After 80 years of COVID mayhem, it looks as though, certainly in the West, and this is

such an important caveat, such an important caveat, because it's part of the problem.

Certainly in the West it seemed as though we were clawing our way through a misery which

has defined so much of our life for such a long period of time towards the semblance of

whatever normality was. Mass vaccination in many Western countries seemed a huge triumph,

bringing down a horrific death toll, a death toll which of course has seen in this country

excess deaths of, or deaths generally of around 140 to 150,000 people, about three times

more than the Nazi Air Force managed in the blitz, and hospitalisation was being brought

down. Now they'd been talk of COVID burning itself out, that it had gone in every possible

direction it realistically could be as to, in terms of the variance, and variance of course

was something which in 2021 we became all too familiar with. But even before the latest

news there was cause for anxiety, because lockdown had returned to Austria, the Netherlands

is sliding back that way, and restrictions have been tightened in other European countries.

Now here in the UK, if we're going to be brutally honest, we became pretty blase, or many

did, certainly not a couple of the experts we have to, what many of the experts we have

today, but a death rate, a daily death rate up between 125 and 161, as well as rampant

infections and huge numbers of long COVID something which is not spoken about enough. But

the news that South African scientists had discovered a new variant, Omicron, continued

the theme of ruining the Greek alphabet, variously described as horrific, and the worst

one yet, with numerous mutations which occurred, and we don't know properly yet, I mean it's

resistance of vaccines, all of this obviously has caused horror and has chilled billions of

people across the world. We know, we don't know, and it's very important we say this, because

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