We are in a time loop.
1. Contamination out of control but hospitalizations stable, all is well.
2. Then, hospitalizations out of control but stable resuscitations, all is well.
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3. Then saturated resuscitations but acceptable number of deaths and which only concern fragile and condemned people, all is well.
4. Too late is serious.
Start once more at 1 for the next variant.
With each episode of this health crisis and to consolidate their repetitive narrative pattern, the heralds of this time loop minimize the seriousness of the situation in the hospitals and the dead who are only old people who were going to die quickly anyway. In addition, they deny the long Covid and the possibility of severe Covid cases in children.
To this they add, like any Supreme Guide, a definitive solution to the crisis. Yesterday, it was called hydroxychloroquine / ivermectin, it is called today “post infectious natural immunity”.
And yet the reality on the ground is not what they describe.
Our healthcare system is under great strain. The massive and recurrent deprogramming, the degradation of care linked to the lack of staff and their exhaustion have resulted in a loss of opportunity for all hospitalized patients.
Of course, the deficiencies were pre-existing to Covid, but they were exacerbated by it.
Our resuscitations are on the verge of breaking down with more than half of their capacity embolized by Covid patients. In addition to the threat of triage of patients, this continuous hyper-activity risks causing excess mortality in patients admitted to these units.
The number of deaths, around 200 per day, is no longer a “variable” for adjusting health measures. Never mind that 26% of them are under 75 and 8% under 65. In the imagination of the Covid is deeply rooted that it is the very old already sick who die. Regardless of whether the life expectancy of an 80-year-old was ten years, they were going to die soon anyway.
The number of hospitalizations of children, in particular those under 5, has recently significantly increased in several countries, which leads us to wonder regarding the peculiarity of Omicron, which a study suggests would be as virulent as Delta in patients. less than 12 years. The child in this crisis is “a non-subject”. We are late in starting the vaccination of 5-11 year olds, some even deny the long Covid in 5-11 year olds and our schools are still not sufficiently secure.
In France, the long Covid problem is underestimated and underestimated. And the French study which spoke of “belief” to qualify these patients serves as a standard for the “heralds of the time loop” in order to deny this coming epidemic.
Elsewhere, in particular in the United States and Great Britain, the long-term Covid is taken into consideration and has led to the creation of specific departments to take care of patients and long-term studies. Even if Omicron only induces a fraction of the long Covid observed with the previous variants, it will be devastating.
The holy grail of collective immunity
As for Omicron it would even be a chance! It would even be the last wave before the end of this nightmare.
We should not worry regarding these 200,000 cases per day, but on the contrary rejoice because they will not lead to hospitalizations or deaths in significant numbers and we will thus be permanently protected thanks to the immunity acquired by the infection. .
Finally we will reach the holy grail of collective immunity.
Affirmations hammered out as soon as this variant appeared, and when nothing allowed such convictions.
The data are finally there, admittedly preliminary, but which shed light on the debate:
– Omicron is two to three times more contagious than Delta.
– Omicron is arguably less lethal than Delta. It is difficult to differentiate between the intrinsic lethality of this variant and that linked to the characteristics of the population it affects compared to Delta (age, vaccination status, previous infection, etc.).
– Omicron may escape post-vaccination or infectious immunity.
-Vaccine protection once morest hospitalizations is very imperfect for two doses (52% following more than 25 weeks) and clearly better for three doses (88%). As of December 31, 22,172,439 French people had received 3 doses. Added to unvaccinated and immunocompromised people this leaves millions of people at the mercy of Omicron. This may explain why hospitalizations are increasing in the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Spain, among others.
Predicting the health impact of the Omicron wave under these conditions is a perilous exercise.
For some, the near future is bright. It is enough just to hold and at the cost of a few thousand additional deaths, this crisis will be over and definitively, thanks to the collective immunity provided by Omicron. A modest sacrifice of a few old people so that the majority can finally live normally.
The debate, if it deserves to be asked, suffers from a major cognitive bias. There is no basis for promising definitive collective immunity with Omicron.
Who can seriously affirm that there will not be a new variant that is more dangerous and that escapes the vaccine or post-infectious or vaccine immunity of the previous variants?
Apart from those who spread the myth of the permanent evolution of viruses towards less dangerous forms.
For SARS-COV-2, the evolution led to a progressive increase in the contagiousness and the lethality of the variants. Except perhaps for Omicron which would be much more contagious but less severe because of a tropism for the bronchi and not the lungs. Remember that a virus whose lethality is less but the greater contagiousness can lead to more deaths simply because of the much larger number of cases.
And what regarding the next variant?
Measures that cannot be limited to vaccination
But then what to do?
We are in a context where it is no longer possible to take measures that would effectively reduce the Omicron wave for two reasons:
– It’s way too late.
– These measures would be economically and socially unacceptable. We are no longer in the spring of 2020.
We must therefore take measures that will protect once morest serious forms without destroying our model of society. They cannot be limited to vaccination.
– Reinforcement of hospital resources. Yes, it takes years to train a doctor or nurse resuscitator, but we might start.
– Protection of children sent back to schools without sufficient measures. CO2 sensors, FFP2 masks, ventilation, compulsory regular tests for all have been requested in vain for months.
– Accelerated vaccination for 5-11 year olds for which we are very late.
– Realization of the third dose, better barrier once morest hospitalizations at Omicron.
– Much wider use of FFP2 masks.
– Very strict respect for barrier gestures while the Omicron wave has passed.
I call on the international community to find reason, in the absence of generosity, and finally to set up generalized global vaccination, the only way to avoid the inevitable next variant.
I remind you that delaying infection means waiting for therapeutic progress. The majority of unvaccinated deaths in 2020 and early 2021 would be alive today thanks to the vaccine.
Anti-viral drugs and new vaccines adapted to the variants are very close.
As a doctor I deplore the choice of the economy, but as a citizen I understand it.
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Nevertheless, let’s save as many lives as possible while waiting for therapeutic progress which, unlike the “white knight variant”, is really inevitable.
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