The Omicron variant

I went away to Tenerife for the few days over the festivities, naturally a lot of loops to jump through, but the welcome there was very warm, spent a lot of time outdoors or in extremely well ventilated indoors spaces. In meantime my extended family, some of whom I might otherwise have spent Christmas with, had an unfortunate time as several were struck down with Covid, albeit in mild form. But it meant 2 families spent Christmas locked in isolation in various rooms of the houses, with Christmas dinner being placed outside the door, and chatting over WhatsApp, scheduling toilet visits not to coincide too close in time and all sorts of practicalities one does not like to be dealing with around Christmas Day. Yes, I had to have Antigen test, a 15 minute taxi journey from hotel in Tenerife, but all fine very efficiently. The risk was that I would have had to endure an extended stay in my nice 5* room with a balcony (or an alternative designated hotel likely with a balcony) and pay for it plus for an extra flight and more tests, but it would have been partially covered by my health insurance and in any case I had factored it in the possible overall cost.

Hoping I’m right in imagining the newest measures are a cautious overkill, and some day we will have to really just try and get on with living or there will be economic ruin.

There was a very enthusiastic reception for visitors to Tenerife, the mood is entirely upbeat there, I got a relative bargain as Canaries usually tend to not be so affordable this time of year. It is fortunate though that they have the climate for better coping with the virus.

Omicron is absolutely rampant. I’m getting text after text telling me of households coming down with Covid, the latest just being my next door apartment neighbour. At least I can easily leave stuff outside their door. These folk thankfully are not very sick, but isolated because of social & government requirement s. In the middle of me typing this yet another text has popped up. Universally the folk are a bit off colour and tired or sniffly, but nothing serious, and still able to eat, quite unlike eh a typical influenza where even trying to text could be undoable.

Seems about every third person or so has Omicron. There’s no stopping it. Just let vaccination mostly take care of possibility of significant illness. You are going to get Omicron, this has got to be a given. As my neighbour says they are quite pleased to be getting it done with. Although it may revisit, they said knowing it’s so mild is reassuring and just a minor nuisance. Keep paracetamol in stock, any rehydration salts if needed, and the basics of teabags, tinned food and jax roll.

Well I’m thinking of the practicalities of that. The two families I speak of here were staying in most houses with a fair number of rooms. Those who tested positive stayed within their rooms, but as most rooms had no en-suite it has been necessary to share bathrooms, windows kept wide open etc. downstairs loo in one house designated as for non-positive use. If everyone of those large households is to isolate they’d need to hire a hotel or rent a row of houses.

Perhaps everybody should be routinely not mixing with any other household, and perhaps I should have cancelled my trip. There are no straightforward solutions, except it seems locking stable doors in all countries where all the horses have already bolted and run free seems a bit pointless now.

We are just gonna get Omicron. My own personal belief is that it’s coming time to live with it, though I fully respect different views as we are still learning about it.