I must admit I intended my previous plague update to be the last one. Frankly I felt I had milked it pretty well and there are only so many ways you can say "yep, Covid still hanging around".
So what changed my mind? What dramatic new development made me decide to circle back to the plague updates? Desperation really. The simple fact is that almost nothing has happened in my life over the last eighteen months or so that isn't Covid related. I have done little travelling, almost nothing significant has occurred to prompt a blog entry and there are only so many reports on war games I can write before my non wargaming readership drops from few to none at all.
So, how about that Omicron hey? Not only does it have a name like a super villain from a particularly cheap sci-fi movie but it has exquisite timing. Our state leaders (except WA of course) flung open the doors and Omicron promptly went through them. When Delta hit a few hundred cases a day it was enough to prompt my state government to institute a lockdown. Omicron has now clocked five thousand in twenty four hours and the state government is like "Oh just cover your mouth when you cough."
Strangely they're probably right. The whole point of lockdowns is to stop the virus spreading and I think we can say that ship has sailed. In fact it has sailed, reached the opposing shore, launched landing craft and its army is currently battling its way up the beach. Instead of lockdowns we now have "personal responsibility". Both the federal and my state governments are basically telling everybody to just be responsible. Which makes a certain amount of sense if the government isn't going to be but I wonder if any of our elected representatives have worked out that if people behaved responsibly there wouldn't be very much need for government at all.
Expecting everyone to behave responsibility isn't just a justification for avoiding lockdown its also a justification for disbanding the police and dismantling our prison system. To say nothing of speed cameras. Still people are responding to the call. Testing centres are overwhelmed to the point they have had to shut down, people are queueing up for booster shots and once again our vaccine supply is being called into question. So the people are behaving responsibly, unfortunately it would appear the government isn't.
A part of the problem is the timing. Not only had the government just released the shackles on the population but Christmas is just around the corner and the government is desperate for everybody to have as "normal" a Christmas as possible. I have to admit a feeling of existential dread has been part of my Christmas tradition for as long as I can recall but its nice to have others with me this time.
In Victoria the police have a new toy to play with. The government has decided to equip them all with tasers. Whether this is in response to increasing levels of Covid based irritation or just an indication that the public is getting surlier with time wasn't explicitly detailed.
In good(ish) news there are hints that Omicron might be less interested in killing us than earlier variants of the virus. This is moderately good news for us and excellent news for the virus. Here's the thing, the virus doesn't want to kill you. It wants you to live a long happy life, raise some kids and pass the virus down to them as a sort of RNA heirloom. If you die that means the virus has to find somewhere else to live and it has to do it quickly. This is why Ebola isn't a particularly effective virus, it tends to kill people so rapidly that it runs out places to live. Pretty much all you have to do to beat Ebola is set up a cordon sanitaire around the infection zone and wait for everyone inside it to die. Gruesome but it works.
Covid was nothing like Ebola in terms of lethality and with Omicron there are hints that it has learnt to dial down the entire "killing the host" thing to an even lower level. Unfortunately this is more likely to mean the damn thing will be with us forever. Look out for Plague Update # 597 coming sooner than you think.
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