OMICRON has a normal Cold virus insertion 214EPE as part of its mutation and is developing into a less pathogenic virus, at the same time it appears that hospitalisations and death rates are decoupling from case loads, which continue to skyrocket. As John Campbell MD puts it, “the virus caught a cold” (see below).
Reuters are reporting that the Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 ‘likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a snippet of genetic material from another virus – possibly one that causes the common cold – present in the same infected cells.’
Netcare has found that there appears to be a decoupling of the rate of community transmission and the rate of hospital admissions, meaning that ‘fewer people end up in hospital than the official infection figures might suggest’.
“This is what we saw with the Spanish flu. We call it an antigenic drift. The Spanish flu never went away. It stopped killing people but it morphed into what we know is a very highly transmissible influenza or flu-like virus that is still with us today,” says Richard Friedland, Netcare CEO.
This is an entirely normal sequence of events, as the coronovirus becomes endemic and the pandemic winds down. As I wrote in September most respiratory pandemics last no more than two years, with the black death a five year affair.
Professor Frode Forland, director of infectious diseases at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, says: ‘It might be that it has now replicated and mutated so many times that this is the optimal position from the virus’ point of view, to spread widely and not kill the hosts.
‘That’s what we’ve seen with other diseases beforehand. And of course, then it gets into more like an endemic phase.’
Scientists have long predicted the coronavirus is unlikely to ever be eradicated but will instead transition into a milder cold-like virus as the world develops stronger immunity.
Of course there is one huge caveat, this could all change if Covid itself, decouples from the history of respiratory disease and instead of natural evolution, is being manipulated in the lab. But let us assume that what is occurring is zoonotic transmission and the pandemic is entirely natural and not man-made.
Barring some unforeseen event, like a mad scientist in a dark lab, manipulating the genome, one can predict, based upon past experience, the end of this saga sometime in early 2022 (fingers crossed).
Since public health policy in South Africa is being set by non-scientists like Halton Cheadle and his crony Glenda Grey, and other law school frat boys (see here) we are likely to see the introduction of strict vaccine mandates at the same time that the pandemic ends.
My earlier postings on the subject raise the issue of Cheadle’s involvement in Kagiso a company invested in Aspen, the local producers of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and thus question the law professor’s fitness to be involved in public health policy.
Cheadle’s involvement with the ruling party and UCT appears to be the reason why he is allowed to operate in such a cavalier fashion — his relationship to Kagiso is a conflict of interest if ever there was one.
For the record, Cheadle’s company Cheadle Thompsen Haysom continue to appear as advisers on Kagiso annual reports. The sizeable investments by Kagiso in Aspen have not drawn any criticism from the medical establishment, despite their associates and advisers seeking to set public health policy. Cheadle appears to have presided over a 2018 matter at the Competition Commission involving Rustenberg Platininum Mines and Mototolo Ventures, an entity partly owned by Kagiso Tiso. He has appeared before the Cape Law Society disciplinary committee regarding a similar lack of transparency and conflict of interest at Labour Court during 2010 without any sanction from this body.
UPDATE: CCMA declares vaccine mandates unconstitutional