B.1.1.529 WEDNESDAY 22nd DECEMBER 2021

And now we go live to today’s Covid figures:

• New cases – 106,122 (+58.9% in the last seven days)
• Deaths – 140 (-2.7% in the last seven days)
• Hospitalisations – 813 (+2.3% in the last seven days)

The new cases represents a British record, the most ever since mass testing was introduced. A truly terrifying figure. The deaths, not so much. Having said that, 140 deaths today is the equivalent of an Airbus A319, a type of plane which flies regularly from my local airport, Adge Cutler International, crashing and killing everyone on board. I wonder what people would be saying if we were losing five or six planes a week? But aren’t we anaesthetised to the grim death toll of Covid. We just see the TV news and go, “Oh.”

Having said that, deaths are actually down which, on the face of it, is very good news. Omicron is wildly out of control yet deaths are nowhere near the figure they were last year when vaccines weren’t a thing.

I keep reading, particularly from South Africa, that Omicron is very mild, barely more than an irritating cold. Then I read that we don’t actually have the data to assess that it’s going to be milder here. And then I go back to Facebook and I learn from some of the greatest virologists and epidemiologists in the land – well, all right: someone told them down the pub – that it’s over and we should open up once and for all, rather like we have now. The ‘I don’t know’ is the worst bit.

I know loads of people who have Covid, all of them vaccinated, and none seem to be very sick. I’m highly encouraged by that. Some people tell me they were far more ill after their booster jabs than they were with Covid. And if Omicron is a milder form, then we will be on the way to a more normal future. Won’t we?

Honest answer: I don’t know. And I’ll only really believe it when and if Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance tell me that it is.

I think I have escaped Covid so far, although I may have had it before Boris Johnson told us “You must stay at home” back in March 2020, shortly before the time when he and his pals were on the piss in the Downing Street garden. I’ve had my three jabs and the odds suggest I might not die if I finally get the bugger.  But I won’t bet the house on it until I hear the latest facts. Until then, I’m staying safe. At least from when I get back from the pub later this evening.