The Omicron variant

It was my understanding at the start that they were clear that there was a shortage of masks and PPE for medical staff and they wanted to priortise for their benefit so they told people to isolate rather than going out and about with masks - especially as people were not used to wearing them and didn't understand the basics such as not touching the outside of the mask and rubbing your face etc. They didn't want to give the false sense of security that you were bulletproof with a mask.

I mean they wanted the masks for the healthcare workers. They were clear about that from the start. They obviously were saying that masks were important.

Is there any government decision you wouldn't defend? They have made some mistakes, it's okay to admit it.

Well I wasn't really putting that much pass on them. One of the things I was doing around Feb 2020 involved a couple of Chinese students. As soon as the news came in about covid, they had masks on. If you've traveled abroad at all, even say to the big US cities like NY, you will see that it was common for Chinese people to wear masks in crowded areas. This was before covid.

So I guess that I took my cues from that. That plus the pleas for people not to be snapping up PPE and to leave it available for healthcare workers. Here are some examples, from around March 2020, of places donating masks and more to Healthcare workers

I don't know how you didn't cop on that at the same time you were understanding that "masks were useless", that they were pleading with the public to leave them available for essential healthcare workers.

That would be the WHO rather than the Irish government.

And I think the confusion hinged on the definition of the word "airbourne"

They're saying they expect SA cases to triple next week but their positivity rate has been stagnant for the past 3/4 days.

According to Jonathan Van Tam: "If vaccine effectiveness is reduced as seems pretty likely then the biggest effects are likely to be in preventing infections"

It's not like the vaccines are great at preventing Delta infections so I don't see how omicron could be much more of an issue

I'll get worried when O-mega comes along. They will have run out of the Greek alphabet and then what will they do?

Fantastic thread here. A South African scientist calling out that clown Ding.

I recall an active sneering in the media at people who had begun wearing masks early on in the pandemic, that they were wasting their time. The infamous comments by Luke O'Neill on the Late Late comes to mind, for example. Tubridy asks him why there's panic about mask wearing and he responds "they've watched too many horror movies".

We aren't be told the full story. Same last year with Delta.

Its lockdown on the horizon. Then 6 months to get the new vaccines out. Then a new variant again. It will never end.

They could borrow last year’s unused storm names from the Met Office!

No need to worry until we get to Varient Patricia!

I see some experts are speculating that omicron has already been in circulation for some time now. In general though I'm seeing a lot of experts with positives appraisals of what we know so far i.e. mild symptoms, vaccines work against it, no hospitalisation spike in South Africa. Of course they all footnote this with the warning that we don't know for sure yet and all the fear mongers latch onto this.

Headline in the Daily Mail saying that global experts are stating that this variant will be good for the world. Possibly pandemic ending?