A second case of Omicron has been found in the US. This one is in Minnesota, in a man who just returned from an anime convention in New York City. New York City is contacting other people who were at the convention and urging them to get tested. The man's symptoms were mild, and he was at least partially vaccinated (I can't remember if he's gotten a booster).
Omicron has passed Delta to be the most prevalent variant in South Africa, making up 74 percent of all the genomes sequenced in November. It appears that Omicron was there as early as November 8. In the province in which Omicron was first found, the hospitalization rate jumped by 144 percent last week, doubling about every six days. The percent positivity has skyrocketed in South Africa. In mid-November, about one percent of tests were coming up positive. That rose to 10.2 percent then overnight jumped to 16.5 percent. Epidemiological evidence suggests that previous infection does not protect against Omicron. Omicron can bypass the immunity given by an earlier infection. There have yet to be any lockdowns or civic mitigation measures, though a representative of the Progressive Health Forum has advised that "Everyone you know is a potential risk to you."
The EU's public health agency says that Omicron could cause more than half of all new infections in Europe within the next few months. There have been Omicron cases in France, but the current fourth wave there is all about Delta. Germany has gone so far as to ban unvaccinated people from non-essential shops and events unless they are recently recovered which, as noted above, may not mean anything once Omicron takes over. The European Commission president is calling for discussions about mandatory vaccinations. Those could get really interesting.
And here in the US, POTUS says that masks will continue to be required on transportation and in airports until mid-March at the earliest. His press secretary says that "nothing is off the table" and that includes requiring people to be vaccinated in order to fly domestically. POTUS is also stressing the need to get boosters. I'd like to know if there's any thought being given to getting the vaccine-hesitant off the fence to get their first shots. Why are those people not looking at the number of anti-vaccine people who have recently contracted covid and died. I know that several said publicly before they died that they wish they'd gotten vaccinated. The POTUS quote that I've seen repeated on multiple sources: "We are going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion." That's been seen as a jab at his presidential predecessor whether intentional or not.
New York City has announced that it will require teachers in private and religious schools to be vaccinated. This would affect 56,000 teachers at about 930 schools. There may be come controversy about teachers at yeshivas, ultra-Orthodox Jewish private schools. There is resistance to the vaccines within the Orthodox Jewish community; ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the city.
And so time the time passes in which we are supposed to be able to learn more about Omicron's severity and ability to bypass vaccines.
1 comment:
I have decided that as there is absolutely nothing I can do about this variant or any other I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing in the hope that one day we will come through this. I refuse to crawl under a rock until I see some actual data rather than guesswork and speculation. Been there, done that already. "May" and "could possibly" don't cut it for me.
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