The Covid fear factory is trembling
Dec 26, 2021 15:31:51 GMT -5
Post by J.J.Gibbs on Dec 26, 2021 15:31:51 GMT -5
December 26, 2021
The Covid fear factory is trembling
By S.R. Piccoli
Hard times are coming for vaccine fanatics and fear-mongering lockdown enthusiasts, or at least that’s what we can reasonably expect after reading the news coming out of South Africa and the U.K. about the Omicron variant. As a matter of fact, the data out of South Africa after five weeks of Omicron spread and out of the U.K. in the first full week after Omicron hit the country suggest that the new Covid-19 variant should be a cause for celebration and relief, not fear and alarm—yet that’s not the direction in which the American media and many politicians are heading.
What we know now is that Omicron’s symptoms are considerably less severe than the Delta strain. Of course, further investigations using larger data sets are needed to confirm this trend. Scientists and health authorities need all the data they can get from the U.S. and other Western countries about Omicron, but the initial premises are encouraging.
At this point the question naturally arises: Why is it that the public health establishment and the media are working hard to generate a tide of public hysteria around Omicron? Before trying to answer the question, though, let us look in detail at why it makes sense to pose the question in the first place.
To begin, as South African Health Minister Joseph Phaahla explained at a press conference, even when his country was recording its highest number of cases since the spread of the pandemic, only 1.7% of identified Covid-19 cases were hospitalized in the second week of Omicron infections, compared with 19% at the same point in the cycle during the Delta wave.
Moreover, according to Discovery Health CEO Ryan Noach, on average, fewer of the infected people in South Africa who did end up in the hospital required oxygen and ventilation, and the proportion who required intensive care, or ended up in the ICU, dropped to about 13% from 30%. Perhaps even more importantly, excess deaths, the number of deaths above the historical average, are below 2,000 a week, an eighth of their previous peak. In addition, 91% of those infected with Omicron have already recovered.
Continued at link
The Covid fear factory is trembling
By S.R. Piccoli
Hard times are coming for vaccine fanatics and fear-mongering lockdown enthusiasts, or at least that’s what we can reasonably expect after reading the news coming out of South Africa and the U.K. about the Omicron variant. As a matter of fact, the data out of South Africa after five weeks of Omicron spread and out of the U.K. in the first full week after Omicron hit the country suggest that the new Covid-19 variant should be a cause for celebration and relief, not fear and alarm—yet that’s not the direction in which the American media and many politicians are heading.
What we know now is that Omicron’s symptoms are considerably less severe than the Delta strain. Of course, further investigations using larger data sets are needed to confirm this trend. Scientists and health authorities need all the data they can get from the U.S. and other Western countries about Omicron, but the initial premises are encouraging.
At this point the question naturally arises: Why is it that the public health establishment and the media are working hard to generate a tide of public hysteria around Omicron? Before trying to answer the question, though, let us look in detail at why it makes sense to pose the question in the first place.
To begin, as South African Health Minister Joseph Phaahla explained at a press conference, even when his country was recording its highest number of cases since the spread of the pandemic, only 1.7% of identified Covid-19 cases were hospitalized in the second week of Omicron infections, compared with 19% at the same point in the cycle during the Delta wave.
Moreover, according to Discovery Health CEO Ryan Noach, on average, fewer of the infected people in South Africa who did end up in the hospital required oxygen and ventilation, and the proportion who required intensive care, or ended up in the ICU, dropped to about 13% from 30%. Perhaps even more importantly, excess deaths, the number of deaths above the historical average, are below 2,000 a week, an eighth of their previous peak. In addition, 91% of those infected with Omicron have already recovered.
Continued at link
