With the world abuzz over the latest variant of concern emerging Fred and I dig into the details of the Omicron Variant, or more correctly ‘Variant of Concern’ (VOC) and how it fits into the pandemic. We discuss the various reactions around the world to the variant.
We discuss what we know and what we don’t about this variant, how transmissible it is, is it more infective and how do our current vaccines hold up.
We close with the story out of Italy where one individual tried to avoid the vaccine mandate by getting his shot in a fake arm.
Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Hi, this is Dr. Nick, I’m the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business better health.
Fred Goldstein
And I’m Fred Goldstein with Accountable Health here working with employers and other companies on their population health and employee improvement programs. So, Nick, we’ve got a new announcement. It’s sort of worldwide, scrambling the press scrambling everybody else Omicron. What the heck is going on with Omicron?
Nick van Terheyden
Omicron, the Greek alphabet letter that people are confused as to why it’s this, why did we miss the other two, let’s not even bother going there. So a new variant, and specifically a variant of concern, I think one of the things that’s important to note here is that there are many variants, over 1000, at least, variations in the virus, it mutates, that’s what viruses do. If you weren’t aware of that you should be, I think we’ve all learned lots of things about healthcare viruses and vaccination through the course of this pandemic. But that is the normal progression for all viruses. And the more they replicate, the more opportunity that there is, for these variations to take place. Most of them as you get from the numbers, because we’re, you know, at a limited number of variants of concern, disappear off because in fact, the change causes the virus to not survive so well. So you know, that’s part of the whole survival mechanism. And it’s also a balancing act, because if you become too lethal, you kill people before you can spread. And, you know, I don’t mean to diminish the impact that this has. But you know, it’s really quite the scientific process. This variant of concern has multiple changes, particularly in that spike protein, that’s the little thing that pops out in all the images that you see. And at least one, and perhaps some more, appear to be better at binding to the ace to inhibitor which means that it potentially infect cells more. We’ve seen it in certain countries, it’s given this alphabet, Greek alphabet letter. And at this point, I would say, we don’t know enough to be able to determine what this is going to do in terms of the pandemic in the future. Unfortunately, that’s not been the case, Fred, right. We’ve seen what I would call some reactive or over reactive responses, and not just here in the US, but around the world.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah, I think as you’re talking about it, you know, this whole idea of you immediately saw countries shutting down traffic from specific countries, particularly those eight I believe it was in Africa, including South Africa, where this was identified. And even to the point where Japan actually at one point, shut down for the next 30 days and said, Don’t write any more tickets. And they have now reversed that back a little bit. It’s just interesting to watch this sudden response. And you said, it’s a bit early. I think people are beginning to recognize that it’s more transmissible. Now the question becomes, where is it on that severity index? And that’s, and that’s the key point that people are looking at, with some people saying it looks like it’ll be less a few, maybe not as many saying it might be more, but we just don’t know yet. As well, as, you know, this whole idea. And you could probably touch on this a bit, Nick, which is the effectiveness of the vaccine or potential other treatments.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, so let’s talk about that, as well. But I want to just talk about the transmissibility. If it’s not more transmissible, it typically doesn’t become a variant of concern. I mean, you would have it become a variant of concern if it was more lethal. But mostly what happens is it tries to spread faster. So that would be an expectation when it comes to the effectiveness of vaccines, as much data as we have today. And there’s currently an awful lot of work of people focusing on this. And we have lots of different ways, obviously, the best way is to look at real world data. So what happens in real people as opposed to in the petri dish or in a test tube in the laboratory? And they’re doing that because what we do is we take the results of a vaccinated individual and the antibodies and see whether that imposes some effect on the virus in a test tube or in you know, the laboratory setting. So far, it would appear as we expect with most vaccines that they ask still effective at doing what their primary job is, which is preventing severe disease and death. I think everybody has gotten to the expectation of vaccines are 95% effective, and anything less than that is unacceptable. Well, that’s not the case. If you’ve had a flu vaccine and had flu in the past, that’s normal progression, but you were probably prevented from having very severe flu. If you did get your vaccine. The same is true with COVID.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah, it’s really interesting. And speaking of vaccines, there was a fascinating story that we wrapped it around today. I believe it was in
Nick van Terheyden
Italy, is that right? Oh, my God.
It’s brilliant connection.
Nick van Terheyden
Oh, yeah, I I’m not sure. But I gotta say it made me laugh. Apparently, an Italian gentlemen trying to avoid the vaccine mandate. did so by having a fake arm. Which I used to be I if you don’t work in Hollywood? And even if you do, I’ve got to imagine that that would stand out a little bit. But I admire the innovation. It does send a question to people, if that’s how extreme people are in terms of their resistance, we’re not doing a good job explaining. So you know, joking aside, that’s a problem. But I do admire innovation. I always do. You’ve got to respect it, but I don’t think it was.
Fred Goldstein
Which was fascinating to read the story about how the individual discovered it, when the color was a little bit off. It didn’t couldn’t find any veins, etc. So it would be interesting to see. Another study we should do is perhaps what percentage of people giving vaccines would recognize an artificial arm? Could you slip through with one or 2%? I don’t know. Are we
Nick van Terheyden
gonna see a large number of people doing and maybe we’ll do a double blind crossover trial? You know, folks lining up and some have got false. Actually, quite honestly, I’d like to see it. I’m curious about the the innovation around this. But joking aside, obviously, you know, that’s not the pathway to success. Vaccines are definitely in the future of combatting Omicron. We see that very clearly, as we’ve seen with all of the other vaccine instances and the variants, if you’re vaccinated, much less likely to get it and less severe disease and certainly less likelihood of death, although you are still going to see some death in people that have additional comorbid conditions, but get vaccinated primary defense against this.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah. And just touching on another point that we’ve discussed with some of our clients is, look at this, like delta if you’re doing certain things to keep yourself safe in certain situations where you need to potentially wear masks, vaccines, obviously critical, but consider it that way. So thanks again, so much, Nick. It’s another fantastic week. This is Fred Goldstein with Accountable Health. If you’d like some help with your population health improvement programs, or with COVID Please reach out to Accountable Health llc.com
Nick van Terheyden
And this is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business, better health.
