It’s been nearly two years since China unleashed the coronavirus on the world, upending the lives of every person on the planet.
We know that no pandemic lasts forever.
We’ve lived through three waves already and a fourth wave, the result of the newly discovered Omicron variant has just begun. The high number of mutations (estimates range from 30 to 50) makes this variant highly transmissible.
A study from the University of Hong Kong that is currently undergoing peer review, found that Omicron is 70 times more transmissible than the Delta variant.
At the same time, the symptoms have been very mild for most patients.
Last Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced one individual had died “with” Omicron as opposed to “from” Omicron.
On Saturday, the UK Health Security Agency reported the cumulative death toll from Omicron had risen to seven.
Reuters reported on some concerning remarks made by Pfizer’s Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten to investors on Friday. Due to the emergence of the Omicron variant, he said the COVID-19 pandemic may not be over until 2024.
Dolsten “expects some regions to continue to see pandemic levels of COVID-19 cases over the next year or two. Other countries will transition to ‘endemic’ with low, manageable caseloads during that same time period.”
By 2024, the disease should be endemic around the globe, Dolsten projected.
Yikes! Two more years?
“When and how exactly this happens will depend on evolution of the disease, how effectively society deploys vaccines and treatments, and equitable distribution to places where vaccination rates are low,” he explained. The emergence of new variants could also impact how the pandemic continues to play out.”
Dolsten’s comments are discouraging, but it wouldn’t be the first time an official from a vaccine manufacturer has made such a pronouncement. The week before last, he appeared on CNN touting the necessity of the booster shot because of waning efficiency after the second shot.
At any rate, WebMD’s Dr. John Whyte asked Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, how we’ll know when the pandemic is over.
Dr. Schaffner said that language is important. We are looking for COVID to change from a pandemic into an endemic.
When we say the pandemic is over, we have to make sure the public understands that that does not mean that the virus has disappeared and it’s all gone. It means that this initial stage, this horrific stage of intense transmission with consequent illness is over and we have this virus under better control. This virus is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. So, moving from pandemic to endemic is what you and I are talking about now.
And for that, I think we’ll have a number of metrics. The first and most important will be, clearly, hospitalizations, hospitalizations across the entire age spectrum. The second will be the proportion of tests that are done that are positive. We want that to be lower than 5%. If it’s more than that, it really means this virus is still being transmitted quite readily in the community.
At what level we’ll finally level off, I’m not sure.
Bloomberg considered this question in September. After speaking to experts, they concluded that “everyone will be either infected or vaccinated before the pandemic ends. Maybe both. … [It] won’t be over until the coronavirus has touched all of us.”
Bloomberg reached out to Erica Charters, associate professor of the history of medicine at Oxford University and the coordinator of a project on how epidemics end.
Charters said, “The pandemic will end at different times in different places, just as previous outbreaks have, Governments will have to decide how much of the disease they are comfortable living with.”
She pointed out that the end games vary per country. “While some countries are still shooting for zero Covid cases, the world is unlikely to eradicate the virus completely.”
“The end process is not going to be uniform. The pandemic is a biological phenomenon, but it’s also a political and social phenomenon. Even now we have different approaches to it.”
Okay, so experts are telling us that the pandemic will end when the SARS-CoV-2 virus becomes endemic.
Why is this pandemic taking so long to run its course? Even the 1918 Spanish flu was over in less than a year and a half.
According to the CDC, there were three waves of the Spanish flu which killed 50 million people worldwide. The first case was diagnosed in March 1918 and the third wave subsided in the summer of 1919. The second wave was by far the deadliest.
A Q and A page on the Canadian government’s website says “the total duration of a pandemic is likely to be 12 to 18 months. A pandemic is not a “one time” event and periods of illnesses may come in 2 or 3 “waves” anywhere from 3 to 12 months apart.”
Spanish Flu (1918-1919): Between 40 and 50 million deaths worldwide
Asian Flu (1957-1958): Approximately 2 million deaths
Hong Kong Flu (1968-1969): Approximately 1 million deaths
Swine Flu (H1N1) (2009-2010): Between 100,000 and 400,000 deaths
For perspective, COVID-19 has killed nearly 5,400,000 worldwide.
Dare I say it? Might we be better off protecting the elderly and those with underlying conditions, and then just letting Omicron infect the rest of the population to the point where virtually everyone will have either vaccine induced or natural immunity?
Are lockdowns, social distancing and masking simply prolonging the pandemic?
We need to watch what happens to patients who contract the Omicron variant. We know it’s off-the-charts transmissible.
But how severe are the symptoms of patients with the Omicron variant? What percentage of patients are being hospitalized with it? How many people are dying from it?
Are vaccines even effective against the Omicron variant? The CDC reported on Dec. 10 that of the first confirmed cases in the U.S., 79 percent of those individuals had been fully vaccinated, and 19 percent were unvaccinated.
The CDC did not report if any of “the unvaccinated” had been previously infected.
It is just plain unscientific that the U.S. taxpayer funded agency charged with “controlling the introduction and spread of infectious diseases” doesn’t track first, how many Americans have natural immunity, and second, how many with natural immunity are getting reinfected.
This is such a disservice to the Americans they exist to serve.
“The experts” must start to recognize natural immunity.
It’s safe to say that by now, all Americans who intend to get vaccinated have been vaccinated.
According to Statistics website Worldometers, 40,515,145 million Americans have recovered from COVID. We have no idea how many of those individuals have also had the vaccine.
Nor do we know how many people have had COVID but didn’t know it and/or were never tested.
According to CDC data (Dec. 18), 203,727,446 or 61.4 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated. 70.6 percent of Americans aged 12 or older and 72.4 percent of those 18 or older are fully vaccinated.
The data also shows that 241,205,528 or 72 percent of Americans have had at least one dose of the vaccine. 83 percent of those aged 12 and older and over 85 percent of those aged 18 and older have had at least one dose.
I would imagine that many of them intend to have the second dose.
Our level of immunity is higher than Dr. Fauci and his ilk would have us believe.
So, if we’re racking up huge numbers of new cases of Omicron, this variant is evading the vaccines. The vaccines are not nearly as effective as they’ve been said to be.
Is it time to stop the masking, the social distancing and the lockdowns and do what’s necessary to turn the pandemic into an endemic?
Is it time to rip off the band-aid?
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