I keep vowing not to write any more about covid. As far as I am concerned, it is over. Done. Finished. Boring. All I care about is that I never again have to wear a mask. The omicron variant is a kind of reductio: covid is now, essentially, the common cold, which like covid is a group of coronaviruses.
But covid-related absurdities from our government keep drawing me back. Like these two stories, which appeared nearly side by side in yesterday’s New York Post. First we have Joe Biden warning against the omicron apocalypse:
President Biden sounded like he’d been watching “Game of Thrones” as he warned Thursday that the unvaccinated “will soon overwhelm” US hospitals and vaccine refusers will experience “a winter of severe illness and death.”
“It’s here now and it’s spreading and it’s going to increase,” Biden said of the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 at the White House, seated near his chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“For [the] unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — the unvaccinated, for themselves, their families and the hospitals they will soon overwhelm,” Biden said.
So, per Biden: Omicron is awful and you must be vaccinated. Actually, though, omicron is not very threatening. In fact, it is not clear that anyone in the world has died as a direct result of omicron, as opposed to dying from something else while coincidentally sneezing.
Meanwhile, the Post also reports this:
A new study out of Columbia University says the Omicron variant is “markedly resistant” to vaccines and boosters might not do much to help, spelling bad news for the country as Omicron spreads and COVID-19 cases rise nationally.
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The scientists express concern in the study published Wednesday that the variant’s “extensive” mutations can “greatly compromise” the vaccine, even neutralizing it.
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The results are “in line with emerging clinical data on the Omicron variant demonstrating higher rates of reinfection and vaccine breakthroughs,” the authors said.One study recently showed Omicron is roughly 70 times more transmissible than Delta, but less severe.
As I have said many times before, I think it is a good idea for most middle-aged and elderly people to be vaccinated, as I have been. The Trump-inspired Operation Warp Speed vaccines have done a lot of good. But they are basically a stopgap measure, and the coronavirus has pretty rapidly mutated around them.
Joe Biden’s assertion that the “unvaccinated…are looking at a winter of severe illness and death” is ridiculous, both because the vaccines are mostly ineffective against omicron, and because omicron causes very little “severe illness and death.” Joe Biden is simply spreading misinformation. That said, it is entertaining to witness his over-the-top commitment to the Trump vaccines.
I would like to say that this is my last word on the coronavirus, but I don’t suppose it will be.
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