Covid19mathblog.com

The new variant of concern has skipped naming convention to Omicron – skipping Nu and Xi. The concern of the new variant could be overdone but there are still many unknowns – the biggest concern stems from the amount of mutations vs. other variants. So far the countries that have observed the new variant we don’t see much change in the trajectory of fatality rates or confirmation (Belgium Czechia, Netherlands already spiking weeks ago). If they do conclude that most of the previous spike was Omicron then perhaps we have some real problems. The list of countries to monitor has grown – https://www.cityam.com/omicron-spreading-fast-new-covid-variant-flies-into-uk-germany-netherlands-belgium-czech-republic-and-italy/

“Officials in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Czech Republic, Italy as well as the UK have confirmed the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus has appeared in their respective countries, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread.”

From my perspective the issue is the delay of confirmations in society. The diamond princess showed a 20% per capita infection rate – I suspect the health of the nation (sanitization and physical health) and the amount of testing will drive the publish infection rate. Infection rate will eventually be 20% +/-10% for each country per the noted variables. One can stall that infection rate through living in quarantine but I think it becomes inevitable unless you want to live in a bubble. The US per capita confirmation sits at 15%. You can see the European countries a month ago many were under 10% now they are all surging as they opened up under the thought the vaccine was going to save them from infection. The vaccine potentially has done a good job for fatality rate so far – not as good as demonstrated ~60-80% vs 90+% claimed. However for reducing transmission the vaccine is not an effective tool.

Mask does influence infection/transmission rate but clearly not the most effective thing to do similar to the vaccine outcomes. Improving ventilation is likely 10+X more effective than mask – as seen in the airplane studies vs. restaurants studies noted here multiple times. In addition we have noted nasal sprays as an effective form of prevention and minimizing spread. Here is another study to back that claim https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8026810/?s=09

“PPE, mask, hand sanitization or vaccines nothing proved 100% effective for COVID-19 prevention still now. PVP-I oro-nasal spray is an easy tool or way for COVID-19 prevention and reduction of SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility. I recommend here, this oro-nasal spray should be used as an adjunct to PPE, mask or vaccine. Any person, policy maker, local or central government could adopt this safe, cheap, easily available and effective PVP-I Oro-Nasal spray as an additional shield of their COVID-19 protection and thus minimize the COVID burden.”

You can pick this up on Amazon for $17 a spray bottle – the govt could probably push this and the price would come down just like mask and eventually transmission would fall. I would contend a mass use of nasal spray will have more impact than mask. They should just make this mandatory before going to concert/gathering over mask.

Still another thing the govt could be pushing and making available in all the hotspots if they really cared about life as per the vaccine push – Vitamin D – this has been noted many times earlier – but once again another study to confirm since common sense and balancing risk/reward is not enough – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34836309/

“Results: Our treatment protocol increased the serum 25OHD levels significantly to above 30 ng/mL within two weeks. COVID-19 cases (no comorbidities, no vitamin D treatment, 25OHD <30 ng/mL) had 1.9-fold increased risk of having hospitalization longer than 8 days compared with the cases with comorbidities and vitamin D treatment. Having vitamin D treatment decreased the mortality rate by 2.14 times. The correlation analysis of specific serum biomarkers with 25OHD indicated that the vitamin D action in COVID-19 might involve regulation of INOS1, IL1B, IFNg, cathelicidin-LL37, and ICAM1.

Conclusions: Vitamin D treatment shortened hospital stay and decreased mortality in COVID-19 cases, even in the existence of comorbidities. Vitamin D supplementation is effective on various target parameters; therefore, it is essential for COVID-19 treatment.”

Russia leads in deaths now.

Europe including Russia has surpassed its previous confirmation peak -deaths are still less.

As expected the southern states are dropping out of the top deaths and confirmation states….chirp chirp goes MSM from purporting it was the unvaccinated in the South….

The vaccinated rates are not a good sign of reduced transmission compared to weather and human behavior per the weather.

Here is the state view for the last 30 days