Holidays—Must Be Time for Another Crisis

News came out over the holiday weekend about a new variant. Followed by calls to panic.

I was listening to a meditation training the other day, which said that one thing that happens with fear is that you cease to breathe, or you fail to breathe deeply. If you take the time to breathe deeply, the fear can turn to simply excitement or interest in whatever was suddenly upon you without warning. So let’s take a moment here to breathe deeply. And then maybe we’ll think better.

Since I’m not a doctor, just a regular person trying to make sense of things, I’m getting my information from what I believe are reliable sources, and I’ll try to reference those. When it’s just me trying to think things through, I try to make that clear.

The new variant of SARS-COV-2 is called omicron. The names have been coming from the Greek alphabet. The most recent was mu, so the next was to be nu. And in fact the first story I heard about it called it nu. But the namers of such things (the WHO) decided to skip nu, because it can be confused with the word new; then any new variant after nu would be called the new variant, confusing it with the old nu variant.

tweet about the naming of the new variant,
found here

So the next option was to be xi (pronounced like z-eye; the Greek letter X, pronounced like sky without the s, is a later letter). That however was said to be confused with the common surname Xi (pronounced like she), which just happens to be the name of the Chinese dictator, in the country that originally spread the virus, but which the WHO doesn’t want to offend. So that Greek letter got skipped also.

That brings us to O; omicron (pronounced O-mi-cron, long O, short other vowels, accent on first syllable) is the small letter, while omega means large O, which you would think is the capital form, but it is a later letter in their alphabet. It’s all Greek to me, as they say. I don’t know what names they use after they get through the Greek letters. It’s sort of like hurricanes when they get through the entire alphabet in a season and have to start over.

So, what do we know about this virus variant? Not a lot. But we know that it was identified by doctors in South Africa. That doesn’t necessarily mean it developed there rather than somewhere else; it just means that’s where it was identified. Doctors there had been facing very few cases of SARS-COV-2 for some time; they were having something of a pause. Then they started seeing this version. Testing showed it was SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19), but the symptoms were not what they had been experiencing. This one showed no loss of smell or taste. There wasn’t much of a cough. If they hadn’t been alert, they would probably have dismissed this as just a cold and not known what they were dealing with. And that quite likely has been happening elsewhere in the world.

It was infecting younger people, often men, around age 40. This demographic tends to get over COVID-19 pretty easily anyway, so that may have affected the data they have, but so far zero patients with this variant have needed hospitalization, and zero have died. After a couple of days of tiredness and muscle aches (about what many people experience following the vaccine), it’s gone.

There’s some definite good news here. It seems to not be affecting the epithelial cells in the nose and throat; that’s why no change in taste or smell. And this also probably means no neurological damage.

From what we know so far, it is a milder version of the illness. Again, we don’t yet know how older or more vulnerable people might react to it. But if it becomes milder for them as well, then what we’re looking at is a good introduction to the endemic stage of the virus—where it becomes simply part of the background of our lives, instead of the focus.

Just to remind, because the reaction to this virus hasn’t followed what we have always known about viruses: they mutate and create variants. The progression is typically toward less virulence (damage to the individual body) and more transmissibility (ability to reach more hosts in which to replicate). That is what viruses do. That is what to expect. And that is mainly what we’ve seen. The delta variant, while more widespread, was milder for most people than the original.

Variants tend to leak through the vaccines. That is, the vaccines are less effective than on the original. There’s a reason for that; the vaccines target a particular protein, in this case the spike protein part of the virus. When mutations happen in the vaccine-targeted protein, then the antibodies provided by the vaccine may not recognize the virus and therefore fail to fight it before it let it replicates enough to make a person sick.

When a person fights off the virus, they develop immunity against the entire virus, not just the targeted protein. So the body’s immune system recognizes the mutated virus—up until the mutations make it a totally different virus—because there’s enough of the parts that make it that virus for the body to recognize. If we see a large increase in reinfection (this variant after recovery from some other variant), I think that means that then we might be very close to having a mutation beyond SAS-COV-2. We’ve seen this with the common cold caused by some endemic coronavirus.

We will wait and see on the vaccines, whether we have more breakthrough cases. But since the vaccines were targeted to an earlier version, and this particular variant alone has 32 mutations in the spike protein, we may find that the vaccines—targeting the spike protein—are less effective on this variant. Or not. We’ll see. But getting a booster that targets the spike protein the way it used to be, logically, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So, we’re back to the things that don’t make sense. Panic, for one. South Africa’s medical officials not only identified the variant, they quickly shared with the world all their findings. And, as a result, countries all over the world shut down travel from South Africa. Not a single person has been hospitalized, let alone died, from this variant, as far as we know. And yet the country that behaved well is punished for their openness.

map of travel restrictions, found here

New York declared a state of emergency—with zero identified cases in the state, or even in the country. And Biden imposed a travel ban that looks suspiciously more racist than any travel ban his predecessor may have imposed on countries not screening for terrorists. People are talking about shutting down Christmas, returning to lockdowns and masking—for a variant that has led to only mild cases.

The World Medical Association Chairman Frank Ulrich Montgomery says, “The new South African variant is a good example of the mutations and us trying to prevent every possible infection and how it can’t be done. We don’t know anything about its dangerousness yet, but it seems to be spreading rapidly. My great concern is it could lead to a variant that is as infectious as Delta but as dangerous as ebola.” (Glenn Beck mocks this here.) 

Is this rational? Zero deaths, zero cases of hospital admission. But someone who I would assume carries some clout in the medical world worries it might be a very transmissible version of an almost instant killer. Based on what?

I’d like to know whether he had this fear about the Mu variant—you remember, the one we were supposed to be concerned about in September, even though it had been around since January and still wasn’t overtaking Delta. Or, before that, all the other Greek letters. Not to mention the many many variants that don’t get a label.

I learned about the new variant on Friday, when someone linked this story:

·       “New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529” Katelyn Jetelina on Your Local Epidemiologist blog, November 26, 2021.   

This was the first news I had of the new variant. I’ve encountered this writer before and found her not very persuasive. This article is well laid out and documented, although I would say there’s more fear in it than the available information leads to.

So I went to Dr. Mobeen Syed, who looks at studies and data, and then thinks through it with other doctors. It turned out that he had taken time out of his Thanksgiving with family to look up information and share it. That was here.

·       “Omicron—How Bad Is It?” Dr. Mobeen Syed, November 26, 2021. 

He says for now there’s not a lot of reason for fear. And he added to that a couple of days later, with a summary underneath.

·       “Omicron—Different Symptoms” 

Here’s his summary:

According to the Dr. Angelique Coetzee who is the Chair of the South Africa Medical Board and a practicing GP in Pretoria, the symptoms are extremely mild. Scratchy throat instead of cough. No anosmia and loss of taste, however, lot of fatigue. A young child had high heart rate.

Dr. raised the alarm when four members of a family tested positive for COVID and all suffered with exertion.

Omicron is spreading rapidly among young people. Most patients from which the following symptoms are observed were men. Half of them vaccinated.

No or slight cough means: shedding will be limited to talking, laughing, etc. It will also mean that patients might not realize that they might be shedding. However, absence of cough itself is going to reduce shedding and spreading.

No anosmia and loss of the sense of taste is interesting. It means that the swelling of the olfactory epithelium is not occurring (at least in the patients she saw so far.) This also means that possible neurological effects and possible long-haul may be less frequent.

Patients complaint of sore muscles and tiredness according to Dr. Coetzee.

A six-year-old child had fever and very high pulse.

How is this variant behaving with older population and folks with comorbidities is not known yet.

Omicron's (B.1.1.529) Symptoms are not like delta (B.1.617.2), instead these are similar to beta (B.1.351 - South African variant). No loss of sense of smell or taste. No cough or slight cough. Just scratchy throat. However, severe muscle aches and tiredness.

Young people with body aches and pains and fatigue.

This is the account of the Dr. Angelique Coetzee. She says in an interview to Newsroom Afrika that she has consulted with other general practitioners. They all are observing very very mild symptoms.

No loss of smell or taste. No oxygen levels dropping at this stage.

Dr. Mobeen Syed links to an interview Dr. Coetzee did with Newzroom Afrika and adds, “Finally, this is a single doctor’s account of her patients. We will have to wait for more data from more doctors and studies.”

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, talking about the new variant from South Africa,
screenshot from here

On Sunday night’s Crossroads, Joshua Philipp covered the new variant among other news:

·       “Live Q&A: Governments Eyeing Lockdowns Over Omicron Variant; New Global Social Controls Emerge” Crossroads with Joshua Philipp, November 28, 2021. 

He read a comment from a viewer, Cameron Bacon, who said,

Josh, do I have amnesia, or did the Democrats and communists go from claiming they didn’t trust the vaccine under Trump to now backing a 100-day turnaround for a variant discovered a few days ago that somehow everyone knew about instantly?

He was referring to this story:

·       “US-Based Company Developing Vaccine That Targets New COVID-19 Variant” Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times, November 27 (updated November 29), 2021. 

There is indeed an effort now underway to develop a new version of vaccine based on this new variant. And one wonders why, if it was doable that quickly, that they haven’t do one for the Delta variant. In fact, as the vaccines appeared less and less effective, they pushed for more and more boosters.

Later in the podcast Philipp was talking about natural immunity, which ought to be news worth cheering about:

New information coming out is suggesting that people with natural immunity are of little risk of infection. And you can have an antibody test to see if you need it or not. You can have an antibody test. If people are talking about actual immunity, and if governments actually cared about actual immunity, natural immunity would be considered as part of that. Why it’s not is beyond me.

He read from this story:

·       “Naturally Immune People at Little Risk of Reinfection, Severe Disease From COVID-19: Study” Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times, November 27, 2021.  

The story says,

Researchers in Qatar examined a cohort of over 353,000 people using national databases that contain information about patients with polymerase-chain-reaction-confirmed infections.

The studied population contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, between Feb. 28, 2020, and April 28, 2021.

Reinfections were counted if a person tested positive at least 90 days after their first infection.

After excluding approximately 87,500 people with a vaccination record, researchers found that those with immunity due to having recovered from COVID-19 had little risk of reinfection or severe cases of the disease.

Just 1,304 reinfections were identified. That means 0.4 percent of people with natural immunity and without a vaccination record got COVID- 19 a second time.

The odds of severe disease were 0.1 times that of primary infection, according to the study. Just four such cases were detected.

No cases of death were recorded among those who got infected a second time.

It ends with this summary:

[T]he study adds to the growing body of research that indicates that people who have recovered from COVID-19 enjoy high levels of immunity against reinfection, and even higher protection against severe disease and death.

There’s plenty of reason to be hopeful as we move into this holiday season. Those who are calling for panic may have an ulterior motive—not to protect your health, but to control your life. If you’re taking good care of yourself, thwart them by going ahead and living your life.

Here are some additional things I’ve read or seen:

·     “Biden Imposes Travel Bans He Called Trump Racist for Imposing” Robert Spencer for PJ Media, November 26, 2021. 

·     “It's the 'Nu' Variant. Everyone Run for Your Lives!” Rick Moran for PJ Media, November 26, 2021. 

·       “Dissection of the Omicron variant” from Newzroom Afrika interview with South African Medical Association's Dr Angelique Coetzee, dissects the Omicron variant, which has been detected in South Africa and is causing havoc throughout the world. 

·       “Omicron COVID-19 Variant Found in More Countries, Sparking Global Concern” Jack Phillips for The Epoch Times, November 29, 2021.

·       “The O variant” Dr. John Campbell, November 26, 2021. 

·       “Omicron - Is Immune Escape Imminent? A DeepDive” Dr. Mobeen Syed, November 30, 2021. 

·       “Omicron good news” Dr. John Campbell, November 30, 2021.