Tag: Omicron is the common cold

Latest NHS Data Suggest Omicron No Worse Than a Bad Cold

Via The Daily Sceptic

We’re publishing a guest post by our in-house doctor looking at the latest NHS data, including ICU data. Conclusion: Omicron hospital admissions in the community are declining and are unlikely to result in severe COVID-19.

Before diving into the numbers this week, I’d like to give a big shout out to Ms. Kate Josephs CBE, formerly the Director of the Cabinet Office Covid taskforce. According to the Telegraph, which broke the story of her leaving party, she “literally wrote the rules” in relation to societal restrictions.

Ms. Josephs took to twitter yesterday to apologise for attending a leaving drinks party on December 17th 2020, when she had been substantially responsible for putting the rest of the country under house arrest. She writes about being “truly sorry” for attending the event – she clearly means she’s sorry for being exposed.

The Telegraph has a helpful timeline graphic showing the dates of the many known social events in Whitehall against a backdrop of prevailing restrictions at the time. I had no idea being a civil servant was such fun! It is interesting that the parties all cluster round periods of maximum lockdown. The brief period in the summer of 2020 was a social desert for civil servants. Maybe they were all on extended holidays?

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Omicron 91 percent less likely to be fatal compared to Delta: CDC study

Via NY Post

omicron stock

Omicron poses a “substantially reduced risk” of serious illness compared to Delta — and is more than 90 percent less likely to kill those infected, according to a federally funded study.

The study, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wednesday, said it proved “compelling evidence of an intrinsically less severe infection” from the variant that currently accounts for 90 percent of cases in the US.

The evaluation of more than 70,000 infected Californians saw those with Omicron less than half as likely to need hospitalization as those with Delta — and about 75 percent less likely to need intensive care.

Those hospitalized also needed to stay approximately 70 percent less time, with a median treatment time of 1.5 days compared to five days for those with the previous dominant variant.

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Media Fakes First Omicron Death Story

Via Mercola.com

Story at-a-glance

  • Despite all signs indicating the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant causes only mild illness, the World Health Organization declared it a “variant of concern,” and countries responded with renewed mask mandates and lockdowns
  • December 20, 2021, the U.S. press went wild, reporting that the first Omicron death had been reported in Houston, Texas. Some claimed the man was killed by reinfection with Omicron even though he’d recovered from previous COVID-19 illness, suggesting natural immunity doesn’t work against this variant
  • As it turns out, this was fake news. The county health department could not confirm that the patient died “from” Omicron infection, only that he had tested positive for it at some point before death. He reportedly had underlying health conditions
  • Authorities wasted no time to use the Omicron death that really wasn’t to scare the unvaccinated. But the data tell a different story. Those who are double- or triple-jabbed are two to five times more likely to develop secondary infections when infected with Omicron than the unvaccinated, who have a 1.17 higher risk of secondary infections when infected with Omicron, compared to Delta
  • While the unvaccinated have higher transmission rates, they’re less likely than the COVID-jabbed to develop problematic infections from Omicron, suggesting Omicron evades “vaccine”-induced immunity

Ever since the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant emerged in December 2021, all the signs indicated that it was the mildest and least lethal variant yet. Not a single death has been attributed to it in South Africa,1 for example, where it was initially detected.2

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Finnish Epidemiologist: The IFR of the Omicron Variant is 0.04%, About Half That of Seasonal Flu

Via The Daily Sceptic

The Danish Government report released on January 3rd 2022 states:

Until Sunday December 19th 2021 nearly all positive SARS-CoV-2 samples were tested with variant PCR to identify Omicron cases. As of Monday December 20th 2021 only a representative sample of the positive SARS-CoV-2 samples are being tested with variant PCR at TCDK, hence, the number of identified Omicron cases does not represent the total number of Omicron cases in Denmark. In the Clinical Microbiological Departments, the PCR samples are from hospitalised patients prioritised to be variant PCR tested.

The report gives a very conservative estimate of the cumulative number of omicron cases by January 2nd, which is 55,673, because the Danish authorities stopped sequencing all COVID-19 positive cases on December 20th. Since then, as stated above, only a daily random sample has been sequenced to see the proportion of Omicron cases in the population. When I use this daily proportion starting from December 20th and multiply it by the daily number of all SARS-CoV-2 positive test results and subtract the number of the daily established Omicron cases I can get a reliable estimate of the true number of cumulative Omicron cases on January 2nd, which is 143,237. From December 29th onwards until January 2nd I assumed that 90% of COVID-19 diagnoses were the Omicron variant.

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The Beginning of the End?

Guest Post by Eugyppius

The virus part of the pandemic will probably soon be over.
Bild

Early reports that Omicron is substantially milder than other SARS-2 strains are every day confirmed by new data. A month into the unprecedented South African case spike, driven entirely by Omicron, Corona deaths remain low. It’s earlier days in the United Kingdom, where Omicron is only just over half of cases. So far, though, it is the same story there:

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