NYT: Omicron’s BA.2 version is rising, complicating hopes of living with the virus: The week in Covid news.
You should look at Covid by ethnicity by each state. You'll then understand what is meant by the following... Race and ethnicity are risk markers for other underlying conditions that affect health, including socioeconomic status, access to health care, and exposure to the virus related to occupation, e.g., frontline, essential, and critical infrastructure workers. The CDC chart below states the below... Yet, to better understand the socioeconomic, access to health care, and who tends to be more exposed to the virus...you need to look at each state. In fact, a specific ethnic group will be the worst in one state and then the best performer in another state. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race You can dig deeper by looking at the ethnicity groups by country and you'll see similar info...one ethnic group is one of the best performers against Covid in one country while one of the worst performers against Covid in another country. Simply, socioeconomic status, access to health care, and exposure to the virus are the most important variables to determine Covid infections, hospitalizations and death. wrbtrader
It's possible for viruses to target certain ethnic groups more than others because of genes that are unequally distributed. That's the essence of Russia's accusation against the US about research in Ukrainian biolabs researching the Slavic genome. There was a post some time ago that suggested black Africans have a higher incidence than whites of a gene that protects them from Omicron.
GWB and his idiot idol, Anthony Fauci find all sorts of fake viruses to pull out of their asses. Nobody is paying attention and more and more people just living their lives. Oh, the horror, what are ET trolls like GWB going to do? Nobody is believing any of my lies and disinformation? GWB, here is an idea, go apply for Jen Psaki's position. You cannot do any worst with the lies and disinformation, you are an expert at lying by now but, you will get a 6 figure salary doing so.
In my studies and internship in Genetics...its a possibility but the uneven distribution from state to state and again from country to country implies there are other variables much more important... Simply, socioeconomic status, access to health care, and exposure to the virus are the most important variables to determine Covid infections, hospitalizations and death. Yet, the genomic research in the haplogroups H5 and H6 involving the Slavic genome is well known in human genetics, especially in Europe. I remember in college whenever I would visit my mother in Chicago or visit her family in France...I do wonder about their Slavic genome advantages but less so today due to how hard Covid hit the European countries including the minority ethnic groups within those countries. Anyways, not too long ago I posted a cryptic image here at the forum about Russia's military scientist's great fears of Ukraine...specifically the Russians from central and southern European regions that have a high genomic affinity towards Slavic populations, such as Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, and Slovenes. Nobody here replied nor question the image. My point, is you'll be surprised at the military involvement in the name of science. I strongly believe its how future wars will be fought. "...For military purposes, it will be up to the Department of Defense “to determine which phenotypes…have special relevance to military performance and medical cost containment” and then presumably to select for those. These phenotypes might pertain to short- and long-term medical readiness, physical and medical performance, and response to drugs, vaccines, and various environmental exposures…. More specifically, one might wish to know about phenotypic responses to battlefield stress, including post-traumatic stress disorder, the ability to tolerate conditions of sleep deprivation, dehydration, or prolonged exposure to heat, cold, or high altitude, or the susceptibility to traumatic bone fracture, prolonged bleeding, or slow wound healing...” Below is a less cryptic image but still scary shit because it has many crazy military implications (e.g. whom to draft, where to place certain groups of soldiers based upon ethnicity in War). European genetic structure (based on SNPs) PC analysis wrbtrader
How fast omicron’s BA.2 variant is spreading around the world The impact of the BA.2 subvariant is unclear. An uptick in coronavirus cases in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe is attributed to the new version of the virus. Some experts say a new wave could hit the United States amid relaxed safety protocols in the same way that delta hit last summer when many thought the coronavirus was finished. Evidence is not clear on whether BA.2 causes more severe disease, but vaccine makers have said the protection extends to BA.2. Experts have said they believe infection from omicron provides some level of immunity against BA.2.
CDC Says Omicron Subvariant BA.2 Now the Dominant COVID Strain in the US https://outsider.com/news/cdc-omicron-subvariant-ba-2-now-dominant-covid-strain-us/ According to the CDC, there is a new dominant strain of COVID making its way around the U.S. called Omicron Subvariant BA.2. The strain is thought to be much more contagious than most. And it is responsible for around 54.9% of all new Covid-19 infections reported last week. At a Glance The CDC says that COVID subvariant BA.2 is showing up in high numbers recently. BA.2 is most affecting Northeastern states. While the strain is highly transmissible, it is not more dangerous. The strain is also becoming a global nuisance, according to WHO. (More at above url)
The good news is that the Omicron BA.2 variant appears to be less severe than the original Omicron BA.1 -- especially for the vaccinated. Omicron BA.2 is more infectious than BA.1 (up to 60% more infectious), but the data is showing that it is less severe. Hopefully the trend of new Covid variants being less severe continues over the upcoming months. It should be note that other diseases tend to have a typical trajectory of later generations/variants being less severe over time. A more contagious variant of Omicron is sweeping across America, but it doesn’t come close to the original’s severity https://fortune.com/2022/04/14/a-mo...-doesnt-come-close-to-the-originals-severity/ Since March, the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, known as stealth Omicron, has been the dominant COVID-19 strain in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It now makes up 86% of total cases. The subvariant, identified in January, is following the same path as its predecessors, initially finding a foothold on the coasts before spreading inland. The subvariant can be up to 60% more transmissible than the original Omicron, able to infect people who have already received two doses of the vaccine and been boosted. However, those people may come down with only a mild case or show no symptoms at all. Its “extraordinary” contagiousness, combined with most state and local mask and proof of vaccination mandates dropping across the U.S., is a “formula for spread,” says Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. As the subvariant began to gain steam last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted it wouldn’t develop into as serious a surge as the original Omicron, citing widespread immunity in the general population from previous infections. Omicron peaked in February with a death rate approaching 3,000 people daily. With its BA.2’s growth rate already falling, Fauci's prediction appears to be accurate. “We’re in a position right now to withstand what will likely be a bump rather than a big surge,” Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in San Diego, tells Fortune. Schaffner says the surge isn’t impacting health care systems, the economy, or regular life as much as during previous large surges. “It simply is not nearly as severe, so it's less of a public health problem,” he says. However, stealth Omicron’s relatively limited surge does not necessarily mean a gradual end to the pandemic, with variants becoming less severe over time as the virus embeds itself into the general population. It’s possible that a more virulent strain will emerge as the virus mutates. “The perception shouldn't be that the coast is clear,” says Topol. “I wish it was, but we still have an ominous [threat] out there.” He notes that though BA.2 symptoms are milder for those who have been vaccinated or boosted or else have recently acquired immunity through infection, it’s still a serious threat for unprotected individuals. Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University, points to recent recombinant strains of COVID as evidence of the virus’s continued unpredictability. Strains like “Deltacron” and Omicron XE show how “the virus is able to continue evolving when a high proportion of people are infected,” he says. “If we allow that to continue, we don't know what the next virus will be.” Ray says it’s impossible to predict what symptoms future variants might exhibit. COVID, no matter the strain, is generally an infection with two symptomatic phases, he says: a superficial upper respiratory infection often followed by an “immune-driven cycle of inflammation.” Omicron, he says, seems to have a relatively mild inflammatory phase. “There's nothing about this process that makes us think that the next variant might not have a characteristic more like Delta, with a more severe inflammatory phase,” he says. Ray acknowledges that public perception that the pandemic has entered a milder phase is correct when considering the relatively low hospitalization rate. However, “I think the danger is complacency about that,” he says, especially when immunocompromised individuals remain at risk. That complacency “is understandable in simple human terms,” says Schaffner. “People have COVID fatigue, and there is a great eagerness to leave all the constraints and move into a new normal, which most people hope resembles the old normal very, very closely.” The urge to return to the old normal and the continued unpredictability of the virus lead to certain persistent questions, he says: “Will there be a new variant that crops up somewhere around the world that can evade the protection of our vaccines? Will we accept periodic boosting?” To date less than half of eligible Americans have been boosted, according to the CDC. “I think we will have a lot of work ahead of us if we need periodic boosters of updated vaccines in the future,” says Schaffner—“trying to persuade people to get it, making them feel comfortable, and making them understand that that’s a responsible thing for them to do for themselves and for their families.”