Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's great to be back and so many things to catch up on and talk
about just a few shows before the end of the year and before we even talk about what's upcoming in
2022, we should talk about just the very end of 2021. As far as the coronavirus pandemic, Omicron,
just absolutely everywhere. We don't even really have the latest numbers because of the
Christmas holiday, where Christmas Eve and Christmas Day case numbers are delayed. We're
just not going to know the full scope for a few days, but what we saw right before New Year's Eve,
just absolutely incredible. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about
what is in essence, even without any real quote, lockdowns. There are sort of de facto
self prescribed soft lockdowns taking place because of the number of people
that have been testing positive. We're going to talk about what's going on in the UK as well,
so let's just jump right into it. The last day for which we have sort of like full data December 23rd
nearly a million cases globally, 900 and 82000 cases globally, with the average dropping a little
bit again because we just don't have full data from December 24th and 25th yet, we will soon.
But if there are one million cases a day that we know about the real number of cases with this
incredibly contagious Omicron variant, could it be two million a day? Could it be three million a day
even more? There's very wide speculation because of number one, the number of people
that are asymptomatic who wouldn't even think to get tested. And number two,
the number of people with what we would call cold symptoms who also may or may not get tested.
The real number could be two three million a day.
Fortunately for now, death numbers not increasing. And this again goes to the idea that this variant
is milder and less likely to lead to death. The numbers globally are depending on where
you look that this variant causes anywhere from 40 to 80 percent lower hospitalization,
the 80 percent number coming from South Africa. And we're told to look at that sort of with care
because of the skewing younger, younger population that has been infected there. So that's globally
in the United States. We saw again on December 23rd this incredible number
two hundred and sixty seven thousand cases on December 23rd, the subsequent days. Because they
are holidays, we still don't know the full number. But again, same sort of math applies. If we knew
about two hundred and sixty seven thousand cases on December 23rd, the real number could be 500000.
Dr. Fauci talking about could we see a million cases a day in the United States? And the answer
is probably yes, particularly when you look at the positivity rate. As one example, Houston Methodist
reports more than half of the PCR COVID tests they're doing are positive, and Omicron makes
up more than 90 percent of COVID cases. So because for so many people? The symptoms are like a cold.
It is incredibly likely that if you have cold symptoms, you actually have COVID and in fact,
there's some data from the UK. Half of colds will be COVID, warned UK researchers. That's from four
days ago. And then two days ago there was another report saying If you are in England. And you
have a cold symptom. It's a 50 50 shot that you actually have coronavirus, and that particularly
means there are going to be a lot of undiagnosed cases that never show up in the numbers. Now
what is happening in terms of vaccine evasion? We have some data from Moderna which says if
you've had three doses, you have 70 percent protection from symptomatic infection,
and that's the data there when it comes to Pfizer. Again, this is it's such a general statement, but
it gives us a sense of where we are. This is a peer reviewed article which will be published in
Nature. This is not a preprint. This has been peer reviewed and accepted Omicron extensively, but
incompletely escapes Pfizer neutralization, and you can find this study and look at the details.
But certainly three doses better than two and still strong protection against serious illness,
for the most part. And then in terms of the societal effect, a very interesting
short article in The Atlantic published over the last couple of days called Omicron is
pushing America into soft lockdown, meaning we aren't seeing mandates for businesses to close.
But because of the number of people testing positive, there are lots of businesses that
are just closing and massive, massive flight delays over the holiday weekend. Because of
all of the pilots and crew and flight attendants on various airlines, Delta was hit really big.
United, I think as well. Maybe JetBlue, a lot of flights being canceled because of the number of
people testing positive. So it's not a mandated lockdown, but that's why it's being called a soft
lockdown. So what's the hope? The hope is that I mean, what's the ideal scenario?
The ideal scenario is a less severe, much more like a cold or flu variant very rapidly burns
through the population, generating significant immunity at a minimal cost. Remember this this
is the dream. And then we see a rapid decline in cases as there is less unexposed population
for that variant to hit. Will that happen? We just don't know yet. But those are the numbers that
we're seeing so far. And of course, we're going to follow it very, very closely and we'll have more,
probably by tomorrow. If not, Wednesday will have a bigger sort of picture of the real
number of cases over the holiday weekend, which seems just absolutely off the wall.