Sajid Javid at a Conservative Friends of Israel meeting

Introduction – Dec 11, 2021

We know that the Omicron variant is far less severe than Covid-19. In fact Dr Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who first identified the new variant, described the symptoms as being “unusual but mild”, and she admitted to having been taken aback by the response to the new variant, especially in Britain.

In South Africa, we’ve retained a sense of perspective. We’ve had no new regulations or talk of lockdowns because we’re waiting to see what the variant actually means. We’ve also become accustomed here to new Covid variants emerging. So when our scientists confirmed the discovery of yet another, nobody made a huge thing of it. Many people didn’t even notice.

In contrast Britain, which has thus far only seen a few cases, is already talking about imposing new lockdowns. When Dr Coetzee, who is also chair of the South African Medical Association, spoke to the Daily Wire in early December, she confessed to being stunned by the response:

I’m afraid it seems to me that Britain is merely hyping up the alarm about this variant unnecessarily.

Indeed. Since then we’ve seen no surge in deaths from the Omicron variant but we have had alarmist predictions from the likes of Neil Ferguson, who warned that a “very explosive wave of infection” from the new variant could overwhelm the National Health Service.

To put that perspective, last year Dr Ferguson warned that as many as 500,000 could die from Covid-19.

Of course, we saw only a tiny fraction of that in terms of deaths directly attributable to Covid-19. Although we have seen hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of jobs and livelihoods lost due to the lockdowns recommended by Professor Ferguson. Not to mention the millions of operations and cancer tests postponed due to the lockdown, which have no doubt resulted in many more deaths or lives foreshortened.

Now the public are being fed more scare stories that seem intended to intimidate them into accepting more restrictions, and the jab, of course. All of which is being done on the pretext of protecting them from an ailment that has a fatality rate of less than one percent for the under 70s, which is only marginally worse than seasonal flu.

It’s not just illogical, it’s more than that. It’s downright sinister and few can argue against it because this is all being done on the pretext of protecting public health.

Javid advised to take ‘stringent’ Covid measures within a week, leak reveals

Rowena Mason – The Guardian Dec 11, 2021

Britain’s top public health officials have advised ministers that “stringent national measures” need to be imposed by 18 December to avoid Covid hospitalisations surpassing last winter’s peak, according to documents leaked to the Guardian.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, received a presentation from the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) on Tuesday warning that even if the new Omicron variant leads to less serious disease than Delta, it risks overwhelming the NHS with 5,000 people admitted to hospital a day.

In an interview with the Guardian, the epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson said the total could be double that number.

No 10 insisted there were no imminent plans to bring in more measures after plan B measures were announced for England this week but cabinet minister Michael Gove, who chaired a Cobra meeting on Friday, said the government had been presented with some “very challenging information” about the speed of the spread.

The Guardian has seen leaked advice from UKHSA for Javid marked “official, sensitive” saying: “The key point is that under a range of plausible scenarios, stringent action is needed on or before 18 December 2021 if doubling times stay at 2.5 days. Even if doubling times rise to around 5 days, stringent action is likely still needed in December.”

It adds: “The rapid spread of Omicron means that action to limit pressures on the health system might have to come earlier than intuition suggests.” Its calculations suggest that even if Omicron causes a less severe hospitalisation rate of 1% or 0.5% compared with Delta’s 1.5%, then “stringent national measures’” would be needed by 18 December at the latest.

Continues …

Javid advised to take ‘stringent’ Covid measures within a week, leak reveals