The bad news is the Omicron variant is very contagious. I was hoping that it would be less severe, but I fear the data does support this. The good news is that it will be over soon because everyone will either get infected and/or vaccinated. The scary part is what may happen to the hospital system.
I live in Israel, and our government is very aggressive. We have green passports, and it is impossible to go to restaurants, bars, and many other venues without three vaccinations. In Israel, you have to have had three vaccinations to be considered fully vaccinated or infected with corona and a follow-up vaccination within six months.
The third vaccination had been done six months after the second one, but this is changing and will soon be three months after the second one.
We closed the country to tourists. Israeli’s are not allowed to fly to Red Countries, which is now most of Africa, Europe, Canada, and the USA. Even though I am both an Israeli and USA citizen, I can not fly to the USA except for exceptional circumstances.
Those over sixty like me will be getting a fourth vaccination soon. I am personally pleased about that.
I expect that there will be a modified version of the vaccine that targets Omicron by April. However, the government does not want to wait for those at high risk for hospitalization.
Our numbers are still low, a bit over 8,000 infected. The hospital numbers are low at 82. But this will soon change. More than 10% of the population has not been vaccinated; a much larger number has not had the third vaccination (they naively thought they were safe because the numbers were so low).
I expect that if we see the hospitalization rise, we will start taking more robust measures, including lockdowns. While this will slow down the spread, eventually, everyone will get it. Once that happens, it will burn itself out at least until the following variant arrives.
I consider those the refuse to get vaccinated potential murders. They are equivalent to drunk drivers. In this case, they take up needed hospital beds. I will not socialize with anyone that has refused to get vaccinated. If you think I feel strongly about this, you are right.
Two Thirds Done 
Wow. I wonder if the increased hospitalizations are not more a result of how unhealthy, obese and sick our society has become. The multiple co-morbidities, the lack of clean air, Is it possible the murderers are too many to name? I can start with our food industry, the current pushing of high calorie non-nutritive foods and the current cost of produce making it unaffordable for lower income populations to choose anything other than government subsidized high fructose corn syrup. Is it possible if our medical community were paid to support healthy lifestyles and education providing healthy food to patients the paradigm would be different. Less hospitalizations because our populations would be healthy enough to fight COVID? Versus physicians are paid for a 15 minute visit and their tool chest is chasing the morbidities with drugs versus supporting patients who are not suffering from illnesses based on ingredients from highly addictive unhealthy foods (there are brain scans to prove this to be true). I want people to be safe, vaccinated, and loved, I want us as a whole to begin to look at this not just as a COVID problem but a societal issue greater than COVID. What are the underlying illnesses creating greater hospitalizations? How can we begin to get a handle on those and support people in reversing and having other options for self-care that are affordable and dont create more shame.
Worldwide prevalence of obesity in 2020, more than 2 billion adults (39% of the adult global population) were overweight (BMI > 25). Of these, over 600 million were obese (BMI > 30). In Europe, more than half the population is overweight (BMI > 25) and up to 30% is obese (BMI > 30).
We need to support greater overall health, more love, more compassion, more listening. I love you Avram and thanks for always bringing it.
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So true Karen. I think there is a very strong correlation between obesity and death from Covid. Thanks for your comments.
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From what is being reported about the latest variant, it looks like two things are going on 1: Omicron spreads easier but is less of a problem for people. 2: It looks like that people with the shot(s) still get it, but they don’t have problems. A recent Danish study had 783 cases, 9 hospitalizations, 1 ICU, ZERO deaths.
So it looks like anyone that has not had covid is going to get Omicron, but won’t die and probably won’t even need to go to the hospital, and will then be immune from covid. If that is the case, then the spread will probably take place from now to next March/April 2022 and covid will be over.
The shot(s) do not appear to do anything for Omicron, but if people are not dying or ending up in the hospital that may not matter.
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.50.2101146
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Thanks for your comments. Yes, Omicron spreads much faster than Delta. It is extremely infectious. Yes, people that have been vaccinated while they still many get infected will probably not have serious and life threatening cases. But that is not true with those that have have not been vaccinated. Because it is so infectious, case levels will claim very fast and hospitals will be overloaded. My time table is April.
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“I consider those the refuse to get vaccinated potential murders.”
The problem with such a view, is that what happens to the people who took the risk of getting the shot(s), or were forced to do so, and have problems with them?
There are mutiple reports of people having all kinds of reports from the shots. Within my extended circle of people I know there are two people, one a teen and one a woman in early 20s, that started having ‘heart problems’ from the shots; what happens to them going forward?
The Danish study I cited to on Omicron cites that of the 783 people in the study, about 75% were ‘fully vaxxed’. This is the first time in history that a vaccine does not stop an illness but is still being called one and even forced on people under threat of loss of job and other forced measures.
In some countries they are talking about repealing the Nuremberg Code because it is an ‘obstacle’ to forced vaccinations. The very thing that was put into place to prevent anyone from ever doing forced medical procudures on anyone else so ‘we never have what happened happen again’ (WWII), is now being dismantled so it can happen again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code
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Louis, I have to respectfully disagree with much of what you wrote. You conflated the large number of people that choose not to get vaccinated with a small potential of people that have had side effects. Frankly, I imagine that more people have been hurt in traffic accidents on their way to get vaccinated than from the vaccine which is extremely safe. Not getting vaccinated and then getting infected can lead to very serious consequences as has been shown by more than 800,000 dead in the USA alone. Of course, in places where there is a high degree of vaccination, a large number of the people that will get infected will have been vaccinated even those who may be a small percentage of those people.
Now you are bringing up the Nazis. I would prefer that you do not go there. But there are things that can be done to put pressure on those that will not get vaccinated. For instance, children that are not vaccinated can study from home but children that are can goto in-person. I would support such things.
When someone who could have been vaccinated chooses not to and then takes up the last heart-lung machine and then someone who has a massive heart attack can not get access to such a machine and dies, I think the former person is responsible for that death. You don’t have to agree of course. This is my blog and I get to express my opinion but I am willing to share space for others like you. In fact, I appreciate hearing from you. Thank you.
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The ‘vaccines’ are NOT extremely safe. Pre covid, I only knew of ONE person that I had EVER heard of having any problems with any vaccine. Now with covid, I know of two people having a ‘heart incident’; one a teen and one a woman in her 20s. These people are NOT supposed to be having problems like this. It should be rare that I would know ‘A’ person with problems with a covid ‘vaccine’; it is incredible that I know TWO. ( so far)
MANY people online are reporting all kinds of anecdotal problems with the ‘vaccines’ but no one seems to care or intrerested in investigating any of them. And let us not forget the 75 athletes that either had to stop playing in a game because of a ‘heart event’ or the few that even dropped dead in the middle of a game. But instead of investigating ‘what is going on’; people are being told ‘oh, that happens all the time’? Really? I don’t seem to recall ANY reports pre covid shot(s) of a lot of atheletes having ‘heart problems’ or dropping dead in the middle of a game.
And I put ‘vaccines’ in quotes because the covid ‘vaccines’ do NOT seem to prevent anyone from getting covid. ‘Breakthrough cases’ should be very rare, not all over the place. (Was the term ever used pre covid?)
The Demark study had over 70% of the people had been ‘fully vaxxed’; how is that even worth calling it a ‘vaccine’ anymore?
And ALL of this is why we allow people to make their own medical decisions; we don’t force people because there is risk no matter what people do or do not do; BUT ITS COVID so in Australia people who come up on contact tracing have the police show up and take them off to a camp for two weeks; and in Austria they are forcing shots on everyone.
In the USA the manufacturers are shielded from all liability, so when someone gets the shot(s), and there is a problem; oh well. If the shot(s) are so safe and effective, why in the USA do the manufacturers need/want protection from any liability? (NOTE: Apparently, we do NOT give the shot(s) to illegal immigrants when they cross into the USA is because they would not be covered under this policy and shot(s) given to them would have the manufacturers liable for any problems from the shot(s).)
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I think we are done.
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Within the last day or so, two more papers were release about Omicron and they confirm what the Denmark study showed; no deaths, few hospitalizations, highly contagious (One source reports the R0 as being 10, which is very high), and shot(s) appear to have no effect on it. It looks like anyone that has not had covid yet will get Omicron within the next few months, and then be immune from covid. I have also seen some speculation that Omicron variant may, statistically, have less problems that the shots.
So it look like going forward:
1: Anyone who has not had covid is going to get Omicron at some point; shot(s) or no shot(s). [Demark study of 785 people of Omicron cases had over 70% as ‘fully vaxxed’]
2: Omicron has few hospitalizations and nearly zero deaths. (So far only one death reported in Germany out of all of the Omicron cases.)
3: Covid, in all forms, will probably be over with the end of this, Omicron, wave which should be in 3 or 4 months.
4: All of the angst over the mandates, masks, lockdowns, shot(s), booster(s), forced meansures, etc, was for nothing. Omicron was going to come along at some point and when that was done, covid would be done. Nothing anyone did or did not do was going to change any of that.
5: We are fortunate in that Omicron is what it is in that it does not cause people problems, becuase in the short time it will spread through the population, of only a few months, there is nothing that anyone could do anyways.
“Using the Scotland-wide Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID19 (EAVE II) platform, which comprises of linked primary care, vaccination, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), sequencing, hospitalisation and mortality data on 5.4 million (99% of the population), we undertook a cohort analysis with a nested test negative design incident case”: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/severity-of-omicron-variant-of-concern-and-vaccine-effectiveness-
“Early assessment of the clinical severity of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in South Africa”: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.21.21268116v1
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You mentioned 10% unvaccinated in Israel, but the WP says it is only 72% single and 64% double shot vaccinated for Israel. In theory the 10% could be adults only and very few under 18, but in the U.S. kids are getting infected at higher rates with Omicron. Of course I don’t know which number is right.
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Thanks for catching this. I don’t know why I wrote 10%. Over 70% have gotten at least 1 shot, 63% got two shots and 45% got 3 shots. Keep in mind that vaccinating children only started recently. Less than 3% of children 11 or younger have been vaccinated. Children under 16 have only recently gotten a second shot and are not yet eligible for a third shot. 27% of the population is under 15 years or younger. The so-called elderly (that me) has about a 90% vaccination rate which is one of the reasons our hospitalization and death rates are so low.
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