The last time I wrote about covid was shortly after I'd had the first of two vaccine injections back in April. Subsequently, on 30th June, I had a second one. That was that, I was led to believe, no more covid worries, herd immunity, get on with your life and all that gumph. Well here we are in December and I'm waiting for a booster. It's booked for 7th January and I'm not feeling great about it.
When they were first talked about, it was my understanding that booster vaccines were for the elderly and the vulnerable but the government are now pushing a huge roll out to everybody. There've even been glimmers of discussion around mandatory vaccination which has already begun in other countries and which fills me with horror. The horror does not come from the vaccination itself, after all I've had two willingly and I'm signed up for a third, but from the possibility of the state mandating what I put in my own body. It infuriates me that the law tells me what I'm not allowed to put in my body but to be considering a situation where people are being forced to have a vaccination, sometimes against their will, is abhorrent to me.
The booster 'push' has been expedited because of a relatively new variant of the virus which started in southern Africa, called Omicron. This variant is potentially transmitted more easily that others, including the Delta variant, and that appears to be the driving force. Not being a virologist I thought I'd read a bit about this new variant to understand why there's so much fuss about it, so I Googled it and went to the World Health Organization's website.
This is what I read: Transmissibility: It is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible (e.g., more easily spread from person to person) compared to other variants, including Delta. The number of people testing positive has risen in areas of South Africa affected by this variant, but epidemiologic studies are underway to understand if it is because of Omicron or other factors.
Followed by: Severity of disease: It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta. Preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, but this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of specific infection with Omicron. There is currently no information to suggest that symptoms associated with Omicron are different from those from other variants.
And then: Effectiveness of vaccines: WHO is working with technical partners to understand the potential impact of this variant on our existing countermeasures, including vaccines. Vaccines remain critical to reducing severe disease and death, including against the dominant circulating variant, Delta. Current vaccines remain effective against severe disease and death.
Current vaccines remain effective against severe disease and death.
So why, I ask myself, are we being told by the government that we should work from home again, and use a vaccine passport when going to a club, under what they are calling Plan B? And why are they drawing up Plan C to track people going to pubs and such? It makes no sense to me. Especially as it's unknown how severe this variant is.
I've been vaccinated, practically everybody I know has been, and those that haven't have chosen that risk. Deaths of people with coronavirus — and I make a point of saying they are deaths of people with coronavirus, not from it — are down by 90% from the peak last winter (almost a year ago) and hospitalisation from the virus is rare amongst vaccinated people. So why the restrictions on liberties? And how many more times is this going to happen?
The vaccination was the key to our freedoms and yet, despite the immense success of the programme, our freedoms are still being limited. Frustratingly they're being limited by a government that is repeatedly proving itself to be untrustworthy and lacking in integrity as bit by bit revelations of rule breaking and mid-lockdown parties leak out.
I had the job of cancelling our work Christmas party last week and it was a sorry affair because as I was doing that, thousands of others were doing the same thing around the country. I could almost hear the hospitality industry groaning in despair. These new restrictions and the fear that's being instilled in people will put companies out of business and people out of work, and yet I read time and again that the new variant is mild or, at worst, an unknown quantity. There are a lot of 'just in case' actions being taken and I don't like it. It smacks of politics. The government can't be seen to be the people that let folk die of covid (understandable) yet the longer term affects of missed diagnoses, delayed treatments by a health service prioritising covid boosters over many other appointments, or the surge in deaths from alcohol for example will, I suspect, be far further reaching.
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Since I started writing this blog a couple of days ago the PM has announced a major push in booster vaccines. One million jabs a day to get everyone fixed by the new year. Now we see on the news people queuing for hours on end (two, three, four hours at a time), the NHS working at full tilt to accommodate it and lateral flow tests, which people are offered free of charge, have run out. This coincides with the first studies, coming out of South Africa, which conclude the risk of hospitalisation with the Omicron variant is significantly lower than with the Wuhan strain or the Delta strain.
It feels to me like the government has overreacted and caused panic; I've decided not to bring my booster vaccination date forward.
Of course, these could be the last words of an idiot. I might catch the new variant and be the second person to die of it. The country might crumble under the economic and social strains brought about by Omicron and this could quite simply be the beginning of the end. Let's hope not, eh?
Then there's the media commotion. These two articles are both on the home page of the Telegraph today. So what are we to believe — serious peril or no worse than flu? It also feels like there's a lot of contradiction which is confusing. No wonder the panic.
It's all just so miserable, after nearly two years of this it feels like the end is continually being kicked down the road and that people have settled with this new state of affairs. Maybe that's why I'm finding it so difficult to accept the new restrictions and why it feels like another lockdown by stealth. I appear to be in the minority.
