Some people - even under Delta - would get only a few days positive PCRs. I know we regard PCRs as the "gold standard" but actually they aren't that good, it's just the best we've got. I don't know for sure, but my expectation is that those getting Omicron in the upper channels, not down in the lungs, will get a negative PCR perhaps a week after the first confirmed PCR, so long as they have a decent immune response (vaccines!). But as ever, people vary and you can't be certain about this. We tend not to get so much of the dead tissue problem now, which would extend the timeline of positive PCRs. But yes, Omicron should be a brief hit for many, from what we are seeing. But note, some people - not many - are dying from Omicron, and not just with Omicron, this isn't just a cold.

And, since we're live from a vaccination centre, we have just had our first first-ever vaccine, someone getting a full dose of Moderna (on Christmas Eve, yikes!). Bit quiet otherwise mind.

The number of first and second doses has been picking over the last week or two. Still not spectacular numbers, but double what was happening last month.

Yes. A lot of the First Doses were children turning 12 essentially, so that's the 20,000 baseline, the rest are first time adults. And indeed it's been 35k to 40k area of late. And I have noticed that in real life, I do normally see at least one totally new person since OMG broke out, sometimes a couple.

Daily data:

Cases 122,186 (93,045 last Friday)
Deaths 137 (111)
Patients admitted 1,171 (901 on the 13th)
People vaccinated up to and including 23 December 2021:
First dose: 51,649,696
Second dose: 47,254,099
Booster: 32,290,487

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 48.2% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 2.0%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 115.7 today.

No data of any use is going to be published for the next two days and it will remain intermittent until after the new year. I will wish everyone a Happy Christmas and look forward to some sort of update on the 28th.

Happy Christmas to you too. Thanks for your continued commitment.

My blood's boiling. I've just overheard a conversation between my mum and a family member (who has a degree in pharmacology) who stated the following:

- monoclonal antibody treatments are still experimental
- if you catch covid, you're immune for life
- it's because of vaccines that the virus is mutating and will keep mutating

You will not be surprised to hear that she's also against vaccines. She might not claim that, but obviously she and the rest of her family did not get vaccinated. She has not even vaccinated her child with the usual immunisations.

Apparently, vitamin C, vitamin D, Zinc and Bacterial Lysates are all you need to strengthen your immune system.

P.S. They've just caught Covid, but mildly.

Daily new omicron cases up to today

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a931486422.png

Likewise, thanks for this very useful daily post and a Merry Christmas to all.

- Only some of the anti-Virals are monoclonal, they are past the experimental stage, but they are new drugs so under increased data scrutiny. Molnupiravir isn't monoclonal.
- If you catch COVID you are unfortunately not immune for life. We don't even think you have lifetime immune from the variant that triggered COVID.
- The last is particularly awful. Viruses are mutating because people are catching COVID, and failure to be vaccinated is assisting this. It's people not getting vaccinated that are contributing to viral mutation.

C and D supplements may have a slightly positive impact on the immune system, taking supplements is not a terrible idea, but there is zero evidence it does anything measureable with COVID. It's a classic case of taking some bits of science that you agree with and rejecting the bits that are inconvenient.

A long read but some may find it interesting:

Covid fearmongering has consequences too​

23 December 2021, 8:18pm

The scaremongers have overplayed their hand. Omicron could prove disastrous, they warned. They scoffed at the early indicators from South Africa suggesting it was milder than Delta. ‘MYTH BUSTER’, declared the Sun when Chris Whitty poured cold water on the idea that Omicron might be milder than Delta. ‘Deaths could hit 6,000 a day’, screamed the Guardian, turning Sage's worst-case scenario into a chilling headline. The news was full of it: we’re doomed.

Yet now it seems pretty clear that these fearful prophecies were way off. Just a week after we were being bombarded with these visions of the Biblical horrors Omicron would visit upon our nation, it’s being reported that this variant really is milder than the Delta one. This raises some really serious questions for the expert classes who are meant to be guiding us through this health crisis. Have they lost the plot? And now, will they lose the trust of the people?

The turnaround in recent days has been extraordinary. Last week, suggesting that Omicron might be milder was dangerous, it threatened to undermine the seriousness of the pandemic. Whitty became visibly frustrated whenever this possibility was raised. The Twitterati pooh-poohed any positive news coming from South Africa. (First South Africa was wrongly blamed for the Omicron variant, then its experts were implicitly defamed as untrustworthy amateurs when they said to the world: ‘Guys, you’re overreacting.’) Two million cases a day, thousands of deaths a day — that is virtually all we heard in relation to Omicron.

The front pages are starkly different today. ‘Official: Omicron 50% less severe’, says the Mail. ‘Omicron hospital risk is two thirds lower’, says the Telegraph. Even the Guardian’s no doubt distressed headline-writers have had to admit that their earlier vision of another nightmarish wave of disease whacking Brexit Britain might have been a tad overdone. ‘Risk of hospital stay is 40% lower with Omicron variant’, the front page says.

These good news headlines — yes, doom-mongers, we are allowed to call it good news! — spring from new studies into Omicron’s virulence. Researchers at Imperial found a 40 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalisation for Omicron in comparison with Delta. Edinburgh University went further — they reckon there is a 65 per cent lower risk of hospitalisation. A South African study says the risk is between 70 and 80 per cent lower.

Researchers are still trying to establish exactly what makes Omicron milder than Delta. Is it the fact that so many of us are vaxxed now? Or is this variant intrinsically weaker than its horrible forebear? It seems to be the case that even when adjustments are made for the fact of vaccination, Omicron has a far less deadly impact than Delta. So perhaps Covid has exhausted itself. Maybe this is what Covid will be from now on — basically a bad cold. If so — Covid hysterics, look away now – that is good news.

Yet even as we cheer what looks like good news — and, yes, even as we continue to ensure that the NHS is prepped for a possible rise in Omicron-related hospital visits — we have to talk about why the first response from the expert class was to assault us with hellish visions of overrun hospitals and thousands of daily deaths. A democratic society like ours ought to have a reckoning with the alarming disparity between what we were told about Omicron and what seems to be the truth about Omicron, and ask ourselves how this could happen.
Consider that worst-case scenario of 6,000 deaths a day. The Sage folk will say it was just a projection. But these people weren’t born yesterday. They knew, surely, that this horrific number would be latched onto by sections of the media. That it would evoke fear in much of the population. And they must have known that it was the most severe projection to make — one that has a very low chance of ever coming to fruition.

Think of it like this. The peak in average daily Covid deaths in India — a nation of 1.3 billion — was 4,000. That was in May, when not that many Indians were vaxxed. Were we really meant to believe that Britain, with its mere 68 million souls, better vaxxed and with better healthcare than India, would suffer more daily deaths than India ever did?

One argument I’ve heard many times is that it is better to overreact to a pesky virus like Covid-19 than to underreact. But is that true? Our response to Covid has consequences, too. Lockdowns, as the World Health Organisation now admits, have terrible consequences for the economy and for mental health.
And fear has consequences, too. Inducing dread and alarm among the populace, encouraging people to think the near future will be bleak, damages the social fabric. It causes national dejection, a culture of atomisation. Everyone asks if Boris Johnson will take responsibility for Omicron, given he has refused, so far, to enforce harsh measures. But who will take responsibility for the social sickness caused by the incessant banging of the drum of fear? Sage? Whitty? The media?

Then there’s the cynicism about vaccination these people risk provoking. The idea that a highly vaxxed country like ours could be battered by Covid in an even worse way now than we were in the pre-vaccination era sends the message that vaccines are pointless. I’ve lost count of the number of friends and family members — all highly reasonable supporters of the vaccine programme — who have messaged me to say: ‘So what was the point of all those shots?’ If we value the wonderful successes of our vaccination drive (and we really ought to) then we really must dial down this nonsense about life never improving in the Covid era.

Omicron could prove to be a turning point, not only for this blasted, mutating virus, but also for the politics of public health. People, I hope, will start to question the fear-led agenda. They will want to know why dire prophecies continue to be made even after previous ones fell apart. They will start to feel agitated by the ceaseless efforts from on high to manage our behaviour by telling us there will be apocalyptic consequences if we disobey. We’re adults. We’re citizens. Start treating us like that. Maybe this is what Covid will be from now on — basically a bad cold
https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/brendan-oneill
Written by Brendan O’Neill
Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...nsequences-too

That’s the very definition of a known unknown and how you react to it. No one in a position of responsibility is going to both hope for the best and prepare for the best. Your luck is only going ride so far with that approach. This is classic “thinking impaired” writing from The Spectator. I think on this occasion the government has mostly done a reasonable job in terms of listening to what the experts (who were just doing their job) are saying and then picking a course of action.

It’s also a reminder I should cancel my Spectator subscription. I only ever go there to take the Mickey out of the other (rather reactionary) readers in the comments section. It’s that attitude, along with those in Parliament who represent it, that, as far as I’m concerned, has led far greater overall loss of my personal liberty since the start of the pandemic.

I'm a bit surprised and concerned to hear this. It seems to be an obvious loophole to obtain a recovery certificate without actually suffering through covid. Many countries require negative test for entry even if vaccinated, but not if recovering, so not having to test would save a lot. And many European countries accept recovery in lieu of vaccination for 2G or 3G status.

I am the next one to join the list of those of us who have received a positive LFT result. On Thursday, whilst preparing to travel up to my Father's house, Mrs Wilsnunn and I both did an LFT each; hers came back negative and mine came back very very faintly positive. Shocked, as I had no symptoms, I waited an hour or so and did another from a different batch of LFT tests (the older style with the throat and nose swab as opposed to the nose only ones), this was once again positive but even fainter.

I booked a PCR test for later that day and isolated away from both Mrs and Mstr Wilsnunn. We waited for the result to come back, with me still isolating in the guest bedroom and it finally came back early this morning with a negative result! I took another LFT both yesterday and today and both were negative. Rather annoyed as it meant that we didn't travel up to my Father's place and instead spent today at home with very little in the way of festive supplies! Thank goodness that the large Turkish supermarket in Chipping Barnet was open and still had turkeys at the butcher counter so I was at least able to make something of it.

The worst bit of it all is that I developed a mild case of flu whilst isolating!

I liked your post just for moral support! I hope you manage to have a decent Christmas even with this.

An unsual flow of events, particularly if flu has also struck (flu or cold???). One slightly implausible explanation that I can offer is that you indeed have flu / cold and that has arrested a potential COVID infection in your nose (it would seem) - it didn't really take root but there were some viral particles picked up by the Lateral Flow cartridge. But in reality, this is destined to be one of life's mysteries. At least you managed to get a Plan B Christmas out of it.