It's a straw man to say that the government should react to every new variant. Since March 2020 there have been probably thousands of new variants, but just a few have been considered dangerous enough that governments needed to consider changing policy - Alpha, Beta, Delta and now Omicron.Lootman wrote:I agree, but what would you prefer? That the government over-react every time there is a new variant just on the off chance that this time might be the real deal?zico wrote:It's not really a case of whether people "tolerate" a lockdown, if we do have another lockdown, it'll be the case (as usual) that it's absolutely unavoidable because the situation is so serious, because the initial response was too little, too late. Lockdown is likely to be a moot point anyway with Omicron, because by the time it's clear to our government that a lockdown is needed, it'll be far too late to do anything about it.
Usually the Covid panickers are arguing for data and evidence. Now you are arguing to panic now and worry about the data later!
The word "panic" gets thrown about a lot, but really the operative word is "caution". There is data for Omicron - as Chris Whitty said "everything we do know about Omicron is bad". It spreads faster, it's resistant to vaccines. We don't yet know whether it is milder - despite lots of people/media pushing the "mild" line for all its worth.