A flurry of news stories from the last few days has revealed a concerning COVID-19 variant that once again threatens the travel industry’s elusive recovery.
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COVID-19 Omicron Variant
News from South Africa (Botswana) of a new COVID-19 variant has many around the world on pins and needles. This is the fourteenth variant though it’s named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet (omicron) rather than the 14th (xi.) Originally linked to Botswana, the variant has few confirmed cases, notable countries include the UK and Hong Kong, though a KLM flight had a substantial number of cases on a single flight yesterday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) held an emergency meeting to discuss the new version of the infectious disease on Black Friday (November 26th, 2021), just two days after it was discovered.
All of the news regarding the variant is concerning if not solely for the fear that comes from the unknown. Some information appears to be somewhat conflicting. The immediate concern over Omicron as exemplified by the WHO and other organizations as well as being labeled a “variant of concern” seems ominous. Initial news also indicated that vaccination was ineffective against omicron, though with so few cases, and such little time, broad assumptions as to whether vaccination, treatments, or natural immunity are effective are clearly premature.
“It looks like this particular variant has a very concerning set of mutations especially in the spike protein, which is needed for its transmission properties as well as its protection against the vaccines, so based on the genetic information we are quite concerned about it,” Pasi Penttinen, public health emergency response manager at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, told CNBC on Friday.
However, Francois Balloux, an epidemiologist and director of University College London’s Genetics Institute, told the BBC on Friday that the early discovery of the variant could render it easier to contain.
Balloux added that even if B.1.1.529 is more transmissible than previous variants, it would not “bring us to square one” in the effort to contain the virus. He suggested that it should be seen an irritating setback rather than a rebirth of the pandemic.” – CNBC
The doctor that discovered and reported the variant suggested that while perhaps more transmissible, the concern was different symptoms but not a more life-threatening variant:
“The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild.”
…They included young people of different backgrounds and ethnicities with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate, she said. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.
…“We had one very interesting case, a kid, about six years old, with a temperature and a very high pulse rate, and I wondered if I should admit her. But when I followed up two days later, she was so much better,” Dr Coetzee says.
Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.” – Telegraph
The doctor noted that about half of the patients that had tested positive for the virus were vaccinated, half were not in a country with a 6% vaccination rate.
Travel Restrictions Coming Back
Not much is yet known as previously cited above, but fear of yet another round of health concerns, crippling shutdowns, and yielding progress made against COVID-19 has caused many countries to restrict travel to known source countries:
“The European Union is restricting travel to and from seven countries in southern Africa — Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe — while the United States and South Korea have targeted those countries and Malawi. Britain has restricted travel with those eight nations and Angola, Mozambique and Zambia.” – The New York Times
The United Kingdom, in addition to banning travel from the aforementioned countries, has reverted all travelers to the unvaccinated approach with an initial entry test required, self-isolation through the first two days, and then another test before potential release for vaccinated travelers. Unvaccinated travelers follow the same protocol but remain isolated until the fifth day where they can test negative again to release. The UK has moved from allowing the lateral flow test to only accepting a PCR test though the entry requirements on Gov.UK have not been updated.
Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister made the following comments:
“We’re not going to stop people travelling,” he stressed during a press conference Saturday. “But we will require anyone who enters the U.K. to take a PCR test by the end of the second day after their arrival, and to self-isolate until they have a negative result.” – Politico
Some have criticized travel restrictions against South African nations as a punishment for its transparency.
Travel Industry Recovery Threatened
While Prime Minister Johnson has stated that he does not intend to shut down travel again, he has stated that “suspected” positive COVID cases regardless of vaccination status will require a 10-day quarantine and then he limited travel. Many other nations have limited travel as well and that suggests that as more cases are reported other countries could be added to the restriction lists.
Just as the world was beginning to recover from substantial restrictions, the customs door has swung closed again in a targeted fashion for the moment. Travel company leaders will face new cancellations, booking apprehension, and will have to again convince travelers and the governments they operate under of the case for travel.
What remains confusing to this writer is the mix of both cases being milder and potentially more threatening at the same time. However, grace is required and given in situations such as this where scientists are learning about it in real-time and getting raw data out to the public as quickly and accurately as possible.
What do you think? Are you concerned about the omicron variant? Have you or will you change plans? Will you wait and see?
Wow has world gone stupid. Covid is here for ever have to learn to live with it. That variant is everywhere already and nothing travel restrictions will do for anyone except destroy our lives.
Agree with you on the first point. But travel restrictions and lockdowns are almost a moot point now. Airlines and travel related industries will do it long before any Government restricts anything. If this variant is all it appears to be, they will just shut down the majority of flights as so few will want to travel. I think we have a reached a point where demand will drive shutdowns more than mandates.
People are emotional apes. Reason follows where emotion leads it. It is silly to expect rational behavior from people, pandemic or not. I just hope service isn’t degraded again in international F/J and that restaurants and such stay open.
It seems your thoughts on Covid have somewhat evolved, Kyle. That’s a good thing. While we may disagree on vaccines there is a more serious tone in your analysis today than in the past.
Today it was reported that a Premier Football team in Portugal could not field more than 6 players to complete a match. One of its players flew back from South Africa a few days ago and yesterday 17 players and coaches tested positive for Covid. Even more startling a scenario than the KLM flight.
Thus far scientists have noted that Delta, the most transmissible variant, had the average ability to infect three people for every single infection. With Omicron, data so far has it infecting 50 people for every single. Making it the most contagious virus in the world, far surpassing even Measles. If this is the case, and vaccines are greatly reduced in effectiveness, it’s very likely that this variant will essentially infect us all at some point. Our only hope being that it’s a mild strain or that the vaccines do shield us greatly from hospitalizations etc.
No matter what, even if mild, these kind of numbers point to one thing. That travel this winter will most certainly come to a screeching halt. With or without lockdowns and closed borders, or even the shutting down of flights in some countries, very few are going to be out and about and taking to the skies.
I’ve previously mentioned this from Sunetra Gupta at Oxford:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/24/vaccines-never-route-eliminating-covid-entirely/
People need to keep getting COVID for us to reach herd immunity. If you’re fat, lose weight. I cannot stress this enough. FAT KILLS, and not just with COVI-19. If you’re old and/or sick, shield. The vaccines are not going to prevent the virus from spreading. Stop worrying and learn to love herd immunity.
I’m hoping places like Thailand, Mexico and Brazil stay open this winter. Folx have little tolerance for further lockdowns. I heard there are protests planned in Italy by folx who got their third shots.
I don’t imagine the majority of people will learn to love herd immunity. With that said, sure, we may need to learn to accept it now. But we should never forget that had the world heeded warnings a year ago to get vaccines to developing nations, especially in Africa, we might have been close to it already. Many experts, far smarter than you and I, have been clear that should a dangerous variant emerge it would most likely come out of Africa. Now it appears we might well be starting all over again. And keep in mind, despite our differences, you can’t argue that starting all over again will most likely lead to yet another variant. And will that one be far deadlier?
Actually, many experts argued against the lockdowns and social distancing policies that were in place for far longer than the “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Instead of shielding the vulnerable while allowing those at low risk to develop natural immunity right away, long before vaccines were available, we simply pushed back the waves of infections for everyone. This strategy was poo-pooed by the safetyists who trotted out horribly flawed models about what would happen if we went with such a plan. The vaccines (which, if you recall, Democrats tried to sow hesitancy about when Trump was in office) were supposed to put an end to the pandemic. We were told that they would, in fact, drastically reduce transmission. The truth turned out to be quite different. No society had ever attempted what Xi Jinping imposed on China. Now we have this mess thanks to the authoritarian Lysenkoists who cry “science” in the name of molding the West after Red China. Rich western nations had elevated death rates because their populations are sedentary and fat. It is criminal that the public health establishment hasn’t drilled into people’s skulls that they should lose weight. We’ve had almost two years for people to get into shape. Instead we are told that racism is to blame for everything. A lot of good that does for (black) folx who stay fat and end up dying.
Take this as a conversation in a hotel bar and we are being civil. Not in a forum where we sling insults. But do you actually see how you are promoting the idea of a cleansing of the less healthy and those who may suffer disproportionately from poor diets due to financial constraints and have less opportunities at decent health care? And that you even went so far as to target them as people of color? It scares me that someone who writes intelligently and makes certain valid points at times can also be so misguided and without an ounce of empathy or understanding.
I think we have learned a lot from the past two years. And I do agree that complete lockdowns for more than a week or two so as to give hospitals a chance to catch up creates more harm in the end. But I also hope that we find ways to protect those who are more vulnerable. And to keep in mind that at times even those who were not “supposed to” can die from this.
How can one not be angered by the breathtaking incompetence and hypocrisy of the public health establishment and elites controlling our corporations and cultural institutions? They imposed horrific costs on the entire nation, but the worst costs were born by those they claimed to be trying to protect. The well-off were hunkered down at home, safely Zooming away while “essential” (read “minority”) workers toiled outside the home and small business owners had their livelihoods destroyed with a wave of a governor’s pen. I will freely admit that I am an elitist, but elites should earn their positions and help society with their superior abilities. Our so-called elites are charlatans who claim to be helping regular folx while enacting self-serving policies that enrich those who are already at the top and exposing those beneath them to economic and physical ruin.
I have zero empathy or understanding for people like Gov. Cuomo who sent people sick with COVID-19 into care homes while crowing about saving “just one life.” I have zero empathy or understanding for people like Gov. Newsom who dine with lobbyists at the French Laundry while telling folx to stay at home. I have zero empathy or understanding for people like Eric Feigl-Ding who demand that schools stay closed while moving to Austria so his child can go to school in person. I have zero empathy or understanding for epidemiologists who tell the public that racism is the number one health priority in this country when there is a virus on the loose that strikes down fat people. Fat was already a yuge problem before the pandemic. COVID-19 just made it worse.
How am I targeting black folx? If anything I am “centering” them. Obesity is a yuge problem among blacks. This is why black folks are dying disproportionately from COVID-19. You speak about poor diets and less (sic) opportunities in a way that robs them of agency. Black folx are perfectly capable of helping themselves. I think they are horribly served by the Democrats they vote for. Telling them to blame white folx for their predicaments does them no good. It is the condescension of utopian socialists who hobbled them for decades and prevented them from fully benefiting from the opportunities this country presents.
I don’t think we’ve learned much that is important over the course of the pandemic that we didn’t know very early on. Shielding and natural immunity were options from the very beginning. We are continuing down a misguided path that only delays the inevitable. Vaccine/mask maximalists demonstrate their insanity and utter lack of empathy when they want to shun the unvaccinated (who, again, are disproportionately black). Mask mandates don’t work and only serve to divide society. Despite earlier promises that they would prevent infection and spread, vaccines work only to prevent severe and fatal outcomes for the most at risk. Vaccinating everyone was never the right way to go. Our leaders and experts have overpromised and underdelivered for almost two years. I think a bit of humility is in order. Virus gonna virus and people want to live their lives.
Speaking of living my life, I’ll be flying Polaris again this week. Let’s see if I get that PDB in a plastic cup.
Welp, that was a mic drop. Nonetheless, I will try and respond. Hopefully with less (sics) for you to remind me that I had a long work day, two martinis in the hotel bar, and really don’t bother towards style and perfection in a comment section of a FF blog.
I appreciate that you take the time to clarify that you are an elitist. It at least puts things into perspective. Not that flying Polaris is very elitist. Or suffering the comment sections of mileage blogs. But I guess elitists come in many forms. I was hoping more for someone who flew private and had front row seats at Christie’s Contemporary art sales. So let’s just assume you are a working elitist who still appreciates a good plastic cup of wine.
With that said…
No politician, or any public figure for that matter, is without faults or errors in judgement. Public figures just suffer more scrutiny. Agreed, Cuomo was clearly not the Covid hero many thought at the start. Newsom just made a poor choice and should have had In N’ Out. Yet, notice that you are selective in your criticism? I can’t think of anyone in a leadership role the past two years that has not done the same. Made some mistakes. It just so happens you chose those two because you don’t like their policies/politics. But the fact is that more people died under the mistakes made under the Trump administration, and their attempts to Pollyanna the entire start of this Pandemic. But let’s say we stop with the blaming and just look at solutions. How to move on.
See, I don’t actually believe that masks divide us, as you say. I believe that right wing elements created a narrative that masks divide us. Had it instead been a rallying cry to be patriotic from the start there would never have been issues. Do people hate taking their shoes off at security? Did we hate the long lines at Security for the few years after 9/11? Sure. Did it actually do anything? Was it really preventative? Probably not. Nevertheless we didn’t argue about it. No one complained that it was somehow infringing on our liberties. We just accepted it and in the end evolved as we learned more. Hell if I know whether masks really work. Who cares? It’s not a big deal in the end, lol. All I know is I have not had a cold in two years. And that’s pretty awesome!
Yes, mistakes have been made all over the world in response to Covid. More will be made. But we are getting better. We are learning every day. But until everyone puts aside their differences, and just accepts that we need to find the middle together (solutions), this will only get worse.
The best we have right now are to find solutions. Together. I don’t believe that telling people to lose weight and ride it out (in your case directing that to people of color) is a productive solution. Perhaps providing these people with support, decent affordable health care, better education opportunities, and subsequent living wages would be a more lasting solution?
Nor do I think abandoning vaccinations and just throwing ourselves to fate is the answer (despite I also don’t entirely trust Pharma as some saintly savior). I believe, as do many, that they offer some sort of protection that outweighs any risks they may have as to the unknown.
While you make valid points and voice them well, they are points still tinged with elements of hatred and anger that smell of far right wing elements. Which is not productive. Instead, let’s cast aside the politics that frame so many arguments today and just focus on the task at hand. That is, to achieve wine in glasses again when we fly. And to stop bickering over every nuance as we all try and figure out this pandemic.
I have no illusions that we could have avoided politicizing our reaction to the pandemic. Even if Trump weren’t President (which made things more difficult all around), there will always be a tension between liberty and safety. Unfortunately, the safetyists are ascendant in the West.
I have far greater condemnation for Democratic leaders as they chose the safetyist path. The “just one life” mentality denies any cost-benefit analysis and ended up making things far worse. I know that politicians will be hypocrites and corrupt no matter the party, but it is especially galling to see the “rules for me and not for thee” in a situation they gin up as being so perilous. Then the media and tech overlords carrying water for them helped boot Trump out of office and riled up the MAGA LARPers for their 1/6 “field trip.” (No, it was not an insurrection.) Racism and identitarianism were upheld as more important than basic human health when simply losing weight and getting in shape would have far more concrete benefits to underprivileged BIPOC folx than any “decolonization” or “centering.”
The first yuge mistake that was made was not really a Trump administration error but a public health bureaucracy one. The insistence on centralizing testing with the CDC lost us at least a month of effective monitoring. This likely would have happened no matter who was President. It just shows that centralization of administration and power is not such a good thing.
The right wing did not create a narrative about masks. The public health mandarins (most visibly Fauci) flip-flopped about masks because they didn’t think they could be truthful with the public. Fauci is on record lying about masks and herd immunity. No one lasts as long as he has in a position like his without being a political operator. He is much like Warren Buffett in cultivating a persona as a straight shooter when he is anything but. I was wearing a mask starting at the end of January when I was flying to Singapore. I already had been interested about mask efficacy in preventing spread of respiratory diseases long before China gifted us with SARS-CoV-2. I knew there was no definitive evidence that they worked. It couldn’t hurt, though. Once mandates were imposed and masks became a cultural flashpoint, I decided that they were a tool of oppression and not of safety. Even Fauci knows they don’t work. Masks are the left’s MAGA hat.
Are you seriously saying you are okay with TSA and security theater? I have had words with TSA agents more than once (though not in many years). We are so much worse off because of it. I think it is a huge deal and that you think compliance with a multi-billion dollar waste of resources and intrusion into our lives is no big deal is very revealing about your biases.
Telling people to lose weight is the best thing that we can do to protect them. Obesity only compounds health problems. COVID-19’s “disparate impact” on BIPOC and poor folx is a horrible manifestation of this. What do the fat have to lose but their excess weight? We didn’t have vaccines until last winter. That gave people plenty of time to get in shape. It is not an either/or proposition. That you are so dismissive of this being a core problem again shows your biases.
Better health care? Better education? Do you think raising more taxes and having the government spending more money is going to accomplish this? Why do you think blacks are still at such a disadvantage despite trillions of dollars that have been spent on the War on Poverty? Black folx would be better off if the state got out of their way. Utopian socialist housing programs destroyed communities. Marxist welfare incentives destroyed black families. Teachers’ unions actively fight giving black folx agency in educating their children. You feign apolitical, pragmatic concern for your fellow citizens’ wellbeing when your position is anything but.
Despite what folx like UA-CCP might say, I am not an anti-vaxxer. I don’t think they cause autism. I don’t think Bill Gates is trying to microchip us. I do think that the narrative around the COVID-19 vaccines is highly suspect. The media whitewash of the truth about COVID-19’s lethality (very rare among the young and healthy) goes hand-in-hand with the failure of vaccine policy. There is no reason to vaccinate everyone. It can, in fact, be quite detrimental to do so. How can folx be so flippant about injecting all of humanity with a novel therapy that has no long term safety data? Now vaccines are just another tool, like masks, to demonstrate the power of the state over the individual. “Freedumb?” Indeed, comrade, I care about my “freedumb.” Nazi Germany didn’t arise from some peasant state. Totalitarian socialism was the state of life for a huge portion of humanity for many, many decades. Don’t think it or something worse can’t happen again. Techno-fascism in service of “science” should have scared us all.
I am not of the capitalist class. I do know folx who are “Davos men.” One friend’s kids were afraid to fly commercial (they were around 10 or so at the time) because they had heard about the awful TSA security apparatus but had never experienced it because they had only flown private. I am just another schlub on the interwebs with an opinion. At least I am 1K and such from my own money and not an OPM tough guy like UA-CCP. I make no bones about being conservative/libertarian. I think I am so far right of most people, though, that I could be considered leftist. I was no fan of Trump, but the treatment he received from the media was unbelievable. Their nonstop lying and distortion pulled the scales from my eyes. I stopped paying for the New York Times after paying for a subscription in some form or another since high school. The cultural elite claim to be impartial when they are more partisan than ever. Journalists used to be rough and barely respectable sorts. Now they are effete products of universities who think they are better than everyone else. I said I was an elitist, but I want real elites, people who are stewards of society and who have demonstrated abilities. What we have now is an overproduction of people who think they are elite but are decidedly not.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/
More left-leaning folx should read Freddie deBoer (an avowed socialist):
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/life-goes-on/
‘Meanwhile the virus does discriminate, despite what you’ve heard over and over again, and in fact it discriminates against very particular and easily-identifiable subpopulations, and most people are not among them, and so every turn of this thing that does not result in mass death and disruption for the larger populace makes that populace feel lied to by the endlessly-panicky media and the abundantly cautious public health officials. We are approaching two years of Covid-19 as a crisis and yet no one in a position of authority has seemed to put it together that the public is exquisitely sensitive to those who cry wolf. Maybe Omicron really is “the big one,” but they’ve said that about every last development in this endless story, so how would we ever know?’
‘But the people are voting with their feet. They’re going about their lives, fitfully but unapologetically. I look around and New York is awake and alive. And the question as to whether all these people returning to normal is good or responsible or sound public health practice just isn’t relevant, isn’t meaningful. People were not going to rot in their houses forever, and this was and remains a statement of fact, not of value. The world is reawakening. Whether it should reawaken is angels dancing on the head of a pin, a trolley problem, a dorm room pass-the-bong puzzler. It can’t be answered and doesn’t matter. Time only spins forward, for good and for bad, even during a pandemic, even when THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL. No time stays special forever, and people like living life. It’s no more complicated than that.’
And how many of those soccer players were incapacitated of playing because of Covid? Probably none. That is the problem. In the majority of cases, people test positive and have nothing. I tested positive for Covid and had absolutely no problems at all. People don’t stop playing soccer because a player has a cold but they panic with Covid. Until we learn that Covid will never go away and learn to live with it we will have these stupid reactions of quarantine and stopping the world for nothing.
I never tested positive for the Wuhan Virus but I’ve tested positive for antibodies. I’ve not been remotely sick for over two years.
I can’t speak for this football team as none of them are now playing as a result of testing positive, whether it be Covid protocol or for other reasons. I can though say as a hockey fan that a number of NHL players took months to regain form after having Covid. Kuznetsov with my beloved Caps is one example. He had health issues for six months and had a horrid season as a result. Sure, athletes will probably be fine. But there are a number as well that have said that it was a hard road back and they would not wish it on anyone. Lastly, we have seen outbreaks on teams where you see maybe 3-4 of them go down at once. The Pittsburgh Penguins were the latest, including Crosby. However, I have never seen any reports of 17 players and coaches from a team all test positive on the same day. This was more my point, that this new variant could well be outrageously transmissible in comparison.
“ this new variant could well be outrageously transmissible” Maybe that os what will take to achieve herd immunity and stop this nightmare of instilling panic in the world.
Perhaps. But the question will remain that in the midst of gaining herd immunity will another variant develop that could be the deadliest of all? I don’t have the answers. I am not a Scientist or Doctor. Nor do I pretend to be like many here. But Covid is clearly not the standard flu and I still feel that vaccinations are the only way out of this spiral to gain some sort of advantage and control. But if this variant is truly 50% more transmissible, and a vaccine adjustment takes 2-3 months, we will get to test herd immunity pretty quickly as within that time frame the majority of the world will have contracted it.
*500 times more transmissible
The issue no one seems to be addressing is whether the world should be shut down for a highly infectious variant that turns out to be extremely mild? What criteria is going to be used going forward to kick in severe restrictions -simply the positivity rate or hospitalization rate?
“For the good of your family, community, and healthcare system, please stop injecting industrially manufactured spike protein-creating chemicals into your body.”
https://twitter.com/GarretKramer/status/1464975640055234563
“The team that’s losing will always try a few last tricks to divert the team that’s winning from its goal. Pharma, its investors, and shills are desperate. Pay no heed. Keep traveling inward toward nature, toward harmony, toward love.”
https://twitter.com/GarretKramer/status/1464981642443997184
Xi was skipped in order to worship President Xi of China. Not joking. The WHO was afraid of China.
Another shoddy reporting job. You have this text:
“… though a KLM flight had a substantial number of cases on a single flight yesterday.”
But the link you selected says nothing of the sort! It is someone tweeting that people on the airplane are getting tested. Nothing about how many people have covid, and certainly nothing about even a single person having omicron! At least pretend to get facts straight at articles you yourself select and link to!
Sorry, but a pair of KLM flights on Friday from South Africa had 10% of the plane (61 passengers) test positive with COVID-19 despite a negative test required to travel. 13 of those passengers had the omicron variant.
https://liveandletsfly.com/klm-passengers-test-positive/
More so they are not done with the sequencing and expect more to be Omicron.
If media stops posting , people will live their lives. No government on earth should have the right to restrict movement of their citizens.
Really Slow Motion & Giant Apes – This Ends Now (Epic Dark Orchestral)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlH6zD8wisg
9.1M views
5 years ago
Epic Heaven Music
Care to guess how concerned I am about this new guaranteed-human-extinction “super variant”?
I’m not.
Let these idiotic governments continue to terrorize its citizens and burn their economics to the ground.