We May Have Dodged It For the Past Two Years But Our Luck May Be Running Out
America's Covid czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warns that the Omicron variant will "find just about everybody." All the caution and protective measures that have helped so many avoid the Alpha and Delta variants will be less effective at shielding us from Omicron.
"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Fauci's warning is echoed by Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy medical officer of health.
One person of my acquaintance contracted the Alpha variant. None to my knowledge the Delta variant. However I know of entire families that have succumbed to Omicron. Fortunately, every one I know, excluding infants, is fully vaccinated or awaiting the booster. Those who have contracted Omicron have had mild to moderate symptoms.
A trip to the grocery store shows the impacts of Omicron. A lack of drivers has disrupted deliveries leaving shelves bare.
While Omicron may not be as lethal as earlier variants it's so much more widespread that it puts our healthcare system at risk.
From conversations I've had with physicians - my late brother's oncologist, my cardiologist and my GP - there's a toll in lives being exacted by anti-vaxxers. They may be just 10 per cent of the population but they account for 50 per cent of ICU beds and the demands placed on healthcare workers and facilities means that people are needlessly dying from cancer or heart disease or any of several other conditions that are ordinarily treatable. These people are not just statistics, they're victims of those who arrogantly put their freedoms over the safety of society.
When it comes to vaccinations it might be wise not to stop at Pfizer or Moderna. The earlier variants are still in circulation even if eclipsed by Omicron. They savage the respiratory system. Most provinces, perhaps all, offer free flu and pneumonia vaccines that are widely available. From what I've read the medical types also recommend supplements, particularly zinc and vitamin C.
Yeah, "you're all going to get Omicron" Fauci. So get a vaccination which won't prevent that happening. Does no one else see the logical disconnect I do?
ReplyDeleteThe hell of it is that Omicron breaks through vaccinations. And google "Can you get Omicron twice?" and disregard the obvious horseshite nutball responses. Apparently the answer is yes with a month or two off for good behaviour.
You may not get really ill in most cases, but the virus mostly lives in the sinus and throat, except when it doesn't for the unfortunate. Infection is easy to come by, which is how so many vaccinated people test positive on a RAT kit and have to isolate, no matter they've had their shots. They shed the virus in quantity, so have to inform all their contacts who get to isolate as well. That's why help is missing at stores and everywhere else at the present. A lot of not very ill people off work for the obvious reason of keeping some kind of plateau on new infections.
The unvaxxed represent only 25% in NS hospitals, and yet I don't see them croaking en masse on the streets. Here's the breakdown as of yesterday:
The vaccination status of the 60 hospitalized is:
• 5 (8.3%) have had 3 doses
• 36 (60%) have had 2 doses but not 3
• 3 (5%) have had 1 dose
• 15 (25%) are unvaccinated
• 1 person’s vaccination status is unknown at this time
Note that less than 10% of the population is unvaccinated.
Just from my point-of-view, the vaccines are not very effective if the idea is that should prevent infection, because it's obvious they do not. Look at the 8.3% who are triple vaxxed in hospital, and yet only 40% of the eligible over 30 have had those boosters so far. That's serious breakthrough of these notoriously leaky vaccines. Kids 5 to 11 are also not being rushed in to get vaxxed by their parents, either -- I think they smell a bit of a rat. Yet we are constantly manipulated into near mass hysteria and hatred of the unvaxxed, most of whom aren't the idiots marching in the streets foaming at their Bernier-style mouths. Get your booster, get your shot is all we hear. It's all a bit over the top when the vaccines themselves are at best mediocre.
I've got all three shots myself, but expect to be on a vaccine treadmill until my life's end, jabbed every six months or less, living in trepidation and unease, with various not very good new vaccines being introduced as time goes by. Not a pretty picture. About time someone had a think for how we handle Covid in future in a way that's less societally destructive than the way things are presently happening, which is at knee-jerk reaction level only. Even if everyone were vaccinated tomorrow, that wouldn't stop Omicron. So it's no magic "pill".
Kicking fake N95 masks off the market would help in reducing transmission. They are most certainly not of equal quality among brands, some are execrable as CBC Marketplace showed a few weeks ago, because anyone with an ink pad and rubber stamp can make a piece of crap into a KN95 and Walfart and Amazon will sell them as the real thing, there being no honour among thieves, nor any check on their nefarious "neutrality". We're not responsible, blah blah blah. Neoliberalism and no enforcement of existing consumer truth laws ensures they get away with flogging fakes.
I think Legault is supremely full of shit, if it matters.
It's a given that vaccination provides little immunity from Omicron, Bill, but that's not the point. It does seem to work to alleviate or avert the worst outcomes and that's good enough for me. In my circumstances everything else is moot.
Delete1) Omicron is milder?
ReplyDeleteOnly because most of us are vaccinated!
2) Omicron is more transmissible?
OK, perhaps. But our behavior in late 2021 and now is oh so much different from our behavior in the earlier waves in 2020 and early 2021.
And why listen to Fauci, Tam etc. when we have St. Bonnie to tell us:
“We may soon enter the place we see a decline,” and her primary focus is on “keeping as much as possible open.”
I'm weary of your rants about "St. Bonnie" NPoV. Not interested.
DeleteI don't want to offend anyone but I simply can't accept lay opinion on this topic. I have the fortune/misfortune at my stage of life to have doctors, a number of them. I've gone from the lowly GP to add a few specialists. Highly trained people. They even went to medical school(s).
ReplyDeleteThey tell me one thing. Just one. Their advice is remarkably consistent. I follow their advice and, in this post, I passed along what I was advised first-hand. It's information, medical advice, that comes direct, not through some media filter, not layered with political influences, and definitely not from social media.
NPoV has an axe to grind with Bonnie Henry. Sorry, not interested. Bill cites statistics from somewhere that don't make much sense to me here at the t'other end of the country.
As for the inevitability of contracting Omicron, there's a real difference between a few sick days at home and being intubated while occupying a badly-needed ICU bed because vaccination interferes with your fundamental human rights. People who think like that are killing people. I know, first-hand.
The bottom line is that this post concerns vaccination. Not the perfidy of some medical officer of health. Just vaccination and its merits as explained to me by a few qualified experts.
I'm sorry if I sound curt or dismissive but what point does it serve to get dragged into these collateral issues?
When it comes to covid I take note of the experts that does not include the travel agent I use.
ReplyDeleteSo much of our "ain't too bad attitude comes from a hurting travel industry
TB