Firstly, Merry Christmas to my readers - all two of them. I keep hearing people saying Happy Christmas, but that means a Merry New Year. Surely it's Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and thus the correct greeting is Merry Christmas, as Scrooge shouted from his window on Christmas Day.
To the nub of today's post. Newspaper headlines can be so misleading. One daily yesterday splashed "Omicron is 70% less likely to cause hospitalisation."
That's not technically true - the study determined, with early data, that the virulence of Omicron is between 2% and 12% less than Delta, which is wafer thin and subject to further data being needed. The additional protection to take it anywhere near 70% (and studies differ on the percentage) is provided by layers of vaccination, starting with one and ending with the full panoply of 3 jabs and prior exposure to Covid itself at some time in the past. For someone who is not vaxxed, the risk from Omicron is virtually the same as from Delta, yet an unvaxxed person reading the above headline would feel justified in not getting a jab, as he or she would feel they're more protected because of an inherent 70% decrease in the virulence of Omicron. That's irresponsible journalism.
As Bertrand Russell once said; “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” That applies to a lot of tabloid journalists, who tend toward sensationalism and brevity at the expense of truth.
On top of that, many people will be delaying their boosters so as to avoid feeling shit over the Christmas week. Many others will be lying about their positive lateral flow tests so as not to upset carefully laid Christmas plans to visit Nan.
As for the ones who don't want a vaccine 'because I don't know what's in it' - would they be as reluctant to accept the medication they will require if hospitalised, as they certainly won't know what's in that either. Perhaps the NHS should accept their objections and deny them the medication.
As for lockdowns; ask any lockdown sceptic as to why they're sceptical and you'll invariably get the response that lockdowns destroy businesses. That's a logical fallacy - if implemented with suitable compensation schemes and targeted at specific segments, such as hospitality, they will prevent the targeted businesses going to the wall in the same manner as furlough did.
Businesses are already going to the wall by people cancelling parties and Christmas meals out of self-preservation, and who can blame them? It's lockdown in all but name, so providing government-backed financial support is the solution. No, there's some other reason why they don't like lockdowns, and it's probably got more to do with freedom to be inconsiderate to others., or free speech, or not taking down statues, or BLM, or wokeness, or the BBC, or migrants.
Merry Christmas to one and all.
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