So while the govt continues to do *nothing*, at least in England, case numbers rose yet higher, to 190,000, and 12.000 people are now in hospital. Deaths have also risen though more slowly but are still up 20% week on week.
The govt’s position? Ludicrous. “The country is in a much better position”, “omicron isn’t too bad”, “the worst is over” and so on. Measures being taken – virtually none.
After immense pressure and clear evidence that parents and teachers would not return to school, they’ve introduced a mask requirement for secondary-age children but nothing for younger kids. We’re being told to be “sensible” – have these idiots met the average person?
Meanwhile, alongside admitting that the virus is moving into and through the over-50s, the govt is still insistent that everything is just fine. This despite all evidence showing that even post-vaccination over-50s are far more likely to die. The graph below shows the last month’s data:
| Cases | Deaths | Chance | |
| Under 19 | 483,894 | 10 | 1:48,000 |
| 20-50 | 1,282,599 | 166 | 1:7,700 |
| 50+ | 304,712 | 2407 | 1:123 |
So, if you’re over 50, you have a one in 123 chance of dying if you test positive. That ought to worry anyone, given that there are 22,000,000 people over 50 in this country. It potentially means another 150,000 deaths for instance.
And all this ignores long covid. All evidence indicates that as much as 25% of cases result in long-term illness or disability. Given that the govt’s aim is to infect everyone, there are likely to be 15,000,000 disabled or long-term ill in a couple of years.
Also extremely worrying is the positivity rate. There is such a shortage of test kits right now that not everyone is getting tested, leading to around 30% positivity compared to 10% a few weeks ago. That suggests that the real incidence of the virus in the popoulation could be three times higher than is being reported. We can pretend cases don’t exist, but when they translate into hospitalisation and death, cold hard reality will hit.
