I’m getting interested in the psychology of people’s views on this. I felt under attack on this threadfor saying a couple of weeks ago that I was cautiously optimistic because 5 old fully vaxed people in my Dad’s care home in London had tested positive for probably Omicron and recovered after very mild or totally symptomless infection.
The danger is far from over.
But when we got the vaccines case rates decoupled from the rate of hospitalization and death. Evidence is growing that Omnicron IS milder.
Saying this doesn’t mean I’m heartless or don’t care about vulnerable people FFS.
There's a lot of context and history to why you get that reaction.
Since the very beginning of the pandemic, back in the mists of time in Feb/Mar 2020, there's been people who've sought to downplay the seriousness of Covid and wanted a minimum of public health measures enacted. People like the right of the Tory Party (Steve Baker & the CRG), the right wing press (special mention for the Telegraph), a small group of sceptical scientists given prominence as they say what those first two groups want to hear (Carl Hennigan for example). Away from the establishment there's also the anti-vaxxers and conspiraloons, but they have little sway over government policy, so they're mainly just a noisy irritant.
After the shock of the first wave they spent last Autumn resisting new measures and complaining about gloomy scientists as the pre-vaccine wave grew into inevitable catastrophe. There were a number of people popping up here parroting their arguments, refusing to believe that last winter would be as bad as it was. They all went very quiet when the inevitable did happen.
At the moment there is no inevitability. We're in uncharted territory due to the vaccine programme and the evolution of the virus.
Almost the first thing people heard about Omicron was that South African doctor saying it's milder. Even as scientists were browning their pants over the alarming mutations in the Omicron strain the phrase 'it's mild' echoed around the world. And those exact same voices - the ones that had been downplaying Covid all along, that spent last autumn dismissing fears of a huge wave of death in winter 20/21, that are back to saying 'it's just flu' - started telling people that it's all over now, time to live with it and get back to acting like it never happened, no need for any restrictions to control the spread, it's all good now. And an exhausted population has been only too happy to receive that message, even as the government's own scientific advisors were warning that even a milder strain would put huge pressure on the NHS, that there could be chaos if it was left to spread freely.
So when people pop up here repeating phrases used by those right wing types that have been very wrong before the reaction can be hostile. Of course, Omicron does appear to be different to what came before, but we're by no means out of the woods yet and trying to understand what is happening and what will happen next is made much harder by a group of people who've made up their mind that the most optimistic possibility is the only possibility. And when people arrive here using stock phrases and arguments from those anti-public health measure types, they can be triggered and go all
