What a load of complete nonsense. There has been no "fear mongering" to begin with. There has been understandable caution and precautions taken to deal with worst case scenarios.

Which is a whole lot more sensible than just winging it and hoping it will be OK. Your Mr Micawber approach, in that something good is bound to turn up, is no substitute for comprehensive preparations.

There has been no staff drops as a consequence of this imaginary "fear-mongering". There has been a great deal of devoted hard work, long hours and extra shifts. All done to try to help people, many of whom who are presenting with Covid are like you, unvaccinated. Staff aren't leaving so much as seeking less stressful roles, or taking a break. The danger is also that if the infection rate surges, as forecast, that will impact NHS staff more than most, as they cannot work from home.

The amount of crap that comes out of your mouth and fingers must mean your loo is redundant.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

And as for Omicron realistically I think most of us will get it, and the vaccination campaign will cushion the blow somewhat. With something this virulent it would seem to be futile to do anything significant to stop it (lockdowns etc) on account that we'd exceptionally soon be in precisely the same situation as before. As in, if we somehow cut cases to 1000 after a lockdown, who cares when it would fly back up so soon. We're going to have to ride this one out. A combo of vaccines, some possible natural protection protection and hope that it's more mild is what we have to rely on.

I am obviously sorry to hear about your mother-in-law. Sounds like Covid was the final straw, and I hope your father-in-law is OK. Knowing he passed it on must be awful for him.

It's unfortunate that people made the assumption that getting vaccinated meant they couldn't still get infected. I don't think that this has been made clear enough until fairly recently, but I think people are now understanding that, although it reduces the chances of infection, and protects against severe disease, you can still catch it and pass it on. Yours is therefore a very sad story to read.

I don't though think the government encouraged that belief. They encouraged vaccination as a protection against severe disease but weren't strong enough about making sure you still distanced from those whose condition meant they remained vulnerable.

You know I disagree with you over our moral obligation, as citizens, to all participate in the vaccination programme. I won't repeat why, but it has nothing to do with "Boris bloody Johnson". It's to do with everyone, and the need to ensure we have a functioning NHS to serve all our needs.

I don't have any fear that this is back-door authoritarianism. If a bunch of Tory MPs are going to oppose this, then there's no chance any government would succeed in anything really Draconian.

I'll leave it there.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

Yep. Also mainly agree. Further, if the govt lockdown again it'll be game over for BoJo so it would need to be something demonstrably drastic for that to occur. And the data seems to suggest otherwise, right now anyway.

Personally can't see how people are going to be able to avoid it, if it is both vaccine evasive (latest data reckons 5 times more so) and highly infectious. Symptomatically or otherwise. Proof will be in the pudding, or lack of it, this year.

I'm actually optimistic rather than pessimistic – it feels like the last hurrah for the virus, provided proper plans are put in place for being prepared next winter, and every winter, like we have done for flu since the 1960s. If they don't, all hell will break loose, and rightly so.

Don't forget the influenza pandemic lasted 2 years, and that was in 1918 without mass population, global trade and travel. So we're not doing that badly.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

You're right, it doesn't prevent the spread. But from the data it does create a lower chance of it spreading, and with reduced severity (lower viral load). And yes I've heard of plenty of people thinking it does make them invincible but whenever that's mentioned I make it pretty clear that as far as I'm aware it's not, and has never been the case. The same goes for masks... wearing one does not mean you or others are safe. As before especially if it's your old tdeatowel.

That said I don't recall ever being told from an official communication that vaccines make you immune. I do think that they cocked up big time re. comms over masks – it should have been made clear that there was a minimum standard for some protection, rather than giving the impression that all masks are equal. Maybe both should have been made clearer somehow but in my opinion the lack of proper mask education has been much more impactful.

Vaccination, of course, has benefits (previous to this strain, more so) reduction in the severity of symptoms, or elimination of them entirely. This in turn reduces the amount of hospitalisations and viral load which in turn reduces the size of dose you get when coming into contact with someone infectious, which in turn reduces the severity.

That's obviously not the case for all interactions, but it's pretty safe to assume that without it we'd be waiting a very long time to get out of this cycle and the general impact would be far more severe, and for much longer.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

You don't need to leave it there Wisbech, I'm very open to discussion and respect your opinion even if it's one I disagree with.

I do disagree that the government haven't encouraged that belief and think the entire notion of vaccine passports is founded on the principle of unvaccinated people posing a threat to your health, which surely implies that vaccinated people do not.

Sadly my mother-in-law was only in her early 60s and, despite her ill-health, probably would have had a decade at least left. We all knew that if and when she caught it she would probably struggle to survive though and it was for that reason that she stopped leaving the house and was only exposed to the vaccinated.

It was, sadly, a horrific death. She effectively suffocated over a number of days as her lungs gradually failed and she had blood pouring from her mouth, nose and ears and she drew her final, laboured breaths.

We have two young children and I think the hardest thing for my wife and her siblings to process, other than those haunting final moments, is that she will never see them grow up, it's been heartbreaking to see them suffer that grief.

To be honest I'm just very pissed off at the moment. Angry that so many people must be going through similar things and even angrier that this government are seemingly using it a means of exploiting the nation to gain greater control and erode our rights and freedoms. That's why I won't buy into the narrative of vaccination being a heroic gesture, it's coercive control on a mass scale.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...