MASENDAV REKORD! Koroonaviirusega on haiglaravil 386 patsienti, lisandus 8004 nakatunut, suri kuus inimest

Viimase ööpäeva jooksul analüüsiti 14 784 testitulemust, millest 8004 osutus positiivseks. Tänahommikuse seisuga on lisa- või tõhustusdoosi saanud 410 513 inimest. Kogu Eesti elanikkonna hõlmatus kahe vaktsiinidoosiga on 62,5%.

What a depressing day in Estonia. 8,004 people tested positive. Of 14,784 tests conducted, 8,004 were positive. That’s more than half! One out of every two people tested has Covid! It’s no wonder really. Only 62.5% of the Estonian population has been double vaxxed. And you thought things were bad in Canada.

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Think Omicron is the last gasp for the Pandemic? Think again!

Get ready to learn more Greek letters. Scientists warn that Omicron’s whirlwind advance practically ensures it won’t be the last version of the coronavirus to worry the world. Every infection provides a chance for the virus to mutate, and Omicron has an edge over its predecessors: It spreads way faster despite emerging on a planet with a stronger patchwork of immunity from vaccines and prior illness. That means more people in whom the virus can further evolve. Experts don’t know what the next variants will look like or how they might shape the pandemic, but they say there’s no guarantee the sequels of omicron will cause milder illness or that existing vaccines will work against them.

“The faster Omicron spreads, the more opportunities there are for mutation, potentially leading to more variants,” Leonardo Martinez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University, said.

Since it emerged in mid-November, Omicron has raced across the globe like fire through dry grass. Research shows the variant is at least twice as contagious as Delta and at least four times as contagious as the original version of the virus.

Omicron is more likely than Delta to reinfect individuals who previously had COVID-19 and to cause “breakthrough infections” in vaccinated people while also attacking the unvaccinated. The World Health Organization reported a record 15 million new COVID-19 cases for the week of Jan. 3-9, a 55% increase from the previous week.

Getting progressively better at evading immunity helps a virus to survive over the long term. When SARS-CoV-2 first struck, no one was immune. But infections and vaccines have conferred at least some immunity to much of the world, so the virus must adapt. “These huge unvaccinated swaths in the U.S., Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are basically variant factories,” said Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “It’s been a colossal failure in global leadership that we have not been able to do this.” In the meantime, new variants are inevitable, said Louis Mansky, director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota. With so many unvaccinated people, he said, “the virus is still kind of in control of what’s going on.”

(Laura Ungar, AP)

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Covid can kill you. The vaccine can not. Get the jabs!

Thanks to one of my readers for sending a link. It’s well worth reading.

“As an infectious disease epidemiologist and research fellow at Boston’s Children’s Hospital who debunks health misinformation on Instagram —where she has more than 380,000 followers — Jessica Malaty Rivera regularly receives tips from her followers about viral content to debunk. A few weeks ago, her followers started sending her a link to an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the world. The episode was an interview with Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who touts himself as one of the architects of mRNA technology.” Here’s the whole article.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/covid-misinformation-joe-rogan-spotify-petition-1282240/

Here’s another from the University of Colorado Health Network’s newsletter.

http://www.uchealth.org/today/omicron-is-in-colorado-worry-for-hospitals/?utm_source=MC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UCHealth+Today_News+you+can+use_OmicronInColorado_12-Jan-2022_Null_Null

The science is there. You can argue all you want about differing points of view, but the bottom line is this. Covid can kill you. The vaccines will not. In fact, they will save you. I got the boost. Get jabbed folks. Have a great Pandemic day y’all!

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Powerful logic for mandatory vaccination.

Time to act: In a vigorous column, Tasha Kheiriddin, in the Post, argues that the unvaccinated must be deterred from harming others. It’s like saying “wear your seatbelt, but if you don’t, that’s OK.” Well guess what — it’s not. If you get in an accident, it will cost up to three times more to treat you in hospital than if you were buckled up. Sound familiar? The reality is that we restrict plenty of behaviours where we judge the harm to others, including economic harm, outweighs the limits to individual liberty. We don’t allow people to smoke in workplaces or public buildings. We forbid drinking and driving. And we mandate vaccination for contagious diseases such as measles if children are to attend public school. (from Macleans)

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The case for updating vaccines for Omicron.

One question occupying scientists and politicians is whether vaccines would work even better if they were updated to deal with new strains…. Omicron’s substantial reduction in cross-reactivity with previous variants doesn’t mean that there is no reactivity. This is probably why boosting with current vaccines provides some protection . (The Economist, Jan 7, 2022)

Full text of the article here: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/07/the-case-for-updating-covid-19-vaccines-for-the-omicron-variant

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There is no shortage of health care workers!

Provinces are likely to introduce mandatory vaccination policies in the coming months to deal with surging COVID-19 caseloads, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said today. “What we see now is that our health care system in Canada is fragile, our people are tired, and the only way that we know to get through COVID-19, this variant and any future variant, is through vaccination,” Duclos said.  Duclos said the provinces are facing a perfect storm of record-setting case numbers, a shortage of health care workers and up to seven million eligible Canadians still unvaccinated. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said there are limits to what the federal government can do to ease shortages of health care staff. (CBC)

Actually Health Minister Duclos, there is something the federal and provincial governments can do instead of piling on more and more draconian lockdown edicts. There are about 5,000 MD’s in this country who have been fully trained to practice medicine, except for one niggly detail. They received their medical degrees in other countries and because of the closed union shop the OMA and RCPSC run, these qualified doctors are not able to get licenses to practice medicine in Canada. So how about forcing the Ontario Medical Association and whatever other bodies license doctors to practice in Canada to change their closed shop ‘good old boys’ network rules and allow these eminently qualified doctors to help this country overcome its “shortage of health care workers”. Let these doctors tend to the Covid patients in hospitals. I’m not talking about allowing them to practice heart surgery just yet, or to do neurosurgery, but surely during this time of national health care crisis, we can force change in the present system of licensing even if on a temporary basis. There seem to be no limits to how much money government throws at problems. Instead of shoveling more pandemic program dollars onto a debt pile that is already the size of Mt. Everest, do something tangible like allowing doctors who could otherwise practice medicine in their birth countries, to do the same here in Canada! Yes, vaccination must continue, but don’t bitch about a shortage of health care workers and burned out physicians when the solution is right there in front of you. License foreign trained MD’s to help their colleagues during this time of crisis. Even if only on a temporary basis during the Pandemic.

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Should we just let Omicron run its course?

Nevertheless, the net effect of the global Omicron wave is that millions are poised to contract a version of COVID-19 that will leave them with natural immunity at the cost of only a few days of cold-like symptoms. Coetzee suggested that the herd immunity offered by Omicron could end up being such a game-changer in the global fight against COVID-19 that health officials should seriously consider whether the variant’s spread should even be checked. It’s a best-case scenario for the Omicron wave that has been posited since the first days after the variant’s discovery in South Africa. Angelique Coetzee is the South African physician who first identified the new variant in late November, and has similarly touted it as humanity’s ticket out of the COVID-19 pandemic. (NP)

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Third vaccine dose can boost effectiveness against Omicron to 88%, UK studies show

And here’s a study that supports third dose effectiveness against Omicron. It really makes the entire Pandemic a case of who do you believe?? Do I get the third dose or not? A damned difficult question. Read on and inform yourself.

A third dose of COVID-19 vaccine can provide up to 88 per cent protection against hospitalization from infection by the Omicron variant of coronavirus, according to early results from studies conducted in the UK. The findings compiled in a report by the UK Health Security Agency (UKSHA) show significantly higher protection provided by third vaccine dose against the highly mutated variant first identified in Botswana and South Africa in November, compared to two doses.

Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine, and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in the US noted that vaccine effectiveness drops to 52 per cent against Omicron around six months after taking the second shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. However, a booster dose substantially increases immunity and lowers the odds of being hospitalised with COVID-19 infection.

“That’s a big boost of protection for 3rd dose vaccine vs hospitalisation from Omicron infection. Vaccine effectiveness increased from 52 per cent (due to 2-dose waning after 6 months) to 88 per cent after the 3rd dose,” Topol tweeted on Sunday.

“It’s pretty impressive that vaccines directed to the ancestral strain spike from 2 years ago, with the virus that’s evolved through more than 290 million confirmed cases, and now to the hyper-mutated Omicron, have preserved efficacy of near 90 per cent vs severe disease with a 3rd shot,” he said in another tweet.

The UKHSA report cited two studies which examined the association between both variant and vaccination status and risk of hospitalization. The first study is based on approximately half a million Omicron cases, and includes all age groups while the second one uses a smaller dataset and is restricted to ages 18 and over. The first study confirms the previous finding of reduced overall risk of hospitalisation for Omicron compared to Delta variant. Both the studies found a substantial reduction in risk of hospitalisation for Omicron cases after three doses of vaccine compared to those who are unvaccinated.

Despite the estimated reduction in hospitalisation risk and preserved vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation, the study authors noted that there may still be large numbers of admissions to hospital.

The risk of hospital admission from emergency departments with Omicron was approximately one-third of that for Delta. The report shows that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease continues to be lower for Omicron than for Delta with waning by 10 weeks after dose 3.

After three doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalization for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68 per cent when compared to similar individuals with the variant who were not vaccinated. “Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization of 88 per cent (78 to 93 per cent) for Omicron after three doses of vaccine,” the UKHSA report added.

The findings compiled in a report by the UK Health Security Agency (UKSHA) show significantly higher protection provided by third vaccine dose against the highly mutated variant first identified in Botswana and South Africa in November, compared to two doses.

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T-cell immune response still high against Omicron mutations.

A new study from researchers in Hong Kong and Australia is suggesting that T-cells — a less discussed aspect of the body’s immune response — are equipped to tackle Omicron, despite the variant’s many mutations.

When we talk about immune response, we often focus on neutralizing antibodies, but there are other facets of the immune system as well. One of those is T-cells, which can be generated both by vaccination and by previous COVID-19 infection. Previous studies have suggested that Omicron has a greater ability to evade antibodies, potentially increasing its transmission ability.

But this new research, published Sunday in the journal Viruses, found that Omicron may not be able to evade T-cells as easily, potentially allowing T-cells to help limit severe illness in those with the virus. “Despite being a preliminary study, we believe this is positive news,” Matthew Mckay, a professor from the University of Melbourne and co-lead of the research, said in a press release. “Even if Omicron, or some other variant for that matter, can potentially escape antibodies, a robust T cell response can still be expected to offer protection and help to prevent significant illness.”

One of the most concerning aspects of Omicron is its increased number of mutations, particularly in the spike protein, which is how SARS-CoV-2 attaches to our cells to attack the human body. The spike protein’s importance is why our existing vaccines target it so heavily with the intent of producing antibodies.

The T-cell response to COVID-19 infection has not been researched as closely as antibodies, but T-cells assist in the immune response largely by eliminating cells that are infected with viruses. In order to investigate this T-cell response, researchers examined more than 1,500 T-cell epitopes of SARS-CoV-2. Epitopes are a part of an antigen that antibodies, T-cells or B-cells can recognize and bind to in order to trigger the processes needed to destroy the virus. By focusing on the epitopes that T-cells have been observed to recognize in COVID-19 patients or vaccinated people, researchers were looking to see if Omicron’s mutations interfered with how well T-cells could bind to those epitopes.

They found that only 20 per cent of T-cell epitopes in vaccinated or previously infected individuals had mutations similar to Omicron, which could open a door for the virus. But this doesn’t mean the 20 per cent with those mutations are going to be able to evade T-cells all of the time, researchers said.

“Among these T cell epitopes that have Omicron mutations, our further analysis revealed that more than half are predicted to still be visible to T cells,” Ahmed Abdul Quadeer, research assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s  Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and co-lead of the study, said in the release. “This further diminishes the chance that Omicron may escape T cells’ defenses.”

Outside of mutations on the spike protein, researchers found that more than 97 per cent of non-spike T-cell epitopes did not have mutations similar to Omicron.

“These results overall, would suggest that broad escape from T cells is very unlikely,” McKay said. “Based on our data, we anticipate that T cell responses elicited by vaccines and boosters, for example, will continue to help protect against Omicron, as observed for other variants.”

Researchers noted in the study that they investigated SARS-CoV-2 epitopes that have been determined in previous experiments, meaning there may be other epitopes they are unaware of.

“Further targeted experiments are required to confirm the robustness of T cell responses against Omicron, and also to test the capacity of specific epitope mutations to confer T cell escape,” the study stated. (Alexandra M Jones, CTVNews)

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Latest Ontario ‘lockdown’ too much, too late.

Here’s a great rant from today’s National Post, couldn’t have said it any better myself!

Ford is inflicting pandemic pain, but offering little gain. The new rules will not be enough to stop Omicron. At best, they will “blunt” the virus’s advance, Ford said. That would be the same blunting that his own science advisers recommended in the middle of December, but that Ford declined to implement. That’s the core problem with what Ford’s doing now. If the situation was really so dire, he should have acted weeks ago when restrictions might have made a difference. If not, this is too much, too late. Omicron will infect many Ontarians, although the rates of hospitalization and death are low compared to earlier forms of the virus. That will happen regardless of the measures Ford announced, but what he did accomplish is to make sure that the sickness will be accompanied by the maximum amount of financial, psychological and emotional grief. It’s not surprising. It’s what he has done throughout the pandemic. Monday, Ford referred, as he often does, to the “toolbox” he relies on to deal with these difficult situations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t contain anything but a hammer. (Randall Denley in NP)

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