A Ray of Hope

 

Some day we might think of Omicron as the friendly Covid variant. English experts confirm that it is both milder and shorter-lived than its predecessors, the Alpha and Delta variants.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University and the government’s life sciences adviser, said that although hospital admissions had increased in recent weeks as Omicron spreads through the population, the disease “appears to be less severe and many people spend a relatively short time in hospital”. Fewer patients were needing high-flow oxygen and the average length of stay was down to three days, he said.

The proof in the optimism pudding will be in the infection rates after the seasonal holidays.

The NHS Providers chief executive, Chris Hopson, said it was still unclear what would happen when infection rates in older people started to rise. “We’ve had a lot of intergenerational mixing over Christmas, so we all are still waiting to see, are we going to see a significant number of increases in terms of the number of patients coming into hospital with serious Omicron-related disease,” he told BBC Breakfast.

Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said people with Covid should eventually be allowed to “go about their normal lives” as they would with a common cold.

“This is a disease that’s not going away. Ultimately, we’re going to have to let people who are positive with Covid go about their normal lives as they would do with any other cold,” he told BBC Breakfast. “If the self-isolation rules are what’s making the pain associated with Covid, then we need to do that perhaps sooner rather than later. Maybe not quite just yet.

“Once we’re past Easter, perhaps, then maybe we should start to look at scaling back, depending on, of course, what the disease is at that time.”

These interviews leave a number of questions unasked. We don't know what happens with the delta variant or what new variants may be coming, i.e. "what the disease is at that time."  Does Omicron suggest that the virus itself has sort of run its course? Questions unasked usually go unanswered.