The Omicron variant

Its well established that people who share even a bed dont always get it from infected people pure spoof mate

I was thanking my lucky stars that I got my vaccine, my dose was very very mild but without it, it could have been nasty.

From talking to people at work, neighbors, friends, ive just realized. There are more people I know who have covid at the moment than I know who havent got it.

FCUK!

Ah there is history of some viruses that do mutate to become less lethal/more contagious, but it's certainly not the rule of viruses progression

It’s very transmissible. My nephew went to a Xmas dinner in his girlfriends. Came home next day unwell thought it was a hangover. His parents had been doing antigen tests every day previous to this getting negative including Xmas day (deal with public so being careful). Today, they now all have positive antigen tests. No sickness for them at all thankfully. So 26th meet him for first time in a few days, today the 30th, all positive for covid.

Good news, lads. There's some new nphet modeling been released. Everybody loves nphet models

Two things concern me about Omicron (and future variants)

• It appears the people can catch both Delta and Omicron. Dr John Campbell shows a graph where the Y axis is a percent, which illustrates the proportion of Omicron is increasing. He (I believe incorrectly) attributes this to Omicron displacing Delta. What if its just the case that there are now simply much more cases of Omicron? Delta could be decreasing, even if it is, because people with Omicron are isolating so with less social interaction, can't catch it. So in January, we end up with two, parallel coronaviruses to contend with, that happily sit side by side. Consider future variants that also do not displace existing ones because they are almost a new strain. How many are we going to end up with?
• There is no guarantee that the next variant will be milder than Omicron (Wibbs post above). With the massive spread of Omicron we are likely to get a new variant sooner, and the next one could be much worse. Disease X.

Czech population is 10.7m, twice ours. Deaths there today are 35 which is per capita 5.5 times ours. And that's only with 6,145 cases. The government isn't testing enough and people won't spend an enormous amount on private PCR tests. Slovakia today has 44 deaths, 14 times our current rate. Poland has 709 deaths, 31.5 times our death rate. Hungary 32 times. Lack of vaccination there a disaster, and hugely under-estimated cases disguising the real problem.

All this is proof that the vaccines are working and we're testing heavily. Both of which make me very happy.

Like the flu so.

Yes, I have several examples from relatives and pals in shared households where it's not spreading to everyone. Anecdotal only I know but this seems to be borne out by medical reporting. And throughout the pandemic I've never known more than two pals here to have Covid at the same time. Currently at least 11 pals/their family members are infected and all of them were taking precautions.

One woman had only gone out once in the past 8 days to have a booster shot and picked it up. I've been to the odd gig, movie and pub/restaurant in the last few months but am giving it a break for a few weeks. Feeling pretty positive about how it's going though, wee may be at the beginning of the end.

It could. And I certain hope its milder. But it might not be. Imagine the scenario if Omicron was as transmissable as it is but as harmful as Delta (or more harmful) then we'd be back towards lockdown restrictions.

We can hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Confelicity is the opposite to schadenfreude

My absolute favourite word since I heard about it.

Susie Dent 💙 (@susie_dent) Tweeted:

Confelicity: a much-underused word meaning delight in someone else's happiness; the opposite of Schadenfreude. https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/919471913491206144?s=20