The Telegraph, 27 November, Matt Ridley
Here we go again, fighting the last war. Because governments are perceived to have moved too slowly to ban flights when the delta variant arose in India, we jumped into action this time, punishing the poor South Africans for their molecular vigilance. But nothing was going to stop the delta going global, and the latest set of government measures to stop the spread of the new omicron variant are about as likely to succeed as the Maginot line was to stop General Guderian’s tanks. The cat is already out of the bag. Just because we can take action does not make it the right thing to do.
This pandemic has mocked public-health experts. They told us to wash our hands and then realised it was spreading through the air. They told us masks were useless and then made them mandatory. They sent covid cases to ordinary hospitals where they infected patients.
Banning flights might have stopped the Wuhan variant of SARS-CoV-2 right at the start had the Chinese authorities not insisted until mid-January 2020, along with the World Health Organisation, that the only way to catch the virus was from an infected animal. Since then, the virus has evolved to be ever more infectious. Alpha spread twice as fast as the original Wuhan strain; delta twice as fast as alpha, and omicron looks like it may have doubled that speed again.
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