Speaker 1: Welcome back to The David Pakman Show, I'm producer Pat Forde here, filling in for David
on this Christmas Eve. David is traveling right now. He's on vacation in Southern California,
having a good time. And he is going to be back with us on Monday. You know,
it's been a little while since we gave a COVID update on the show, and I thought that given the
latest surge that we're seeing in infections, it would be good to provide you with one today.
Obviously, much of this latest surge has to do with the al-Muqrin variant,
which we first heard about only a month ago. Hard to believe. And since it came from South Africa
in such a short amount of time, it has been able to become the dominant strain here in the U.S.,
with an estimated 70 to 80 percent of current cases being attributed to the variant. Of course,
the speculation when it comes to Macron is that it's a lot more contagious, yes, but not nearly
as severe that less severe part we're not totally sure about. We'll know for sure. Hopefully, in the
next couple of weeks or so, I'm going to talk more about that later. But let's take a look at
the case chart. Looking at the case chart back in the spring of 2020, we had what looks like a tiny
wave there, which is actually deceptive because it was hard to come by tests during that time. The
numbers were probably a lot more crazy than the graph shows. But of course, these are confirmed
cases. We had this wave in the spring of 2020, and then we got a small wave in the summer of 2020,
mainly because of places like Texas and Florida. There are places like New England at that time
that were doing just fine, but there are other parts of the country not doing so well in the
summer of 2020. Then by the winter of 2020 into 2021, we had this just out of control giant spike,
topping out at about 250000 to 300000 cases per day. But then, as the weather warmed up and more
importantly, as people got vaccinated, because this is the time that vaccines became available,
we went back to super low numbers and many of us thought that in May, June, July of this year that
this all could be over with soon. But then we got into the late summer. There was another wave then,
which calmed down by October. And now unfortunately, we're heading back
up seeing about 150000 ish new cases a day. And the question is, how high are we going to go?
Retiring now, director Francis Collins is predicting that things could get as bad here
as one million new cases a day. One million. And that's just based on how contagious al-Muqrin is
now. Looking at the death numbers, we're seeing a slight uptick so far from the October Valley,
getting around 1500 deaths a day. But as we know, deaths tend to lag cases by a few weeks. So
are we not seeing a major surge yet in the death numbers because Omicron isn't nearly as deadly? Or
is it because just not enough time has passed yet and because people are getting infected with it
now? We could possibly see the surge in deaths in the next couple of weeks. We just don't know yet.
Another key point is that even if we do find al-Muqrin to be less deadly than previous strains,
that's not going to help us all that much. If we're seeing a million cases a day, like even
if the rate is somewhat low, if we're seeing that many cases, there's still going to be thousands
and thousands of people who die from this every single day. And it could be just as bad overall
as the big wave that we saw in the winter of last year. So that's one important thing to consider.
Now, obviously, we know that vaccination is our best way to protect against infection,
but especially against severe COVID and death. And that's why some cities are joining cities
like New York and Los Angeles and now requiring proof of vaccination to do indoor activities.
And also because of Macron, we're seeing some cancelations that we arguably haven't seen since
the start of the pandemic. So let me run through you a list of cancelations that we've seen over
the past week or so, and I'm sure that this list is going to be added to over the coming
days. Broadway shows have now closed their doors through Christmas week. The ball drop in Times
Square will go on, but it's going to be scaled back with masks required for those in attendance.
The World Economic Forum, scheduled for Davos, Switzerland, has been postponed until the summer.
I'm sure most many other conferences will follow soon. Companies shutting their doors to
non-essential workers include CNN, Apple, Google, Uber, Lyft and Ford. Universities that shut down
their campuses early for the remainder of the semester included Cornell, NYU and Princeton.
And then in terms of travel, Israel, France and the Netherlands closed their borders to
more countries and added more travel restrictions when it comes to sports, the NFL decided to move
some games around the NBA, decided to postpone a few of their games in the NHL as maybe being the
most strict. They decided to put a pause on games until after Christmas, and also they've decided to
pull out of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, because of the surge. So we'll have to wait and
see whether or not these decisions make sense. I think the sentiment is, well, you'd rather
be safe than sorry. Let's see if cases reach a peak any time soon, and if they do reach a peak,
let's see where that peak exactly is. But the numbers right now, they're just not going in the
right direction, and what worries us, especially now, is that we're about to see families get
together for Christmas. We're about to see friends get together for New Year's celebrations. And so
there's definitely a whole lot of reasons to be cautious now about Omicron and COVID in general.