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An Omicron Hypothesis
Omicron doesn’t kill people nearly as much as earlier variants of Covid. But does it kill people much at all? Not long ago, you could look at global data or country-specific data for places that have a lot of cases of Omicron at Worldometer and see something interesting: Despite epic spikes in the case numbers, deaths were fewer than for any previous spike.
That seems like it would be a big deal: The rates skyrocketing in these Omicron waves with the death numbers falling in absolute terms and the death rates plummeting dramatically.
But deaths are a lagging indicator, and we needed a few more weeks to confirm that Omicron is killing fewer people overall despite its massive transmissibility. And we still need a few weeks.
It sure looks good in the UK: The Omicron wave seems to be receding, and the death numbers are nowhere near the numbers for the last wave. Likewise South Africa, ahead of the UK. And in some other places that appear to be a bit earlier in the Omicron wave, it sure looks promising. Turkey. Italy. Brazil.
Enter the USA: If I’m reading this chart right, death rates look like they’re just about to pass the Delta wave death rates.
Dang.
So maybe Omicron is still killing people, and killing them in numbers enough that its dominance is not a good thing in absolute terms: massive transmission rates, massive case numbers, much lower death rate, and still more deaths overall.
Or . . . maybe not that exactly.
Suppose for a moment that the way things look just now is the way they are: In the UK and South Africa, Omicron killed fewer people than any previous version of the virus, even while spreading to more people and, conveniently, giving them the best immunity so far; but in the USA it actually killed more people!
Why would that be?
Is it because the USA has a lower vaccination rate? Not likely. Check the NY Times vaccination tracker: In the second-dose and third-dose numbers, the UK is significantly leading the US, but it only leads 78 percent to 75 percent in first-dose numbers. More importantly, South Africa’s rates are much lower than the USA.
But here’s something that fits that data, something that the USA has more of than either the UK or South Africa:
America is a very fat country.
So here is an Omicron hypothesis for your consideration: Maybe Omicron has massive transmission rates and case numbers, a much lower death rate, and lower deaths overall–except for where obesity rates are high.
If that’s the truth, things are still worse than I’d hoped. But still a lot better than they were.
But I don’t know what’s true. We could look at the numbers over the next few weeks and compare them to this Wikipedia chart of countries by obesity rates: Find countries with obesity rates comparable to the USA, wait until their Omicron waves come and go, and then look over the death rates. And watch various countries now having Omicron spikes, see if they follow the pattern of the UK and South Africa, and then check to see if they are significantly less obese than the USA.
In the meantime, and speaking of not knowing things, I don’t know how the CIA figures out obesity rates; but that’s where the Wikipedia chart comes from–the CIA World Factbook. And I don’t know if the USA is overreporting in some way that makes its data largely useless–deaths with Covid reported as deaths from Covid, that sort of thing.
And I didn’t know, in a previous post drawing in part from Worldometer numbers, how much the case rates were going to go up and down again and again and again. (An updated post, including a partial retraction of the earlier one, is in the works.)
Hello, my name is Socrates, and I don’t know anything. But here is a plausible hypothesis about Omicron. What do you think?
Published in General
There is a tendency, displayed by some on the left, to interchange “not all”, “few”, “many”, “some”, and “all” in ways they feel might bolster their opinions. It is as if any disagreement could be vanquished by the plasticity of language.
I confess I find that approach dishonest, but I have to remember they don’t really think like normals. It’s just what the left mind does.
I thought these studies were themselves debunked.
This isn’t a study, it’s an opinion piece.
This one is an article on O2 saturation with masks.
This isn’t a study, it’s a USA Today article.
This isn’t a study. It’s an article on CO2 saturation while wearing masks.
The listed USA Today article has links embedded in it & listed that are articles that disprove the hypoxia & hypercarbia dangers of mask. The others are medical opinion pieces written by experts the field. An example of a link embedded in the USA Today article:
“In healthy healthcare workers, FFR [filtering face piece respirator] did not impose any important physiological burden during 1 hour of use, at realistic clinical work rates”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20420727/.
additionally the linked article provides numerous other links:
“There were no significant differences in physiological variables between those who used surgical masks and controls…Use of a surgical mask as an outer barrier over N95 filtering facepiece respirators does not significantly impact the physiological burden or perceptions of comfort and exertion by the wearer over that experienced without use of a surgical mask.” OMG DOUBLE MASKING IS SAFE!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20337987/
BTW- that is how you read the medical literature properly- you actually read it & look at articles they cite or link to.
But any reasoned look at it would readily disprove the claims of hypoxia/hypercarbia dangers. Medical personnel wear masks for stretches lasting more than 8 hours w/o any detrimental effects on an ongoing basis.
Sure, but there are other confounding variables everywhere you look. Even so, it would be hard to make a case that Omicron is more virulent. I would place a small bet on less virulent, but I wouldn’t bet everything I had on it. Some people have argued that in western countries, the vaccinated people are making it all look good. But I don’t think they’re basing that on hard, conclusive data, either.
You’re referring to the news media and their activist wing in government, right?
Well, I know that I have trouble with masks and others say they do too. So maybe the studies are not taking everything into account.
Aha! Passive voice! Gotcha.
That was deliberate. I don’t have problem with the passive voice. :)
But I do usually say, Wait, who’s “they”? I know where you’re coming from, but they’re not weasel words unless they are intended to deceive.
Sometimes people just say, “we were told,” because they listen to people who say, “we were told.” I’ve seen that phrase used dishonestly in some of the “papers” put out by the anti-covid-vax people. When they run out of data and facts (which happens quite quickly) instead of limiting their conclusions to something that can be based on those facts, they jump to “we were told” and to extremely broad accusations. That’s dishonest. (I’ve heard radio preachers do pretty much the same thing.)
You forgot “we were sold”. But we were sold it.
Let me ask you. What was your expectation of the purpose of the vaccine in 2020 in the run-up to it’s testing and administration? Perhaps you were more sceptical then than now.
But not mentioning “immunizations” and changing the definition of “vaccine” is an aspect of pure propaganda. And “they” whoever “they” are world-wide are arresting people for not getting inoculated. What’s up with that?
Nevertheless, it’s all one. The vaccine is part and parcel with the covid madness of mandatory masking, forced vaccination, lockdowns, denial of rights, threatening arrest of unvaccinated children, job losses, inane travel restrictions, cops stomping on the heads of peaceful protesters, and quarantine camps.
In the run-up to its testing? I didn’t have high hopes for it. I figured it might be no better than the flu vaccine, if that. I was annoyed by people who were all enthusiastic about a vaccine before it was even tested. I guess I didn’t bother to learn much about them. And I was leery of anything that was going to be messing with genes. I figured I’d sit this one out, at least for a while.
When I learned the details of how the mRNA vaccines actually work (at the same time as the first phase 3 test results were being reported) I quickly got enthusiastic and couldn’t wait to get in line for it.
Never, ever, did I have the remotest expectation that it would have the efficacy of a smallpox vaccine, and I never heard anyone say that it would. But you don’t need that to bring a pandemic under control. The first I heard of such expectations was when people here on Ricochet started reciting the mantras of what some of the anti-vaxxer charlatans were saying: “We were told, we were sold…”
Well, that’s reasonable. But we were told, and we were sold. To deny it is to miss something important in the roll out and in its purpose.
By the way. What did the promoters of the vaccine say was its purpose? Did it achieve it?
South Africa.
The passive voice is not categorically rejected by me.
Various goals were discussed: 1) Protect people from getting covid. 2) Protect people from getting severe covid. 3) Slow the spread and maybe stop it altogether.
All of those goals have been accomplished to some degree, but not to the degree that the original phase 3 test results led us to hope. The J&J results were a little different from the other and only predicted a rather unspectacular reduction in severe covid in the short term (because that was the endpoint that was tested and reported to the FDA) though with time it seemed it would be as good as the others. I do remember when Biden/Fauci said 70 percent vaccination was the goal, and it didn’t seem to me that we’d ever get quite there, partly because of resistance by anti-vaxers and also because it didn’t seem that the vaccine was appropriate for that many people. I think they expected 70 percent would suffice to make the pandemic a non-issue and that seemed reasonable to me and others. And if you listen to those who say covid is a nothing-burger, I suppose you could say they were right. I don’t think most people would agree, though.
But people on all sides of these issues were warning about variants right from the beginning, because variants have a long history of evading treatments. So that was always a wild card. For the Biden administration defenders and anti-covid-vaxers to act as though it never occurred to anyone is rather weird.
Stop infections. Stop transmissions. Stop hospitalizations. Stop deaths.
I believed all four around the time of the Star Trek vaccine post. Current information suggests it’s only the last two, with maybe only some small help with the first two.
We were given the passive voice. It was intended to be used.
A good time to use it is when the subject who is performing the action is irrelevant to the point and would only detract from it. But in politics, the person doing the action is almost always relevant. For example, take the saying: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It doesn’t specify who does the taking and giving. That turns out to be of supreme importance. Same with “we were told…” and “we were sold…”
Thanks. Do you happen to remember who said what, or at least what branch of the establishment voiced these goals?
This reason and the fact that the whole discussion had been laid out in previous comments on the thread. Sometimes we don’t even know who and simply refer to TPTB. Other times, I simply don’t have quotes or don’t remember who all said it. And at other times it refers to general implications and misdirection by many in coordination.
But “and would only detract from it” is disingenuous, and I don’t do that (as far as I know).
The first one was Dr. Roger Seheult, on MedCram. For a long time, MedCram was the only source I’d listen to–he and some of MedCram guests, such as Michael Mina and Shane Crotty. I’d listen to any of those three. Problem was, Seheult is a great teacher, but is also a guy who is busy with his hospital job, and he got to a point where he wasn’t reporting much on new covid research. Mina’s thing is rapid antigen tests, so I’d pick up a little from his Twitter feed when it happened to come up, but that wasn’t too often. And Crotty is a busy researcher who is sometimes in demand for interviews, but he is otherwise not a denizen of YouTube.
Later (more recently) I was feeling a little starved for news, and learned about Vincent Racaniello and This Week in Virology. I can’t keep up with everything they discuss, but if I had time for it I could listen for hours on end when they discuss the latest research, or the workings of Virology in general. I also listen to most of his weekly clinical updates with Dr. Daniel Griffin. Griffin had once been a guest on MedCram and I took an instant dislike to him (as well as to a few others of the scaremongering guests who finagled their way onto that program). Whenever I could tell by the YouTube title that it was a scaremonger, I didn’t listen at all. Griffin still has some of that about him, but I’ve learned that there is much to be learned by listening to him talk about the clinical side of things. But this was all long after the vaccines had been widely administered.
Probably the first time I actually saw a brief snippet of Fauci was when Shane Crotty had been on MedCram. The host played a snippet from a hearing in which both Fauci and Rand Paul had cited Crotty in their arguments against each other. I’ve seen a couple of Fauci snippets since then. But Fauci is now a government guy, and I don’t see that much can be learned by listening to government people.
She has never cited credible sources… You’re just as well off reading CNN articles.
It is becoming more and more difficult to keep up this house of cards by continuously appealing to authority as the facts continue to support those very well qualified experts and doctors who have all along been countering the narrative with truth. (As jp humorously observes)
Fortunately for us, though people like mimac will likely continue shouting their hysterical lies indefinitely, each day that passes more people wake up, and they will be left shouting at their own shadows. If they were ever even remotely honest and interested in the truth, it isn’t difficult to find, not has it ever been. Battacharya/Gupta/Kuldorff, Atlas, Malone… The list goes on and on, and if you cite to any of these people, the covidocrats come back and say that these aren’t “real” experts, or they’ll say “are you a doctor?” Someone like mimac will attempt to sound intelligent by dumping 50 links that come nowhere close to hitting the mark, as if volume somehow makes you more credible, or by telling you how “medical evidence- is actually read (I’d love to hear her try that feigned condescension on Jay Battacharya). Meanwhile, she ignores or misstates valid arguments that contradict her preferred view.
But you know what? That’s fine- because people aren’t stupid. The narrative is crumbling, because it is false. These are the tactics of people who have lost. Their credibility is gone. Hopefully, there will be hell to pay, and this will not be permitted to happen again. I’m the meantime, I’m happy watch as the house of cards falls to the ground…
p.s. omicron has just swept through our town. The gym, the school, the church. It has hit just about everyone. I had it last week.
Guess what? It’s a cold. This is over.
Not to mention that the questions about what harms to weigh against the putative benefits of the OMIGOSH VACCINATE EVERYONE NOW AND TRIPLE MASK AND STAY HOME PEASANT policies . . . were . . .
. . . moral questions.
Did anyone ever ask a pastor about those decisions? An ethics teacher from the Religion and Philosophy Department? Or even your virtuous grandparents?
I did explore, perhaps only surface level, the question of the spiritual in my last post. It was a bit long and not a conversation starter … I should have asked the Teacher of philosophy if he thought I was close with my interpretation of Schaeffer, or if I missed the mark…
Ask me later. I have to run to class!
How can you tell?
Because it is what he wants ( or is it she wants- apparently hammer has trouble with gender) to believe and any one who thinks otherwise is just shouting hysterical lies indefinitely….those 1963 deaths reported in last 24 hrs cut themselves shaving or something…
omnicron lethality is about the flu’s but it is much more transmitable- so one would expect it to cause more deaths than the flu- which averages 36K/yr- ie it is not the common cold. Luckily we are better at coronavirus vaxxes than rhinovirus vaxxes.
There are no actual vaccines for either case.
True, if you rewrite history and play devious word games.
But what should I believe about those deaths? Who were they, and what was their medical condition?
Possibly, possibly. At any rate, I do recommend a vaccine for people who are vulnerable to the virus. They do seem to prevent a lot of deaths.