The Omicron variant

If you are uncertain about all the variables (and you should be) just track one: numbers in hospitals. Never mind who comes into hospitals or if they have Omicron, comorbidities etc. Just that one number, the one that really counts. A lot of countries have hospital numbers going down. Start tracking that. We should see a huge rise IF Omicron infections rise fast (and they do) and say 50% less severe than Delta because of the infection numbers. Maybe someone can put up a series of graphs with Denmark and the UK as the early runners.

I actually do get the point of the curfew. I've seen lots of sarcastic posts today saying "The virus doesn't know what time it is", but the aim of a curfew is not to 'stop' transmission, but to reduce it.

The braver thing to do of course would be to shut down all hospitality immediately, but the point of a curfew is slow down transmission and buy themselves time with the booster jabs.

Oh ok ordinary people don't understand what they are doing, the experts know it all and closing Pubs at 8pm is the solution because Covid needs a certain amount of time to spread so by that logic it's better to crowd everyone together for a short period of time rather than spread them apart over a longer period of time. Great logic.

At this stage all us that don't understand are basically sick of the whole approach at this stage, they are just making it up as they go along. What's the point in these measures when we have open boarders with the UK were they have a very callus attitude to the whole thing and the Government there is happy to let the Virus run it's course.

First it was wear a mask for 4 days as the Virus cannot survive that length

Then shutdowns until we find a Vaccine

Now a new Virus so even though we have been Vaccinated we still must isolate? wtf? I'm Vaccinated, so are 96% of the population, the Omicron variation is not as lethal as the original Covid. Enough of the BS from the sensationalist Media, Politician's and Health service

It boils down to this

either get busy Living or get busy dying

Yeah go tell that to the UK so

and I will carry on, like the vast majority are going to do from now on

People do understand that it is not coming from hospitality but largely in unregulated social mixing. It's a somewhat pointless measure given how quickly this allegedly spreads but the sooner we can put some actual data on this variant, the sooner measures which invoke fear of the unknown can stop.

Probable and suspected cases were at 200k a day at the start of the week and expected to hit a million a day by weekend.

So no, he isn't.

Great research. It is more and more pointing towards expected mildness. Case numbers will be sky high, hospitalisations will be up but not to same extend and ICU shouldn't see much increase

Testing in Gauteng is actually increasing at the moment

Yes, good info. Delta seems to have been the optimum. It is very important to highlight the fact that Omicron does not seem travel downwards into the lungs but remains at the bronchi stage so less cytokine storms w the immune system going haywire and out of control tissue damage. Actually, Delta was already a tad 'milder' in that respect and now Omicron with really low levels of serious inflammation, hence the difference in symptoms. People with asthma etc. should really be extra careful and of course other vulnerable people.

If it leads to less hospitalisations f people with severe symptoms and ICU admissions it seems to me a real missed opportunity not to have created separate Covid clinics away from hospitals and staff them with med students, nurses and other healthcare workers. Especially when it looks like most people entering w Covid symptoms now will have mild, upper respiratory issues and will be out after 2 or 3 days. Why the hell would you both allow the Omicron infection spread going into hospitals and make people self isolate for 10 days in case they either get Covid or are a close contact? That is a big factor in the upcoming Omicron damage imo. They used to have TB clinics in the old days. Instead we are once again cutting off healthy areas to protect the few. Immense collateral damage if you ask me..

The Netherlands is announcing strict new restrictions later today. All non essential stores, pubs, restaurants and schools to close.

The restrictions will be in place until at least Jan 14th.

This is the fault of Tony and RTE