News from Nowhere: The Omicron Factor
The British government’s uncharacteristically rigorous first response contrasted very sharply with its previous reticence to introduce international travel restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic.
It has been making headlines across the world. The latest development in this global pandemic has been dubbed the Omicron variant by the World Health Organization. The other significant variants of concern to have been flagged up by the WHO were Alpha (identified in the UK in September 2020), Beta (identified in South Africa in May 2020), Gamma (identified in Brazil in November 2020) and Delta (identified in India in October 2020). It has of course been the Delta strain which has swept the planet for much of the last year.
The world media’s attention has skipped through the Greek alphabet all the way from Delta to Omicron, missing ten letters along the way. The ‘variants of interest’ Lambda and Mu passed by almost unnoticed, as did the ‘variants under monitoring’ Eta, Iota and Kappa, and the ‘formerly monitored variants’ Epsilon, Zeta and Theta (whose threat levels came to nothing). All in all, it feels rather like this sudden shift all the way to Omicron has unexpectedly accelerated our progress towards the apocalyptic endgame that is Omega.
‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the God of the Christian Bible in its final book. ‘I am the beginning and the end.’ While Covid-19’s rapid progress through the Greek alphabet may represent encouraging news for those zealots who believe the end of the world is in sight, and who may actually welcome it, this development might nevertheless introduce some further unwanted anxieties for many of the rest of us.
These worries have perhaps unnecessarily been exacerbated by the WHO’s decision to avoid using the Greek letter ‘Nu’ – because it might have been confused with ‘new’ (as in ‘the new Covid variant is the Nu variant’). The WHO also avoided the letter ‘Xi’ because it is a common family name in China; it is of course the name of the leader of that nation. The WHO observed that the naming conventions for diseases tend to try to avoid causing any ‘offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups’. That sensitivity did not however prevent the eldest son of former American president Donald Trump tweeting, ‘As far as I’m concerned the original will always be the Xi variant.’ (Of course, Donald Trump Junior’s name says it all: the only person on the planet even less mature than his father. His recent support for anti-vaccine protests prompted Vanity Fair at the end of last month to describe him as a ‘world-renowned moron’.)
The international reaction to the news of the emergence of this new variety of coronavirus has been swift and surprisingly decisive. Some nations have taken the extreme step of closing their borders to all non-nationals. At the start of this month, Germany followed Austria and Italy when it announced its plan to ban unvaccinated people from restaurants, bars, leisure facilities and many shops. Ireland has closed nightclubs, reintroduced social distancing and limited the size of groups congregating in hospitality venues. Britain immediately resumed its practice of including riskier countries on a so-called ‘red list’, prohibiting non-essential travel and imposing quarantine arrangements for returning travellers, as well as reintroducing mandatory PCR testing for all travellers entering the UK.
The British government’s uncharacteristically rigorous first response contrasted very sharply with its previous reticence to introduce international travel restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic, and its hesitation in restricting travel to and from the Indian subcontinent following the appearance of the Delta variant a year ago.
The UK’s devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had retained a number of the lesser safety measures which England had abandoned after coming out of lockdown this summer, and also introduced Covid passports as prerequisites for entry to nightclubs and larger indoors entertainment venues. Boris Johnson’s instinct has however always erred on the side of risk-taking bravado, and these had not been his first priorities.
Incredibly, at the start of this month, it was reported by the British press that Mr. Johnson had grown so nonchalant about the pandemic this time last year that he had allowed well-attended parties in to be held in Downing Street in an apparent breach of his own administration’s Covid restrictions. The public outrage at this apparent indifference to the global crisis was exacerbated when footage from that time emerged of the Prime Minister’s press team joking about the possibility that this embarrassing news might leak.
For many in the UK, then, it comes as a great relief that their government at last seems to be taking the situation rather more seriously. However, we may observe that history has perhaps inevitably repeated itself: the Conservative Party’s chairman declared earlier this month that the situation still had not become sufficiently dire to necessitate the cancellation of its staff Christmas parties.
The government has been accused of sending out mixed messages on the subject of festive gatherings, and it might be argued that they could go much further in both the rigour and the rhetoric of their current precautionary strategy. The head of the country’s Health Security Agency has recommended that people avoid unnecessary social activities over the Christmas period. This suggestion has been directly refuted by the Prime Minister. The Health Secretary has asked people to take lateral flow tests before attending festive events; the Science Minister has said that his department’s Christmas parties will go online; but Downing Street has urged the public to go ahead with such get-togethers. One Cabinet member has warned against the yuletide tradition of kissing beneath a decorative sprig of mistletoe, but Mr. Johnson has predictably distanced himself from that advice. While key figures in his administration have urged responsible behaviour, the nation’s happy-go-lucky buffoon of a premier as usual hasn’t wanted to be seen to be trying to spoil anyone’s fun, not at least until the point at which he has no choice. He seems desperate to avoid being portrayed as the man who cancelled Christmas twice.
One of the British government’s senior pandemic advisors said that the latest border restrictions had come ‘too late’ to make a ‘material difference’ to the spread of the Omicron strain. Another added that while all measures would offer ‘some benefit’, the new travel controls would have only a ‘very minor impact’ upon the eventual spread of the disease. It is the case however that these measures were never expected to prevent the variant reaching the UK. The explicit intention had merely been to delay its progress while a better scientific understanding of Omicron was being developed, in order to inform longer-term strategic and medical responses.
Meanwhile, there are those – most notably from amongst the medical community and the political establishment of South Africa, the apparent site of the origin of this new variant – who have criticized the actions of western governments in response to this latest viral threat as hysterical overreactions. They have pointed out that, though this version of Covid features an unprecedented number of mutations, the majority of those infected in South Africa have been young, have not been fully vaccinated and have only experienced relatively mild symptoms. The good news here is that this may suggest that full vaccination could prevent infection. It might however also be supposed that the young would be less susceptible anyway to the more severe symptoms of the virus. Its sudden prevalence in South Africa has indicated that the Omicron strain is overwhelmingly infectious; but that is a country in which only a quarter of the population is fully vaccinated, a population whose relatively high rates of HIV may also have impacted upon levels of immunity. The world’s epidemiologists have been wrestling with these variables and unknowns; and the scientific data that continues to accrue will of course come to offer a more robust evidential basis for the political decisions which must controversially be made before that evidence has fully come to light.
It has also been supposed that there may be political or geopolitical reasons for the decisions already made by certain nations to impose particularly stringent border controls and restrictions upon domestic freedoms in response to the emergence of this new variant. It has even been suggested that these governments may be attempting to take advantage of this situation to justify such draconian measures. There may be some truth in this, in some cases.
However, it is also true that accurate hindsight is a commonly boasted virtue, but that twenty-twenty foresight is a rather rarer thing.
In addition to its resumption of stricter border controls, the British government swiftly reintroduced the mandatory use of face-coverings in retail premises and on public transport from the end of November. These were not seen by most as especially onerous requirements, though they were not particularly popular with the more dogmatically libertarian wing of the Prime Minister’s own party. At the same time, outside Tory ranks, one of the most vocal critics of these measures has been Piers Corbyn, the elder brother of the former Labour leader. This is frankly rather fortunate for the government, as this underachieving, self-publicizing sibling is one of the most widely ridiculed figures in British public life.
Britain’s regular asymptomatic testing regimes have been ramped up, as have plans for the nation’s ongoing booster vaccination campaign. These precautions seem moderate and reasonable. They do not infringe unreasonably or prejudicially upon any individuals’ or groups’ fundamental civil liberties; but they have perhaps surprised a minority of the public, insofar as they have been introduced with an unprecedented degree of agility and speed.
On 8 December, amidst a surge in Omicron cases and fears of the prospect of ten thousand hospitalizations a day, the British government announced the introduction of further emergency measures to counter the rapid spread of the new variant. These included guidance that people should work from home wherever possible, the extension of mask-wearing to entertainment venues, and the implementation in England of Covid-safe certification similar to that seen in other parts of the UK.
For once, it seems difficult for all but the most die-hard sceptics to fault the timeliness of this government’s overall response to these sudden developments in the global pandemic. Just as Nadhim Zahawi, the UK’s first minister for Covid-19 vaccine deployment, has been rightly praised for the efficiency of the roll-out of country’s original inoculation campaign, so the relatively new Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid, appears on this occasion at least to have pitched his policies pretty much right.
(The only other members of the government to have earned such kudos in recent months have been Chancellor Rishi Sunak and the Glasgow climate summit president Alok Sharma, who performed the role of good COP to Mr. Johnson’s bad COP. With these four able political operators as his only serious rivals, it may be that the main reason Boris Johnson had until recently maintained the grassroots support of his party is that he is white – though it has become increasingly obvious that he is by far the least competent member of his own administration. Nevertheless, a poll published earlier this month showed that their leader’s approval rating amongst the party faithful had plummeted to -17 points, while his inane new Foreign Secretary Liz Truss inexplicably led the field at +82 points, her only apparent assets being her aggressively outraged patriotism, her hearty Home Counties bonhomie, her reduced public profile and quite possibly the colour of her skin.)
While many may be understandably loath to blow the trumpet the successes of this administration (whether in relation to its handling of the Covid crisis or more generally in regard to the conduct of its affairs), one is forced to admit that a less urgent alternative to their current actions might have heralded further catastrophe, and that therefore, despite one’s scruples, we might let the longer perspective of history be their judge and concede that pragmatism may for the while be permitted to prevail over ideology.
The British government’s strategy in this situation might of course turn out to have been an overreaction. But an overreaction which at this stage and at this level has relatively minor negative impacts upon individuals and upon the economy is surely preferable to the previous responses of a government which have all too often turned out to be too little and too late, and which have as a result cost the nation so very many livelihoods and lives.
Sometimes, just sometimes, some things are more important than the internecine feuds of party politics; and this critical moment in the history of our species may well prove to be one of those times.