Oh, I like to know a lot more than that. I may not need to know, but it's in both my nature and my background to want to know. I sit around here in the evenings discussing this stuff with my medical wife, daughter and son. Come around to my house for an evening of riveting conversation and sparkling wit

They have to deal with this stuff at the sharp end and so far their only source of info about the Omicron variant has been the Daily Mail (and the rest of the hysteria rags). It's only this morning I've seen the first actual information in a journal I'd trust. No doubt there's loads more on the way but it takes time to do the work, write it up and publish it. To misquote Mark Twain, "a headline is halfway round the world before truth has put its boots on". There's money to be made from scaring people.


An interesting ... well, what are we dealing with here? Is it observation, analysis, hypothesis, insider knowledge? Usually though when someone purports to 'know' what's actually going on I tend to react with a degree of suspicion. History has proved again and again that we're all - governments, businesses, markets, all our august institutions - just blown around by the winds of change. Almost nobody has the faintest idea, and if they seem to in the short term, a longer baseline usually shows it was either chance or simply in the right place at the the right time. As is often said of politicians it's better to be lucky than talented. If enough of them spout enough nonsense the chances are someone will get close to what actually happens.