Omicron found in the UK [title edited by MNHQ]

[manolantern]

Health Secretary has just said two cases have been found here. That was quick!

@KittyBurrito

SA virology facilities are some of the best in the world. Just because they found it there does not mean it's necessarily come from there. It just means they found and sequenced it first.

Yes, and we are being punished quite severely for it.

Living in SA and knowing so many people who have been so badly affected by this. I know people who are stuck all around the world at the moment.

And when flights have landed, the passengers have been treated with so much disrespect. The fight landing in Netherlands, passengers were not allowed to disembark for 3 hours. The testing their after was just a joke. They were all piled into one area, some tests came back postive, but those passengers were not seperated from the others. Its all on Twitter. Passengers were tweeting from the plane.

There is such a melancholic feel around today. People are panic buying alcohol as we are most likely going to be placed on higher restrictions any moment.

Things are very sombre today.

@Alltheblue
*Just reading this thread and I'm struck by the attitude in some of the comments.

Melodramatic eye rolling and aggrieved 'don't you dare take my Christmas' responses seem such an odd way to respond to a public health matter that affects everyone. One poster has even said 'People die. Life goes on' when it clearly doesn't and won't if his or her relative requires Covid or cancer treatment and there is none to be had. Our lives are not so resilient. He or she must realise this. Why pretend otherwise? It's one thing to protest that they think we should ignore the variant and take the consequences... But why pretend there won't be any consequences beyond 'people die'? There is rather a lot of carnage implied there and the laconic style seems puerile as a way of dealing with it.*

I don't think it's clear whether either position (we must do something or we shouldn't do anything) is correct, or whether some other alternative would be better, but I don't think the case against doing nothing is clear.

If we impose restrictions, we will slow the spread, but we will not eradicate it. The more successful our restrictions, the slower the spread and so the longer the pandemic lasts. There is a benefit from slowing the spread to prevent the health service becoming overloaded (this prevents people from dying as they can't access non-covid diagnoses and treatments and it reduces the number of people dying from covid who might have survived if they could have been treated). But the downside is that the all the anti-covid measures stay in place longer.

People may disagree on what measures, if any, are appropriate based on different values (how much cost and disruption is it reasonable to endure to reduce deaths and illnesses). Or they may disagree based on different estimates of the harms resulting from various measures (either or both the non-covid harms caused by the measures or the higher covid resulting from fewer measures).

To try and better understand the positions people take, is anyone aware of estimates of what would happen under different scenarios?

I have every confidence that this variant may be more transmissible but will symptoms will be milder @FMSucks

Have been reading this elsewhere too.

I'm all covid-news'd out. There will have to be some gigantic mind blowingly awful new development for me to care. I will keep having jabs, wearing masks, socially distancing if I can pleaseeeee just get on with my life.

Didn’t we have the same with the variant from Brazil? A few cases but they were shut down pretty quickly.

@Alltheblue

Just reading this thread and I'm struck by the attitude in some of the comments.

Melodramatic eye rolling and aggrieved 'don't you dare take my Christmas' responses seem such an odd way to respond to a public health matter that affects everyone. One poster has even said 'People die. Life goes on' when it clearly doesn't and won't if his or her relative requires Covid or cancer treatment and there is none to be had. Our lives are not so resilient. He or she must realise this. Why pretend otherwise? It's one thing to protest that they think we should ignore the variant and take the consequences... But why pretend there won't be any consequences beyond 'people die'? There is rather a lot of carnage implied there and the laconic style seems puerile as a way of dealing with it.

It doesn’t affect everyone though. The worldwide death rate from infections is ~ 0.15%, with the overwhelming majority of those amongst the very elderly.

It’s utter madness to be having this kind of response.

I honestly wonder what we will do when we one day have our own equivalent of Ebola/smallpox where the death rate is somewhere around a half of all infections.

The mind boggles.

@Laiste

And - this is making me not want my booster (3rd jab) if we're going to be getting a whole new vaccine set in 3 months.

I feel the same way. I don't want the booster anyway and I certainly don't intend to have a new jab every few months.

Mine's not due until 20th December so I'll probably wait until after Christmas anyway as I can't find a reasonable vaccination centre.

@Russianmax

I have every confidence that this variant may be more transmissible but will symptoms will be milder *@FMSucks*

Have been reading this elsewhere too.

Where have you been reading this? Because everything I have read is scientists worried it will evade the vaccine? Links please.

@Furries

The word “frothing” has been so overused on MN that I now just glaze over at posts containing it.

I don’t want any more lockdowns. Nor do I want my/any hospital stuffed to the gills with people with Covid. Rock and a hard place. At the moment, we don’t know how severe it is if infected - until then, taking personal precautions won’t do any harm.

Well said.

@DevilishlyEvil

Could scientists manafacture a mutation of covid which was super infectious but non fatal?

I’ve been wondering about that but… the potential for it to go wrong!!!

…and if the NHS isn’t coping, then we might just have to accept that this manner of healthcare provision is no longer valid now that we all live in a post Covid world.

We can’t carry on with this ‘tail wagging dog’ approach.

@SheikhMaracaplease dont spread false covid info. The mortality rate for those who catch covid is higher than that.

@Theplantisgrowing

I don't care if I have to have a vaccine every 3 months for the rest of my life if it means we can all get back to proper living.

I do. I'd rather take my chances than have to keep having injections. I had the first two as I thought it would help get us out of the shit show we're in and I'll probably have the booster but that's it, I can't do it.

@SheikhMaraca Yeah just ration healthcare so only the rich can afford it. Let poor people die. That is what you mean.

MN is always out of step with the general population over covid anyway. Too many people on here with a clear agenda.

0Oh well.

Viruses mutate. People die.

Such is the way of the world. We need to move on.
Absolutely NO need for this kind of post. None"

Why ever not? Isn't that accurate?

@Schulte wouldn't it be great if Omicron is exactly that...

PinkSparklyPussyCat

Why can't you do it?

I’ve been wondering about that but… the potential for it to go wrong!!!

Exactly - you can't control the next variant after it's released - what if it became more serious, or became better at producing severe disease in DC?

@Mouseonmychair

The joys of globalisation can't we go back to the smaller hassle free world of less international travel? It will be better for the environment too. Unfortunately we cannot carry on as normal as we need to protect the NHS. So we either carry on and refuse to treat covid and accept the death of venerable people (including the overweight) Or we significantly give up freedoms again to control the virus. I actually don't mind either however I don't think we can do both.

Some of us don't want to live in a narrowed world and give up holidays abroad. People have different priorities. I am prepared to put up with whatever vaccination requirements or testing deemed necessary.

I don't care much about domestic restrictions by comparison, though I think any further restrictions on people mixing in private households will be unenforceable and unpopular.

Different things are important to different people.

@Theplantisgrowing

PinkSparklyPussyCat

Why can't you do it?

Severe needle phobia. If we have to have regular vaccines then the rest of my life will become unbearable as I'll be living from one vaccine to the next and I'm not prepared to do it.

@Lilifer

0Oh well.

Viruses mutate. People die.

Such is the way of the world. We need to move on.
Absolutely NO need for this kind of post. None"

Why ever not? Isn't that accurate?

It's not the whole truth - what happens if the NHS become overwhelmed is not something that should be overlooked.

Nor is the desirability of avoiding excess deaths - both directly from the disease and indirectly from the consequences of it on the health service,

It's a really heartless approach - and I assume reductio ad absurdam as it seeks to airbrush out all the measures that could reduce the impact - thus also keeping the economy going

@AledsiPad

Oh well.

Viruses mutate. People die.

Such is the way of the world. We need to move on.

Spot on

What we need to do is help poorer countries get their populations vaccinated. We have to make new variants rare.

[quote julieca]@SheikhMaraca Yeah just ration healthcare so only the rich can afford it. Let poor people die. That is what you mean.[/quote]
It’s got nothing to do with socioeconomic status.

The current system has the lives of the young and healthy(ish) being jeopardised to buy an extra couple of months for the very elderly and infirm.

This cannot be seen as acceptable, surely?