Sometimes it is hard not to fantasise that there must be some evil genius lurking behind Covid-19. If the virus was a sentient being, it would certainly be an extremely clever as well as a nasty one. Omicron is running riot at exactly the right time to cast a shadow over the festive season, in something of a Christmas repeat of the Alpha version being identified as a variant of concern last December.
A year on, and the gloomy tone of TS Eliot’s Journey of The Magi seems even more apposite in describing our pandemic weariness: “A cold coming we had of it / Just the worst time of the year / For a journey, and such a long journey.” We need to be a nation of wise people. We can only face it.
Without denying the seriousness of the monsoon of allegations raining down on Boris Johnson, I have to confess that a large part of me simply couldn’t give a fig. Not long after he became prime minister, I wrote here that Johnson is a “stranger to the truth”, and I’ve never had cause to revise that opinion. His days in Downing Street — a place that in a word association game would now prompt responses about illicit parties and pricy wallpaper — are diminishing. I don’t see his prime ministership recovering and can’t imagine he will lead the Conservatives into another general election. Johnson served his purpose in winning the last election in the unique circumstances of Brexit, and I suspect Tory MPs will want to remove the comedy baddie from the stage before the next one.
These are important matters, with all sorts of political ramifications. But I still don’t much care. If we can possibly achieve it by an act of collective will, we should ignore the pantomime being played out by and around the prime minister, let whatever due processes are assembled take their course, and focus on what we all need to do: get the virus under control by any means necessary and prevent our health service from falling over this winter.
Hopefully, one day we will look back on that and remember what we did; not at how little regard we had for a long-gone prime minister, or even how horrified we were at the antics of some of those who worked for him.
Advertisement
The real threat that Johnson poses, and the main reason for sidelining him from what we give our attention to, is that flagrant breaches of Covid rules in the Downing Street operation he presides over risk popular compliance with public health messaging and thus its effectiveness.
The more that politicians and health officials take us into their confidence about where we are with this pandemic, the greater trust people will have in what we’re being asked to do. In that sense, the tone of Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid briefing on Friday was refreshing, even though its content was profoundly depressing. Its purpose was to “level” with us about the spread of Omicron across Scotland, including “what we are likely to face in the days and weeks to come”.
As well as being much more transmissible than the currently dominant Delta variant, Omicron can get through our vaccine defences to some extent. Nonetheless, vaccination is still our best protection and booster doses make a huge difference.
We have to keep going and do what’s required. It gets harder on such a long journey, but this is a Christmastime to keep the faith.
