The Omicron variant

I think there's still an undercurrent of zero-covidism in some posters here and indeed in some policymakers; the idea that all traces of the virus must be eliminated through restrictions, lockdowns and vaccines. The possibility that it might simply evolve into an less lethal strain is abhorrent because people will stop taking the need for restrictions and vaccines seriously.

While it is probably still too early to say what the lethality of this variant is, if it turns out to be relatively benign, the whole strategy would need to change. The virus would need to be encouraged to spread among the healthy population while protecting the vulnerable for a period of time until a good level of immunity is reached in the general population. Because this is a complete change of direction, we can expect it to be opposed every step of the way.

If it is particularly mild, however, you might never know you had it, so no one would be in a position to tell you to isolate.

@Woody79 wrote

Yeah, that's exactly how science works.

The practical problem with trying to isolate the vulnerable is that it doesn't work. It didn't work with "Wuhan" variant, it's not working with Delta and it sure as hell won't work with a more transmissible variant, if that's what we have.

Our society is just too interconnected. Healthcare workers with families have kids in school, healthcare workers without families have social lives and housemates. Cleaning staff, security staff. Vulnerable people have needs and can't be cared for by robots.

I suppose it's too much to ask that we could institute an actual mask policy rather than having at-risk people walking around with random bits of cloth and poorly fitting surgical masks hanging off their faces.

Anyway, hopefully we can get enough boosters out to those who need/want them before this thing becomes dominant. It's not going to be a great look if we end up with hospitals overflowing because the HSE dithered with vaccines sat in fridges. At least last winter they had a lack of supply to blame.

My positive spin is that if this thing proves as transmissible as feared, the lovers of natural immunity are finally going to get the protection they've been longing for. 😀

I'm still baffled why we dont encourage ffp2s - at least for the elderly. The latest study from Germany showed a massive reduction in risk if these are worn properly. Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and others have kept their numbers minuscule comparatively, with not many other mitigation factions beside air filtration (another key measure we dont bother with) and good quality masks worn properly and appropriately.

In ireland the attitude is that any mask, worn anyway, will do. We treat it as more of a box ticking exercise instead of utilizing it as the valuable mitigation it could be.

I think the reason why FFP2/3s for the public aren't mentioned here is that the HSE would then have to spend more on them for HCWs.

Huge numbers of elderly people living with children & grandchildren is for me the ultimate barrier to this approach. I'd always bring it up when people were calling for an 'isolate the vulnerable' strategy in the early stages of the pandemic and they would never have a practical solution.