According to Health Secretary Sajid Javid, there are currently 4,713 confirmed Omicron infections in the U.K. But in his statement to Parliament yesterday he added that the UKHSA has estimated the true current number of new daily Omicron infections to be around 200,000 (I assume in England, though he didn't say). He added that this represents around 20% of the current estimated daily infections in England, including 44% in London. Note that these UKHSA figures are based on modelling that has not been released to the public.

Separately, the UKHSA has reported that just 10 people so far have been admitted to hospital in England with the Omicron variant (most of whom are double-vaccinated).

On transmissibility, early UKHSA estimates for the household secondary attack rate (the proportion of household contacts an infected person infects) using contact tracing data is 21.6% for Omicron and 10.7% for Delta. This suggests Omicron (incidentally, pronounced with a short 'O' as in orange, not a long 'O' as in over - omega is the Greek letter that signifies a long O) may be around twice as transmissible as Delta in the current population. However, to put this in context, note that the Alpha direct secondary attack rate in December 2020 was estimated by the UKHSA at 15.5%, while the Omicron estimate is based on a small number of infections and, according to the UKHSA, "may be influenced by improved ascertainment around Omicron cases". The equivalent figure for "Omicron confirmed, highly probable, probable or possible" is 15.2%. In any case, even on the likely inflated figure of 21.6% it means that only around one in five household contacts of those with Omicron go on to test positive, and the difference in absolute terms between Omicron and earlier variants is only that 5-10% more of a person's contacts become infected.

New Zealand's prime minister has given some Kiwis an early Christmas present as she announced that newly relaxed Covid-19 restrictions, based on a 'traffic light system', allow for orgies of up to 25 people.

Speaking in an interview with New Zealand's Seven Sharp on Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that the traffic light system, which is being implemented as the country reopens from strict Covid-19 measures, would allow for the most intimate of gatherings.

Having been asked to explain some of the finer details of the traffic light system, Ardern confirmed that everything from dating to sex parties is back on the table.

"I can confirm that Tinder liaisons have reopened," she stated, adding, "it's not strictly embedded in the traffic light system but um, it is a given, up to 25 actually, in a red area."

The blame game continues against the unvaccinated and it is affecting many lives and relationships.

You are surely well aware of the divide that has cemented itself in society as a result of vaccination segregation. Not all people who chose to take the experimental COVID jab are afraid of the unjabbed, and more than a few are quite critical of the segregation measures that have been implemented.

However, it cannot be ignored that public health officials have done everything they could to drive a fear-based hysteria of the unvaccinated as some sort of disease-peddling class of unclean citizens.

How many times have we heard terms like "pandemic of the unvaccinated"? There is no evidence for this, in fact there is growing evidence to the contrary. The dreaded Omicron variant - which causes common cold-like symptoms - has been spread round the world by the vaccinated. And more and more regions are now finding that COVID-positive vaccinated patients are filling up death tallies.

If things are allowed to continue, within a decade or so, every sports record held by a woman will fall to a biological male.

There might be some exceptions, like gymnastics, but you know what I mean.

Now that a biological male named Lia Thomas has been allowed to compete against girls and erase and smash all their records, what's stopping other men from switching genders to achieve fame and Olympic Gold?

What stops men from flooding the zone as female wrestlers, basketball players, and soccer players? What's preventing men from dominating track and field, tennis, water polo, boxing, and you name it...?

As things stand right now, there is nothing to stop them, but there are all kinds of incentives.

If anything, this Lia guy, who was mediocre when competing against other men, will show the way to easily get your shot at the Olympics.

New York's top ethics panel on Tuesday ordered disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to pay the state $5.1 million in book profits he made on the backs of taxpayers amid the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The extraordinary resolution was approved by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics in a 12-1 vote — a month after the ethics agency voted to revoke its prior approval allowing Cuomo to earn outside income from his book "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic" while he was still governor and New York was in the throes of the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

JCOPE rescinded its approval after concluding that Cuomo violated pledges not to use state resources or government staffers to prepare the book. He must pay the money to the state by next month.

In China, 138 locally-transmitted cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Zhejiang Province. These cases are said to be from the new Delta strain, "sub-lineage AY.4", prompting authorities in the province to bar millions of people from travelling to other parts of the country.

A surge in Coronavirus cases that too shortly before the Winter Olympics, which is set to take place in Beijing in February 2022, has become the cause of anxiety among officials.

The state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday that Zhejiang province has recorded 138 locally-transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and one asymptomatic carrier since December 5-12.

German police have been filmed in a viral video displaying their meticulousness by using measuring sticks to determine whether people at a protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates are following social-distancing rules.

One version of the video garnered over 1.8 million views as it made the rounds on social media on Sunday. While the source of the footage is unclear, it was purportedly shot at a demonstration on Saturday in Frankfurt and showed police walking through a crowd, using folding rulers to check whether people were standing at least 1.5 meters apart.

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced Saturday that he is planning on enacting an "assault weapons" ban modeled after the Texas abortion law.

Newsom further commented that he has told his staff to collaborate with the California legislature and attorney general to work on the proposed bill.

The specifics of the legislation are still in the works, but the gist of it would be that "anyone who manufactures, distributes or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts in the State of California" could be sued for up to $10,000 per violation plus costs and attorney's fees, according to Axios.

Following the thousands of hours the Chicago Police Department spent investigating Jussie Smollett's hate crime hoax, the former Empire star is now being sued over $130,000 for the time spent by the department's officers investigating the incident.

The city will be going forward with a $130,106.15 lawsuit against the star after Smollett was found guilty on five counts of disorderly conduct, according to the Daily Mail.

In a July 2019 legal filing from the department, they stated that more than two dozen cops spent weeks investigating the Smollett's claims, logging 1,836 overtime hours in the process.

Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers are committed in principle to education and jobs for girls and women, a marked departure from their previous time in power, and seek the world's "mercy and compassion" to help millions of Afghans in desperate need, a top Taliban leader said in a rare interview.

Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also told The Associated Press that the Taliban government wants good relations with all countries and has no issue with the United States. He urged Washington and other nations to release upward of $10 billion in funds that were frozen when the Taliban took power Aug. 15, following a rapid military sweep across Afghanistan and the sudden, secret flight of U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani.

"Sanctions against Afghanistan would ... not have any benefit," Muttaqi said Sunday, speaking in his native Pashto during the interview in the sprawling pale brick Foreign Ministry building in the heart of the Afghan capital of Kabul.