Ljubljana - The weekly Reporter is critical on Monday of the import of Omicron from New Year's Eve celebrations in Belgrade. The carelessness of the people who attended the celebrations will cause many who have successfully dodged the virus for the last two years to get ill. But as the epidemic peaks, most of those carefree people will plan their next holiday.

"As if we didn't have enough virus spreading in the country already, we imported additional infections during the holiday. Knowing that new variants are spreading, that that number of transmissions is rising, and that holiday socialising will lead to an explosion of new infections, Slovenians hopped onto buses to celebrate New Year's."

They went to a country that stands out for its low vaccination rate, where people take pride in how carefree they are to the measures preventing the spread of the virus and whose most famous citizen is a staunch anti-vaxxer who triggered a diplomatic war between two countries on opposite sides of the world last week.

Slovenians who returned from New Year's Eve celebrations in Belgrade infected mostly brought Omicron to the country. 900 people went to Serbia and by Friday 200 have had infections confirmed. Because of them hundreds of other people are in quarantine.

Meeting the vaccinated-recovered-tested rules means nothing if you go into an environment where you have contacts with strangers whose epidemiological status is not checked.

Because of the carelessness of those people many will get infected in the coming months, including those who have successfully dodged the virus for two years. For most people, the symptoms will be mild, but for some it will be a medical ordeal and for some the infection will be fatal.

Yet there will still be many who will complain about the situation of the last two years and will try to ignore the reality. At the end of the month, there could be 10,000 new infections per day, and in February ICUs could be full again, but the tourists from Belgrade will plan their 1 May holidays by then.

"These people will rush to the 1 May holidays immediately after the 24 April election. And I'd venture to bet that most of those who will rush to holiday will not even turn out in the election," reads the commentary entitled Contempt.