Agreed, though I don't think anyone has been talking of throwing caution to the winds.

Agreed. It's a math problem, but over 2,700 cases included in hospital figures presented with other problems and were only found to be positive when tested on admission. In a total about turn, NHS chiefs are reported in today's newspapers saying they don't believe the threshold for new Covid-19 restrictions has been crossed despite a surge in hospital admissions. Having said that, we don't know what's in store for us when the figures for family Christmases and rawkus New Year parties come through in the statistics in seven to ten days time.

I might be accused of being naïve, but I believe that with the possible exception of Brazil, governments around the world have tried to make the best decisions balancing the country's diverse needs. In the case of Omicron, one group of experts on the ground in South Africa were saying it wasn't so dangerous, and another group of mathematicians and medical experts in the UK were urging for lockdowns. Whichever way it was called, the government would be criticised.

Time will indeed tell. Most viral outbreaks don't end but rather mutate from a pandemic that society deems unacceptable, into an endemic state where it remains in the background.

Medical staff in the UK were poised for a tsunami amongst older folks but it hasn't happened. Chris Hopson, head of NHS Providers, "Although the numbers are going up and going up increasingly rapidly, the absence of large numbers of seriously ill older people is providing significant reassurance." Though this could, of course, change.

World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus expressed optimism during a press briefing last Wednesday that 2022 may be the year the world ends the acute stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.  There was a caveat—that governments do as the WHO has been pushing for and get the world vaccinated.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)