The Omicron Variant

Here is a question from a dear colleague and my response:

Regarding your email and question:

The new Nu variant has '32 mutations' - does that sound reasonable for a virus to mutate that much? Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

My response and elaboration on related matters:
Interesting and not surprising - but the important issue is potential mortality rates associated with Omicron, not its infectivity rate. The lethality of this virus will probably be no different than delta and the earlier forms - thus, I am not worried about the impact of its being more infective.

But that has not stopped the public health autocrats from trying to scare the daylights out of the human race.

I am a believer in herd immunity and think that the ridicule of this notion by the politically motivated public health tyrants has caused incalculable devastation to our society and planet, for that matter.

The SARS- CoV-2 virus is a cold virus and will spread like wildfire regardless of what humanity throws at it - this has been proven already.

My medical opinion from the beginning and that which I have expressed to my colleagues has been that society must protect vulnerable groups (elderly and those with co-morbidities) first, and be extremely cautious about engaging in public health overreach related to the rest of the population.

I am a firm believer in vaccination - so we may try to convince or even chastise those who do not want to be vaccinated BUT we must not marginalize them and disrespect their rights.

(I say the latter at the risk of upsetting one or more persons whose opinion I respect - but I worry more about the loss of our freedoms than I do about impact of the virus - I defy anyone to show me real [not manipulated] data that indicates that the adverse impact related to the hospitalization of the unvaccinated has led to excess mortality in the vaccinated or others - if such "data" exists, I would question it until I could review it myself - people forget that the thrust of all current public policy has been to shove vaccination down the throats of society....[unless, of course, you are an illegal immigrant] - in our midst even now, there has never been such a tyrannical move - why, for example, have the public health tyrants not forced influenza H1N1 or other variant vaccination upon society? Great Question - they can get away this tyranny, because they can NEVER be proven wrong - we can never see what would have happened absent the lockdowns, vaccine discrimination, etc. compared to the current state of affairs - they can bask in their "success" without fear of rebuttal and criticism - it will take historians 100 years to sort this out - not to mention the misclassification of people who "died with COVID," counting them as those who died "from COVID" - but from one who has been in the data trenches on this subject from the beginning - I am sickened by the conversion of real science into political science by nefarious actors who have joyously turned society into a herd of cattle that spook and stampede at the sound of a cowboy's belch.)

So my opinion - about the Omicron variant - not to discount its expanded mutation status and certainly subject to new information is not to worry at present.

Our inventory of anti-virals, monoclonal antibodies and our ability to develop an anti-Omicron booster for those most vulnerable will allow our pathetic species to do just fine.