Boris Johnson said yesterday that Omicron is “surging across the country now” and warned that “we reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public and to protect public health, to protect the NHS. We won’t hesitate to take that action.” The Telegraph reports.
The Prime Minister has said the Government “reserves the possibility” to implement further Covid restrictions amid surging Omicron cases, and warned that the current situation is “extremely difficult”.
Speaking in Downing Street, Boris Johnson said the latest data will be kept under constant review “hour by hour”, and refused to rule out further measures after Christmas.
“We will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public and to protect public health, to protect the NHS,” he said. “We won’t hesitate to take that action.”
Asked about what types of restrictions could be reimplemented, he said: “We are looking at all kinds of things to keep Omicron under control and we will rule nothing out.”
But is it really true that Omicron is surging and warrants the Prime Minister breaking his repeated promise that the lifting of restrictions in the summer following the vaccine rollout was “irreversible”?
Not according to the latest data. Yesterday’s reported infections for the U.K. were at 91,743, down from three days ago.
The peak by specimen date is still December 15th and the figures for the following days, while incomplete, do not suggest it will be topped soon.
December 15th was 10 days before Christmas. Given that people have to isolate for 10 days if positive, this suggests the peak may be largely an artefact of people getting tested ahead of Christmas. The leap in testing on that day is also indicative of this.
In this regard it is similar to the spike in tests and positives that occurred ahead of the summer break in July. That quickly dropped off as schools broke up and people went off on summer holidays. We may well see a similar phenomenon now that schools have broken up and people go away or to family for Christmas.
Most of the recent spike in positive tests is an artefact of the increase in testing. While the positivity rate in the U.K. saw a modest rise in the past week, up to 5.3% on December 19th from 4.4% on the 14th (see graph at top), it is not yet any higher than it was in October, and far below last winter’s peak of 13.5%. No reason to panic there. Deaths also continue their downward trend. How does data like this warrant the return of draconian ‘last resort’ social restrictions?
Rather than causing a large new epidemic or surge, Omicron appears largely to be replacing Delta for the winter wave – though Delta is still retaining some market share for now.
Meanwhile in the original epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, Gauteng province in South Africa, reported infections have been falling sharply in the past week.
National data from South Africa also continues to show a much milder disease, with ICU admissions currently at 21% of their July peak, or 79% lower.
This mildness has been confirmed by new data from Denmark, which finds the hospitalisation rate from Omicron 60% lower than from other variants.
Perhaps it should not come as a surprise, then, to hear that South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19, which is similar to SAGE, has written to the Health Minister Joe Phaahla recommending that the quarantining of contacts and all contact tracing be halted with immediate effect. It is no longer necessary and too costly for individuals and society for too little benefit, they argue.
We have learned more about the manner in which COVID-19 is spread, and also now have to contend with variants of concern whose epidemiology differs from that of the ancestral strains of SARS-CoV-2.
Crucially, it appears that efforts to eliminate and/or contain the virus are not likely to be successful. Therefore, it is critical that the role of containment efforts like quarantine and contact tracing is re-evaluated.
In addition, among the small proportion of symptomatic cases, testing is far from universal, since patients may not seek testing when their symptoms are mild and when testing would be burdensome and expensive. Furthermore, the SARS-CoV-2 test sensitivity is suboptimal, sometimes leading to false negative results.
The inability of the current testing strategy to identify the bulk of cases is illustrated by the high SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity rates seen across multiple provinces in serosurveys, implying that only a fraction of cases (perhaps one in 10, or even less) are ever diagnosed.
It stands to reason that if the vast majority of cases are not diagnosed, then the vast majority of case contacts are also not diagnosed. This means that quarantining and contact tracing are of negligible public health benefit in the South African setting.
Boris’s support base is collapsing as even once-loyal Ministers desert him over his apparent addiction to lockdown restrictions. Yet he is deaf to their pleas and seems only to have ears for the doom-mongers of SAGE. Government modeller Professor Graham Medley revealed on Saturday they didn’t model more positive outcomes for Omicron because they weren’t asked to. Who didn’t ask them to, and why not? Boris has many enemies, and he is only making his position worse by alienating his natural supporters while heeding the advice and adopting the policies of those who would gladly see him gone.
Time to wise up, Boris, and start listening to the right people. Omicron is not “surging”, and neither is it a cause for panic. You just need to keep calm and carry on.
Stop Press: Tuesday’s reported infection numbers dropped again, to 90,629, and the peak by specimen date remains December 15th.
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No vax (obviously) got Covid July 2021. Family all got it except the youngest 15 year old. We managed the symptoms with Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, vitamins D&C and Zinc. 2 days were like a bad flu without a cough. Not back to normal until about day 8.
Since then anytime I felt a cold coming I took Hydroxychloroquine half dose with Zinc and Vitamin C. Never got sick again until a month ago with a cold for about 4 days.
No reinfections, never wore a mask, ditto wife. Youngest still never seemed to have gotten it.
Both unjabbed, my husband and I have taken vitamin supplements every day since this started and a couple of months ago I wasn’t feeling well and took myself off to bed for about 24 hours, headache, sneezes, blocked nose – no cough though and bounced back after 3 days. My husband didn’t catch anything. Was it Covid? – don’t know, don’t care. We are both in good health and for that I am grateful but its no thanks to the NHS!
No vax, no mask, no extra supplements, no problem.
Had a 3 day cold once in 2 years. May or may not have been “covid”. Don’t know, don’t care, never tested.
Oh, and made a point of shaking as many hands and giving as many hugs as I could.
Nothing keeps disease away like a happy, cheerful soul.
Same here, one bout of flu-like thing that laid me low for a week or so, one mild cold. About average for me for a two-year period. Plenty of liquids and bed rest for the flu, ignored the mild cold and carried on with life.
Family of 5. No vaccinations. All had Covid at least once, symptoms for each were about 2 days of headache, some back aches. All symptoms gone within a week.
A useful report. Regarding the claim that the “vaccine” product could reduce the virus transmission to third parties, to be fair to the manufacturers, they did not appear to issue such a claim. At least, in the paperwork issued to me by the NHS organisation back in 2021, they stated that they “do not know yet….” I suspect that the claims were generated by the usual suspects, not real specialists in that field.
I never accepted the offer, and have not used it. The last time I had some kind of respiratory infection was early in 2020, before the panic ensued. About a year later, I did shell out to have a private assessment to see if I had any relevant T-cells on board, which was inconclusive, so it must have been something else then. Suggests that I have never suffered from C19 at all, unless it’s so benign that I confused it with my normal seasonal pollen allergy issues.
Strangely my hayfever has been a lot less these past 2 years.
Anecdotal; we have four healthy adults in the house, all under 35. Two people in the house are uninjected, the other two were “fully boosted” at that point, despite warnings from me.
We all caught the virus at the same time, sometime around last October. Admittedly the symptoms were a little different to a regular virus, but definitely not worse.
Myself and the other un-injected got over it in a day. Personally I got through it with a bottle of whisky, pizza and Band of Brothers boxset. The subsequent hangover was worse than the virus.
The other two injected people had it hit them harder and differently. Not only were they physically more ill, but they suffered mentally, which I am attributing to their fear playing tricks on them along with some cognitive dissonance. They were locked up for around 3 days, and were significantly fatigued and generally run down for a week after. Thankfully they have come around to rejecting any more gov’t crap.
Again, anecdotal, but I suspect we all know of something like this.
I had a weird thing several weeks back whereby I had all over body aches, even my fingers and eyeballs ached, but I just took ibuprofen and went about my business, even kept up my exercise routine. The strangest thing is that I lost my sense of smell and taste without having even the slightest sniffle. That’s only ever happened when I’ve had a bunged up nose so that was novel. Taste and smell returned after a week gradually. I lost 4kg in a week as not being able to taste food does dampen one’s appetite for food somewhat.
I don’t test so it was just some random lurgy as far as I’m concerned and nothing to write home about. Life is and always has been full of these occasional maladies that pop up out of the blue. Normal people just get on with their lives and don’t behave like wet blankets.
Lovely article with which to close my evening; the smell of vindication grows sweeter every day. (And walking past the local health centre I noticed a sign up stating that in line with new guidelines, face coverings are now optional).
I’ve taken the FLCCC stuff that I could obtain plus a weekly dose of IVM and my brush with the bug lasted 6 days; husband the same minus the IVM, (although he took a few doses when in the thick of it) and cleared it in about 9 days. No after-effects, unlike most vaxxed acquaintances I’ve spoken with. We are 64 and 70. Neither of us jabbed; would love to be quizzed by a medic so I could gloat about it but unlikely to be given the satisfaction.
I’d enjoy the sensation more, but clearly our betters have more miseries in store for us with the energy prices, especially for those running businesses.
If that fool who’s been at the helm this past couple of years shows me that smirk just once more as he spouts his bs, I won’t be responsible for my actions.
Fit, healthy 60+ female. Think I had Covid in November 2019. Unjabbed; carried on as close as possible to life as normal throughout the restrictions and regularly stretched “the rules.” Regularly take Vit C, Zinc, cod liver oil and echinacea.
Is this the same group that I’m assuming quite a few people here are in SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Control Group that Toby is a member of and suggested Lockdown Sceptics might join? This was way back just as the experimental gene therapy treatment jabs were about to be forced upon us. Just asking.
I remember there was some suspicion around here that the group might have been an attempt at data-gathering of the non-compliant. There was still a wary atmosphere around vaccine passports and making the jabs compulsory before entering public spaces, so many of us elected to safeguard our privacy until the true aims of the group became apparent.
Seems they were ok but those were febrile times – understandably.
You knew all this from the beginning.
I knew all this from the beginning.
But who are we?
According to this peer-reviewed analysis, only 0.4% of participants were hospitalized. And then it mentions ‘…low incidences of severe disease, hospitalization, or death.’
But how do they know how many of the participants died?
As the analysis is based on self-reported monthly questionnaires, if a participant dies, they wouldn’t be able to self-report that they had died, and it’s unlikely that a relative or friend would report to the Control Group Cooperative project that the person died.
So if a participant stops self-reporting each month, how would the authors of this analysis know if the person had died due to Covid, or died with Covid, or died due to some other reason, or was alive and had just stopped self-reporting?
It was just a huge money laundering exercise and lots of government officials and their friends made a fortune out of it. At the same time they managed to scare a large part of the population and not only damage their physical health but mental health too.To try to deny we have Immune systems was the final straw for me! I will continue to hope for an International Court to bring those criminals to justice.