South African medical authorities seem to be reporting the opposite, majority are very mild cases, no big upturn in hospital admissions and nobody's died yet.
Who to believe?
It's not necessarily and either/or situation. The UK experts are predicting a wave coming. Omicrom is so new that SA might not be experiencing a wave right now either. Also they will have very much lower levels of testing than the UK. We need to be looking ahead to avoid system overwhelm.
I would personally say that Xmas was always going to
present a crisis, even without Omicrom: more indoor socialising, more
travelling, less guarded behaviour, more staff on leave; also other
added NHS pressures - more colds, flu and other lurgies flying about,
worse mental health for many, more drugs and alcohol fuelled admissions.
It's a usual crisis time for the over stretched NHS usually, even before Covid.
My understanding is that the SA population affected are younger, so it's difficult to make a comparison with our population here - yet - because there's a huge number of older people, and they're more at risk anyway, as with all the variants of the virus so far.
Caution is surely the right way forward?
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Winter bugs, Winter pressures, Winter holidays all combine to strain the NHS every year. This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Whilst we don’t really know what we are dealing with, with Omicron, I feel that tighter restrictions over Winter make sense.
Announcement of Plan B today…when will Plan C start being spoken about I wonder?
Assuming 500 cases of Omicron in UK today [ almost certainly a vast underestimate ] Assuming a doubling time of 3 days [ best scientific evidence 2-3 days. ]
100,000 cases within 30 days.
How can you lie there and think of England When you don't even know who's in the team
Given there is little testing going on - it's all guesswork. Hospitalisations seem a more acurate gauge of changing scale.
Cabinet idiocies are a distraction and always were. @debs64 I would ignore it all and keep focus on sense. There are bigger and more important questions at hand. We know the cabinet are tossers. We don't need more evidence of that.
My concern is that these are well informed, highly educated people, they obviously think it’s safe to have a party so how can they justify these rules for other people?
Posts
Caution is surely the right way forward?
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Assuming a doubling time of 3 days [ best scientific evidence 2-3 days. ]
100,000 cases within 30 days.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border