© Illustration by Michelle Budge, Deseret News.
A strange omicron variant symptom has emerged as COVID-19 has continued to spread across the country. What is ‘flurona’? Coronavirus and influenza co-infections reported
as omicron surges. (msn.com)
Dr. John Torres, NBC News senior medical correspondent, told the “Today” show
that one of the most common COVID-19 symptoms — loss of taste and smell — has not been common among omicron variant patients.
However, “people are reporting night sweats, which is a very strange symptom
that they say they’re having,” Torres told the “Today” show.
Night sweats have become one of the common omicron variant symptoms,
along with muscle aches, fatigue and scratchy throats, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
Torres said you should assume you have COVID-19 if you start to feel sick, regardless
of the symptoms you’re feeling.
“So, if you start getting sick, essentially you have to assume it’s COVID unless proven otherwise,” he said. “And by that I mean make sure you isolate yourself (and) get a test
to make sure it’s not COVID.”
“You notice there’s a lot of overlap in those symptoms, and that’s why it can be so hard
to tell the difference between all of them,” Torres said. “But there are a few differences.”
Dr. Amir Khan, a physician with the U.K.’s National Health Service, told the U.K. newspaper The Sun that night sweats had become a COVID-19 symptom for the omicron variant, too.
Khan said the night sweats are “those kind of drenching night sweats where you might have to get up and change your clothes.”
Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who sounded the alarm on the omicron coronavirus variant, said at the beginning of the omicron variant wave that the symptoms are re often “very, very mild” compared to previous COVID-19 strains, per Al Jazeera.
The Next Big COVID Variant Could Be a Triple Whammy Nightmare.
By David Axe
Even as daily new COVID cases set all-time records and hospitals fill up, epidemiologists have arrived at a perhaps surprising consensus. Yes, the latest Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is bad. But it could have been a lot worse. Even as cases have surged, deaths haven’t—at least not to the same degree. Omicron is highly transmissible but generally — ““t as severe as some older variants— “lineages” is the scientific term.
We got lucky. But that luck might not hold. Many of the same epidemiologists who have breathed a sigh of relief over Omicron’s relatively low death rate are anticipating that the next lineage might be much worse. Fretting over a possible future lineage that combines Omicron’s extreme transmissibility with the severity of, say, the previous Delta lineage, experts are beginning to embrace a new public health strategy that’s getting an early test run in Israel: a four-shot regimen of messenger-RNA vaccine.
“I think this will be the strategy going forward,” Edwin Michael, an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida, told The Daily Beast. Omicron raised alarms in health agencies all over the world in late November after officials in South Africa reported the first cases. Compared to older lineages, Omicron features around 50 key mutations, some 30 of which are on the spike protein that helps the virus to grab onto our cells. Some of the mutations are associated with a virus’s ability to dodge antibodies and thus partially evade vaccines.
Others are associated with higher transmissibility.
The lineage’s genetic makeup pointed to a huge spike in infections in the unvaccinated
as well as an increase in milder “breakthrough” infections in the vaccinated. That’s exactly what happened. Health officials registered more than 10 million new COVID cases the first week of January.
That’s nearly double the previous worst week for new infections, back in May.
Around 3 million of those infections were in the United States, where Omicron coincided with the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays and associated traveling and family gatherings.
But mercifully, deaths haven’t increased as much as cases have. Worldwide, there were 43,000 COVID deaths the first week of January—fewer than 10,000 of them in the U.S. While deaths tend to lag infections by a couple weeks, Omicron has been dominant long enough that it’s increasingly evident there’s been what statisticians call a “decoupling” of cases and fatalities.
“We can say we dodged a bullet in that Omicron does not appear to cause as serious of a disease,” Stephanie James, head of a COVID testing lab at Regis University in Colorado, told The Daily Beast. She stressed that data is still being gathered, so we can’t be certain yet that the apparent decoupling is real. Assuming the decoupling is happening, experts attribute it to two factors.
First, Omicron tends to infect the throat without necessarily descending to the lungs, where the potential for lasting or fatal damage is much, much higher.
Second, by now, countries have administered nearly 9.3 billion doses of vaccine—enough for a majority of the world’s population to have received at least one dose. In the United States, 73 percent of people have gotten at least one dose. Sixty-two percent have gotten two doses of the best mRNA vaccines. A third have received a booster dose.
Yes, Omicron has some ability to evade antibodies, meaning the vaccines are somewhat less effective against this lineage than they are against Delta and other older lineages. But even when a vaccine doesn’t prevent an infection, it usually greatly reduces its severity. For many vaccinated people who’ve caught Omicron, the resulting COVID infection is mild. “A common cold or some sniffles in a fully vaxxed and boosted healthy individual,”
is how Eric Bortz, a University of Alaska-Anchorage virologist and public health expert, described it to The Daily Beast.
All that is to say, Omicron could have been a lot worse. Viruses evolve to survive.
That can mean greater transmissibility, antibody-evasion or more serious infection. Omicron mutated for the former two. There’s a chance some future Sigma or Upsilon lineage could do all three.
When it comes to viral mutations, “extreme events can occur at a non-negligible rate, or probability, and can lead to large consequences,” Michael said. Imagine a lineage that’s as transmissible as Omicron but also attacks the lungs like Delta tends to do. Now imagine that this hypothetical lineage is even more adept than Omicron at evading the vaccines.
That would be the nightmare lineage. And it’s entirely conceivable it’s in our future.
There are enough vaccine holdouts, such as the roughly 50 million Americans who say they’ll never get jabbed, that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen should have ample opportunities for mutation. “As long as we have unvaccinated people in this country—and across the globe—there is the potential for new and possibly more concerning viral variants to arise,” Aimee Bernard, a University of Colorado immunologist, told The Daily Beast.
Worse, this ongoing viral evolution is happening against a backdrop of waning immunity. Antibodies, whether vaccine-induced or naturally occurring from past infection, fade over time. It’s not for no reason that health agencies in many countries urge booster doses just three months after initial vaccination. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is an outlier, and recommends people get boosted after five months. A lineage much worse than Omicron could evolve at the same time that antibodies wane in billions of people all over the world.
That’s why many experts believe the COVID vaccines will end up being annual or even semi-annual jabs. You’ll need a fourth jab, a fifth jab, a sixth jab, et cetera, forever.
Israel, a world leader in global health, is already turning that expectation into policy. Citing multiple studies that showed a big boost in antibodies with an additional dose of mRNA and no safety concerns, the country’s health ministry this week began offering a fourth dose to anyone over the age of 60, who tend to be more vulnerable to COVID than younger people.
That should be the standard everywhere, Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington Institute for Health, told The Daily Beast. “Scientifically, they’re right,” he said of the Israeli health officials. If there’s a downside,
it’s that there are still a few poorer countries—in Africa, mostly—where many people still struggle to get access to any vaccine, let alone boosters and fourth doses. If and when other richer countries follow Israel’s lead and begin offering additional jabs, there’s some risk of even greater inequity in global vaccine distribution.
“The downside is for the rest of the world,” Mokdad said. “I’m waiting to get my first dose and you guys are getting a fourth?”
The solution isn’t to deprive people of the doses they need to maintain their protection against future—and potentially more dangerous—lineages. The solution, for vaccine-producing countries, is to further boost production and double down on efforts to push vaccines out to the least privileged communities.
A sense of urgency is key. For all its rapid spread, Omicron has actually gone fairly easy on us. Sigma or Upsilon might not. Dr. Fauci, corporate media, and the Public Health Regime have been lying about Covid since the beginning.
Fauci defends CDC Guidelines, says we’re still in the middle of a pandemic – Bing video
On Thursday, Dr. Fauci joined Adrienne Bankert on NewsNation’s Morning in America for an interview that included questions from viewers. Fauci has a visceral negative reaction in this interview when asked about Covaxin, yet offers no scientific justification for being against it.
His attitude is “Shut up and take the mRNA vaccines!”
On Behalf of a Michigan viewer, Bankert questioned the NIAID director about why
“more traditional” vaccines that are not mRNA based – specifically Covaxin, which has been approved for use by the World Health Organization – have not been approved by the FDA for use in the United States even though multiple clinical trials have proven its safety and effectiveness is supposedly up to par.
“We had so many people ask about Covaxin,” she added.
Fauci shamelessly attempted to deflect and scrambled to build a straw man, claiming that he was “puzzled” because the US is stocked up on vaccines, and it’s not like we need any more because we have them, and people aren’t taking them.
“We have enough vaccines, the best vaccines available, in the United States.
I’m puzzled by that question. We have more vaccines than we need right now. We just need the people to get vaccinated with the vaccines that we have. The mRNA vaccines are desired by everyone else in the world.
“So, we have what we need; we need to use it.“
Bankert followed up Fauci’s pathetic puzzled response by asking if he is “opposed to alternative treatments.” Visibly shocked, at this point by the seemingly benign but unwittingly pointed line of questioning, Fauci just outright says we don’t need another vaccine before claiming Covaxin has not applied for approval anyway,
What do you mean by alternative?
It’s not an alternative. It’s another vaccine. We don’t need another vaccine; we have plenty of vaccines, they have not applied to get approved. When you try to get approved, the FDA looks at the data, and if the data are in order and give you a good scientific rationale to approve it, the FDA will approve it.
There are no interventions that are not being approved for reasons other
than they’ve either not been submitted for approval or the data are not
strong enough to warrant approval.”
Unsurprisingly, Ocugen Inc, the US-based pharmaceutical company that produces Covaxin, DID, in fact, apply for Emergency Use Authorization for their non-mRNA Covid vaccine, and that was all the way back at the beginning of November,
but for some unknown reason, the EUA has not been approved or denied
by the FDA as of yet.
What’s more, the FDA has also forced Ocugen to pause its
phase III Covaxin clinical trial while also citing no reason.
In other words, Covaxin’s approval status seems to have nothing to do with their application status – of which Fauci was fully aware when he brazenly misled the public
on national TV, but rather it seems that the FDA is arbitrarily delaying the approval.
Watch: Fauci’s deception went largely unnoticed thanks to Bankert letting him slide in another bootlicking softball interview, but the hacks at NewsNation also played their role in suppressing the truth by issuing a silent “editor’s note” into the official transcript of the interview. They also wrote a lengthy piece about Fauci’s comments that had the correction buried all the way at the bottom of the article.
WATCH: Fauci Caught Lying AGAIN, Claims Non-mRNA Vaccines Like “Covaxin” Have Not Been Approved In the US Because “They Have Not Applied” – Turns Out, They HAVE (thegatewaypundit.com)
How many people saw the ABOVE clip with Fauci’s lie?
Versus how many people saw that teeny-tiny correction?
The latter pales in comparison. That’s the power of Fake News.
But in the end, whether it’s Pfizer’s experimental jab or a non-mRNA-type like Covaxin, natural immunity provides the best protection against Covid-19, in some cases by as much as 13X – and don’t forget, this virus also has over 99% recovery rate anyway.
Plus, the available vaccines do not have the best track record, to put it mildly.
Fauci should stay the hell out of it, Americans have enough ‘data’ to make
up their own minds.
Enough with his lies.
“Highest Death Rates In History” – Indiana Life Insurance CEO Says Deaths are
UP BY A WHOPPING 40% Among People Aged 18-64 in 2021 – Only a Fraction
From Covid Deaths (VIDEO)
MUST SEE: Italians Light Up The Sky With EPIC Storm of Fireworks In Defiance
of Mayor’s Ban – Happy New Year, Worldwide Resistance (thegatewaypundit.com)
What a way ^ to ring in the New Year while still giving the finger ^ to the tyrants.
TRENDING: BREAKING: Georgia Investigators have ‘Ballot Trafficker’ Who Is Talking — Admits to Being Paid THOUSANDS in 2020 Election Ballot Boxes Ballot Harvesting Scheme — 242 Ballot Traffickers Detected.
The Supreme Court has allowed state COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Biden’s policies face a steeper climb (msn.com)
‘We can’t vaccinate the planet every 4 to 6 months,’ vaccine creator warns: Live COVID updates (msn.com)
“IHU” variant “on our radar” but not a threat, WHO says (msn.com)
IHU: What to know about the newer variant WHO is monitoring (msn.com)
Biden urges concern but
ot alarm in US as omicron rises (msn.com)
Google — Year In Search 2021 – YouTube