By the Time You Have Red Listed It, You Have Missed It?

When the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 was discovered in South Africa, that country and several other African locations were put on the UK 'red' travel list. This mean't that only nationals were allowed to return from those places and travellers had to quarantine (at their own expense) in specified airport hotels. Eventually, there were 11 countries on the list. Just as quickly, the red list was abandoned, to be replaced by 'costly' testing (https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/red-list-quarantine-scrapped-costly-22460198). 'Red listing' can never work in a country like the UK. As soon as a variant is described here, it's already spread into many parts of the Kingdom. Air and ferry passengers mindle, when they are in transit. This also applies, in spades, to the crews of planes and ships. So specifying the country that individuals are travelling from, is fairly meaningless. Anyhow, the UK is currently experiencing more than 78,000 new daily Covid infections. Many of these will be the Omicron variant. That will make the UK, a net exporter of this variant. Horses and stable doors?