Why do we presume Omicron is dangerous when the signs are that it is not?

Not all epidemiologists are pessimists or alarmists. Not even all the ones who get covered by the media. Professor Tim Spector, for example, is given BBC airtime, so is respectable, doesn't think vaccine passports will achieve much but goes along with them in the UK for the time being, thinks masks probably don't work, but nevertheless thinks the English ought to wear the and advises them to be cautious over Christmas. He strongly recommends vaccines for older people, but thinks people under 50 are more likely to contract Covid in the lengthy queues for the vaccine than to gain any benefit.

Professor Spector said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme yesterday, talking about the Omicron variant of Covid (why don't we call it the Botswanan variant?):

'The majority of symptoms are just like a common cold, so we're talking about headaches, sore throat , runny nose, fatigue, and things like sneezing. Things like fever, and cough, and loss of smell, are actually now in the minority of symptoms that we're seeing.'

Omicron might well be a blessing, lightly disguised.

Why not give people advice and let them decide for themselves?

This is opposed to the spirit of the age, a spirit created by statist academics and experts, the dirigiste and Napoleonic European Union, the American Democrats, big restrictions on free speech and now by Covid rules.

Lockdowns have been a terrible mistake, I think. Unless people agree that they are the world is in very big trouble.

Instead people who say so find it hard to publish an opinion, like the people who think climate change is either not a big thing or not something we can do anything about.

British Conservative backbenchers are the great exception as far as Covid is concerned. They make me realise that some people in the Tory party are still genuinely conservative and sensible. 

99 MPs, almost half the Tory MPs who are neither government ministers nor what are called Parliamentary Private Secretaries to ministers, rebelled against Johnsons's policy to require a vaccine passport — comprising either proof of vaccination or a negative test —  for entry to nightclubs and indoor unseated venues with capacity for more than 500 people.

I was pleased when I saw in the papers today the rebellion compared to that by Tory MPs who voted against stricter gun laws after the 1996 Dunblane massacre. They were right back then, I think.

One Tory journalist wrote an article calling a move to ban firearms “something-must-be-done-ism” and implying the action was “authoritarian”. Earlier this year he was accused of “a callous disregard for others” by the father of a child killed in the horrible massacre. The Tory in question was Boris Johnson.

Shortly after that, Tony Blair and New Labour won the biggest victory since 1906 and the UK became authoritarian and left-of-centre, which it remains to this day. 

The differences between David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson up till now and Tony Blair are very slight. Brexit, so far, has not led to more freedom. The reaction to Covid makes things very much worse.