Shall we delay Christmas until Jan 6?

[loveandroses]

As it stands December 25 will be in the middle of a massive but really fast covid wave caused by omicron which is likely to overwhelm our hospitals, at least temporarily. If you infect your nan then they will have a huge amount of problem getting care . Shall we all just agree to spend Christmas with our immediate family and then have an extended family Christmas on January 6 instead?

If your parents want to see you on actual Christmas @loveandroses, will you say no?

My personal view, having looked at the data carefully, is that December 25 -31 is going to be pretty much the worse possible period for the NHS.

It's busy during that period every year because it's the time of year when everyone socialises and drinks too much, the weather is coldest - lots of health hazards come from that, and vulnerable people are loneliest.

Moving the date of Christmas really wouldn't alleviate much pressure at all.

I'm not wasting a day of annual leave so early in the year!

Maybe you could have a clap on the 25th OP

If your parents want to see you on actual Christmas @loveandroses, will you say no?

I will talk to them and see if I can persuade them.

It's busy during that period every year because it's the time of year when everyone socialises and drinks too much, the weather is coldest

The specific problem is the vast number of omicron cases there will be in the next 10-15 days. The numbers are doubling more quickly than once every 2 days. This doubling can't of course go on for that long as you run out of people to infect. So it will be a massively fast and massively sized covid wave.

No thanks. Don’t see what’s going to be so much different a week later.

@loveandroses infection rates don't really matter though because for most people there'll be little/no symptoms so it won't make a difference to the pressure of healthcare services

I will talk to them and see if I can persuade them.

And if as competent grown ups they say they’re happy with the risk?

Realistically, only a week later the situation is going to be the same or worse.

Also OP, my Nan very much wouldn’t want that. She’s had a crap two years not being able to see her family, and absolutely wouldn’t want to miss out for another year. She’s in her late 80s, who knows how many Christmases she has left.

You can fill your boots OP. But I work Thursdays so no thankyou.

Unless there are delays in opening schools ours will be back by 6th Jan. We will also be working so that won't work.

Realistically, only a week later the situation is going to be the same or worse.

The way I see it, there are two options. Either the wave comes as dramatically fast as predicted in which case it will have passed by early Jan, or it doesn't in which case the NHS will be able to cope and early Jan will be fine too.

7th January is a school day (barring emergency school closures) so that's not ideal.

But actually, looking at the available data, there's a certain amount of sense behind the idea that if Omicron is going to go tits up then it will do so by early January. By 15th/16th January we'll either be saying "well that was all a lot of fuss about nothing" or recovering from a short sharp crisis saying "thank god I stayed indoors and didn't go and see Granny because that was pretty scary".

@loveandroses

As it stands December 25 will be in the middle of a massive but really fast covid wave caused by omicron which is likely to overwhelm our hospitals, at least temporarily. If you infect your nan then they will have a huge amount of problem getting care . Shall we all just agree to spend Christmas with our immediate family and then have an extended family Christmas on January 6 instead?

I'm going with no.

Shall we all just agree to do what we want and stop trying to police other people? Mad fucking concept, I know.

We are supposed to be seeing family on the 2nd after having to cancel our original plans for the 12th.

I don't fancy the chances of it happening. Especially since one works in A&E.

So doing it early doesn't work for us. And doing it late probably won't either.

But actually, looking at the available data, there's a certain amount of sense behind the idea that if Omicron is going to go tits up then it will do so by early January.

Yes exactly. I think it will actually be the end of this month if it is really going to be a disaster.

Isn't there only 10 people in hospital in England with the Omicron variant currently?

Isn't there only 10 people in hospital in England with the Omicron variant currently?

That was yesterday. The number is higher today. But deaths take weeks to come through and almost no one had omicron in the UK 2 weeks ago.

Also, the way this wave, and in fact I think all of them, work is that first healthy people in their 20s spread it to each other and they don't suffer too badly. Then this creeps up the ages and eventually it gets to the elderly and vulnerable.

Surely if it's going to peak in the last week of December logically your suggestion would be to postpone until 14th January? So all contacts incubation/isolation periods had ended?

@loveandroses

Also, the way this wave, and in fact I think all of them, work is that first healthy people in their 20s spread it to each other and they don't suffer too badly. Then this creeps up the ages and eventually it gets to the elderly and vulnerable.

No... throughout the whole of at least the first two waves the older age groups had high rates of infection and the younger age groups had much lower rates because younger people were adhering to restrictions better.

A lot of people have elderly relatives who they see at Christmas You know a lot of people don't though, right? @loveandroses

so if that's what's best for you and yours then crack on.

I actually think things will cool a bit next week simply because most schools break up. Lots of people will baton down the hatched ahead of Christmas day.

Last year it was the following week and the week the schools went back after Christmas mixing that was worse. I don't know whats going to happen yet for new year but everything was in lockdown by then. If its not you might see a whole bunch of parties setting things off right before returns to school.

Tbh i think that first week in jan is going to be as much of an issue if not more due to lag anyway.

I know this 6th Jan thing was being pushed by Andrew Lillico on twitter, the thinking being that this omicron wave would've gone through young population by that stage, so safer for multi generation meetups. I think he's very clever but I'm not convinced by this one. If the wave slows down due to behaviour changes It's surely just as likely to hit then.

No... throughout the whole of at least the first two waves the older age groups had high rates of infection and the younger age groups had much lower rates because younger people were adhering to restrictions better.

I was thinking of this: