Time to get boosted, as Omicron soars, dives

Iwasted part of Saturday afternoon watching the Facebook livestream of the Freedoms and Rights Coalition’s latest mass demonstration in Auckland. According to the livestream viewer count, I was one of just 202 sad saps watching on – hardly the crowd-puller the ringleaders would have been hoping for, given the multiple camera locations and production resource thrown at it.

I was quietly hoping that the event may have triggered an epiphany moment, something compellingly thought-provoking or totally unexpected, prompting me to reassess my own worldview.

Alas, nothing could have been further from the truth.

It was a forlorn, inane and pitiful spectacle peppered with a barrage of infantile protest chants, ranging from ‘‘Jacinda – stick your mandates up your a...’’ to ‘‘Take your hands off our kids’’. Seriously?

The protesters then commandeered the trafficclogged streets, huffing and puffing their way around Manukau on a long and sweaty march.

When it comes to the dreadfully avoidable waste of hospital resources associated with unvaccinated Covid cases ending up in hospital, I’m feeling increasingly Singaporean. It’s time to bill them.

Canterbury’s vaccination rates continue to be nation-leading, if not world-leading, with 99 per cent of the eligible population receiving their first dose and 97 per cent their second.

With the vaccination programme now under way for 5-11-year-olds, it can only be hoped that the overwhelming number of parents will see the wood for the trees and protect their kids’ health too.

Last week, I received my booster dose and was staggered at the lack of demand on local vaccination providers.

Pharmacies are doing a splendid job, delivering much of the heavy lifting on dispensing the vaccine, yet a quick ring around to check on walkin availability at a variety of pharmacies laid bare the trickle of traffic. After rocking into my local pharmacy, five minutes later, it was job done.

Don’t delay what you can do today, if four months has passed since you received your second dose.

With Omicron knocking on our door, Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely is emphasising the importance of boosters, given it lifts protection against infection to 70 per cent, let alone its considerably higher protective shield against serious illness.

Currently, less than 20 per cent of our population has had a third dose.

If we’re serious about minimising the impact of the Omicron wave on our hospital system, let alone daily life, the more boosted Kiwis, the better. It will flatten the impact and reduce the collateral damage.

The good news about Omicron’s curveball is that Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA are all following a similar high-speed trend to South Africa’s explosive rise and fall in case rates.

Within a week of Omicron’s identification in late November, the populous Gauteng province became the first in South Africa to enter a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections.

A mere three weeks later, health authorities said Gauteng’s wave had peaked, with case rates plummeting as fast as they shot up.

Last week, South Africa’s health minister, Joe Phaahla, announced that Gauteng had ‘‘officially exited the fourth wave’’, with the rest of the country about to follow suit.

Don’t delay what you can do today, if four months has passed since you received your second dose.

In Britain, the Omicron wave skyrocketed in mid-December, lurching from 58,000 daily infections to above the 200,000 mark by year’s end. Yet now, case rates are falling rapidly, with the seven-day rolling average plummeting by 49 per cent in the past week.

Hospitalisations remain flat, and the fatality rate has dropped 9 per cent in the past week.

Australia’s trajectory is consistent. Case rates appear to have peaked in New South Wales on January 12, with the day-by-day skyscraper graph now tumbling down.

Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, is also confident that the peak in hospital admissions in NSW has already passed.

Pleasingly, hospitalisation rates remain below even the ‘‘best-case scenario’’ modelling.

The propensity of modellers to overcook the doomster act is troubling.

When Omicron washes across New Zealand, short-lived disruption is the most likely impact, mitigated by booster uptake.

That’s what the real world is graphically showing us.