5 reasons you should not deliberately catch Omicron to 'get it over with' https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/5-...y-catch-omicron-to-get-it-over-with/20072889/ The question hung in the air like a bad odor, silencing the small group of fully vaccinated and boosted friends and family at my dinner table. "Why not just get Omicron and get it over with? It's mild, right? And it can boost immunity?" The fully vaccinated, boosted, well-educated friend who asked was sincere, echoing opinions heard on many social platforms. The idea of intentionally trying to catch Omicron is "all the rage," said Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, with an exasperated sigh. "It's caught on like wildfire," agreed Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "And it's widespread, coming from all types of people, the vaccinated and boosted and the anti-vaxxers," he added, with a warning. "You'd be crazy to try to get infected with this. It's like playing with dynamite." In case the thought had crossed your mind, here are five reasons why you should not purposely try to catch Omicron. 1. It's not a 'bad cold' Significant fever, body aches, swollen lymph nodes, sore throats and heavy congestion are often reported even in milder cases of Omicron variant, Murphy said, leaving people debilitated for days. "People are talking about Omicron like it's a bad cold. It is not a bad cold," Murphy said. "It's a life-threatening disease." A recent study of over a million people published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the risk of a severe outcome from Covid-19 was higher in vaccinated people who were 65 or older, people with weakened immune systems, or people who had at least one of the following health conditions: diabetes or chronic kidney, cardiac, pulmonary, neurologic or liver disease. However, even people without any underlying health conditions can get severely ill, Murphy said. "I have a vaccinated, boosted patient right now -- over 65 with no underlying risk factors — who is in the hospital and doing poorly." It is true that if you catch the Omicron variant of Covid-19, as opposed to the Delta variant, "you're less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to go to the ICU (intensive care unit), less likely to be put on a mechanical ventilator and less likely to die -- and that's true of all age groups," Offit said. "But that doesn't mean that it can't be a severe illness," Offit added. "It's just less severe. But you don't have a 0% chance of dying. You should never want to get infected." 2. You could get long Covid Losing your sense of smell (and therefore your sense of taste) has become a more common symptom in mild cases of Covid-19. Studies show some 80% of people recover the ability within a month or so, but others still can't smell or taste after six months or more. An unfortunate few may never regain those two senses. As unpleasant as that may be, it's only one of a number of health concerns that can last and last after a case of Covid-19. Called "long Covid," the phenomenon is characterized by such debilitating symptoms as shortness of breath, severe fatigue, fever, dizziness, brain fog, diarrhea, heart palpitations, muscle and abdominal pain, mood changes and sleep difficulties. Severe forms of long Covid can damage lungs, heart and kidneys, as well as your mental health and may qualify as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal statutes. "We're still trying to understand long Covid," Offit said. "Because we don't understand it, I wouldn't be so quick to want to get an infection from a natural virus. "A natural virus is always called the wild type virus, and there's a good reason for that: It's out of control," Offit said. "Don't ever risk catching an infection from a natural virus." 3. You're spreading the disease to children Just over half (54%) of children between the ages of 12 and 17 eligible for Covid-19 vaccines have been fully vaccinated. Only 23% of children between ages 5 and 11 have received their first dose, according to the CDC. Because booster doses -- considered a key warrior in the fight against Omicron --were just approved by the CDC for children as young as 12 last week, few children have received that third shot. That means any risky behavior that might expose you to Omicron, such as not wearing a mask, not following social distancing guidelines, or gathering with crowds, especially indoors, will potentially expose others who may then carry the virus to their children. Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows an upward trend of infections in children, which far exceeds "the peak of past waves of the pandemic." "For the week ending January 6th, over 580,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported," according to numbers released Monday by the AAP. "This number is a 78% increase over the 325,000 added cases reported the week ending December 30th and an almost tripling of case counts from the two weeks prior," the AAP stated. Covid-19 Infections in children have typically been mild so far in the pandemic, but the sheer magnitude of cases caused by the very contagious Omicron variant is sending children under age 18 to hospitals in record numbers, according to data from the CDC. "I would say the best way to keep those children protected is to vaccinate them as they're eligible and surround them by siblings and parents who are vaccinated themselves," said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in a Friday news conference. 4. You'll stress the health care system By deliberately catching any variant of SARS-CoV-2, which is the official name of the novel coronavirus, "you're going to keep the pandemic going and stress the health care system," Murphy said. Over the weekend, nearly a quarter of the more than 5,000 hospitals that report into the US Department of Health and Human Services said they were suffering a "critical staff shortage." That's a larger number than any other time during the pandemic, the data showed. Staffing shortages are expected to grow even more as frontline health care workers are either infected or forced to quarantine after being exposed to Covid-19. The dearth of health care staff couldn't come at a worse time -- more than 138,000 Covid-19 patients were in US hospitals as of Saturday, according to HHS. In addition, the HHS data found that ICUs across the country are more than 80% full, with almost 30% of the beds being used to treat Covid-19 patients. Elective surgeries are being cut, and health care officials are worried that the nation's health system won't be able to do its job. "The health care system is not just designed to take care of people with Covid. It's designed to take care of kids with appendicitis and people who have heart attacks and get into car accidents," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, told CNN on Sunday. "And all of that is going to be much, much more difficult because we have a large proportion of the population that is not vaccinated, plenty of high-risk people who are not boosted," he added. 5. Don't mess with Mother Nature Was it ever a good idea to catch a disease on purpose? Those of a certain age will recall when parents used to host "chicken-pox parties" to expose their young children to an infected child. Because cases of adult chicken pox are more severe, the idea was to have your child catch it early to "get it over with." "Oh, that was a bad idea too," Offit said. He told a story about an educational film on vaccines he made years ago, and the cameraman revealed he had a sister who had taken her child to a chicken pox party. Tragically, the child died from the infection. "Don't mess with Mother Nature," he said. "She's been trying to kill us ever since we crawled out of the ocean onto the land."
Scientists start to predict that omicron will peak in U.S. in coming weeks, but hospitalizations remain at record levels https://www.marketwatch.com/story/s...lizations-remain-at-record-levels-11642002986
Omicron's different lineages not only help to increase its transmissibility but also increase reinfections. For example an example of reinfection, someone becomes infected in Denmark with Omicron (lineage BA.2) and has only a mild illness. 91 days later, the same person travels to the United States and gets reinfected with Omicron (lineage B.1.1.529). Pango Lineages Simply, the same Variant of Concern (Omicron) causes reinfections due to a different lineage of Omicron. Yet, it's important to note that reinfections are rare but they do in fact occur along with the fact they cause different types of Covid illnesses within the same patient when comparing the two Covid infections. Just as important, reinfection does not get labeled as such until after confirmation from genomic sequencing. Also, note that all Variants of Concerns have different lineages within the same country and in different countries. Therefore, my hypothesis is that reinfections are primarily occurring (although rare) within people that travel although reinfection can occur in someone that has not traveled but instead was exposed to someone else that had traveled. Thus, their first infection occurs in one location of their country...they then recover from their Covid illness. Next, the same person then travels to another location within their country, maybe exposed to someone that has traveled or travels to a different country and becomes reinfected with the same Covid Variant of Concern that has a different lineage. Thus, reinfections have been confirmed within the same Variant of Concern by a different (tiny change) in the genomic of the VOC. Simply, each Variant of Concern have sub-groups. wrbtrader
IMO -- with Omicron we have finally arrived at a Covid variant which is a step beyond being merely vaccine evasive... at least in regards to transmission. The various vaccines only seem to be 30% effective or so at stopping infection --- where 50% is usually set as the barometer where below this level is useless. This means -- according to one example -- with Omicron if you put 30 fully vaccinated people in an indoor room for several hours with no social distancing, no masks, and limited ventilation then it is likely that 20 out of the 30 will be infected with Omicron (if 1 person showed up with it originally). There is even an "live" example of this recently. With Delta, for which the vaccine effectiveness was still generally above 75% for stopping transmission, it would have been likely that only one additional person at most would have been infected. (Also note that the formulas for effectiveness and efficacy are not "linear"). Fortunately the vaccines are still over 80% effective generally at stopping severe Covid illness with Omicron which is important. And fortunately that Omicron is generally less likely to cause severe illness and death, but the next variant may be just as infectious as Omicron and deadly as Delta -- which would be a very bad combination. Especially for the unvaccinated who would bear the brunt of the hospitalizations and deaths.
Variants of Concerns are probing and looking for weaknesses in our immune system defenses. It's the reason why I expect to see more of them because the world as a whole is very unhealthy. Considering they can be birth anywhere in the world...pray that a Variant of Concern doesn't come along that has the qualities of both Delta and Omicron. Yet, due to the fact that there are so many Pango Lineages of each Variant of Concern, a more pathogenic Variant of Concern will most likely be birth that will hit most of the not vaccinated very hard (Hospitalization, ICU Admission, Death) and hit most of those vaccinated with mild illnesses. wrbtrader
So we have reached the end of another week of Omicron in North America with a number of new and continuing developments and highlights. The cruise ship industry appears to be on the edge of stopping sailings in the short term from U.S. ports due to being overwhelmed with Omicron. Nearly every cruise ship is having outbreaks involving 50 or more passengers and crew on every voyage. Most major cruise lines have cancelled voyages on one or more ships in upcoming weeks -- most likely due to not having sufficient crew due to illness. The cruise lines have been transferring sick crew members to unused ships -- leaving increasingly smaller number of healthy crew members available. On the good news front the CDC is stopping their oversight of the cruise industry as of January 15th and letting them handle Covid themselves by not renewing the conditional sailing order. In medical news -- there is more commentary that being infected with Omicron may prevent infection with Delta. This was based on on small initial study but there appears to be more confirmation. However this is next to meaningless in view that Omicron is so much more infectious than Delta and has effectively wiped Delta out (in areas where Omicron is present). It should be noted that more studies have come out confirming that being infected with Delta provides nearly no immunity from being infected with Omicron. WHO noted several things over the past week including that we cannot vaccinate our way globally every 6 months with new boosters to address variants. We need a next-generation vaccine for coronavirus. Based on media, WHO also noted that Omicron re-infections can occur -- which is not good news even within a variant family. The CDC has updated the mask guidelines in view of Omicron being more infectious than previous variants. Cloth or basic surgical masks only really serve to prevent you from transmitting Covid -- they are not very useful in preventing you from catching Covid. Hence they only work when nearly everyone is wearing one in an indoor setting. N95 & KN95 masks are more effective as stopping you from receiving Covid and being infected. The CDC is recommending people use these N95/KN95 masks due to how infectious Omicron is. And should we mention Omicron is vaccine evasive and cases nationally are at a peak level. The epicenters of the original Omicron breakout in the U.S. were originally New York (NYC) and Florida (south Florida). This is understandable since NYC and Miami are leading transit hubs. Omicron cases are dropping in NY and other states which were initially infected in the northeast. However Florida -- another state with the first cases -- is not seeing cases decline yet (nor is it expected until early February). Note that the Covid public health policies in New York and Florida are very different. Additional studies, government data, and medical facility reports are confirming that Omicron is 70% less severe than Delta in terms of hospitalizations across all age groups. The ICU numbers show that the unvaccinated are still much more likely to be very severely impacted with Omicron. However the huge case numbers of the very infectious Omicron variant are leading to peak hospitalizations and stress on medical systems. Including staffing shortages of medical workers being out with Omicron. This has led to a small number of hospitals demanding the asymptomatic staff members continue to work -- which has been roundly criticized by some virus experts. Even with the CDC reducing the quarantine time to 5 days from 10 days -- many businesses have a large number of workers out with Covid. This is has led to some businesses across the U.S. closing or reducing hours due to staffing issues. This trend is likely to continue over the upcoming weeks -- possible leading to further supply chain shortages for food in grocery stores and some other items.
US Covid-19 hospitalizations expected to substantially increase from an already record-high over the coming weeks, expert says https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/17/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html
US Surgeon General warns ‘next few weeks will be tough’ as Omicron spreads https://nypost.com/2022/01/16/us-su...t-few-weeks-will-be-tough-as-omicron-spreads/
‘The economy cannot stay open’: Omicron’s effects ricochet across US Biden has vowed to keep businesses and schools open but some experts wonder if that’s possible given nature of Covid variant https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ses-effects-schools-supply-shortage-hospitals