THE ominous clouds of Omicron, the highly transmissible Covid variant, are continuing to spread malevolent microbes of fear, distrust, and panic across a nervous and polarised UK.

I’m becoming very concerned that we are again being softened up by our grandstanding health officials and alarmist, but skint, Scottish Government. Instead of holding their nerve and calmly waiting on incontrovertible and tangible evidence to justify their rattled response, in echoes of Christmas Past, they now look determined to press the panic button and reintroduce punitive restrictions, and punishing lockdowns and bring our new-found festive freedoms to a juddering halt, creating economic chaos in the process.

Tougher Covid rules on movement and gatherings are lying in wait and ready to be implemented at short notice. These damaging restrictions will, as Leon Thompson of UK Hospitality Scotland says, only “prolong the agony” already felt by our long-suffering hospitality, tourism and culture sectors.

If 250,000 workers heed the First Minister’s advice and abandon their offices to work from home until well into the New Year, then the effects on the High Street will be catastrophic. Footfall will fall off a cliff just at a time when, as David Lonsdale of the Scottish Retail Consortium points out, struggling “businesses are trying to find their feet after the past 20 months of the pandemic”.

Across Britain, there has been a drop in hospital admissions, the numbers in ICU wards and mortality rates. What is also becoming clearer by the day, in a position supported by the WHO and from the South African scientists who first alerted the world to Omicron, is that it’s nowhere near as deadly as Delta.

In Scotland, of the hundreds of Omicron cases so far reported, the good news is that no-one has yet been hospitalised or died. Even better, both Pfizer and BioNTech have announced that the booster provides an effective defence against this new variant.

It seems that despite the rapid exponential spread of this new variant, we are in no more danger of succumbing to serious illness or death than we were before its discovery but, instead of being cautiously optimistic, we are overreacting and preparing to lay another pathway of fear instead of a positive road to recovery.

On Wednesday, a year to the day since the vaccine rollout began, Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf hailed the vaccine programme as an “overwhelming success” and “providing us hope for the future”.

Really? It seems a very strange way to celebrate a successful vaccine programme which continues to make great strides against coronavirus and all its variants, by ramping up restrictions, and frightening the nation with the damaging threats of worse to come.

I know her poll ratings have dropped since they stopped broadcasting the FM's Daily Doomcast but do we really need them to return? Positive messaging and daily encouragement from the government is what should be prescribed, not never-ending daily doses of negativity.

The Scottish Government should instead be concentrating on opening our country back up, not cowering in fear, and threatening to curtail our freedoms every time a new variant raises its ugly head.

Our economy is taking a tanking, hospitality, tourism, retail, travel, public transport, live shows, and events are all being slowly strangled. There is now nothing left in our national shortbread tin, not a note or even a groat, to help bail these vital industries out, all of them major employers. You can forget any emergency assistance from Westminster – the Chancellor has already ruled that one out.

That’s why I agree with Scottish Labour's budget call that Finance and Economy Secretary Kate Forbes makes sure “every penny counts” and uses the extra £3.9 billion in Barnet consequentials it will receive from the UK Government “to deliver a real recovery for Scotland and invest in our future."

It’s time the Scottish Government were aspirational, brave and fully focused on Scotland’s economy, its recovery, and regeneration, not just fear of Covid and their fear of the unknown.

If they don’t this hellish game of hide and seek will never end.

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