologies from all those "scientists" who said it would lead to the end of humanity [/sarcasm]

 

[yorkie]

Dr Mike Ryan, WHO pessimist-in-chief, has said that the vaccines work against Omicron, and disease could be milder.

Covid: Vaccines should work against Omicron variant, WHO says

A small study in South Africa suggests the new variant could partially evade the Pfizer jab.

www.bbc.co.uk

I await the grovelling apologies from all those "scientists" who said it would lead to the end of humanity [/sarcasm]

This is good to hear.

The individuals who cry wolf over variants must surely now be so discredited, media outlets (other than the Grauniad & their ilk) will surely stop listening to them?

All evidence I've seen suggests the virus is evolving in a manner that is entirely consistent with expectations.

I wonder if & when the likes of Sturgeon will issue a U turn over Omicron.

 

[duncanp]

This is good to hear.

The individuals who cry wolf over variants must surely now be so discredited, media outlets (other than the Grauniad & their ilk) will surely stop listening to them?

All evidence I've seen suggests the virus is evolving in a manner that is entirely consistent with expectations.

I wonder if & when the likes of Sturgeon will issue a U turn over Omicron.

There is very little emphasis being made of the fact that of the 437 Omicron cases identified so far, not one has ended up in hospital.

If Omicron becomes the dominant strain of COVID in the UK, and there is a hospitalisation rate of 1 in 500 or less, then even if the number of "cases" look scary, the numbers in hospital will remain within the capacity of the NHS to cope.

That won't stop NHS managers and all the usual locktivist bores bleating and whinging about how we should introduce more restrictions.

In some ways I am rather encouraged by the present situation. Some Doctors have compared it to the final stages of the Spanish Flu pandemic after the First World War, where the virus evolved to become more infectious but weaker, and eventually was indistinguishable from the common cold.

 

[kristiang85]

In some ways I am rather encouraged by the present situation. Some Doctors have compared it to the final stages of the Spanish Flu pandemic after the First World War, where the virus evolved to become more infectious but weaker, and eventually was indistinguishable from the common cold.

The difference is back then there wasn't the mass testing telling even asymptomatic people they were ill...

 

[duncanp]

The difference is back then there wasn't the mass testing telling even asymptomatic people they were ill...

What we don't really know is how many infections there are per day.

The number of "cases" per day (ie. those who test positive) is only a fraction of the number of infections.

If Omicron is as mild as is being reported, there may be thousands of people who have it at the moment without realising it, or they put it down to being a common cold. The usual symptoms of COVID (fever, continuous cough and loss of taste and smell) do not seem to apply to Omicron.

There have been 437 cases of Omicron so far in the UK, and so far not one of them has ended up in hospital.

If there is a hopsitalisation rate of less than 1 in 500 cases, then the numbers ending up in hospital will be well within the capacity of the NHS to cope, especially if milder disease leads to a shorter stay in hospital.

 

[BRX]

This is pure fantasy on your part.


This can't be a serious post...

Why do you say this? To be clear, I am not claiming to be able to predict how the Omicron wave will land in the UK - the numbers I was using were just an example of why it's not just severity of the disease that matters, it's transmissibility too, and I see a lot of discussion focused on it being "mild" therefore nothing to worry about. There absolutely is something to worry about, if it is a lot more transmissible, even if it leads to only a small proportion of cases needing hospital treatment.

Saying there is something real to worry about is not a prediction that such a scenario will play out, but surely it's wise to understand the potential scenarios and be prepared for them.

We coped last winter with exponentially more people in hospital than we have right now and there is no way we would ever reach those levels again; anyone who claims otherwise would have to be an extreme disbeliever in the vaccines

I'm not sure why you use the term "exponentially" - exponential is used to describe a rate of change, not an absolute number.

Last winter at the peak we had around 40,000 people in hospital, and at the moment we have about 7,000. It's easy to say we "coped" last winter but dealing with those numbers had consequences for the health service - maybe you are lucky enough not to know anyone whose treatment for other conditions was delayed as a result? This backlog is something that the NHS is going to be dealing with for several years.

But anyway, how can you say "there is no way we would ever reach those levels again"? You can't know how this Omicron wave might play out, nor can you foresee any other variants that might arise. You don't have to be a disbeliever in the vaccines to see that large numbers could still arise - you just need to be aware of the fact that the vaccines don't provide 100% protection for everyone, and be able to do the arithmetic that a small proportion of a very large number can still be a large number.

Last year's numbers were produced by an unvaccinated population, yes. But they were also produced by a population under lockdown restrictions. Now we have vaccines, yes. But we (currently) have virtually no restrictions on social contact and we have a variant of the disease which behaves differently. It seems amazing to me that you can confidently predict that there's no way we can end up with hospitalisation numbers as large as last winter's - maybe you know something that the world's virologists and epidemiologists don't?

 

[kristiang85]

What we don't really know is how many infections there are per day.

The number of "cases" per day (ie. those who test positive) is only a fraction of the number of infections.

If Omicron is as mild as is being reported, there may be thousands of people who have it at the moment without realising it, or they put it down to being a common cold. The usual symptoms of COVID (fever, continuous cough and loss of taste and smell) do not seem to apply to Omicron.

There have been 437 cases of Omicron so far in the UK, and so far not one of them has ended up in hospital.

If there is a hopsitalisation rate of less than 1 in 500 cases, then the numbers ending up in hospital will be well within the capacity of the NHS to cope, especially if milder disease leads to a shorter stay in hospital.

Yes I agree, I'm just saying that if this is the natural endgame of the worst parts of this virus, it will go on a lot longer due to the regulations surrounding it. This wasn't an issue in the 20s.

 

[adc82140]

This is good to hear.

The individuals who cry wolf over variants must surely now be so discredited, media outlets (other than the Grauniad & their ilk) will surely stop listening to them?

All evidence I've seen suggests the virus is evolving in a manner that is entirely consistent with expectations.

I wonder if & when the likes of Sturgeon will issue a U turn over Omicron.

Interestingly also a Russian virologist (it was on tass.com, but I can't find the article to link to) has pointed out that despite all of the mutations, the genome is still 99% the same as the original Wuhan coronavirus, so he can see no cause for panic about reinfection.

 

[BRX]

There have been 437 cases of Omicron so far in the UK, and so far not one of them has ended up in hospital.

If there is a hopsitalisation rate of less than 1 in 500 cases, then the numbers ending up in hospital will be well within the capacity of the NHS to cope, especially if milder disease leads to a shorter stay in hospital.

Let's say there are currently 437 cases (there will be more in reality), the doubling rate is 3 days and there's a hospitalisation rate of 1 in 500.

Day 0: 437 cases
Day 3: 874
Day 6: 1,748
Day 9: 3,496
Day 12: 6,992
Day 15: 13,984
Day 18: 27,968
Day 21: 55,936
Day 24: 111,872
Day 27: 223,744
Day 30: 447,488
Day 33: 894,976
Day 36: 1,789,952
Day 37: 3,579,904
Day 40: 7,159,808

7,159,808 / 500 = 14,319 hospitalisations per day. So after a bit more than a month you are already at nearly 4 times the number of people being admitted to hospital as was the case at the peak of the last wave. But that was the peak of a wave during lockdown restrictions, and we are looking at this scenario as if there are no restrictions, so we can't be confident about when it's going to peak. It could peak any time up until nearly everyone in the country had been infected. If day 40 isn't the peak, then on day 43 we will be looking at more people having been admitted to hospital in the past three days than was the peak occupancy last time round.

I'm not saying this is going to happen - I am just illustrating how the numbers work.

One possibility is that it simply won't be as bad as these worst case scenarios. We will have pretty good protection from existing levels of immunity and it won't be as transmissible as the early numbers from South Africa suggest. This is certainly what I'm hoping is going to happen.

Another is that these kinds of numbers do turn out to be about right. In that case, we'll be forced into another lockdown (because most of the electorate don't actually want to see the health service collapse), probably a bit later than would have been ideal (because of the proportion of the electorate who regard restrictions as some sort of evil communist conspiracy) and the numbers will be bad but not anywhere near as bad as those ones above. And then the people who think restrictions are unnecessary will say, see! we told you so, the worst case predictions never came true!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Dec 2021 ==

If we have four million cases a day in England, we have a really horrendous week. Then it's over. Nobody left to infect.

This is fantasy, I'm afraid.

 

[yorkie]

Why do you say this?

Who is predicting such levels of growth? The onus is not on me to disprove your claim; the onus is on you to provide evidence for it.

To be clear, I am not claiming to be able to predict how the Omicron wave will land in the UK - the numbers I was using were just an example of why it's not just severity of the disease that matters, it's transmissibility too, and I see a lot of discussion focused on it being "mild" therefore nothing to worry about. There absolutely is something to worry about, if it is a lot more transmissible, even if it leads to only a small proportion of cases needing hospital treatment.

We really ought to be using the term fitness rather than "transmissability".

Saying there is something real to worry about is not a prediction that such a scenario will play out, but surely it's wise to understand the potential scenarios and be prepared for them.

If you can provide a source for these "potential scenarios" I would be interested to read them.

I'm not sure why you use the term "exponentially" - exponential is used to describe a rate of change, not an absolute number.

OK then: the number of people in hospital at the peak is higher than the number in hospital right now by a factor of more than five. What do you have to say about that?

Last winter at the peak we had around 40,000 people in hospital, and at the moment we have about 7,000. It's easy to say we "coped" last winter but dealing with those numbers had consequences for the health service - maybe you are lucky enough not to know anyone whose treatment for other conditions was delayed as a result? This backlog is something that the NHS is going to be dealing with for several years.

Lockdowns and other restrictive measures have caused a tsunami of problems right now; if you are proposing such measures you are creating problems in the future. There is no risk of there being over 40,000 people being ill due to Covid this winter and if you think there is, the onus is on you to provide the evidence.

But anyway, how can you say "there is no way we would ever reach those levels again"? You can't know how this Omicron wave might play out, nor can you foresee any other variants that might arise.

How can you say there won't be 40,000 people ill with any other virus? You don't know how the latest variant of any other virus might play out, nor can you foresee any other variants that might arise.

You don't have to be a disbeliever in the vaccines to see that large numbers could still arise - you just need to be aware of the fact that the vaccines don't provide 100% protection for everyone, and be able to do the arithmetic that a small proportion of a very large number can still be a large number.

Can you provide a link to, and quote from, any studies that have done this arithmetic and come up with the numbers you suggest? If you've just made it up on the basis that we cannot disprove it, then I have every right to say it's fantasy.

Last year's numbers were produced by an unvaccinated population, yes. But they were also produced by a population under lockdown restrictions. Now we have vaccines, yes. But we (currently) have virtually no restrictions on social contact and we have a variant of the disease which behaves differently.

How does it "behave differently"? It's still Sars-CoV-2, which is evolving in a manner that is entirely consistent with what was predicted.

It seems amazing to me that you can confidently predict that there's no way we can end up with hospitalisation numbers as large as last winter's - maybe you know something that the world's virologists and epidemiologists don't?

Which virologists and epidemiologists are making the predictions of 40,000 people being ill in hospital due to Covid this winter?

If you listen to virologists, tell me this: which virologists do you listen to? Did you listen to the podcast I linked to?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Dec 2021 ==

Let's say there are currently 437 cases (there will be more in reality), the doubling rate is 3 days and there's a hospitalisation rate of 1 in 500.

Day 0: 437 cases
Day 3: 874
Day 6: 1,748
Day 9: 3,496
Day 12: 6,992
Day 15: 13,984
Day 18: 27,968
Day 21: 55,936
Day 24: 111,872
Day 27: 223,744
Day 30: 447,488
Day 33: 894,976
Day 36: 1,789,952
Day 37: 3,579,904
Day 40: 7,159,808

7,159,808 / 500 = 14,319 hospitalisations per day. So after a bit more than a month you are already at nearly 4 times the number of people being admitted to hospital as was the case at the peak of the last wave. But that was the peak of a wave during lockdown restrictions, and we are looking at this scenario as if there are no restrictions, so we can't be confident about when it's going to peak. It could peak any time up until nearly everyone in the country had been infected. If day 40 isn't the peak, then on day 43 we will be looking at more people having been admitted to hospital in the past three days than was the peak occupancy last time round.

Have you made this up, or is anyone with any credibility actually forecasting this? Please provide a link if you can back this up.

I'm not saying this is going to happen - I am just illustrating how the numbers work.

You are illustrating how the numbers don't work. If what you propose does not happen in a few weeks time, will you come on this thread and admit you were wrong?

One possibility is that it simply won't be as bad as these worst case scenarios. We will have pretty good protection from existing levels of immunity and it won't be as transmissible as the early numbers from South Africa suggest. This is certainly what I'm hoping is going to happen.

Another is that these kinds of numbers do turn out to be about right. In that case, we'll be forced into another lockdown (because most of the electorate don't actually want to see the health service collapse), probably a bit later than would have been ideal (because of the proportion of the electorate who regard restrictions as some sort of evil communist conspiracy) and the numbers will be bad but not anywhere near as bad as those ones above. And then the people who think restrictions are unnecessary will say, see! we told you so, the worst case predictions never came true!

There will be no more lockdowns in the UK, end of

This is fantasy, I'm afraid.

Your posts are fantasy.

 

[big_rig]

Am I back in March 2020, reading BRX’s posts? When people first heard of the idea of exponential growth and thought it had any application to reality? Crikey day 46 of that scenario will be interesting when 28 million people get Covid!

 

[duncanp]

Am I back in March 2020, reading BRX’s posts? When people first heard of the idea of exponential growth and thought it had any application to reality? Crikey day 46 of that scenario will be interesting when 28 million people get Covid!

And if things do get that bad, by day 49, 56 million people will catch COVID, which will then mean that the virus has run out of people to infect in the UK.

In reality, I don't think things will be as bad as that, if only because there are only about 1,000,000 COVID tests per day in the UK, and of those 1,000,000 people, only a fraction test positive.

All the evidence we have seen so far suggests that vaccines provide some protection against the Omicron variant, even if it is less than for the Delta variant.

 

[Dent]

Am I back in March 2020, reading BRX’s posts? When people first heard of the idea of exponential growth and thought it had any application to reality? Crikey day 46 of that scenario will be interesting when 28 million people get Covid!

Day 49 will be more interesting, when then number of people testing positive each day exceeds the population. That illustrates how absurd it is to claim exponential growth will continue ad infinitum in a finite population.

 

[Yew]

Let's say there are currently 437 cases (there will be more in reality), the doubling rate is 3 days and there's a hospitalisation rate of 1 in 500.

Day 0: 437 cases
Day 3: 874
Day 6: 1,748
Day 9: 3,496
Day 12: 6,992
Day 15: 13,984
Day 18: 27,968
Day 21: 55,936
Day 24: 111,872
Day 27: 223,744
Day 30: 447,488
Day 33: 894,976
Day 36: 1,789,952
Day 37: 3,579,904
Day 40: 7,159,808

7,159,808 / 500 = 14,319 hospitalisations per day. So after a bit more than a month you are already at nearly 4 times the number of people being admitted to hospital as was the case at the peak of the last wave. But that was the peak of a wave during lockdown restrictions, and we are looking at this scenario as if there are no restrictions, so we can't be confident about when it's going to peak. It could peak any time up until nearly everyone in the country had been infected. If day 40 isn't the peak, then on day 43 we will be looking at more people having been admitted to hospital in the past three days than was the peak occupancy last time round.

I'm not saying this is going to happen - I am just illustrating how the numbers work.

One possibility is that it simply won't be as bad as these worst case scenarios. We will have pretty good protection from existing levels of immunity and it won't be as transmissible as the early numbers from South Africa suggest. This is certainly what I'm hoping is going to happen.

Another is that these kinds of numbers do turn out to be about right. In that case, we'll be forced into another lockdown (because most of the electorate don't actually want to see the health service collapse), probably a bit later than would have been ideal (because of the proportion of the electorate who regard restrictions as some sort of evil communist conspiracy) and the numbers will be bad but not anywhere near as bad as those ones above. And then the people who think restrictions are unnecessary will say, see! we told you so, the worst case predictions never came true!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Dec 2021 ==



This is fantasy, I'm afraid.

There’s this new thing called vaccination…

 

[Domh245]

By day 40 of BRX's prediction, cumulative omicron infections would be 21,861,663 and by day 45 it'd reach 69.4million, exceeding the UK population. Unless Omicron somehow triggers zero immune "memory" to itself, I think it's safe to say it's unlikely to happen.

 

[Class 466]

Various news sources now suggesting a full plan B implementation very soon with working from home back to being mandatory (for those who can). A distraction move following on from the issue of parties in Downing Street that seems to be all over the news.

 

[chris11256]

Various news sources now suggesting a full plan B implementation very soon with working from home back to being mandatory (for those who can). A distraction move following on from the issue of parties in Downing Street that seems to be all over the news.

Thats what the cynical side of me is thinking. The government is going to go full covid fear mode to bury the party story.

 

[BRX]

I've tried to be clear I'm not foolish enough to try and predict the course of a new variant.

My initial post was to point out that rate of transmission is important as well as severity of disease, because the discussion here seemed to be ignoring this.

My claim is not that the rates of transmission and hospitalisation I've tried to illustrate are going to be what we see in reality. My claim is that something like this is not implausible, so we should be prepared for it. No, I'm not going to come back in a month or two and admit I was "wrong" about plausibility, because I am only talking about what is plausible based on the limited evidence we have at this moment. What happens in the next couple of months doesn't change that.

What is it that leads me to believe such a scenario is plausible? It's the early numbers coming out of south africa and the interpretation of them by people more expert than me. This info is fairly easy to find. It so happens that I'm in the waiting room of a vaccination centre right now, getting my booster. When I'm back at my desk perhaps I can post some links.

Those of you predicting that hospitalisations won't get out of hand - you may very well turn out to be right. I absolutely hope you are. I want this thing to be over too. I hate lockdowns and other restrictions too. But...unlike me you are making predictions about what's going to happen. It means that you do have the possibility of being proven wrong. I really hope I'm not coming back to this thread in a few weeks or months to point this out.

Back in February 2020 I thought everyone was being paranoid. I didn't think we were really going to get hit by a crisis that would be severe enough that a relatively libertarian government would introduce a lockdown. I saw what was happening in northern italy, but I read various things giving reasons why it wouldn't happen in the UK. I didn't pay enough attention to the people pointing out that the trajectory of our infections was only a couple of weeks behind Italy's. I was wrong then.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Dec 2021 ==

By day 40 of BRX's prediction, cumulative omicron infections would be 21,861,663 and by day 45 it'd reach 69.4million, exceeding the UK population. Unless Omicron somehow triggers zero immune "memory" to itself, I think it's safe to say it's unlikely to happen.

View attachment 106626

What I posted is not a prediction. I've been careful to say this several times.

 

[bramling]

Thats what the cynical side of me is thinking. The government is going to go full covid fear mode to bury the party story.

Same thoughts here. This loose-cannon absolutely is unscrupulous enough to do it, almost as a fit-of-rage reaction to the bad publicity.

He needs to go.

 

[westv]

Various news sources now suggesting a full plan B implementation very soon with working from home back to being mandatory (for those who can). A distraction move following on from the issue of parties in Downing Street that seems to be all over the news.

I thought WFH was always advisory rather than mandatory.

 

[chris11256]

I thought WFH was always advisory rather than mandatory.

It's always been work from home if you can, and it's been up to your employer to decide if you can.

 

[westv]

It's always been work from home if you can, and it's been up to your employer to decide if you can.

yes, so advisory as I said.

 

[brad465]

Various news sources now suggesting a full plan B implementation very soon with working from home back to being mandatory (for those who can). A distraction move following on from the issue of parties in Downing Street that seems to be all over the news.

The FT have it, and the article even cites sources that the move is being used like a dead cat:

Subscribe to the Financial Times

A subscription to the Financial Times provides you with the insights and perspective you need to succeed, now.

on.ft.com

...“It looks very much like a dead cat,” one said, a reference to a media strategy to distract from bad news.

 

[big_rig]

This is going to be interesting. If they do this, it will be the first opportunity for there to be real opposition to the Government and PM on the basis of restrictions being too strict (and in this case evidently selfishly implemented purely to distract from a bad news story). Opposition has been purely (except for a very small number of Tory backbencher) been from the perspective of trying to stop the Government from removing restrictions - now there is a chance for a stand to be made in the opposite direction. Will Labour take up the mantle? ‘You’ll be banned from going to work because Boris Johnson wants to distract from his lies’ is an east line for them to take if they want to shrug off their pro-lockdown tendencies for once. It would be opportunistic but who cares.

 

[adc82140]

I will be watching PMQs today. I want to see him squirm. What an odeous pustule of a Prime Minister.

 

[ScottGallagher]

This is going to be interesting. If they do this, it will be the first opportunity for there to be real opposition to the Government and PM on the basis of restrictions being too strict (and in this case evidently selfishly implemented purely to distract from a bad news story). Opposition has been purely (except for a very small number of Tory backbencher) been from the perspective of trying to stop the Government from removing restrictions - now there is a chance for a stand to be made in the opposite direction. Will Labour take up the mantle? ‘You’ll be banned from going to work because Boris Johnson wants to distract from his lies’ is an east line for them to take if they want to shrug off their pro-lockdown tendencies for once. It would be opportunistic but who cares.

I can't see how Labour can take the mantle when it was them squealing for plan b not so long ago with no real evidence to back it up.

 

[DustyBin]

I've tried to be clear I'm not foolish enough to try and predict the course of a new variant.

My initial post was to point out that rate of transmission is important as well as severity of disease, because the discussion here seemed to be ignoring this.

My claim is not that the rates of transmission and hospitalisation I've tried to illustrate are going to be what we see in reality. My claim is that something like this is not implausible, so we should be prepared for it. No, I'm not going to come back in a month or two and admit I was "wrong" about plausibility, because I am only talking about what is plausible based on the limited evidence we have at this moment. What happens in the next couple of months doesn't change that.

What is it that leads me to believe such a scenario is plausible? It's the early numbers coming out of south africa and the interpretation of them by people more expert than me. This info is fairly easy to find. It so happens that I'm in the waiting room of a vaccination centre right now, getting my booster. When I'm back at my desk perhaps I can post some links.

Those of you predicting that hospitalisations won't get out of hand - you may very well turn out to be right. I absolutely hope you are. I want this thing to be over too. I hate lockdowns and other restrictions too. But...unlike me you are making predictions about what's going to happen. It means that you do have the possibility of being proven wrong. I really hope I'm not coming back to this thread in a few weeks or months to point this out.

Back in February 2020 I thought everyone was being paranoid. I didn't think we were really going to get hit by a crisis that would be severe enough that a relatively libertarian government would introduce a lockdown. I saw what was happening in northern italy, but I read various things giving reasons why it wouldn't happen in the UK. I didn't pay enough attention to the people pointing out that the trajectory of our infections was only a couple of weeks behind Italy's. I was wrong then.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Dec 2021 ==


What I posted is not a prediction. I've been careful to say this several times.

The problem is that we're unlikely to find ourselves in a better situation than the one we're in. There will always be concerns over variants. I suspect we'll continue to be told immunity is waning and we need yet another booster in order to "stay safe". I strongly suspect the vaccines will be tweaked at some point in response to a variant and we'll be told we need jabbing with the new version as well. I'm absolutely certain that the NHS will continue say it's under unsustainable pressure. There's simply no end game. We need to move on, we can't allow ourselves to be cowed indefinitely.

Interestingly I was reasonably concerned about the pandemic in the early days, I thought it may have been worse than it actually was. The limited information we had painted a pretty grim picture (remember the bodies in the street in Wuhan?). However, it's now clear we're being taken for fools and enough really is enough.

 

[kristiang85]

I can't see how Labour can take the mantle when it was them squealing for plan b not so long ago with no real evidence to back it up.

Indeed. They've set their stance, and it will be very difficult for them to change as they will be open to accusations of just simply doing anything to get into power rather than having their own convictions.

The Tory backbenchers are our best hope.

 

[bramling]

The FT have it, and the article even cites sources that the move is being used like a dead cat:

Subscribe to the Financial Times

A subscription to the Financial Times provides you with the insights and perspective you need to succeed, now.

on.ft.com

There’s certainly something afoot. No gov ministers available for tv this morning was quite telling. Johnson busy having a massive hissy-fit no doubt.

We need to be punished for daring to criticise...