Covid Patients Aren't Filling Up The ICU's - OLD PEOPLE ARE!!!

 Denmark sitrep 20th:

– on Dec 15th Omikron was 44%, assuming well beyond 50% by now.

– since Nov 22nd 76%/91% of delta/omikron-infections were vaccinated. For Omikron that means the vaccinated are over-represented vs. the population vax rate.

– hospitalized right now because of omikron 35
– hospitalized right now bcause of omikron in ICU less than 5

I find Table 4 more concerning. Not only does it confirm that VE wanes, it suggests a rebound effect whereby the (doubly) vaccinated become *more* susceptible.

Were the animal models for these vaccines ever tested for susceptibility to reinfection?

That is to ask, did the pharma companies know they were creating an extortionate vaccine dependency?

dagbladet |  But it is not the corona patients who now overwhelm the emergency department and the medical departments at OUS. These are our old ones. The aging wave is washing in, and the preparedness there seems far more awkward than the preparations for the corona wave we are now preparing for.

There is one incident that has made more of an impression than anything else during my four - relatively short - years as a nurse at Gastromedisin at Ullevål. That was when an extremely frail 102-year-old man was going home after being treated for the flu. He had assured that his daughter was so good at helping, so it was decided that he did not need a nursing home place, but could manage with home nursing. This is what is called free choice and user participation.

When the daughter learned that her father was going home, she became desperate. She was eighty years old, she said, and so ill that she herself should soon be in a nursing home. When the patient taxi finally arrived - they are often a few hours late - we had to carry the worn-out old man out in the taxi. And then they left in the icy February darkness. The parchment-skinny half-asleep one hundred and two-year-old, with her crying eighty-year-old daughter. Printed for the home, as it is so nicely called.

This happened in the winter of 2018, in the middle of the flu season. Then there was real chaos with us - far worse than now - with many sick employees and yellow droplet infection equipment down the entire corridor. In the thirteen weeks the flu ravaged, there were 7,600 hospitalizations, with a peak of 700 patients simultaneously and a mortality rate of 1,400. There are more than a hundred deaths a week.

Far more than the seven corona deaths per day that recently made headlines. The reality behind the last number is not very dramatic. These were old people, and it is uncertain whether they died with or from the corona. It is also worth noting that 350 to 400 people die in nursing homes in Norway every week. Of old age. We must all die once.

Last year, it was known that mortality was due to infection control measures. The closure meant that nursing home patients were not transferred to hospitals and the elderly dared not visit us to any great extent. Now they are overwhelming the hospitals. Because it is not the covid-19 infected who top the hospitalization statistics in the last two weeks. They make up only one percent of all inpatients, while the majority of inpatients with respiratory diseases are frail old with pneumonia and RS virus.

 

 

 

Omicron Out'chere Freeballing No Matter What You Call Yourself Doing

The data from figure 4 shows that fully-vaccinated sera with the Moderna vaccine saw a 33-fold drop in neutralization against Omicron, Pfizer a 44-fold drop, and AstraZeneca a 36-fold drop. Notably, recently released data shows that sera from people who received the third dose lost almost ninety percent of its potency against Omicron after two weeks. After three months, most third-dose sera failed to neutralize at all. This data confirms the epidemiological observations that most fully doubly-vaccinated and triply-vaccinated individuals, including those with prior infection, are susceptible to infection by Omicron within weeks of the last boost.

Forbes  | In a few short weeks, the COVID-19 virus variant Omicron has spread around the world. The incidence of new infections is rising rapidly, even in well-vaccinated populations and those previously infected by earlier variants of SARS-CoV-2. The epidemiologic evidence strongly points to a variant that is resistant to most if not all extant vaccines, and possibly many monoclonal antibodies treatments. Here we explore these concerns. This is the third in our series that outlines what we know about Omicron. We summarize the finding of recent experiments by Cameroni et al. in a bioRxiv preprint from December 14th.

Omicron ACE2 Binding

The first question asked was how tightly the Omicron Spike (S) protein binds to the ACE2 receptor. The data is summarized in Figure 1. Cameroni et al. show that Omicron’s affinity for the ACE2 receptor is 2.5 times as great as that of the S protein from the original Wuhan isolate. Omicron binds to the receptor as well as the Beta variant, but not as well as Alpha, which binds ACE2 almost six times more tightly. The N501Y mutation in Omicron is universally observed to increase affinity roughly 6-fold, yet other mutations in key sites like K417N, Q493R, and G496S were shown by deep mutational scanning to decrease affinity. Increased affinity for the receptor may account, in part, for increased transmissibility, but that is clearly not the whole story as Omicron is much more transmissible than any previously isolates, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta.

Many seem surprised at the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to mutate to increase resistance against convalescent sera, most vaccines, and most monoclonal antibodies. However, the surprise was unwarranted for those who realized that coronaviruses have evolved over many millions of years to reinfect hosts over time. Those previously infected with earlier strains of the virus, contrary to our assumptions earlier in the pandemic, are able to be reinfected with Omicron and strains to come.

We previously predicted that SARS-CoV-2 would persist, continue to vary, and evade our natural and adaptive immune responses. We have also learned that SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to become far more lethal than it is today. We reiterate that the sister of this virus, SARS-CoV, and its cousin, MERS-CoV, ranged between 10% and 30% lethality. This is presumably due to slight variations in the structural, nonstructural, and accessory proteins. We must be ever alert now and for many years in the future of the possibility of such changes and their consequences.

 

Omicron Now The Majority Of New Cases

thehill |  The omicron variant now makes up a majority of COVID-19 cases in the United States, at 73.2 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in updated figures released on Monday.

The statistics are for the week ending Dec. 18 and show the rapid spread of the variant in the U.S. That spike is a significant increase from just 12.6 percent of cases one week earlier.

The omicron variant is highly transmissible, and officials are bracing for a large wave of infections in the coming weeks. However, people who are vaccinated, and especially those with booster shots, are well protected against severe disease from the variant, experts say, meaning the greatest risk is for the unvaccinated.