@Anjo2011
No lockdown but covid disruptions will be the daily norm.
I agree. Omicron is too contagious for previous mitigations to have much impact and hospitalisations/deaths aren’t
quite high enough to put covid back at the top of the agenda or contemplate lockdown. This isn’t herd immunity by stealth as a pp said, simply because it seems omicron can either infect repeatedly or is mutating subtly enough to infect more than once.
In peoples haste to call for a return to normal the structure of actually living with omicron appears to have been neglected. It may not be overwhelming hospitals but there’s certainly a massive impact, if this is the norm going forward then standard capacity and treatments have to be increased and managed - whether we have the will or resources to do that though is questionable.
We also need a newer vaccine based on newer strains but I suspect that the uptake would be considerably less which is frustrating because the vaccines did show significant ability to prevent infections before omicron and I believe they could do again with a new vaccine but that’s all imho.
The majority of people don’t experience care homes or hospitals on a day to day basis but those locations are absolutely still battling huge issues caused by covid.
My df has been in a nursing home since December, hospital before that since October where we couldn’t see him at all. We’ve been prepared for him to die at any point (his heart is basically knackered alongside other health issues). Since December there have been three weeks we’ve been able to see him because of covid outbreaks in the home. I think there’s a possibility this may be what palliative and long term care may look like for some time to come. People aren’t going to comprehend that until it affects them, but for everyone’s sake I hope that peoples last days/weeks don’t become routinely isolated from this point onwards because it’s brutal.