... and by that I mean, I'm fighting on the side of Omnicorn. After all, it's essentially using our bodies as weapons against its rivals, the Delta and Original Flavor variants.
Our main financial man, Scott Grannis, got Omnicorn over the holidays.
Recently we had 32 family members for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. About two-thirds of us (my wife and I included) ended up testing positive for Covid, and I'm pretty sure we all got the Omicron variant.
Everyone thought they were healthy to begin with, and the index case was the only one of the group that was triple-vaxxed—surprises all around. Only 3 people were unvaxxed, and all 3 got it; 22 fully vaxxed individuals got Omicron, and virtually all of them had received two doses of the Moderna vaccine. Three people had had Covid previously, but none of them caught Omicron. No one has even considered going to the hospital...
My takeaway: the MRNA vaccines don't protect you at all against Omicron. Omicron is similar to a flu. Above all, it is extremely contagious, so I won't be surprised if nearly everyone ends up getting it. A few weeks ago, I remember telling people that I wouldn't mind catching Omicron, if only because that would solidify my immunity to this crazy virus (I was fully vaxxed last February). Now that it's happened, I have no regrets. Sayonara, Covid!
As Ohioan pointed out in a comment recently, once you recover from Omnicorn, your body is prepped to take on the other flavors. They aren't nearly as contagious and don't stand a chance against a body that's loaded for bear. Or loaded for the WuFlu, as it were. So, in essence, we are all helping Omnicorn take out it's competition.
I'm down with that. I'm on Team Omnicorn, for sure.
Be Not Afraid
South Africa is 4 weeks ahead of us and less than 30% vaccinated. The UK is about 2 weeks ahead of us. With their data, we can do a decent job predicting our future.
It's a short, sharp spike with no significant rise in deaths.
Go Omnicorn!
Since I'm going to the gym every day where everyone is close together and breathing heavily, I'm guaranteed to get it. I may have had it already. When that happens, wife kitteh will get it if she hasn't had it already.
Is the pandemic over? Maybe. Not to worry, though. We still have systemic racism and global warming climate change to fear. So long as we continue to fear, we will continue to turn to the government for protection and that's what counts.
Well, until the money runs out and then we'll have to count on ourselves.
Yes, if the Omicron variant (or whatever it ultimately becomes) turns out to be basically a contagious vaccine against the actual dangerous strains, that is probably the best outcome. That way, you won't have to worry about the people who refuse to take a regular vaccine. They aren't going to get a choice.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is any need to rush, though. I think we are basically in a situation where people who know they are sick have the more severe strains and end up quarantined, and so spread it to hardly anyone. Meanwhile, the people who do spread it are the ones that had the milder strains, and never noticed they were infected. And then the people who catch it from them, also only spread it when they don't notice they have it. The longer this process goes on, the more the viruses will be selected for strains that are highly infectious but don't produce symptoms[1].
So, given that I already got the vaccine against the more severe strains, there's no real hurry for me. The longer it takes to get one of the "attenuated" strains, the more mild the symptoms are likely to be.
[1] This is something I've kind of wondered about, ever since I read it (written as a joke) in Analog magazine back in the early '80s: Is there such a thing as a positive disease? A virus that actually makes us feel good, instead of feeling bad? If there was, would we ever notice? And if we did notice, would we do anything about it?
I can see this working out pretty well for the "feel good" virus - if it made people alert, energetic, and craving the company of others, it would basically encourage people to go out and socialize, giving a perfect environment for spreading itself through the population. Particularly if it also made people crave physical contact. Heck, maybe that has already happened. Maybe sociable people have already been infected with such a virus, while unsociable people are immune to it!
Tim,
ReplyDelete"A feel good virus"... could they exist? Absolutely.
So let's start with this fact, my training is in Chemistry. Not Biology. Really not Biology (not a single college course in the field). But Mrs Ohioan has Bachelor degrees in both of those fields, so I have heard a lot about Biology. She has a book called "This is Your Brain on Parasites". I must (shamefully) admit that I have not read it, despite her exhortations about it being a great book. But I know there are species of wasps that basically 'zombie-fy' spiders, cockroaches, maybe others(?) and then use those zombies to feed their eggs. I just used the book's Index to find descriptions of that. The few pages I just read suggest that they do this using chemicals and at least some use neural transmitters like dopamine. If they can do that, then I see no reason why a virus couldn't evolve to do likewise.
Wow, just I was preparing to publish this comment the book opened to the photo section and I see a caption that reads "The Czech biologist Jaroslav Flegr believes T. gondii can alter humans' personalities and prompt us to act recklessly." I think I will have to read the book...
T. gondii can alter humans' personalities and prompt us to act recklessly? Heck a couple of pints of a good double IPA can do that!
ReplyDeleteKT - so can about 3 shots of tequila, or the testosterone level of the typical 18 year old male.
ReplyDeleteI have been informed that tequila makes her clothes come off.
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