Christmas isn’t cancelled – hurray for anyone with a perfect family, condolences to those with a drunken aunt who burps after every brussel sprout.
The First Minister had little choice yesterday but to introduce new restrictions in the face of a “tsunami” of Omicron cases.
Cases are rising faster than any variant that has gone before, with spread doubling every couple of days and it will become the dominant strain within days.
Cases have increased by a quarter in the past week.
No doubt Nicola Sturgeon will be criticised, as though she is some modern day Stalin, but if anything, she should have gone further and perhaps shut down nightclubs.
The extra £100million for businesses hit by restrictions is good news but without furlough from Westminster, that won’t pass down to the pockets of workers who find themselves with fewer shifts, particularly in hospitality.
The booster jabs are not being rolled out fast enough by the Scottish government, for all Sturgeon’s promises.
My earliest online appointment in Glasgow came up for February.
Restrictions only work if people adhere to them and sadly many are already dismissing the small requirements currently in place.
Last week in a supermarket, four of the five staff I saw weren’t wearing masks, and many customers weren’t either.
It was the last hour of the shift and wearing a mask for hours is hellish, but then so is being a nurse on a Covid ward full to the max or a business which has too many staff isolating to run it. When I challenged one male worker in the same
supermarket, wearing his mask under his chin, he said with no sense of irony that he couldn’t make the customers do it and turned back to filling the freezer.
We get that staff can’t push the point with customers but at least they could set an example. Supermarkets have profited hugely from this pandemic. A staff member at the door worked in the beginning of this pandemic and it can again.
And if staff are struggling with masks, perhaps they should be given more breaks, not to mention a decent wage as compensation.
Most of us are less vigilant than we were, washing our hands less and failing to social distance.
Not wearing a mask seems to be a badge of honour for a particular type now, who picture themselves as brave dissenters, so much smarter that us “sheep”
These dissenters range from those who can’t be bothered to the conspiracy theorists who believe the vaccine is all about mind control.
Unless Bill Gates is making me watch too much Netflix and eat entire Battenburgs, I haven’t noticed any mind control since being double jabbed.
In fact, bring it on, my mind is doing a lousy job of staying in control.
QAnon, which is anti-vax and believes Hillary Clinton and a host of celebrities are child traffickers, saw its traffic rise by 700 per cent at the beginning of the pandemic.
These are not just some crazy American Trump supporters, and there are plenty of Scots who adhere to the theories.
One carer I know told me she knew for a “fact” the veracity of the QAnon theory that Michelle Obama is a man and Barack Obama is a transgender woman.
She also told me Covid is simultaneously a hoax and is spread by 5G but thankfully my mask was hiding my dropped jaw.
For the response to Covid-19 to prove effective, governments need to disseminate clear messages which build trust and ensure transparency.
Boris Johnson, whose own teacher at Eton accused him of narcissistic exceptionalism, didn’t even wear a mask on a hospital visit. Add to that the No10 Christmas parties and we have a very murky message.
But we are not “sheep” and Boris is no shepherd, and he has never been an example we should follow.
As a nation, we have to take Omicron as an opportunity to reset and remind ourselves that we will be entering year three of this pandemic, if we don’t take these new restrictions seriously.
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