Omicron Update

As I'd surmised, the attempts by the public health establishment to incite panic during last holiday weekend over the Omicron variant have gone the way of the boy who cried wolf. The information that's coming out is that the variant had been spreading well before its "discovery" late last month. A Minnesota man contracted and recovered from Omicron by November 24, prior to the South African announcement of its discovery.

About 60 people who attended a holiday party in Oslo November 24 were infected and recovered with mild symptoms.

All of those infected at the party - which hosted employees of South African renewable energy firm Scatec - are currently recovering at home, [public health officer] Ravlo added.

The Olso outbreak - currently the world's largest-known Omicron outbreak - happened after several employees who had recently travelled to Scatec's head office in Cape Town attended the party.

. . . [All] cases are assumed to be the new variant, with the results of more sequencing tests expected soon.

Mr Ravlo said the 'incubation period' of the new variant - the time from infection to first symptoms - appears to be two to four days.

This suggests that Omicron had escaped from South Africa before the South African announcement, and certainly well before President Biden's November 26 travel ban from some African countries. So the current renewal of COVID international travel controls is effectively closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out. And more recently, WHO has announced that despite Omicron being identified in 38 countries, nobody so far has died from it.

No one has died with the new super mutant Omicron Covid variant despite the strain being spotted in 38 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed.

. . . The WHO warned it could take weeks to determine how infectious the variant is, whether it causes more severe illness and how effective treatments and vaccines are against it.

As I've said, Omicron poses a double threat to the current public health regime. I think it's increasingly likely that it's turning into an overhyped damp squib, which further damages the credibility of Dr Fauci and his colleagues. On the other hand, while I think this is progressively less likely, if it turns out to be a serious threat, it also damages the prestige of the public health establishment, in that all the "scientific" authority and remedial strategies at its disposal have not defeated the disease.

The other side of the whole coin, though, is that the public has taken this in stride. There have been absolutely no runs on toilet paper or face masks, and the news has continued to focus on other issues like crime, Jussie Smollett, and Ghislaine Maxwell. People are fed up with COVID and have decided to resume their daily lives.

It looks like Omicron will be a rear guard action for the moral entrepreneurs hoping to renew the 2020 moral panic.