The Omicron Severian BA5 became the
dominant variant in the US last week,
according to the CDC.
Colorado's variant specific
data is delayed by two weeks,
so the most recent data set shows
it's responsible for more than 38%
of our cases double the week before.
9 health expert doctor Pyle Conley
is joining us this afternoon to talk
about this because this one is scary
and frustrating, and it's BA five.
It's a sub variant.
I mean, they all like, you know,
they're just like.
Bad guys in a super superhero movie,
you know they all have their own name.
So why is this one so concerning?
So this is a bad guy that came
from an earlier generation of bad
guy which is the Omicron RB one.
So this is a sub variant,
so it is an Omicron variant,
but it's actually more contagious
than the original Omicron,
and it has evolved in such a way
that the spike protein and the virus
actually tricks the immune system
so it evades the antibodies that we
are making against with the vaccine,
and with the original infection
and. So many of us have,
you know, had COVID by now,
and I'm like, alright.
I've you know, I've got my vaccines.
I've been boosted.
I've got natural immunity. I'm good.
Is that the case with this one?
No, and in fact, that is why we're
seeing such a spike in cases occurring
because not only are people who've
had COVID before with Omicron still
able to get reinfected, but in fact,
people who've both had COVID with omicron
and been vaccinated are also more likely
to get infected with four and five.
So this is called an escape variant.
It's escaping some of those antibodies.
What we have now lay this all on
the background of all the mask
mandates going away,
everybody traveling,
everyone getting together in restaurants
and indoors so you can see why we're
seeing such a spike in cases occurring,
and it's hard to tell
what the exact numbers are too,
because the testing and and
then there's all that idea of
where you go to get a test and
false positives of the home test
and then hospitalizations.
Explain that angle.
We're just going blind this year,
guys, because last year at this
time we were doing a lot of testing
and it was all PCR testing.
Right, so we were getting very
accurate results and we know exactly
what we were getting and those
positivity rates we could follow.
But now with all the at home testing,
we're actually thinking that we're
underestimating cases by sevenfold.
What they actually are, but we're seeing
people still end up in the hospital,
so we're still seeing thousands
of hospitalizations every day.
We're seeing hundreds of deaths still
occurring, but that's a lagging metric.
Remember, so it tells us what
happened several weeks ago,
so it's just really hard.
Hard to keep track of where
we are happening right now,
exactly.
That's what makes it so tricky.
I want to play devil's
advocate for just a second.
Don't get mad at the question,
but so many of us have had COVID.
We're fine, we're out of work,
sick for a couple of days,
and we just kind of pushed through.
Why should we be concerned
about yet another variant?
We've been doing this for years, right?
COVID just COVID at this point,
right? And it is a a virus that
lives in the cold family of viruses,
except what we're learning with COVID.
Based on new data that just came out.
Now this is pre print,
but if you're getting infected
over and over again with COVID,
your risk of ending up in the hospital
or dying from COVID is a lot higher.
And your risk of getting long COVID
because now think about it as
repeated injuries to your organs.
With this different,
you know bad guys,
but the same version of bad guys really,
so your risk of having long
COVID is also potentially higher.
So these vaccine makers haven't made
a put out a vaccine for this one
because I mean I'm ready to go. What
the heck is taking so long?
I'm ready to go to and I'm to be honest,
not sure why it's taken this long,
because even Omicron has
been around for many months.
Even the sub variants now have
been around for many months,
so the FDA last month.
Actually told the vaccine manufacturers when
the falls version becomes four and five.
B4 and BA5 need to be on it.
Now the question is whether they'll
be able to get that together.
Whether it'll require clinical trials,
because with the flu shot,
every time we update it, we don't
necessarily repeat the clinical trials.
Should we do that with this and
will we have a new variant by then?
New bad guy.
Ohh yeah, this is exhausting.
I know I just keep him
thinking the octopus guy in
Spiderman and he had all the
OHS. I don't know why I just think
it's so annoying but you know the and
Spiderman does win because at the end
spider believe he does the right things.
That's OK. Great power.
He can be spider responsibility.
OK, thank you. Thank you.