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Omicron Variant: Here We Go Again!
No one — I mean no one — is going to put me through the fear and misery of the last two years with COVID-19. Fortunately, I live in Florida, and we’ve watched Gov. DeSantis behave like a mature and wise adult regarding the virus. But once again, panic reigns as another variant shows up on the scene. And one state and most definitely the federal government can’t wait to pass more draconian measures supposedly to protect us.
When the announcement first came from South Africa about the new variant, called Omicron, the scientists emphasized that data was limited:
Health officials in South Africa said the reaction by other countries was premature, given how little was understood yet about the new strain. [Professor Salim Abdool] Karim noted that it was only detected thanks to South Africa’s excellent scientific surveillance of COVID-19 cases, which specifically hunts for new variants. Few other nations have such a robust genomic sequencing program to find the strains.
Surprisingly, the World Health Organization showed some sanity in its response:
But despite the World Health Organization’s call for ‘a risk-based and scientific approach’ as it urged nations not to adopt travel restrictions yet, some countries decided not to wait for the detailed scientific analysis. Britain, France and Israel have cancelled direct flights from South Africa and surrounding nations.
And, of course, the mainstream media couldn’t wait to publish the most frightening news they could possibly create:
A potentially dangerous new strain of the coronavirus is alarming scientists around the world and prompting governments to ban travelers from southern African nations. The variant was first detected in South Africa, where scientists were quick to flag it to the global health community.
As CBS News correspondent Debora Patta reports, there’s serious concern among experts that the new strain could set back the fight against the pandemic.
These reactions were based on only 100 cases in South Africa.
One day ago, however, the South Africans provided an up-to-date and less hysterical perspective:
Dr. Angelique Coetzee, a practicing doctor for 30 years who chairs the South African Medical Association (SAMA), said she believed she had found a new strain of the virus after COVID-19 patients at her private practice in Pretoria exhibited strange symptoms.
‘Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,’ Coetzee told The Telegraph . . .
‘It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well,’ Coetzee told the paper. ‘So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer the loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home.’
Joe Biden, who accused Donald Trump of racist motivations for closing our borders against the coronavirus, may be doing the same thing on Monday against some African countries.
And we can count on New York to lead the way with a panicked approach:
There have been no confirmed cases of the new variant in the United States yet, but officials believe it may already be here. Two cases have been confirmed in the United Kingdom, which joined the US and European Union in issuing travel restrictions.
On Friday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency and put a temporary halt on all elective surgeries in anticipation of hospitalizations.
What do you think will be happening in your local communities and your state? Will governors wait for more information, or will they compete for the panic prize? Will school boards react and will the unions demand action, even if the science says to take a wait-and-see approach?
In other words, will the power brokers go for more power and expect citizens to submit?
Published in Domestic Policy
Absolute power, once acquired, is rarely yielded.
Revolt is necessary.
Kathy, many hospital administrators are generally intelligent and are perfectly capable of adjusting the bed utilization based on patient census without some harpy dictating they cancel elective surgeries, creating empty bed$ now, based on an assumption that sometime in the future there might be a need for the beds to serve a different purpose. Who are the advisers that come up with this crap?
Hopefully we’ve learned quite a bit as we’ve gone through these two years. A lot was bogus. Let’s not replicate that.
I don’t know. I live in New York, so it could go any which way. I don’t know why but I’m more optimistic about it. We’ve learned a lot over the two years. People are fed up with what didn’t work. We’ll see.
Manny:
“Hopefully we’ve learned quite a bit as we’ve gone through these two years. A lot was bogus. Let’s not replicate that. “
Amen to that.
Susan, I’m sorry I replicated some of your post.
A week ago I debarked from one of several cruise ships in Port Everglades. Today, my sister sailed away on one of 7 cruise ships in Port Everglades alone. Many more sailed out of other Florida ports. On the way home last Sunday, we stopped at Bucee’s in Daytona. 200 gas pumps and at least 200 cars parked while folks were inside buying lunch and other stuff. Most weren’t wearing a mask. We are none the worse for our vacation.
I shouldn’t have said anything, Unsk. You had a lot of good information in your comment.
The virus is behaving as viruses do. The left is behaving as the left does. Virus mutate and seem to get weaker and people more resistant. The left in contrast gets more virulent and people weaker. We older people are more vulnerable to the new disease and younger folks to the old one.
This should be etched in stone. Great comment.
Border closings do not work with respiratory pandemics. Whether it spreads depends on what it finds when it gets there.
Variant bingo: It is a mystery (to me anyway) why the lambda variant knocked the hell out of Peru but did not take off in North America or Europe. Alpha and Delta were already there but not as dominant as here. Omicron has a long way to go to be number one. Here is a cool chart from nextstrain.org:
Gray=Clades of Alpha
Blue =Alpha
Dark Blue=Beta
Light blue and Greens = clades of Delta
Orange =Lambda
Red=Omicron
When the dust settled, Delta was not more deadly than Alpha per case. I would be willing to bet that Omicron will be even milder.
Per the CDC/MSM/DNC the important thing is that people get scared again, don’t question or notice that none of this sh*t works and that policies have caused harm instead. And most importantly, this new fake crisis lets the fraudsters keep their policymaking perches a little longer. AND ADDED BONUS: maybe even a pretext for forbidding voting in person so mail fraud can minimize or prevent Democratic losses next year.
This has to be important:
“President Biden on Monday said the new omicron variant of coronavirus is a “cause for concern, not a cause for panic,” while maintaining that his administration’s plan to combat COVID-19 this winter will not involve “shutdowns or lockdowns,” but rather a strategy for more widespread vaccinations.”
There’s no way Chairman Joe would say this unless he’s really scared of blowback from another lockdown.
News story
The lockdowns we have had have been state and local, not federal, so what is Joe trying to say?
Good question. The link above has him saying that we should be wearing masks in public again. Not me.
Not only that, why should we believe that he wouldn’t try something like that, given his track record? Thanks, Tex.
Since he hasn’t cared so far about whether or not the constitution allows his initiatives, he wouldn’t let it prevent him from declaring a lockdown now. He has to be scared of the results.
Let’s see how the courts treat the unconstitutional initiatives he has already ordered.
I don’t want him to be scared, I want him to keep it up.
I wonder if he will go so far as to discourage governors from doing lockdowns. Even if he doesn’t do it himself, their doing the lockdowns will hurt the Democrats–at least if the Republicans make sure everyone knows!
I saw his talk and he is doubling down on the vaccination theme I guess still trying to convince Americans that the mandate is a needed thing. The politicians making medical treatment policy is hurting many Americans, the latest being the New York governor pushing hospitals to delay elective surgery because of the omicron variant yet to materialize in New York. I suggest the vaccine mandate has wiped out some treatment capability and she is covering for that.
Let’s go, Brandon!
Another lockdown will lessen money flowing into the federal coffers.
I think the most important take from that article – and, to be honest, from all of the actual facts about this – is that we are incorrect in the way we think about these things. A variant that is highly contagious but mild in symptoms really is, as he describes, “nature’s vaccine.” The one thing we should most want is for this one to become dominant and supplant all other strains. Let it spread far and wide.
I’m in full agreement. In fact, I told a friend that since I will likely catch the virus at some point, this variant would probably be my choice. (I’m speaking as a person who’s received three shots and am 72.)
And knowing that we will all catch this virus at some point (and most of us likely already have), it is amazing to me that we persist in pushing the nonsense that is Masks (etc…), rather than encouraging and reminding everyone of the benefits of basic health measures:
https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-studies-show-an-aggressive-vitamin-d-campaign-could-have-prevented-nearly-all-covid-deaths
I was just thinking this morning, Ryan, that at some point the PTB need to state what is obvious to most of us. We are all going to catch it (or already have, as you’ve said) and it will be with us forever. Instead of Biden saying that we need to get rid of it, he needs to say that it’s not going away, but we’ll have many great ways of handling it. But I’m sure he has all kinds of reasons for not saying the truth–that doesn’t come naturally for him . . .
If <Control> <J> isn’t taken, it could be used for this to save us all a lot of typing.
Funny thing about that, of course, is that Biden really shouldn’t be saying much of anything at all. I saw somewhere a minute ago that Biden says a national lockdown is “off the table, for now.” Well, of course it is. The President does not have any authority to issue a national lockdown. It is off the table forever, because it was never on the table to begin with and it never can be.
But our state governments persist in this politically-motivated fear mongering. My family spent Thanksgiving in Idaho, which is largely free of any sort of covid restrictions (minus, for some insane reason, college campuses – and medical offices, which is still quite silly, considering that is the one group who should know better). We came back to Washington and half the state (mostly government) is still acting like we’re in the middle of the black death. The other half (my family included) just ignores all of it. Of course, covid is virtually nonexistent in my county, but even at its peak, there was never any crisis.
I think there’s a standalone essay in this thought, and I’ll see if there’s time to jot it down, but the truth that is often lost in all our talk of Federalism is this: If I believe something is tyrannical coming from the federal government, it is probably equally tyrannical at the state and local levels.
As to the substance of your comment, though – I totally agree. Those “powers that be” have largely beclowned themselves. We still have some ridiculous people who place their faith in the CDC (largely broken down along party lines), but what Fauci, the CDC, the WHO, et. al. (i.e. “public health”) have done is reveal how little they know, how corrupt they are, and how all they really deserve from us – absent a full defunding – is to be ignored.
Of course, if that is all we had to worry about, that would be fine. It’s easy enough to ignore the CDC (we’ve done that for years!) – but suddenly we have governors and employers mandating that we all take various actions… which is the law sort of getting flipped on its head. Remember when privacy was such a major issue that it was the justification for gay marriage (without the certificate, nothing could be shared by medical providers)? Remember when “STD” was changed to “STI” in order to “destigmatize” personal decisions? For the left, “bodily integrity” was the end-all be-all. But today, if I want to take my kids to their own violin recital in a couple of weeks (we will not be doing so), I have to show proof of vaccination at the door! Not just for parents, but also for my 7 and 10 year old kids.
There are enough free states now to make it impossible to impose things at the national level.
Does anyone know what he’s ever trying to say? If this wasn’t all so serious, his entire presidency would be one continuous Saturday Night Live skit. ;)