Omicron Variant

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It's an interesting question, which I'll leave you to ruminate over.

To help you out, though, here's some information (nothing new, I believe it could all be found in the forums here already) that you would need to consider:
* Would I trust a medication which your previous President had a hand in fast-tracking the development of, when by doing so it would demonstrate trust in him and his actions?
* With family members having compromised immunity (because of hers, my wife had been given 3 injections - which were considered the equivalent of 2 in a "normal" person - when she caught the virus at Christmas), would I be likely to have been injected?

But, on the other hand:
* I do state that people should have a choice, and not be forced\coerced, to have these injections (or any other medical procedure) against their will.
* I do study a range of reputable science regarding the virus and the injections, not just relying on what the media tells me.

I hope all this additional information helps you with solving your conundrum, and wish you luck with coming to a conclusion.

A more contagious subvariant of omicron, known as BA.2, is spreading across the globe and could soon become the dominant version of Covid-19.

It’s now the top variant in at least 18 countries and rapidly spreading, representing 35% of all new cases that have been genetically sequenced worldwide, up from 10 countries and 21% of cases the week before, according to new data from the World Health Organization. In the U.S, BA.2 currently makes up 3.8% of genetically sequenced Covid cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A pandemic-weary public wants to know two main things: Will BA.2 cause a second surge of omicron cases, and will it put even more people in the hospital with severe infections? So far, scientists say the answer to both questions is probably no.

However, Danish scientists confirmed this week that the new subvariant can reinfect people who’ve previously had omicron, although it doesn’t appear to be all that common. They also agree that it’s more contagious than the original version of omicron, BA.1, which is still widely circulating around the world.

But it’s surprisingly not driving a second wave of omicron infections. Globally, Covid cases have plunged 21% over the past week — subsiding in every region except the Western Pacific — while deaths have fallen 8% over the past week, according to data from the WHO.

“If what is being reported is true that BA.2 is slightly more transmissible, then my strong inclination is to say that BA.2 will likely take over wherever BA.1 was,” said Mehul Suthar, a virologist at Emory University.

However, Suthar said this doesn’t necessarily mean that BA.2 will cause a surge of infection. BA.2′s ability to cause another wave depends, in part, on whether it can reinfect people who have already caught and recovered from omicron, he said.

Danish scientists confirmed Tuesday that the BA.2 subvariant can reinfect people who previously had its omicron predecessor, BA.1, though the risk of catching the virus again appears low.

he people reinfected had mild symptoms and none of them were hospitalized or died. The study also found that people reinfected with a BA.2 infection had a reduced viral load, indicating some crossover immunity from the first infection.

The U.K. Health Security Agency, in a separate study, found 69 cases of people reinfected with BA.2 no more than 90 days after their first infection with Covid. However, no instances of people reinfected by BA.2 after first catching BA.1 were found among the 51 cases where enough information was available. The timing of the first infections and sequencing indicated their original Covid cases were the delta variant.

Neither study has been peer-reviewed, which is the gold standard in academic publishing.

The WHO, in a statement Tuesday, said data from early studies of reinfection cases in the general population shows that one infection with BA.1 provides strong protection against reinfection with BA.2.

The original omicron BA.1 strain demonstrated a substantial ability to escape antibodies induced by the vaccines, leading to many breakthrough infections during the recent surge. Danish scientists found that BA.2 is better at evading vaccine protections than BA.1, according to a study published last month.

However, vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections don’t spread the virus as easily to others as the unvaccinated, according to the study. This is likely because people who are vaccinated have a lower viral load than people who have not received their shots, the scientists said. In other words, vaccines still help reduce spread of the virus.

Scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that BA.2 evades the antibodies from two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine slightly more than BA.1. Neutralizing antibody levels were about 1.4 times lower against BA.2, according to a study published in early February.

“BA.2 evades antibodies from the Pfizer vaccines similarly to BA.1, maybe slightly more so but not dramatically more so,” said Dan Barouch, an author of the study and principal investigator at Harvard’s Center for Virology and Vaccine Research. Barouch also helped develop Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine.

Barouch said vaccinated people infected with BA.1 also developed robust antibodies against BA.2. “It would suggest that since BA.1 omicron has been very widespread, those people probably have a substantial degree of immunity to BA.2,” he said.

Just as New York case rates drop and officials roll back health requirements for schools and businesses, another coronavirus variant is showing signs of derailing the state’s recovery from the winter COVID surge.

Known as BA.2, this virus is an offshoot, or sublineage, of the omicron variant that just swept through New York State. It’s like a kid sister, and some experts even call it “Omicron 2.” But it spreads about 30% faster than its sibling — BA.1 — and is just as severe, according to the World Health Organization.

Data from the New York State health department shows that BA.2 is quickly moving to dominate its viral kin. BA.2 is doubling in proportion statewide every two weeks and represents about one in 10 sequenced cases. This trend is backed up by similar data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the New York and New Jersey region.

The pattern is mind-boggling given what New York experienced this winter. Since omicron’s discovery in late November, the state has recorded 2.2 million COVID-19 cases — its biggest surge of the pandemic. Despite the immunity from those infections and 75% of New York residents being fully vaccinated, BA.2 is finding space to thrive.

The question now is whether BA.2 will stay in the background as New York’s winter surge peters out or lengthen the wave just as life is getting back to normal. This sister variant has been known to global scientists since mid-November but has just lingered on the sidelines in some places. When BA.2 hit Denmark this winter, for example, it caused a second surge and lifted daily deaths to a new summit — mere weeks after the country had peaked with its sibling. But BA.2 is also spreading through the U.K. and South Africa without reversing progress against the disease. (Update:After lingering in the background for weeks, new data shows BA.2 is now contributing to an uptick in cases and hospitalizations in the U.K.)

Some health experts think BA.2 won’t cause much harm in New York because of the area’s vaccination rate and because it is gaining ground so soon after the last surge.

“I don't think it means a lot because there's pretty good cross-immunity between BA.1 and BA.2 and because the omicron wave was so recent,” said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology at Northwell Health and the chief of infectious diseases at North Shore University Hospital and LIJ Medical Center. “People clearly have good immunity. It's very good immunity for 90 days. It's probably decent immunity for six months.”

But other researchers worry BA.2 could prey upon unvaccinated groups such as children and people who have not been boosted. Only 33% of New York residents have received a booster shot. So few health care workers have taken their additional doses that the state health department postponed the enforcement of a booster mandate for this workforce, citing fears of staffing shortages.

Sure, these omicron variants are milder than their predecessor, the delta variant, which caused havoc last summer. But they’re also three to five times deadlier than pre-delta variants, according to a recent study from the CDC.

“Spread of the BA.2 subvariant could extend the winter surge,” said Bruce Y. Lee, a public health policy expert at CUNY and executive director of the research group PHICOR. “We know that cases have been going down, but the cases are still happening at a reasonably high level right now.”

COVID-19 risk is considered low in most of New York state and across the five boroughs, but its abundance is still much more than we’ve seen during past low points in the pandemic. The state, for example, is still averaging about 1,800 cases daily. During last summer’s lull, this average was six times lower.

The BA.2 subvariant has also weakened our ability to treat the disease. Earlier this winter, its potent sibling knocked out two of the four monoclonal antibody drugs used to remedy infections in high-risk individuals. Recent evidence from New York University suggests that BA.2 can bypass a third drug, sotrovimab.

On the positive side, such breakthroughs in vaccinated people don’t appear more prevalent with BA.2 and reinfections overall appear to be rare. But every case of the coronavirus offers an opportunity for developing chronic symptoms — or long COVID.

Lee said New York could not rule out any future possibility with BA.2 at the moment.

Earlier this year, Gothamist reported on how the daily number of COVID tests was shrinking faster than ever before in New York City. That pattern has only deepened. The city started February giving out 60,000 PCR tests per day. By the end of the month, this number had almost been cut in half — to fewer than 40,000 daily tests.

The city has never seen a testing drop like this one, and it could be due to more people using at-home kits instead of going to clinics — or fewer concerns about the milder-but-not-mild omicron variant.

The New York City health department has reported an uptick in pediatric COVID-19 deaths since the start of the new year. Since then, the city’s death toll for kids rose by a half dozen — from 29 to 35 children over the course of the pandemic.

The rise comes after no fatalities had been recorded for this age group for months. In early October, the city raised the tally to 30 before dropping it back to 29 a month later. Regardless, six deaths in two months when the coronavirus hadn’t taken any children’s lives in nearly half a year speaks to the intensity of the omicron surge.

But with vaccination rates stalling and BA.2 lingering in the background, Scarpino, from the Rockefeller Foundation's Pandemic Prevention Institute, is worried about the nation being caught off guard again. He said a turning point last year revolved around mask mandates ending last summer even though the U.S. had missed its vaccination goals.

People were told to go about their lives if they were vaccinated, but so many people still lacked their shots, that the delta variant took off once everyone started mixing again.

“My biggest concern about BA.2 Is the potential erosion of trust in public health,” Scarpino said. “If we get this one wrong again, it kind of feels like replaying the tape that happened with the Delta variant.”

Am wondering if this is actually a mass eugenics program . Created by the worlds Ogliarchs ?

The sick and the infirm even disabled people are probably most likely to die from Covid and it’s variants, I think .

Am wondering if this is actually a mass eugenics program . Created by the worlds Ogliarchs ?