Omicron - all over the UK. Happy Omicron Xmas!

Omicron seems to bring the Corona pandemic to a swift end. As of today, December 13, In London, 44% of new Corona infections are Omicron, with cases doubling every 2 to 3 days. Models estimate the number of new Omicron infections to be 200 000 a day in the UK. If they double every 2 to 3 days, we should have 1000 more in about one month. That is 3 times the population of the UK. Thus, the virus will run out of people, probably this year.

The rest of the world will follow a few short days later. My guess is that Omicron immunity works against Delta, while Delta immunity doesn't work well against Omicron. This would mean the Delta variant will be phased out soon.

Omicron is mild, well in the range of the common colds we are used to. As it outcompetes Delta, the Corona pandemic will become the usual cold pandemic we experience every winter.

Sure, there is the worst case scenario, when Omicron is so different from Delta that Omicron infection doesn't offer immunity against Delta. That would suck, as both Delta and Omicron would continue to propagate independently. While possible, I don't believe this scenario to be likely.

Thus, we should wish our friends and family a happy Omicron this Christmas. Looks like almost no one will escape it. As we are allowed to stay home when sick, we should all have a mild cold. Maybe some cough. Hopefully, no pneumonia.

Note: I have vaccinated and I recommend vaccination!

The Unstoppable Omicron -- a foreseeable end for the Covid-19 pandemic?

Omicron is now confirmed to be less deadly and more contagious than Delta.

Why? The omicron virus appears to have borrowed a DNA sequence that is common in human cells, and other viruses that infect us including most colds viruses and even HIV. This may be the genetic factor that helps it be more infectious and less lethal.

WHO continues to claim Omicron has caused no deaths so far. By the way we have counted deaths in this pandemic, this is obviously impossible. Omicron has spread worldwide and is highly infectious. The number of cases now must be in the millions, perhaps tens to hundreds of millions. We will know that most of the population in a region has been exposed when the pandemic wave peaks and the number of cases stops growing.

For a typical million people, 1000 must die every month. To see that, think that people live about 1000 months (100 years at 10 months a year). Thus, in a typical million, 1 in 1000 die every month. In the month with Omicron, there should be more. We see that through the doubling of excess deaths South Africa.

If Omicron wasn't killing anyone, but we count natural deaths occuring while infected as Omicron deaths, like we did with other Covid fatalities in this pandemic, the lowest possible theoretical mortality for the one week long Omicron iness is 0.025%. That is a bit more than one tenth of Delta.

Any virus, even the most mild cold, should increase mortality a little bit. As the pandemic wave affects the entire population roughly at the same time, even a mild increase in mortality and morbidity will have a visible effect on the health system and media.

The good news, however, is that the new Omicron will likely replace Delta in a few days in most places and a few weeks worldwide. This will bring the Covid-19 mortality in the region of unremarkable colds. It will no longer be at the high end of the mortality spectrum among the over 200 respiratory viruses that infect us.

Omicron

The world is shutting down again due to Omicron.

This new variant is said to be Africa's response to the pandemic.

In general, viruses evolve to become
-- more infectious
-- less deadly
-- immune to the antibodies of previous variants, but, in general, existing variants will be vulnerable to the antibodies against the new ones.

The proof follows:
(1) It is obvious that, all other things equal, a more infectious variant will take over a less transmissible one.
(2) Let us consider two coexisting virus variants, with one being more deadly than the other, while all other things are the same.
The people affected by the less deadly variant will continue to participate in society and spread the virus more effectively. Thus, the less deadly variant will infect more people and take over.
(3) When a virus evolves in an environment where most people have immunity against an existing variant due to widespread natural infection, any genetic mutation that allows the virus to go around the prevailing kind of immunity will enable the new mutant to reinfect the entire population and take over.

In general, the old variants will still be vulnerable to the immune response generated by the new ones. Thus, in general, when a deadly virus infects a population, eventually, a less deadly and more contagious variant evolves, which acts as a natural vaccine against the original deadly virus. Sure, in this natural vaccine production process many of the affected animals or humans will die.

So far, with COVID-19, we've seen it evolve into the Delta Variant in India. Delta is more contagious, and, I believe, less deadly. Thus, the pandemic waves are shorter, with a lot of people dying at the same time. Overall, in places like Romania, where both Delta and the original variant infect the entire population, there are fewer deaths due to Delta. Fewer, but concentrated in a shorter time.

Compared to Delta, Omicron has evolved more. It is thus further from the original variant, and, thus, I expect it to be considerably more contagious, and, at the same time, less deadly. It will transition more and more from clinically looking like a bad flu to being more like a common cold.

At the same time, as vaccine immunity becomes widespread, we should expect new variants to evolve in the vaccinated world that are immune to the dominant vaccine immunity.

In the unlikely event that we contain Omicron, these new variants that evolve independently from Delta are likely to be more deadly than Omicron.

The most likely scenario is a new Omicron wave that will go through the unvaccinated population and try to evolve a way to infect the vaccinated ones.

It will probably succeed in doing so, and the Pharma industry will have to come up with new vaccines. These will be necessary every few months. Some people will choose to be vaccinated, while others will choose to cough away the virus like they do with the flu. Preliminary counts in the UK say that more than half of the detected omicron patients were doubly vaccinated, and WHO claims no deaths due to omicron so far.

Overall, I dare take the controversial position to say that, probably, Omicron is a good development in the COVID-19 story. A less deadly and more contagious variant will act as a natural vaccine, sure, with side effects that appear vastly worse than those of manufactured vaccines.

This is not an argument against vaccination.

A cure for the common cold

Pfizer has a drug that can cure COVID-19. It slashes hospitalizations by 90% and virtually eliminates deaths from the illness. Furthermore, the drug disrupts the virus metabolism, and, therefore, works on all versions of COVID-19 as well as on the old Coronaviruses that causes some 10 - 15% of common colds. It probably works agains the deadly SARS and MERS as well.

The common cold is one of the main illnesses that plague us. It comprises of a few hundred viruses split of several types like Coronaviruses, Adenoviruses, Rhinviruses, Influenza, etc. For reasons that always escaped me, we never had a cure. It was always said that colds are so complex that science can't find a cure. But science wasn't trying hard enough.

With a bit of world shake from Covid-19, we now have a drug that effectively addresses and cures the common cold. It will not work on all colds -- just the 10-15% of them that are caused by coronaviruses, including COVID-19.

This is a major technological breakthrough and probably signals the end of the pandemic.

But ... why did we need a pandemic to fund this research? We could have done it 5 years ago or 10 years go or, maybe, even 20 years ago. There are 200 more cold viruses out there that still don't have a cure. There is a good chance we won't look for it now. Why?

Why do we have money to fund armies and nuclear bombs and space programs and, when it comes with something as common as the common cold that can turn as life threatening as the Spanischer flu, we just don't care?

After this pandemic, how can we justify not having research and vaccines and tests and drugs for all cold viruses?

Why? Because just like research on Gravitational Waves or just like literature and art, most of these drugs won't be sold for huge profit. They won't make private firms rich enough to lead the world, like it just happened to Pfizer. Yet, by developing them, we'd be ready for the next pandemic, when it comes.

Fundamental research should have enough government funding to thrive. By funding it we would get ready for the next pandemic. Research that matters should never be led by private companies that must deliver shareholder profit. But goverments aren't ready to make changes that matter. Leaders meet and cause wars. They don't fix problems.