Bad Cattitude | 9 Dec 2021
“hey look, nature made a vaccine”
first up: south africa
“So I actually think there is a silver lining here, and this may signal the end of Covid–19, with it attenuating itself to such an extent that it’s highly contagious but doesn’t cause severe disease. That’s what happened with Spanish flu.”
“In truth, [the virus doesn’t want to kill you, it wants you to stick around,” said Marc Mendelson, head of infectious diseases at the University of Cape Town and doctor at Groote Schuur hospital.”
more cases, fewer symptoms, less serious.
this bears out in the hospital data so far. also note that the case spread is being badly overstated due to the inclusion of antigen tests to the count that began on nov 23rd, right when this practice changed. this is not simple case surge, it’s a data splice around more inclusive definitions that resulted in a step function rise. it will also spike reported positivity because antigen tests tend to only get reported when positive.
and then on to norway:
gotta get that “experts warn” plug in at the end, but i would take that one with an entire shaker of salt (and preferably some tequila. and lime. after all, when have THOSE guys ever been self-serving hysterics before…)
“Doctors involved in tracing the outbreak say the infected are so far only suffering very mild symptoms like fevers, coughs, headaches and tiredness following the festive do on November 26.
Some 120 people who attended the Louise Restaurant and Bar in Oslo have tested positive for Covid, all of which are suspected to be Omicron but only 13 have been confirmed in a lab.
But Dr Tine Ravlo, a public health expert in the Norwegian capital involved in tracking the outbreak, said that so far ‘none have become severely ill and none of them have been treated in hospital.”
“Dr Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association and the first person to spot the new variant in a patient, said her patients infected with Omicron reported different and much milder symptoms, including tiredness, muscle aches, a sore head and a dry cough. But none reported the tell-tale symptoms of a loss of smell or taste or breathing difficulties.”
thus far, all the evidence seem to point to one fact:
this is covid becoming a cold.
