These are, of course, finger-in-the-air guesstimates. Nevertheless, the hospitality sector usually makes about a quarter of its £100bn annual revenues in December alone. How much will it miss out on this year? Shares in restaurant groups and airlines inevitably took a bit of a kicking on Thursday.

The bigger issue for many businesses is that they have been cast into a kind of limbo. True, the restrictions are nowhere near as onerous as a full lockdown. But, equally, there is nowhere near as much government support as has been available in the past.

The Treasury is still providing some support in the form of access to government loans and a reduction in VAT for hospitality firms. But this time around pubs, restaurants and retailers will have to continue paying rents and salaries while potentially watching revenues tail off.

And it’s not as if many businesses weren’t already facing significant headwinds as it was. It won’t be long before the Government starts facing calls to reintroduce furlough.

How loud those calls become will depend on how bad things get. It will be at least a couple of weeks until we know for sure. The fact that omicron cases appear to have peaked in South Africa must be offset by the relative paucity of testing in the country. It’s also worth treating South African data suggesting omicron doesn’t result in serious illness with a certain amount of caution too.

Most experts believe that the immunity humans develop after being naturally infected is better than that from vaccines (having both is best of all). In South Africa, the vast majority of the youthful population has already had Covid and is therefore particularly well protected. The UK population is older and more dependent on vaccines. In other words, we are comparing apples with oranges.

So far the markets appear to have shrugged off all these concerns and reached the collective view that omicron will be much milder than previous variants, resulting in a much smaller hit to the economy.

Indeed global markets have not only recovered all the ground they lost when omicron first reared its head but also surpassed previous highs to break new records. Given the level of uncertainty about the new variant, that certainly seems premature.

We can already say that the imposition of Plan B by the Government is definitely hypocritical and at least partly illogical. But unnecessary? We can only cross our fingers and hope so.