Omicron’s New Symptoms Are Very Good News

Good morning, we’ve got MORE potentially good news about the Omicron variant, and more potentially terrifying news about the Omicron variant. A new report published just yesterday on December 4th from the South African Medical Research Council covers early observations among COVID-19 patients at the epicenter of the global Omicron outbreak, which is currently undergoing a tidal wave of new cases. 

That part is very bad news, the speed and increase of infections is shocking. Just one district in South Africa saw a jump from less than 1,000 cases a day, to nearly 3,500 cases a day in just 4 days. There is now no question about how aggressively contagious Omicron is, the European Union’s public health agency is already expecting that within a few months more than half of all new infections will be due to the new variant, 

Just in the past week, the number of countries that have discovered it within their borders has jumped from 12 to 45, and yes that includes the United States, where the spread has been inevitable. In fact, AnimeCon in New York City, which happened the weekend before Thanksgiving, is now being considered a superspreader event because someone in attendance was diagnosed with the new variant after he and his friends, who also tested positive, mingled among tens of thousands of people from around the country, who then went home to their families the following weekend.

And even though the convention required proof of vaccination, and mandated masks - the person who was originally diagnosed was double vaxxed AND had gotten the booster. But let’s be clear about one thing: we’re still weeks away from having proper scientific analysis of just how vaccine resistant, contagious, or deadly the new variant is. Which is why no matter what you hear in the meantime, including in this video - the only proper course of action is to continue ramping up vaccination rates, social distancing, and wearing masks in public places or crowded spaces.

That said, let’s talk about the potentially great news that we’re seeing in early Omicron patients out of South Africa. A new report from hospitals in the Gauteng Province where the first cases of Omicron variant were identified in South Africa, are reporting a dramatic distinction between how patients are responding to this variant, compared to earlier variants like Delta, or even the original SARS-CoV-2.

The report covers the first two weeks of infections, as measured by patients who tested positive for the Omicron variant but were not in the hospital as a result of COVID-19 - and the reason this is big news is because Omicron patients WERE NOT HOSPITALIZED with the virus - In fact, the report’s main observation about the Omicron variant is that the people who had it were not oxygen dependent.

This is a radical reversal of what we’ve seen in every previous variant. One of the ways that we’ve discovered new waves of variants is by the massive increase in oxygen dependent COVID patients - the report notes that throughout every previous wave, there have been almost no patients who didn’t need extra oxygen, and if there were, they were almost always patients in the recovery phrase. Quote, “The COVID ward was recognizable by the majority of patients being on some form of oxygen supplementation with the incessant sound of high flow nasal oxygen machines, or beeping ventilator alarms.”

But as the number of Omicron cases have skyrocketed, the few reporting hospitals are NOT seeing the same respiratory effects. This is potentially AMAZING news. But let’s pause, and talk about the facts: the sample sizes in these findings are extremely small - and they can’t be considered statistically significant because we literally don’t have enough cases yet to run scientific analysis on.

Even though many of the cases that we’re seeing so far are asymptotic or mild, or at the very least not immediately life-threatening in the same way previous waves have been - there are MANY underlying threats to be worried about here that we have zero data on. For example - being asymptomatic or having mild symptoms doesn’t mean you’re in the clear.

The prevalence of long-haul COVID even after mild symptoms - which is basically when COVID symptoms last for months and even now years, and particularly neurological symptoms like fatigue, insomnia, and brain fog, but extending to even more serious outcomes, is a huge concern here. 

While on the one hand Omicron might signal an end to the pandemic and the beginning of a seasonal illness like the flu - it is also aggressively contagious and we don’t actually know what the long lasting or wide-spread symptoms are. More to the point, its increased contagiousness is still a threat to vulnerable populations who are not liable to survive even mild symptoms.

We want to be exceptionally clear about what this new information means - this is not a time to celebrate, this is a time for caution, and at best, our first bit of cautious optimism while waiting for some definitive answers. And those answers are not in this video. The information found in these early reports is newsworthy, but not medically prescriptive. 

So in the meantime, it’s important to understand that there is a new variant and it is extremely contagious, and you do not want to catch it or spread it. We are telling you to continue vaccinating, get your booster, wear a mask, social distance, and please exert caution around immunocompromised and vulnerable populations.