Here is today's update.
The Omicron variant is spreading fast. In London, the cases are dobling almost daily and faster than every two days, according to professor Chris Whitty.
I watched the news conference from 10 downing Street at 11:OO AM CST, which was 5:00 PM GMT.
I will paste the essence of what the chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty had to say.
Omicron could be a dangerous disease
even if it is milder, because the variant is spreading more quickly, Professor Chris Whitty has said.
In a press conference from Downing Street on Wednesday night, Professor Whitty, urged “really serious caution” over reports that
omicron was leading to fewer hospitalisations than delta.
His comments were made after the first major
real-world data from South Africa suggested that the country’s omicron wave had led to 23 per cent fewer hospitalisations than when the delta variant was dominant.
However, Prof Whitty said that levels of immunity and vaccination, as well as population age, were very different between the two counties.
He said: “The first caution on this is simply a numerical one – if the rate of hospitalisation were to halve but you're doubling every two days, in two days you're back to where you were before you actually had the hospitalisation.
“If the peak of this is twice as great, then halving the size of the hospitalisation rate, you still end up in the same place. And this peak is going very fast.”
He added: “The second point I wanted to make, which I'm not sure it's fully been absorbed by everybody, is that the amount of immunity in South Africa for this wave – because of a prior delta wave and vaccination – is far higher than it was for their last wave. And therefore the fact that there is a lower hospitalisation rate is unsurprising.”
Prof Whitty said: “That doesn't mean that there isn't some degree of slightly milder disease, that is possible. But I just think there's a danger people have over-interpreted this to say, this is not a problem and what are we worrying about?
“I want to be clear, I'm afraid this is going to be a problem. Exact proportions of it, of course, South African scientists and UK scientists and scientists globally are trying to determine at the moment.”
Prof Whitty said that “all the things that we do know [about omicron] are bad" warning that the variant was moving at a “phenomenal pace”.
That is extremely sobering. In the US we have nowhere near enough urgency about this.
There is a massive booster effort under way in the UK. About half the people over 18 are now boosted, and the age of boosting has now dropped to 12. According to Boris Johnson the proportion of the population with three doses is double the EU and US. Boosting is key at the moment.
Professor Whitty advised only absolutely necessary social mixing and contact until everyone is boosted.
This most likely to turn out to be a bad situation, but time will tell.
He was asked when this crises might end. He said not until we can have everyone is immunized with a multivalent Sars vaccine. He thought that would be ready at the earliest sometime 2023. The problem is this Covid-19 is showing far too much vaccine escape. My personal fear, is that Omicron may not be the last to show significant vaccine escape in the next 18 to 24 months.
Having said all that, I do think we are in better shape than a year ago. We have better treatments, and now any virals coming soon. My fear is that viruses become resistant to antiviral agents fast. So that is why, when treating HIV for instance, it takes a cocktail of antivirals that attack replication at different points. I will be surprised if this is not the case with Covid-19.
The big advantage we have now is that omnicron has far from total vaccine escape, which gives hope that with aggressive use of the vaccines we have now, we can keep things from becoming catastrophic while we improve our armaments.
SO GET BOOSTED ASAP. If anyone happens to be an unvaccinated COVIDIOT, then please review your position DBQ, and call up your sparse neurons, involved in logical decision making.
Changing gears, MPs have been informed that this Sars Covid-19 virus most likely escaped from a Chinese lab, and that there is a good probability that this is an engineered virus.
A laboratory leak is now the more likely origin of Covid, MPs have heard, because after two years of searching an animal host has never been found.
Speaking to the Science and Technology Select Committee, Dr Alina Chan, a specialist in gene therapy and cell engineering at MIT and Harvard, said there was also a risk that Covid-19 was an engineered virus.
Dr Chan, said: “I think the lab origin is more likely than not. Right now it’s not safe for people who know about the origin of the pandemic to come forward. But we live in an era where there is so much information being stored that it will eventually come out.
“We have heard from many top virologists that a genetically engineered origin is reasonable and that includes virologists who made modifications to the first Sars virus.
“We know this virus has a unique feature, called the furin cleavage site, and without this feature there is no way this would be causing this pandemic.
“A proposal was leaked showing that EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were developing a pipeline for inserting novel furin cleavage sites. So, you find these scientists who said in early 2018 ‘I’m going to put horns on horses’ and at the end of 2019 a unicorn turns up in Wuhan city.”
The furin cleavage point on Covid-19 is part of the spike protein which helps it to enter cells.
Spike proteins are little grappling hooks which lock onto receptors on human cells. They have two sections, a binding section and a cell-entry section.
Once attached, the virus makes use of the enzyme furin - which is present in human cells - to snip away the bound section, leaving a space for the cell-entry section of the spike protein to fuse with the cell membrane and get inside. It is the reason Covid-19 is so infectious.
My personal hunch all along has been that this was not a virus that arose in nature. There have just been far too many features that just do not add up. This virus has not been found in any significant quantity in nature, which it would have by now, and it has features never seen or envisaged before.
I think this view is rapidly gaining round, and fast becoming, if not already the majority view.
