Another round of: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Oh, and for the cherry on top, he took Ivermectin, it didn't work. Shocking.

I am sure the Ivermectin worked as it is intended and fought Parasites. It just did nothing against COVID.

Okay, this omicron meltdown is officially hysteria in my book. The doctor who discovered it has described the symptoms she's seen in patients with this particular variant of Covid as "extremely mild", as in no one, not one single person with omicron, has yet been hospitalized as a result, it would appear, unless there's new info on that that I've missed. Cases thereof so far reportedly have not even included so much as a cough or a sore throat. And over this we are seeing travel bans and the shuttering of whole economies again? Seriously? That makes me think we'll never be out of this mode. There will always be new variants, folks. This one seems less consequential than even the original alpha strain, to say nothing of delta. So far I'm not even the least bit worried about the new omicron variant. I feel that I can live with being in circulation. I can live with a chance of experiencing "extremely mild symptoms", especially given my vaccination status. At some point moving on with life is called for.

Let me circle back to the zero hospitalizations point. While I am certainly no medical expert, my understanding has been that the point of everything from masking to vaccination to...*grumble grumble*...lockdowns has been to prevent hospitals from filling up such that people can no longer get in for any other kind of life-threatening emergency like strokes or cancer. If the omicron variant doesn't add to hospitalizations...maybe it's not worth shutting down economies over, you know? That's my thinking anyway.

When it came to earlier strains of Covid, the more I read about them, the more worried I became. With this one, it's the other way around: the more I read about omicron, the less concerned I am about it. I'm way more scared of more shortages and further price increases resulting from more supply chain disruptions than I am of the omicron variant. The cost of living here in the U.S. is up 6.2% over the last year alone (the fastest inflation rate in 31 years), while my income is up 0% and my stimulus money is now long since exhausted. I am, in other words, way more afraid of how countries are reacting to omicron than I am of this virus strain itself.

Matter-of-factly, I feel that I've been a pretty damn good soldier about all this. I mean okay, I've splurged and been undisciplined in some respects, like returning to movie theaters early on, as soon as they reopened in August of last year because I felt like I needed the outlet mentally-emotionally, even if it was just old movies playing and nobody was there but me, stuff like that. I'm human. But I have also gotten all three of my shots early on for the same virus in the span of well under a year and still have to mask at work anyway. This panic over what sure the hell so far looks like a very mild variant just makes me feel like there's no end to this regime in sight after more than a year and a half; like we'll never psychologically recover from Covid and be able to fully move on with our lives. I'll tell you what, if my workplace masking obligations aren't lifted by the spring when the weather starts to warm up and people resultantly start spending less time indoors and more time outdoors again, I'm officially going to cross over to the other side and start joining some of those anti-masking protests.

Do many of these mutations seem familiar to you, if you know anything about Omicron?

These are samples collected from NYC wastewater earlier this year, proving the virus can mutate really fast to adapt to animal hosts without the need of immunocompromised patients. I'm increasingly leaning toward a zoonotic origin for this one - rodents, cats, or dogs.

This would also have awkward implications such as the fact that no amount of vaccination would have prevented its emergence...

Intringuingly, even though the WNY4 sample is even more mutated than Omicron, its RBD was still neutralized with a significant but not catastrophic 5 to 7-fold reduction in titers (about 1,4 - 1,9 times more resistant than Beta's RBD).

Yeah I read a doctor saying, it might be a good thing, that it becomes the dominant strain, because it appears to be a milder, form of covid.
So its even more contagious than Delta, it might overall kill less people.

The thing is it will still overload hospitals, if the infection rates sky rocket, evne if less people need to be hospitalised (pr infected), the fact that it spreads so fast, might still cause it. Oh and people that have had covid before, arn't immune to Omicron, its differnt enough, that it will reinfect people that have had covid (or vaccine).

Worse still:
People have given up, trying to avoid getting infected or infecting others.
Here in denmark, it seems like 90% of people are up to the mustard, and do what needs doing.
The problem is the people that dont, or refuse.

I take the train, and I see people with face masks, under their chins, while their caughing or haveing a running nose.
People that leave their noses hanging out....
People arnt as good about personal space, and keeping distance to others either.
Its like people think because their vacinated, they dont have to worry about anything (without realiseing that protection drops, overtime).

it makes me question if its even possible to get rid of it, and the spread from a society.
Theres always going to be a few fools, or weak links in the chain.

The same with the 78% fully vacinated rate..... why isnt it just mandatory? get everyone vaccinated, dont let it be a choice.

Personally think, airports, should have required PCR testing for everyone flying, taken at the airport, and handled before take off.
If your not vaccinated, you shouldnt even be allowed in the airports.

They should do the same for all border crossings (if by car, or ship).

So let me get this straight.. when police were arresting rioters for destroying property etc you were yelling facism. But you want people to be taken into custody to inject them against their will?

Weekly update. Cases continue to rise as uncertainty about Omicron closes down the borders again.

In total 4.29 million new cases were reported last week (up from 3.94 million) to a total of 265,161,704
Also another 51,530 more deaths were reported (slightly up from 51,209) to a total of 5,258,074

Europe is at its peak with some countries going back down while others are still building their wave.
The USA is still climbing after a break for Thanksgiving.

The continents

Europe reported 2.58 million new cases (slightly down from 2.69 million) and 27,293 more deaths (slightly up from 27,107)
North America reported 885K new cases (up from 594K) and 10,819 more deaths (up from 10,115)
Asia reported 599K new cases (slightly down from 635K) and 9,653 more deaths (slightly down from 9,908)
South America reported 134K new cases (135K last week) and 2,776 more deaths (2,737 last week)
Africa reported 78.7K new cases (up from 52.9K) and 929 deaths (1,224 last week)
Oceania reported 12.0K new cases (down from 17.6K) and 60 deaths (118 last week)

Corners of the world

USA reported 827K new cases (up from 529K) and 8,978 more deaths (up from 8,040)
Brazil reported 61.8K new cases (down from 64.3K) and 1,454 more deaths (down from 1,589)
India reported 60.3K new cases (down from 68.2K) and 2,321 more deaths (down from 2,851)
South Africa reported 48.9K new cases (up from 27.0K) and 157 deaths (221 last week)
South Korea reported 29.7K new cases (up from 23.8K) and 299 deaths (225 last week)
Iran reported 27.1K new cases (down from 32.5K) and 605 deaths (728 last week)
Canada reported 20.2K new cases (slightly up from 19.7K) and 139 deaths (137 last week)
Australia reported 9,614 new cases (9,653 last week) and 47 deaths (52 last week)
Japan reported 737 new cases (760 last week) and 10 deaths (11 last week)

Europe in detail

Germany, Poland, Ireland and Switzerland are at their peak, Denmark and UK are wandering further up again.
Russia, Austria and The Netherlands are heading back down while Spain and Sweden are the last to join the wave.

Global vaccination rate is now 44.02% (+1.54%)

South America 58.97% (+2.71%)
Europe 58.39% (+0.83%)
Oceania 55.45% (+1.09%)
North America 54.94% (+0.49%)
Asia 49.56% (+2.02%)
Africa 7.47% (+0.34%)

The good news is that Omicron doesn't appear to bring another wave of deaths with it, reported deaths remains low in South Africa.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-york-becomes-fourth-us-state-to-confirm-omicron-live
The World Health Organisation said Omicron has been detected in 38 countries but there are no reported deaths so far from the new COVID-19 variant.

It's still too early to tell, but maybe Omicron will be helpful rather than the next problem
https://www.wlwt.com/article/the-best-of-all-worlds-how-a-new-variant-like-omicron-could-help-diminish-pandemic/38426581#

Deaths in the US from Covid have now passed 800,000. I remember when Biden got inaugurated/elected they held a memorial for the 400,000 that died by then.

A report released this morning from Tshwane indicates most patients in hospital were incidentally diagnosed with Covid. That is, they weren't admitted due to Covid, they merely tested positive for it because of mandatory testing in hospital settings. The average time of stay is three times shorter than that of previous Covid waves (2.8 vs. 8.3 days). Oxygen is in low demand and no one so far is in ICU with pneumonia from Covid.

Still too early to tell if this is due to Omicron actually being milder or the fact most people were already exposed to Covid means the disease looks milder, but better than reading about the opposite happening.

Another study found out that the 'EPE' insertion in the Omicron strain's NTD might have come from a seasonal coronavirus, HCoV-229E, with unknown effects. But some speculate it *might* be an adaptation favoring upper respiratory tract infections in humans.

In layman's terms :) Omicron might have picked up a piece of the common cold
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/omicron-variant-may-have-picked-up-a-piece-of-common-cold-virus-1.5693909

The Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a snippet of genetic material from another virus - possibly one that causes the common cold - present in the same infected cells, according to researchers.

This genetic sequence does not appear in any earlier versions of the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, but is ubiquitous in many other viruses including those that cause the common cold, and also in the human genome, researchers said.

By inserting this particular snippet into itself, Omicron might be making itself look "more human," which would help it evade attack by the human immune system, said Venky Soundararajan of Cambridge, Mass.-based data analytics firm nference, who led the study posted on Thursday on the website OSF Preprints.

This could mean the virus transmits more easily, while only causing mild or asymptomatic disease. Scientists do not yet know whether Omicron is more infectious than other variants, whether it causes more severe disease or whether it will overtake Delta as the most prevalent variant. It may take several weeks to get answers to these questions.


The theory is, people infected with both Covid and the common cold had the two viruses interacting in their lungs making Omicron possible.

South Africa, where Omicron was first identified, has the world's highest rate of HIV, which weakens the immune system and increases a person's vulnerability to infections with common-cold viruses and other pathogens. In that part of the world, there are many people in whom the recombination that added this ubiquitous set of genes to Omicron might have occurred, Soundararajan said.

"We probably missed many generations of recombinations" that occurred over time and that led to the emergence of Omicron, Soundararajan added.


Looking at the numbers from South Africa https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/
Cases are going up scarily fast, however reported deaths isn't following at all. Good sign.