Whitty points out there is at least a compensation for the speed at which Omicron is spreading.

Says it will probably "peak really quite fast. My anticipation is it may then come down faster than previous peaks" The downside: "even if it is milder, because it's concentrated over a short period of time, you could end up with a higher number than [January's peak] going into hospital on a single day. That is entirely possible."

Cummings and the government seem to mean different things by "herd immunity" so arguably they both have a point The strategy has always been to stop so many getting sick at once that the NHS was overwhelmed.

initially the plan was to achieve this by allowing the disease to pass through the population in a managed way

New: The government is proposing a 1% pay rise for NHS staff in 2021-22.

This is going to be explosive after the lack of extra cash in the budget - unions livid and preparing to accuse ministers of failing staff who got the nation through the pandemic.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… Dept of Health says that "Anything higher would require re-prioritisation", which sounds like Whitehall-speak for the Treasury wouldn't give us any more money

Neil Ferguson of Imperial says his modelling shows that with NHS ICU surge and new national lockdown, Covid-19 demand on hospitals likely to be "within capacity"

This could work... Ferguson say initially it was thought there were "clear advantages economically to having it over by the summer" if the NHS could cope.

But then modelling found it couldn't and "slightly reluctantly" Britain moved to lockdown