So what is the difference between NYC & Massachusetts, where Covid cases are falling rapidly, and Florida where they are not. Oh, only the proper public health practices which Florida does not follow. Seeing that Omicron started in all three places at about the exact same time... then if the Omicron wave cycle decline was only based on "the virus" then all three locations should be seeing a steep decline now. But they are not... only the places following proper public health practices are seeing a steep decline. Massachusetts COVID Cases On Steep Downward Trend, According To Latest Data https://boston.cbslocal.com/2022/01/18/omicron-peak-mass-covid-cases-steep-downward-trend/ COVID-19 cases in NYC show omicron infections may be plummeting https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid...icron-infections-plummeting/story?id=82271946
Biden's home tests and masks will be "too little, too late"... 4 signs Omicron may soon peak in the U.S. https://news.yahoo.com/4-signs-omicron-may-soon-peak-in-the-us-153809296.html
Lets' take a look at reality... there are only a small number of states where Omicron has peaked. Omicron cases seem to have peaked in northeastern states, but national case tally remains at record levels and hospitals are slammed Hospitalizations are averaging 156,505 a day, the most since the start of the pandemic, and daily deaths are above 1,900, up 54% from two weeks ago https://www.marketwatch.com/story/o...-levels-and-hospitals-are-slammed-11642520495 Jan. 19, 2022 Signs that the omicron-driven surge of coronavirus cases may be peaking in northeastern states where it took hold earliest weighed against continued stress on hospitals on Tuesday, as the national case rate stood at a record of about 800,000 a day. Cases appear to be peaking in New York City, Cleveland, Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to a New York Times tracker. But hospitalizations are averaging 156,505 a day, up 54% from two weeks ago and the most since the start of the pandemic, and daily deaths are above 1,900, up 54% from two weeks ago. The Times and other media outlets are reporting about the pressure on hospitals that are suffering staff shortages, also due to omicron. Hospitalization numbers include people who are in the hospital with another ailment but have tested positive for COVID. New cases have climbed more than 400% in Alaska, Oregon and Utah, the tracker is showing. Over the holiday weekend, experts cautioned that omicron may not accelerate the pandemic’s transition to an endemic phase, where the virus remains a risk but has become more manageable. The fact that the variant is far more transmissible but appears less lethal had raised hopes it would replace other variants and gradually help end the crisis. (More at above url)
Analysis: How Omicron highlights fading hope of herd immunity from COVID https://www.reuters.com/business/he...s-fading-hope-herd-immunity-covid-2022-01-20/ The Omicron variant, which is spreading far faster than previous versions of the coronavirus, is not likely to help countries achieve so-called herd immunity against COVID-19, in which enough people become immune to the virus that it can no longer spread, leading disease experts say. From the earliest days of the pandemic, public health officials have expressed hope that it was possible to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, as long as a high enough percentage of the population was vaccinated or infected with the virus. Those hopes dimmed as the coronavirus mutated into new variants in quick succession over the past year, enabling it to reinfect people who were vaccinated or had previously contracted COVID-19. Some health officials have revived the possibility of herd immunity since Omicron emerged late last year. The fact that the variant spreads so quickly and causes milder illness might soon expose enough people, in a less harmful way, to the SARS-COV-2 virus and provide that protection, they argue. Disease experts note, however, that Omicron’s transmissibility is aided by the fact that this variant is even better than its predecessors at infecting people who were vaccinated or had a prior infection. That adds to evidence that the coronavirus will continue to find ways to break through our immune defenses, they said. “Reaching a theoretical threshold beyond which transmission will cease is probably unrealistic given the experience we have had in the pandemic,” Dr. Olivier le Polain, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters. That is not to say that prior immunity offers no benefit. Instead of herd immunity, many experts interviewed by Reuters said there was growing evidence that vaccines and prior infection would help boost population immunity against COVID-19, which makes the disease less serious for those who are infected, or become reinfected. “As long as population immunity holds with this variant and future variants, we'll be fortunate and the disease will be manageable,” said Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. NOT LIKE MEASLES Current COVID-19 vaccines were primarily designed to prevent severe disease and death rather than infection. But clinical trial results in late 2020 showing that two of the vaccines had more than 90% efficacy against the disease initially sparked hope that the virus could be largely contained by widespread vaccination, similar to the way measles has been curbed by inoculation. With SARS-CoV-2, two factors have since undermined that picture, said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "The first is that immunity, especially to infection, which is the important kind of immunity, wanes quite quickly, at least from the vaccines that we have right now," he said. The second is that the virus can quickly mutate in a way that enables it to elude protection from vaccination or prior infection - even when immunity has not waned. "It changes the game when vaccinated people can still shed virus and infect other people," said Dr. David Wohl, an infectious disease specialist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. He cautioned against assuming that infection with Omicron would increase protection, especially against the next variant that might arise. "Just because you had Omicron, maybe that protects you from getting Omicron again, maybe," Wohl said. Vaccines in development that provide immunity against future variants or even multiple types of coronaviruses could change that, said Pasi Penttinen, the top influenza expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, but it will take time. Still, the hope for herd immunity as a ticket back to normal life is hard to shake. "These things were in the media: 'We’ll reach herd immunity when 60% of the population are vaccinated.' It didn't happen. Then for 80%. Again, it didn't happen,” Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, told Reuters. “As horrible as it sounds, I think we have to prepare ourselves to the fact that the vast majority, essentially everyone, will get exposed to SARS-CoV-2," he said. Global health experts expect that the coronavirus will ultimately become endemic, circulating persistently in the population and causing sporadic surges. The emergence of Omicron, however, has raised questions about exactly when that might happen. “We will get there," said the WHO's le Polain, "but we are not there at the moment.”
'Stealth Omicron': Is subvariant BA.2 a more transmissible strain of COVID and should we be worried? By Ian Smith & David Walsh • Updated: 21/01/2022 - 14:10 Just as governments across Europe have voiced their intentions to ease COVID-19-related restrictions, the spectre of another wave of the virus is sparking concern among the scientific community. Omicron subvariant BA.2, which is being dubbed with the moniker "Stealth Omicron," appears to be gaining ground in certain parts of the world, including Denmark and the UK. Why "Stealth Omicron"? Given the speed at which it is outpacing other Omicron subvariants, it is sparking fears that a more transmissible strain of coronavirus is actively spreading through the community. COVID variant B.1.640.2: What we know so far about the new strain found in France UK watching BA.2 'closely' The UK Health Security Agency designated the BA.2 as a variant under investigation on Friday while emphasizing that current case rates are very low. The agency said they will undertake further analyses. "53 sequences of the BA.2 sub-lineage of Omicron had been identified in the United Kingdom," it said in a statement. "This sub-lineage, which was designated by Pangolin on 6 December 2021, does not have the spike gene deletion at 69-70 that causes S-gene target failure (SGTF), which has previously been used as a proxy to detect cases of Omicron. UKHSA are continuing to monitor data on the BA.2 sub-lineage closely". Dr Meera Chand, Incident Director of the UKHSA said "It is the nature of viruses to evolve and mutate, so it's to be expected that we will continue to see new variants emerge as the pandemic goes on. “Our continued genomic surveillance allows us to detect them and assess whether they are significant". Should we be concerned? Omicron, which is also referred to as B.1.1.529, has three main substrains, BA.1, BA.2, and BA.3, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Up until now, it has been BA.1 that has been dominating with the WHO estimating it makes up a large majority of all Omicron cases. However, in some places, the BA.2 has begun to spread faster. In Denmark, it now makes up almost half of all Omicron cases. Other countries such as the UK, Norway and Sweden are also experiencing an increase in BA.2 cases, although not to the same extent. "Initial analysis shows no differences in hospitalizations for BA.2 compared to BA.1,” said Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, a government-run infectious disease research center, in a statement on Thursday. "Analyses regarding infectiousness and vaccine efficiency etc. are ongoing, including attempts to cultivate BA.2 in order to perform antibody neutralization studies. It is expected that vaccines also have an effect against severe illness upon BA.2 infection". https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/...nsmissable-strain-of-covid-and-should-we-be-w ---------- wrbtrader
I think it's time to admit that covid isn't going anywhere, there will be no vaccine that will eradicate it. It will wind up being like a permanent really bad flu that you have to get a vaccine for every year. That vaccine will be good at keeping people from getting really sick and dying but not from getting infected. By the time they know there is a new variant of concern, it will be too late to get a variant specific vaccine into production. Hopefully the new pill turns out to work on all strains. If not, it is just a matter time before we get a variant as transmissible as omicron but replicates in the lungs a little better than delta and we will live in a 3rd world country for a while.
Reinfection rates To assess the impact of Omicron on reinfection rates the researchers used genotype data, since even prior to Omicron, reinfection was correlated with negative S gene Target Failure data, likely due to random PCR target failure caused by the lower viral loads associated with reinfections. Controlling for vaccine status, age, sex, ethnicity, asymptomatic status, region and specimen date, Omicron was associated with a 5.40 (95% CI: 4.38-6.63) fold higher risk of reinfection compared with Delta. To put this into context, in the pre-Omicron era, the UK “SIREN” study of COVID infection in healthcare workers estimated that prior infection afforded 85% protection against a second COVID infection over 6 months. The reinfection risk estimated in the current study suggests this protection has fallen to 19% (95%CI: 0-27%) against an Omicron infection...... https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evades-immunity-from-past/ ---------- wrbtrader