25 December

For those drunk on the hopium of ‘lots of infection will make us more immune and make the pandemic go away’, Omicron is happily reinfecting people who catch it, sometimes only weeks later. It’s so infectious it may surge and fall very quickly. But it won’t leave an immune population in its wake. Covid is still coming for all of us, because we refuse to stop it. That’s not a good thing. (It’s in my family, and ruined some Christmas plans, like thousands of others.) Maybe 2022 will be the year we sober up on the hopium and realise ‘let’s all get infected, to stop us all getting infected’ is exactly as stupid as it sounds. Latest research (as just one example) still showing brain damage from even mild infection. It’s not a cold.