Making Sense of the Omicron Nonsense
Just as Americans were digesting their Thanksgiving turkey, the world erupted based on very little information about the new Omicron variant.
I am certain that as you were sitting around the Thanksgiving table this past Thursday you had never heard about the Omicron variant. How could you? The World Health Organization (WHO) only knew about it the day before. Then Friday, November 26th, the WHO met to review data just in from Africa and promptly announced to the world that this SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.529 should be given the Greek letter designation Omicron and they listed it as a “variant of concern.” The world erupted into a coordinated frenzy. News cycles began to spin on virtually no information. Markets took a nosedive and oil prices plunged. Borders were closed. Was this prudent caution or has the world gone mad?
Let’s look at the facts behind the narrative.
No good deed goes unpunished
Earlier this month, Dr Angelique Coetzee first saw several lethargic young men in her South African clinic complaining of headaches, body aches, and a scratchy throat. It was hard to see this as COVID, yet they tested positive. They lacked the tell-tale COVID symptoms such as lack of taste and lack of smell. Thankfully there were no deaths, no need for ventilators. In fact, no one required hospitalization. Some were fully vaccinated, others not. The worst situation was a six-year-old with a fast heart rate that recovered fully in a few days. Dr Coetzee suspected she was seeing something new.
Dr Coetzee said that, had it not been for a particularly low level of COVID in the country mid-November, she would have missed the diagnosis given how subtle and mild the symptoms were. South Africa was averaging just new 250 cases per day at the time. It was only because these cases were so mild yet persistent that she thought to have the genetic strain analyzed. In addition to being a practicing medical clinician, Dr Coetzee is the chair of the South African Medical Association. South Africa is a developed country at the tip of a poor, developing continent. It is home to a quite advanced medical research community which moved quickly to sequence the genome of this virus and declare they had found a new COVID variant. On Wednesday November 24th, Dr Coetzee and her colleagues reported this to the WHO. Within 48 hours, the world turned itself on its head trying to cope.
How was this scientific diligence and transparency rewarded? South Africa and nine neighboring countries were effectively cut off from the world as flights were cancelled and borders were closed. Dr Coetzee, arguably the scientist that knows the most about this variant right now, characterized this as “hastily” imposed and a “knee-jerk reaction”. She highlights symptoms are mild and no one has yet even been hospitalized.
What we know. What we don’t know.
We don’t really know where it originated. There is no evidence that this originated in South Africa. We only know that the South Africans were the first to identify and genetically sequence this new variant. It is theorized that Omicron originated in an AIDS patient in neighboring Botswana, but even that is speculative. The thinking is that a patient with such a compromised immune system is an ideal breeding grounds for mutations to flourish.
We do know Omicron contains a lot of mutations. What makes Omicron notable is the 50 or so distinct mutations from the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus. More than 30 of these are contained in the spike protein. Mutations are concerning because they result in different behaviors of the virus. Different may mean more severe, different may mean less severe. Delta, with its many serious mutations, caught the world off guard this past summer. Despite knowing virus mutate, authorities in developed countries were not on alert, but rather, they were patting themselves on the back following the vaccine rollouts.
We do not know if Omicron mutations make the virus worse than Delta. Most of the mutations are not new as many of the 50 mutations appear in the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants but it concerns scientists that so many were packaged in one variant. Spike proteins are the little red spikes around a sphere in most graphical depictions of the virus. Mutations to this part of the virus make researchers doubly concerned because this is the only part of the virus that vaccines target. It has been long but quietly feared that if the spike protein mutates too much, vaccines will be rendered ineffective. Natural immunity, thankfully, targets the whole virus and not just the spike protein. Here too, there is risk that a highly mutated virus variant renders natural immunity ineffective.
We know of a few hundred mild cases. Once authorities knew what to look for, Omicron was detected in more than a dozen countries in recent days. Presently, there are no confirmed cases in the US but there are two in Canada. It has been found in many European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and the UK. It has been detected as far away as Hong Kong and Australia. South Africa has reported about 100 cases so far and about the same number across the rest of the countries that have detected Omicron. Best guess is that 200-300 cases are known as of today, but that number will climb quickly. So far, these are all mild or asymptomatic cases, mostly discovered through mandatory testing of air travelers.
We know of no serious Omicron cases yet we know COVID is serious. To date, there are no reports of deaths, hospitalizations, or even assertions of severe cases. That will, of course, change. This is COVID after all. It is a deadly disease. Our church has watched as several members die from it. We have watched others severely hospitalized, including one in our immediately family. The recovery from that hospitalization is now going on months, with more to go.
Despite the severity of COVID overall, what happened over the weekend was a grossly disproportionate response, given the information at hand. What passed for news over the weekend was purely speculation. Omicron may or may not be more transmissible (spread faster) than other variants. No one knows. In terms of how severe the disease is, all known information points to a milder variant. That might change but, for now, that is all we know.
We do know of breakthrough cases, but we don’t know if it is worse than with Delta. The most important question on people’s minds is: Will this variant evade the vaccines? Yes, it already is. We know this is true for all variants that after about 5 months vaccine effectiveness is almost gone, hench the Booster Bonanza of late. What is unclear is whether it is worse for Omicron. In South Africa, Dr Coetzee observed that roughly half of the patients with Omicron were vaccinated, and half were not. This is in a country that is less than a third vaccinated. Of the international travelers found having the Omicron variant, a healthy number of them are vaccinated, as would be expected for most such travelers.
Governments are incentivized to hype this situation
The award for the most egregious overreaction goes to New York State where the new governor declared a state of emergency on Friday. This was specific to the Omicron news even though no cases exist in New York or in the entire United States. Elective surgeries are already being curtailed to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed even though there are no reports anywhere in the world yet of someone being hospitalized from the Omicron variant.
So, your Aunt Sally in upstate NY may need to go without her knee replacement for a while, all because people are worried about what might be. I’ll let you decide if this is a great power grab to enhance the governor’s authorities or simply a rookie move by an overzealous governor in office just two months. I would encourage Governor Hochul to read the text of her own declaration of emergency that specifies such orders are for situations where, “a disaster has occurred in New York State, for which the affected local governments are unable to respond adequately.” Such orders are to be used for events having occurred (past tense) within the state. Again, no cases anywhere in the US and no one yet admitted to a hospital anywhere in the world.
As Rahm Immanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff and recent Chicago mayor, once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Authorities across the globe, from the local to the national level, have used this opportunity to emphasize that their citizens need to do what they are told. In the words of one German news report authorities are saying, “Get vaccinated, get your booster, and follow public health regulations.”
This is coming at a time when authorities are frustrated with several lingering problems around the vaccines. First, mandates are highlighting how a stubborn minority of citizens are willing to be fired or be locked into their homes rather than be vaccinated. Protests have erupted across Europe. Secondly, scientific data consistently shows that vaccines only effective at stopping the spread of the virus for 3-5 months before boosters are needed. Lastly, there is a growing number of vaccinated individuals who dutifully allowed themselves to be jabbed the first time around, only to now question whether doing so put them on a never-ending treadmill of boosters every few months. It is becoming apparent that high vaccination rates are not achieving the outcome governments promised. Even a 100% vaccinated region still has outbreaks.
If the goal is to scare or intimidate citizens into compliance, Omicron couldn’t have come at a better time. The fact that it is not particularly lethal is of no consequence. Authorities will assume that gets lost in the translation. Oh yeah, that is right, reporting from the frontlines is in English. “Hey someone call over to YouTube and have that video taken down! It goes against my narrative. It must be misinformation.” Thankfully for Dr. Fauci this video is still obscure. Here is the world’s foremost expert in English telling the world they are overreacting. Omicron might become severe but so far it is not.
In Conclusion
So why all the fuss if there are no deaths and no serious cases?
In American sports, baseball umpires and football referees make big mistakes now and then by calling a strike or throwing a penalty flag when they shouldn’t have. At times, they have been known to follow this up with an opposite call later in the game when it wasn’t warranted to compensate. They provide this “make-up call” as a way to even out the game even if they won’t openly acknowledge the initial mistake.
If you are inclined to see your governing authorities as benign and generally well intentioned, the best explanation for the episode over the weekend is global governments are doing a make-up call, so to speak. Authorities were criticized for failing to deal swiftly with the Delta variant and this is them overcompensating to make up for it.
If you are more skeptical of your governing authorities, this as a naked power grab with the intention of bullying their citizens to fall in line and get their boosters and/or initial vaccines. The irony is they can’t even tell you if right now if the boosters/vaccines they want you to get will work against this new variant.
Either way, it is way too early to be concerned. That day may come in a few weeks, but it isn’t here now. Governments of the world may, in fact, be correct that this is a variant more lethal and concerning than Delta, justifying their actions. If they are, it will have been a lucky guess because there is not yet facts to support that. When the facts emerge, it will be the South Africans, and not the Americans, to which I will be listening to hear the truth.