"It's behind you! I'm not sure about this panto."
At least a dozen employees of BARBRI, the US-based legal education provider, are self-isolating after they became infected with Covid at an internal conference.
Staff at BARBRI, which offers a SQE prep course, met face-to-face at their office in London last week for a two-day meeting.
The conference has resulted in 12 Covid cases “so far”, said a source.
"All government COVID guidance was adhered to", Robert Dudley, BARBRI's Deputy Managing Director, told RollOnFriday, "including each employee taking a LFT before joining".
Despite the precautions and even though the meeting shifted to Zoom for the third day of the conference on Monday, "as advised by the Government", it was too late, and "a handful of employees have since tested positive for COVID this week and are now isolating", said Dudley.
The spreading event testifies to the high infection rates associated with the Omicron variant, and highlights the difficulty of justifying in-person office work, when just saying its name three times appears sufficient to contract it.
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Comments
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A non-story.
It has always been accepted that people will be infected as the world goes back to normal. The vaccines/boosters are there to stop people ending up in hospital when they get infected.
Stop suggesting people should stop living their life and stay at home forever.
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It's got nothing to do with stopping living your life and staying at home. The point that seems to be lost on a lot of people is it's also got nothing to do with how ill/not ill you personally may be if you get it. Rather it's all about ensuring that if the infection rips through the population then those people who do need hospital treatment can actually get it, which requires taking steps to manage the numbers who need treatment overall. Seemingly at the moment we're heading in a direction where that requires more than just vaccine and boosters unfortunately.
So assuming you wouldn't be too ill if you get it (which statistically seems likely), the point is you're being asked to do your bit to help others. Yes that's restrictive, but it is what it is. If you're not comfortable living in a society where that is the case I'd kindly invite you to head towards the door and find somewhere else.
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Well said Anon at 11:09, well said.