Even without mass deaths, hospitals, schools and the economy may be overloaded by Boris Johnson’s spin of the roulette wheel
The roulette wheel is spinning, the ball already rattling towards its final destination. Boris Johnson has bet the house on his Omicron gamble and now there’s no going back. The bullishness of ministers insisting over the weekend that they see no case for further restrictions glosses over the fact that it may now be too late for that anyway, given an estimated one in 25 people in England already had the virus before New Year’s Eve.
Double or quits it is, then, as a country drags itself back out to work and school after the Christmas hibernation period. We’re about to find out exactly what it means to experience unprecedented levels of Covid infections, but from a strain that may be less dangerous, at least in the fully vaccinated. Once again, a virus we thought we’d got to know has abruptly shapeshifted and once again, history isn’t necessarily a reliable guide to the present. We’re all back on the seesaw, lurching between hope and fear, never knowing quite what to expect.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
