From: slider@anashram.com

Early studies of the Omicron COVID variant suggest that the highly mutated COVID-19 strain may be producing less severe infections than previous
variants like Delta, but White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci
warned against making definitive conclusions about a strain that the world
only learned about 12 days ago.

On Saturday, the South African Medical Research Council published a report about an Omicron-driven outbreak in Tshwane district in South Africa’s northern Gauteng Province, one of the first areas in the world where
Omicron has overtaken Delta as the dominant strain. The researchers wrote
that in the last two weeks there has been an “exponential" rise in
caseloads but the surge has not corresponded to a significant uptick in hospitalizations and deaths.

https://fortune.com/2021/12/06/omicron-new-covid-variant-more-infectious-less-severe-delta-experts-fauci/

“The relatively low number of COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalizations in the general, high care, and ICU wards constitutes a very different picture
compared to the beginning of previous waves,” the report said, examining
data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital complex.

The hospital complex said it admitted 166 COVID-19 patients between Nov.
14 and Nov. 29, a "sharp rise" from the previous two weeks. But the report
said the majority of them were "incidental" diagnoses, stemming from
patients who were not suffering from COVID-related symptoms but made to
take a test due to the hospital's policy to screen all patients for
COVID-19. On Dec. 2, the complex said that 38 patients had been admitted
to the COVID-19 ward, six of whom were vaccinated, 24 unvaccinated, and
eight with unknown vaccination status. Of the cases, only one COVID-19
patient required oxygen, but doctors said the patient needed the oxygen
for a non-COVID-related illness.

Fauci, the director of the U.S. government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says he is encouraged by the preliminary figures coming from South Africa.

“Though it’s too early to really make any definitive statements about it, thus far it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it,” Fauci said on CNN on Sunday.

The South African hospital says that it will be at least two weeks before
they can draw more firm conclusions about the severity of Omicron cases
since hospitalization numbers could “significantly change” before then.

But, for now at least, South African officials are optimistic that the
variant may not devastate the country's health care system.

"Our hospital admissions are not increasing at an alarming rate, meaning
that whilst people may be testing positive, they are not in large numbers
being admitted into hospitals," South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
said in an address on Saturday. "We should not panic."

Scientists elsewhere have posited a theory that may explain why Omicron
appears to be less severe than previous variants. At Nference, a
U.S.-based bio-medical data platform, researchers sequenced Omicron and
found that part of its genetic code, which is not in other variants, is
also present in the common cold. That strand could be a sign that Omicron
is evolving to become less severe and more transmissible similar to the evolution of other viruses, the researchers told the Washington Post.

The variant appears to be spreading fast.

South Africa is now recording an average of 10,055 cases per day compared
to 300 cases per day three weeks ago. South Africa’s government reported
on Thursday that 74% of the 249 cases it sequenced in November were
Omicron cases, suggesting that the variant may already have displaced
Delta in the country.

On Friday, a group of researchers led by Carl Pearson, a research fellow
at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published a non-peer-reviewed study finding that Omicron may be spreading twice as
fast as the Delta variant. But the researchers said they were uncertain
whether Omicron was more infectious than Delta or if the variant is simply better at evading immune defenses—established by previous infections or vaccines—than previous strains.

"We’re not sure what that mixture is... It’s possible that it might even
be less transmissible than Delta," Pearson told the New York Times.

Researchers in Hong Kong say that a case of Omicron transmission in one of
the city's quarantine hotels is fueling worries about the variant's
potentially high degree of transmissibility. Hong Kong University
researchers reported that Omicron likely spread between two fully
vaccinated people across the hall from one another even though the
patients never left their respective rooms.

“It is not known whether [Omicron’s] detected mutations might have
affected the effectiveness of existing vaccines and virus
transmissibility,” the researchers wrote in a post published on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal. “However, detection of Omicron variant transmission between [two] fully vaccinated persons across the corridor of a quarantine hotel has
highlighted this potential concern.”

Researchers are concerned that Omicron's numerous mutations on the spike protein will make it more resistant to vaccines and natural immunity
acquired from previous COVID infections. In the coming days and weeks, scientists will likely release neutralization studies projecting how much Omicron may evade existing COVID-19 vaccines.

For natural immunity, emerging evidence suggests that Omicron is bypassing
the immune defenses built up from earlier infections. Last week, a group
of researchers in South Africa posted a pre-print study finding that the
risk of reinfection was 2.4 times higher with Omicron compared to Beta and Delta.

“We find clear, population-level evidence to suggest substantial immune evasion by the Omicron variant,” writes lead author Juliet R.C. Pulliam, Director of the South African DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in
Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis, in the study.

“This set of real world data on the ability of the Omicron variant provide
us with the first indication that it is indeed able to evade immunity
conferred by previous COVID-19 infection,” Dr. Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading tells the U.K.’s Science Media Centre.

But given South Africa’s low vaccination rate—25% of South Africa's population is fully vaccinated—the researchers said it’s too early to tell how much Omicron has been able to evade vaccines. Scientists say that
existing vaccines will provide a level of protection against
hospitalizations and death against Omicron, but the prospect of
diminishing efficacy against Omicron has prompted vaccine makers like
Pfizer and Moderna to begin developing vaccines that specifically target
the variant.

“We await a further indication as to whether Omicron has any ability to
evade vaccine-induced immunity,” Clarke said.

### - blah blah blah, yeah yeah we get it, omicrom might just be 'less' deadly/severe, albeit 2.5 times even 'more' infectious than delta!

which, IF correct, is prolly some of the best news we've had to date?

being 'more-infectious' meaning that it'll very likely then quickly take-over/replace delta altogether (nada beats a virus's ass like another
virus huh, something delta proved...) the hopeful point being that IF it's
only mild then omicron itself will then act as an effective planet-wide
vaccine against all previous strains (which are unlikely to come back
anyway after being replaced) which, even when it mutates, in unlikely to
then become more severe! (there's no evolutionary impetus to become more deadly, see? infectious yes but not more deadly)

so ok, at worst then, this omicron version of covid turns into an
alternate form of cold...

and that's summat we could indeed learn to eventually live with :)

(note: if this actually turns out to be the case, then future pandemics
might just sometimes be more rapidly treated by say 'encouraging' it - in
the lab - to similarly mutate to something far more infectious but less
deadly and releasing it to compete with the more deadly strain, which by
its own infectious nature will then quickly inoculate the whole planet no vaccines required... something which is entirely counter-intuitive but
might just work...)

Omicron:

more deadly
less deadly
or just about the same

place yer bets! :)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)