For those maybe just about to book flights - maybe wait and lets hope this DOESNT become a "thing"? :-(

[Nirish guy]

If people were to hold off on booking flights for their vacations until there were no more variants being discovered in the world, they may never get a chance to take a vacation again.

Correct, but I a lot of scientists are flagging up "hey, heres a new thing and we need to look into it as it could be a bigger problem than before" and airlines and the stock market are already factoring that into their thinking and planning then as per my OP IF 'I" was about to press "book" on a long haul flight personally I think I'd think it appropriate to give it a week or so until a bit more information was forthcoming re that perhaps, but each to their own of course.

My position on this is very simple: Get myself fully vaccinated (done).

Totally agree there, do all of that and then get on with things - that is on the assumption that the vaccine actually WORKS on a new strain - again I'd think waiting a week or two to find that out would be sensible, but again maybe that's me.

people die from "stress" than anything else, including covid-19. .

Oh please, you cant be serious, that's not even worthy of a reply.....

I just remind myself to laugh out loud every time I hear an overly paranoid person freaking out over this bullshit. Laughing is good for the soul.

Well if by overly paranoid you mean being aware of situations as they develop and try to alter my life around them so they affect me less then I guess I'm guilty of that - and as for laughing being good for the soul, do be sure to tell that the people who have lost their loved ones to covid, I'm sure that will be a great comfort to them.