The Omicron variant

All were vaccinated was the key point I took from that. We already know 99% of vaccinated people have milder symptoms. So they are probably more worried about unvaccinated and filling up the hospitals to be fair. BEcause the issue here isnt getting a bad dose for the vast majority, its killing the health service and the staff in there.

Im not convinced about this booster at all myself, even though ive always been vaccinated for everything with no problems. I just think this approach is a vax first and see how effective it is later. Now i still got the booster, but i nearly didnt bother.

All i care about is that people dont end up in tents at the hospital because the wards are full. Thats what leads to unnecessary deaths.

And all the older people have got their booster.

Exactly. I think most level headed people view any data coming out at the moment wit equal skepticism. Its still early days.

The blind excessive optimism exuded by 'the usuals' on here just doesn't seem rooted in reality and more likely in denial and fear.

For example the poster below you is stating how obvious it is that "omicram is mild". This is just fanciful wishful thinking at this stage.

Also, any poster who links anything that suggests omicram might be a problem is labeled as a 'doomfester'.

We simply don't have enough solid data yet.

The Danes yesterday went from nearly 12,000 to just over 8,000 new cases. Now that could be lower weekend testing and we'll need a few more days but since its initial surge it hasn't looked exponential.

I tested positive on Thursday - I'm assuming Omnicrom as we came back from the UK just under a week before hand. I am double jabbed and my wife has the booster. it has absolutely floored me for the last few days - just about functioning today .. my wife didn't get it as bad ... but if those are 'mild' .. I'd hate to even think what the unvaxxed / severe symptoms are like.

Leo: Mr Varadkar said he is hoping and expecting that high infection numbers will not bring hospitalisations and deaths as high as earlier waves.

At least he is reading the data from other countries and not peddling the great unknown, as if we're the first country source again. Could change but at least "expecting" means something.

So, i pose a question to you: at what point in time would official health bodies deem the data to be sufficient? They said they would know just before Christmas. That was said around 10 days ago. Common knowledge has it (from a variety of data points) symptoms appear around 3-5 days so let's say a week to 10 days before people end up in hospital. All the evidence points to upper respiratory tract infection like a cold. At what point do we say: yes, that is the case? My guess would be somewhere in january. Right now we are on message spreading fear w misleading headlines for obvious reasons. It is a delaying tactic. Not saying it is right or wrong, just observing the bleeding obvious. Since more and more data points to the positive one might conclude that the nay sayers are in denial and suffer from blind pessimism. Back up your view w up to date data has always been the way. It is simply not convenient for some to let that trickle through. But more and more people get on board and it is a worry for people in an official health function. They want to lift that focus to after the holiday season when hospital numbers will go up. But I am glad to see the more balanced view gaining ground..

Correct. Around half of specimens in London dated 11-12 December had s-gene target failure associated with Omicron, and this was a few days ahead of the rest of England.

So we'd expect to see hospitalisations rising first in London, around now.

The latest data on hospitalisations on the dashboard is from 15 Dec. They've been climbing steadily since the last week of Nov but not alarmingly so.

Not sure whether there's a more recent source of London hospitalisation data.

The variant is not necesarily milder. It is having less of an effect than previous waves, but it is impossible (according to various experts) to separate the innate virulence from the effects of infection-aquired immunity, and then to transfer that conclusion from a mostly-recovered young population to a mostly-vaccinated old population.

The science is uncertain at this point.

Feel free to post better graphs.

The point I was making is that we don't have London hospitalisation data recent enough to see the effects of an infection spike that only really got going a week ago.