Coronavirus

The Omicron variant of SARS-Cov-2 is highly transmissible with a doubling time of near 2 days.   It has now spread into over 100 countries globally and is spreading rapidly throughout all 50 states in the US. 1M Floridians and 10M Americans could be infected before the end of January.   Luckily Omicron appears to be less virulent than the Delta variant, but more importantly, it is arriving at a time when the developed world is well vaccinated.  This means that the majority of cases will affect 3 different groups: 1.      unvaccinated who are mostly young and who are less susceptible to hospitalizations and deaths (as in South Africa)   2.      vaccinated folks who while susceptible to infections are still well protected against serious illness by 2 doses and sometimes 3 doses (as in Denmark).  Breakthrough probability is much higher with the Omicron than the Delta...

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) slow and poor response has handicapped the US fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic.   The latest example of their incompetence has cost ~8k Americans their lives including that of Colin Powell.   Since the first vaccines were given to Americans in December 2020, there were always nagging questions about how good were the vaccines’ efficacy, safety, and durability in real life.  The vaccines were developed, tested, and approved remarkably fast causing many Americans to have questions.  The correct approach would have been to collect as much data as possible afterward to determine the real-life efficacy, safety, and durability of these vaccines.  Instead of doing this, the CDC arrogantly decided that breakthrough cases (infections after being fully vaccinated) would be rare and mostly mild and would concentrate on collecting select data for serious cases that resulted in hospitalizations and deaths.  This...