Escape from Howard Springs and Other Lunacy Around the World
Omicron spreads globally, largely with mild symptoms, but authoritarianism may be spreading faster.
It has been a week since the world went mad over Omicron. I felt it timely to check in and see what is truly known about the new variant. Every hour there are headlines that cases being found in a new country. Omicron is spreading but so is COVID in general. The more we look, the more we find.
Often the most important clues are found in what is not being said. Suspiciously missing from most headlines is any claims about severity. Severity is the key to whether Omicron is bad news or good news. Around the globe, governments are locking down and locking up their citizens just as COVID could be taking a turn for the better. The best outcome is a new variant that spreads so widely and wildly it pushes Delta aside while at the same time the variant gives you symptoms so mild it is mistaken for a common cold.
Currently the biggest emergent risk to society’s health is how our authorities are reacting to both Omicron of late and COVID as a whole. I can’t judge whether those overreactions are simply governments appeasing a petrified populace and if they are an effort to extend authoritarian reach. I suspect it is a healthy amount of both.
I am not saying Omicron is certain to end up mild. It is too early to tell. Severe Omicron cases causing millions of hospitalizations and death are still possible. So far, no evidence, though. For what it is worth, there is evidence of prison break being tied to Omicron.
Cases are on the rise in South Africa but everything is “mild”
In the past week, we are seeing Omicron around the globe despite travel restrictions. Omicron has been found in 38 countries. Yesterday, United States had ten reported cases in five states. This morning, we are up to ten states. By all reports, cases are mild. In South Africa, where Omicron was found, cases are rising and rising fast. Last Friday, when Omicron was given it’s name by the World Health Organization (WHO), the country had 2,828 cases in a day. Today that number is 16,055. There is no information about how many of these cases are the Omicron variant, but these are happening in the country’s largest province Gauteng where Omicron was discovered. There is clearly a connection.
It is as if every researcher in the world is racing to find out if the variant evades the vaccine and natural immunity. No official word on it evading vaccine protection but one researcher, Dr Juliet Pulliam, released a study this week that looked at reinfection rates there in South Africa. Her team concluded reinfection rates in the country were on the rise in recent weeks. Beyond that, they couldn’t determine much else because the team lacked any information on vaccination status, and were not privy to which variant was causing the reinfections. US mainstream media took that paltry amount of information and pronounced, “Omicron covid variant three times more likely to cause reinfection than delta, S. Africa study says.” Having gone through the study, I think a more accurate characterization is, “There has been a big uptick in the number of people getting reinfected with COVID in the area where Omicron was discovered. We don’t know how many of them are vaccinated or even if it is Omicron that they are being reinfected with. Yet, something is afoot.”
Another odd (mis)representation of South Africa’s data is in hospitalizations. Some have reported that hospitalizations were rising. In recent days – yes. But in the last two weeks or the last two months, it has been dropping substantially. It doesn’t look to me that the hospitals in the region where Omicron was discovered are being overwhelmed. Take a look at the data and judge for yourself.
On two international flights 10% are COVID positive but asymptomatic
South Africa can’t tell us anything about the vaccination status of those with Omicron, but the Netherlands (and the US) can. Amsterdam is a global travel hub to and from the continent of Africa. On the day the world went apoplectic over Omicron, two Dutch planes were en route from South Africa. Upon arrival, Dutch authorities promptly detained and tested the more than 600 passengers. By regulation all non-vaccinated people required a negative test result to board, but vaccinated passengers need only show their papers.
Roughly one out of ten, or 62 passengers, tested positive. The flight was long but not long enough to allow for someone to catch COVID on the plane and test positive upon arrival. Also, it has been shown that COVID is rather unlikely to spread on planes due to their air filtration systems. Thus, that 10% of the passengers likely had COVID when they boarded and did not know it. Of those that tested positive, roughly 90% were vaccinated.
As for Omicron, 14 of the 62 COVID-positive passengers were found to have the new variant. The rest presumably had the Delta strain. Of those 14, all were vaccinated. No one of the 62 were particularly sick. All were simply quarantined at nearby hotels. Here, in what could be thought of as the largest outbreak of Omicron anywhere in the developed world, the term “mild” seems like the word of the day.
This comes at a time when Europe is enacting some of the most authoritarian measures on their citizens since World War II. Germany has announced that it will follow its neighbor Austria in forcing unvaccinated citizens into lockdown. Germany is expected to follow Austria in mandatory vaccination for all adults. This comes in a week where researchers confirmed that not one healthy German child over the age of four has ever died of COVID. Despite surging case rates, the Netherlands, has paused any further escalation of policies after protests against such policies (locking up of the unvaccinated) resulted in violence. Protests gave way to riots. Police ultimately fired on crowds in Rotterdam, injuring seven. There is a fine line between protecting the people and punishing them.
The more we search for Omicron the more we find COVID
The KLM plane situation has taught us more about COVID generally than it did about Omicron specifically. I am unaware two plane loads of passengers have ever been spot tested for COVID before. It is a good case study of COVID itself. Having 10% of travelers on a given day testing positive speaks to how much COVID is around us, particularly in vaccinated individuals. That 10% sounds scary. Something must be done, right? Or not. As professional athletes would be the first ones to tell us, the more random testing we do, the more COVID we will find. The Dutch are not unique here. With ten Omicron cases in the US, we see a similar pattern. Nine of the ten cases appear to be in vaccinated individuals and all ten cases appear to be mild.
In short, COVID threats remain what they have been. The efforts to learn quickly about Omicron are confirming much of what we already know, some of which governments are unwilling to admit:
· COVID is not a pandemic that can be ended. It is endemic and will be with us.
· Vaccines and natural immunity provide protection from hospitalization and death.
· COVID almost never causes any harm to healthy children, regardless of vaccination status.
· Across the entire population we now know that your age, your health, and your weight can influence severe outcomes. Beyond this, fatality rates of COVID are primarily tied to how well (particularly how early) we treat the patients with COVID. Therapeutics work.
· Reinfections are very possible but are likely to be mild. Omicron could be making them more frequent.
· Breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated cases now occur regularly. They, too, are generally mild.
· Vaccine effectiveness begins to drop by the third month and is near ineffective at stopping transmission by the sixth month. Omicron likely exacerbates this trend.
· The older you are, the more overweight you are, and the more health issues you have, the more likely you are to benefit from vaccines.
· The younger you are, the more risks of vaccine adverse reactions outweigh any vaccine benefit.
· Outbreaks or waves happen in regions and at times regardless of the vaccination levels of that region.
COVID’s true nature is becoming rather clear for those willing to look. It is a very deadly disease for some. For the rest, we have far more to fear from efforts to eradicate the virus than from the health risk of the virus itself. A dichotomy has emerged that, despite facts about COVID being endemic and generally benign to much of the population, governments are doing more harm to their less vulnerable citizens than COVID is.
How lockdowns for ‘the good of the public’ give way to authoritarianism
Australia gets the unflattering award for the developed world’s shiniest example of authoritarianism. The city of Melbourne, located at the southern-most tip of the mainland, recently was a protest flashpoint for lockdowns. Police were known to round people up (sometimes tackling them in the street) and forcibly lock them in their homes. For those allowed out of their homes, social distancing was enforced through drone surveillance.
Not to be outdone, Darwin, one of the northern-most cities on the continent, has a built an internment camp called Howard Springs. This 2,000-person detention center is now fully operational and even hitting its limits. This is because internment is not simply limited to the COVID-positive. It also includes suspected positive patients, people who have been in close contact with a positive patient, and people simply deemed untrustworthy.
I realize that sounds far-fetched. It did to me until I heard the story of Hayley Hodgson, 26, a new arrival to Darwin. She had recently moved from Melbourne to flee the lockdowns and protest she was seeing there. Darwin is located in the Northern Territories, a state/province roughly twice the size of Texas. This vast but sparsely populated region has not yet seen a total of 300 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Daily COVID cases for all of the Northern Territories most days are measured single digits.
One day, shortly after one of Hodgson’s work colleagues tested positive for COVID, two undercover police officers showed up at her house. She had been seen in contact with the colleague and was tracked by her scooter’s license plate which was caught on video surveillance. When asked if she had gotten a tested, she panicked and lied to say she had and that she didn’t have COVID. They left. Within hours she was contact again by government officials saying they could find no record of her testing. She apologized and admitted she had lied. She was told she had to be sent to a quarantine camp but was told that it was only temporary until she tested negative. Two uniformed officers returned and ushered her into a van to the camp.
Hodgson chronicles in a 20-minute video interview how she was forced to remain there for 14 days despite testing negative three times. I recommend you watch this video or read the article. One day she stepped off her porch outside without a mask and was promptly cited for the infraction. She was told that if it happened again, she would be fined $5,000. Camp authorities made it clear they could extend her stay if she caused further trouble. If the isolation and lock up was too much for her, they’d be happy to medicate her with Valium.
When the 14-day ordeal was over, she contacted the Australian CDC to find out why she even had to stay. She never did have COVID and had three tests to prove it. The CDC said her detention was because she had initially lied about taking the test. You might be tempted to think this is a unique situation or Hayley Hodgson over-dramatized the feeling of incarceration. Corroboration is out there that people see this as imprisonment. The UK’s Guardian newspaper (hardly a conservative news outlet) confirmed that three people interned at Howard Springs had been arrested for scaling the fences in the wee hours of the morning before the sun came up. Sounds like a prison break to me.
Once captured, the three escapees were promptly tested for COVID (results were negative) and they were properly arrested for their decision to leave. Maybe the three was just fleeing in fear of this dangerous new variant that only hits people with mild symptoms. It turns out Omicron was detected at that facility the day prior. I suspect they were more afraid of their government than the virus and simply wanted their freedom back.
In Conclusion
This modern-day Alcatraz (minus the pretty view of the Golden Gate bridge) tucked away in the Australian bush will be certainly seeing more of Omicron. Australians caught abroad due to boarder closures are being returned on special “repatriations flights.” Anyone lucky enough to take one of these flights into Darwin also gets a 14-day stay at Howard Springs included with the flight.
One territory in Australia is locking up 2,000 of its people at a time when that territory has not yet seen 300 COVID cases ever! As well-intentioned as these facilities might sound to some, it is becoming clear Australians have more to fear from abuse of power than the new variant. At least the Dutch put their detainees up in a local hotel.
Omicron may be spreading fast but there are no signs yet of it being deadly like Delta. I’ll keep one on the spread for all of you, but I’ll be keeping my other eye on authoritarianism that seems to be spreading just as fast.
(Complaints, praises, critiques and other feedback all welcome. Send it to bbanish@gmail.com. If you find this interesting let me know, forward to someone you know. )