Is hindsight about Covid appearing in 2020, well, 20/20? Apparently not.
But before launching in, let me say that whether you believe the Covid response was perfectly ideal or you believe it was wildly wrong, this thought experiment will have something to offer you. And regardless of your point of view, I look forward to your comments!
As always, please remember that Covid the Cow is not a doctor. However, she is outstanding in her field. Not to mention that she’s a leftist! And a GREEN. But she’s quite disenchanted with the left at the moment!
While I do not pretend to have the sophistication to understand raw data nor to design studies, I do have a strong math and science background. Once doctors and scientists publish their findings and debate, I can look at their arguments and evaluate which expert point of view is the most logical, reasonable and matches up the best with ‘good science’.
So here we go!
We know a lot more about Covid now, but we still don’t seem to understand that natural immunity is at least as robust and long lasting as vaxxed immunity.
We don’t seem to understand Age Stratified risk. From the CDC: “Compared with 18- to 29-year-olds, the rate of death is four times higher in 30- to 39-year-olds, and 370 times higher in those who are 85 years and older.”
And there some ideas still floating around, which should have been soundly disproven by now but yet persist regardless of new data and evidence. Plastic barriers, cloth masks, outdoor masking, etc. The misinformation seems to come fast and furious… From public health experts, politicians and the press — along with the censorship, blacklisting and persecution of courageous doctors speaking out to correct the record.
I believe all of this is largely due to PTSD from the initial round of Covid fear and panic. But what if Covid had started this year, under Biden, and it entered the mainstream consciousness with the Omicron Variant rather than Alpha. Would we have any restrictions, lockdowns, masking? And if not, should we return to normal life now?
This is our THOUGHT EXPERIMENT!
First, let’s revisit the timeline of Covid beginning in the U.S. back in 2020 — taken from the link below.
January 9, 2020 — WHO Announces Mysterious Coronavirus-Related Pneumonia in Wuhan, China.
January 21, 2020 — CDC Confirms First US Coronavirus Case.
February 3, 2020 — US Declares Public Health Emergency.
February 25, 2020 — CDC Says COVID-19 Is Heading Toward Pandemic Status.
March 19, 2020 — California Issues Statewide Stay-at-Home Order.
https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020
At the time of the lockdown, there were very few cases and very few deaths in the USA. I actually couldn’t get Worldometer to make any cases show up before March 24th!
There were 67 deaths on March 19th, according to worldometer. If deaths remained at that level for a year, that would be 24,445 deaths for the year, or lower than even a very mild flu season. So this was not a huge amount.
It wasn’t simply the data in the US that was driving the pandemic response of lockdowns, closures and restrictions. There was already a global panic due to what had happened in Wuhan, China.
SEE GRID. Deaths in China fall to near zero. (Whether we believe the lockdowns worked, or China just stopped counting deaths is not important. The impact of the statistics was undeniable.)
The above data from China shows a steep rise and then a steep drop. This convinced many that lockdown policies worked and entirely STOPPED the virus in China.
The other example which was driving media stories and public health messaging at the time was Italy, which was having far more cases, and they were rising at the time of March 19th.
The number of deaths was alarming, and there seemed to be no China-like success story on the horizon for Italy.
Two and a half months into the narrative about Covid, we had an example of lockdowns apparently succeeding and evidence that the more liberal democratic means of handling the viral spread was not succeeding. The USA was not in any distress. Flattening the curve to keep hospitals from flooding was only a speculative concern as there was NOT a glut of cases at the time.
The other driving factor of the pandemic response was the IMPERIAL COLLEGE MODEL. “This worst‐case simulation came up with 2.2 million deaths by simply assuming that 81% of the population gets infected –268 million people– and that 0.9% of them die. It did not assume health systems would have to be overwhelmed to result in so many deaths, though it did make that prediction.”
The Imperial Model used a very high IFR (infection fatality rate) based on the early numbers from China and assumed 81% of the population of the U.S. would be infected and came out with 2.2 million people dead by summer. That prediction was 2.2 million dead in America by the SUMMER of 2020. While this was massively far off, it was taken seriously and informed policy decisions.
Noted scientists disagreed with this high IFR of .9%, but they were ignored. Now we know the IFR was closer to .2-.3%, much closer to that of the flu.
The factors above lead to lockdowns, closures and restrictions. It was too early for their to be consensus that Covid is spread by aerosols. Since it is, the plastic barriers were pointless and maniacally sanitizing surfaces was pointless. Outdoor masking has since been found to be pointless. Cloth masks were pointless. N95 masks have not done any better in real world circumstances, only in lab tests and what some experts describe as “poorly designed” studies.
Regardless, there is currently ZERO correlation between high mask compliance and low case numbers. If there were any correlation at all, it has been completely obliterated by the Omicron surge. Omicron seems to be particularly adept at avoiding masks (and even vaccines, in terms of spread). When Delta blew through the Southern States, it could be blamed on the population failing to mask and vaccinate. But when Omicron blasted through the highly vaccinated and mask compliant Northern States, all bets were off. It was clear something was wrong with our policies.
Whatever impact N95 masks have, it seems illogical that taking them off to sit down and eat maintains their efficacy. But I think there can be NO DEBATE that making children wear N95 masks 7 hours a day while seated at their desks is ridiculous when their parents can go to the bar down the streets and drink and socialize without masks.
Just a couple of examples of places with high mask compliance did the same or worse than those with lesser restrictions.
Johns Hopkins' Dr. Marty Makary: "There's actually broad consensus now by public health officials acknowledging privately, & they're starting to say so publicly, that cloth masks have almost no impact on transmission whatsoever, and we basically have known that the entire time."
Israel, the only quadruple-vaxxed country in the world (also using mask mandates and Covid passports), just broke global record for daily Covid cases.
The interventions we’ve done; lockdowns, restrictions, closures, and Masking have shown no correlation to lower case numbers in the data from county to county, state to state, region to region, nor country to country. Just two examples. LA County has done every intervention, while Orange County has done little or nothing.
Sweden has done almost no interventions, while Israel has done nearly every possible intervention.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday clarified its stance on various kinds of masks, acknowledging that the cloth masks frequently worn by Americans do not offer as much protection as surgical masks or respirators.” That’s the best they could do trying to avoid saying they are worthless.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/health/cloth-masks-covid-cdc.html?
But let’s not quibble about masks, plastic barriers and scrubbing door knobs with Windex. Instead let’s move on to the THOUGHT EXPERIMENT!
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:
What if Covid started now, in 2022. And the version of Covid which started the pandemic was OMICRON. What would that look like? Below is a timeline of the appearance of Omicron taken from the CDC website.
November 24, 2021: A new variant of SARS-CoV-2, B.1.1.529, was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO).
November 30, 2021: The United States designated Omicron as a Variant of Concern.
December 1, 2021: The first confirmed U.S. case of Omicron was identified.
January 18, 2021: (CNN) “Areas that were among the first to get hit hard by the Omicron variant are starting to see their Covid-19 numbers level off or even improve.”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/omicron-variant.html
***NOTE: Unlike the Alpha version of Covid-19, Omicron arrived when most people were vaxxed, so that has to be kept in mind as a strong mitigating factor. But please indulge me and let’s address that separately at the end.
Omicron appeared in Africa and much of the early data came from the country of South Africa. We’re only looking at the bit on the far right of the below grid. You can see that the curve goes sharply up and has started down now. It crested in December, before any cases came to the U.S.
Deaths trails case numbers, but the death toll was clearly low in South Africa throughout the spike in cases. This was without lockdowns. So there would be no Chinese model of dealing with Omicron to would influence our policies if the pandemic started now with Omicron.
“Mounting evidence from animal studies suggests that Omicron does not multiply readily in lung tissue, which can be badly damaged in people infected with other variants.”
There is some confidence that in addition to having passed the crest in many places, the death count is expected to be lower than other variants. If we did not know of any more deadly variants, we would presume this was about the normal fatality rate of Covid in general.
“On 14 December, the South African private health insurer Discovery Health in Johannesburg announced that hospitalization risk has been 29% lower among people infected with Omicron, compared with people infected with a previous variant.”
New York has already crested. (And so has Florida and others.)
There is disagreement, but Omicron is potentially 2/3 less deadly than Delta. I realize it’s early, but that would be the impression given if we take the snapshot for our thought experiment right now, and if we had not lived through this for two prior years. The impression would be clear that Omicron is a LESS DEADLY virus. We would not have the last two years to color our perception, nor fraudulent images of people in China dropping dead in the street, which was clearly false. We’ve seen nothing like this AT ALL.
Omicron spreads much more quickly (this even despite vaccinations and masking). So very likely if this was our first experience with Omicron, the case numbers would be much, much higher then they even are right now. This means that it would have been widely and uncontrollably spread throughout the USA before any lockdown measures could be successfully implemented.
Additionally, the low death toll for the first wave would have minimized the calls for locking down. The high transmissibility would work against lockdowns in that there would be no delusion of being able to control the viral spread. So, there would be no justification for trying to stop the spread when it was already spread far and wide, while deaths would still be low, as they are now, in our snapshot.
Why is it more transmissible? “In essence, it looks to be more able to infect the upper respiratory tract – cells in the throat. So it would multiply in cells there more readily than in cells deep in the lung. This is really preliminary but the studies point in the same direction.”
“A growing body of evidence indicates that the Omicron Covid variant is more likely to infect the throat than the lungs, which scientists believe may explain why it appears to be more infectious but less deadly than other versions of the virus.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00007-8
Oddly, Omicron seems to be more transmissible to the vaccinated and might even be more dangerous for the vaccinated. It’s also possible the numbers would be FAR WORSE because the 16% of the population who are over 65 would not have been as used to protecting themselves when Omicron hit.
But let’s assume no shutdown. With no shutdown, young healthy people catch Omicron like crazy. This means likely an even lower IFR and much higher spread.
“But Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, told The Times that “although the numbers are going up and going up increasingly rapidly, the absence of large numbers of seriously ill older people is providing significant reassurance.”"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/risk-of-hospitalization-from-omicron-a-third-of-that-from-delta-new-uk-data-shows/
“A total of 57 people has been reported to have died within 28 days of an Omicron COVID-19 diagnosis up to 29 December 2021. The median time from Omicron specimen date to death was 5 days (range 0 to 14). The age of those dying ranged from 41 to 99 years.”
“The risk of hospital admission alone with Omicron was approximately one-third of that for Delta (Hazard Ratio 0.33, 95% CI: 0.30 to 0.37).”
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1045619/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf
“JERUSALEM, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Data from Israel on Thursday supported growing evidence worldwide that Omicron causes milder illness than previous variants of the coronavirus even as the country grappled with a record number of daily infections.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/infections-record-high-hospitalisations-low-omicron-sweeps-israel-2022-01-06/
So, the first two factors I’m raising in our THOUGHT EXPERIMENT are:
1) the high transmissibility would make Omicron spread an unlikely candidate to be susceptible to lockdown measures, even in the minds of the most dogged lockdown advocate. And the China example would not be cited.
2) the lower fatality rate would have made Omicron less likely to have forced drastic interventions, because it would have looked more like a very transmissible flu-like virus.
But there is a third factor to consider...
3) Biden is President instead of Trump. When Covid started in 2020 Trump appeared to be cruising to a second term and the media wanted him out. With Biden in office, the media would not be so anxious to undermine a sitting Democrat and to make it easier for a Republican to unseat him.
Yes, I am suggesting that the media played an role in politicizing Covid and stoking a firestorm of panic for the purpose of removing Trump from office. I don’t think that’s a big stretch of the imagination. Regardless of whether or not you think Trump should have been booted out, the media clearly had a pre-existing agenda to ram their boot into his behind on his way out the door. (Full disclosure, I had an FB group called, PUNCH DONALD TRUMP IN THE FACE, and when that was taken down I made the group, DONALD TRUMP IS A BIG FAT LIAR. So I know from personal experience that bias against Trump was a factor.)
So what is my point? Glad you asked.
MY POINT is that if we were starting the pandemic now and with Omicron, we would not have had Lockdowns, restrictions, nor closures. School Closures are not happening even with the current set of circumstances as they are. Let alone without the PTSD of the past two years.
Would we have masking, plexiglas, scrubbing down surfaces and all the other interventions we see now if 2022 was the beginning of the pandemic? I’m going to say emphatically NO.
Here’s why.
Omicron would have spread too widely for those kinds of mitigations. Public Health messaging would have moved directly passed containment and into treatment of this far less deadly version of Covid, which does not attack the lungs in the same way.
How many fewer deaths there would have been? Unclear. But I think it’s obvious there would have been at least 1/3 less deaths from an Omicron pandemic than Covid’s Alpha variant. And possibly a less politicized environment would have conceded that 25-40% of Covid deaths were WITH COVID instead of FROM COVID.
“The rise of the milder strain has led to a similar pattern emerging in hospitals, where nearly half of virus inpatients are not primarily needing treatment for the infection.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10413701/A-QUARTER-Covid-deaths-patients-died-virus.html
And, most importantly, we would have seen it already cresting and going down. The numbers are already dropping in many countries and states. Probably natural immunity would have been high enough, due to rapid spread, even in the first wave, to play a large factor in mitigation of spread.
I’m not saying I know there would not have been the same kind of panic and shutdowns. But without the China example and with the lesser IFR, and not having had the experience of the last two years, Omicron likely would not merit the kinds of drastic measures we saw.
SO…
If you agree that Omicron would not have required the same kind of drastic measures if it happened FIRST, then Omicron should not require that type of drastic measures now. (I think this is obvious!) So, why are we continuing these measures if we would not institute them if we were starting from scratch? The answer is, we should not continue them.
In truth, we should remove all the mandates designed to stop spread and return, right now, to a voluntary model based on the high transmissibility and lower death rate of Omicron. Just protect the vulnerable and allow young healthy people to make their own risk/benefit analysis on what level of protection they wish to do.
The UK just did this!
✔️ No more facemasks
✔️ No more work from home guidance
✔️ No more Covid passes
I avoided one part of this. The part about the impact of vaccination. But now let’s take it on!
I pushed Vaccination to the back for a reason. Vaccination has been wildly successful at protecting against severe cases of Covid. For people over 65 it’s a slam dunk. They should get it right away. Get the boosters. Bathe in vaccine if they can!
(I am vaccinated and boosted - not that it’s any of your business.)
For young healthy people, they should check with their doctor and see if the vaccines right for them. Of course, everyone should be vaccinated, as long as their health allows and they are agreeable to it. But do notice that hospitalizations among the vaccinated are higher in older age groups than among the unvaccinated. So there may not be so vast a difference specifically with Omicron due to being vaccinated or unvaccinated. We don’t know. But again, we don’t know.
This is a crazy turn of events. Vaccinated people are catching Omicron more often. And, in some age groups, are being hospitalized at high percentages. This could be completely meaningless, but we don’t know.
If Covid just now appeared, we would obviously not have vaccinations. How would that impact the current situation? It would be worse! But how much worse?
From the CDC: “Severe Illness: More data are needed to know if Omicron infections, and especially reinfections and breakthrough infections in people who are fully vaccinated, cause more severe illness or death than infection with other variants.”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/omicron-variant.html
Israel, the only quadruple-vaxxed country in the world (also using mask mandates and Covid passports), just broke global record for daily Covid cases.
Professor Cyrille Cohen is head of Immunology at Bar Ilan University and a member of the advisory committee for vaccines for the Israeli Government says herd immunity is the way now.
https://unherd.com/thepost/israeli-vaccine-chief-we-have-made-mistakes/?=frpo
By the way, my suspicion is that the worse stats for vaccinated people is only related to Age Stratification and not the vaccines. Age Stratification and Natural Immunity are the two most IGNORED factors of the pandemic. A person with natural immunity is at a tiny risk compared to a non-immune person, and possibly even a vaccinated person. Certainly a child with natural immunity is at less risk than a grandmother who is vaxxed.
We’re assuming for this THOUGHT EXPERIMENT that no one is currently vaccinated nor naturally immune. That means we would have tons of Omicron cases. Mostly among the young and healthy who are out in the world interacting. And they would quickly develop natural immunity. And there would be more deaths than we have now — due to the lack of vaccination. But not as much as when Alpha appeared and there were also no vaccinations.
But it looks to me like the IFR for unvaccinated people is also far lower than the stats for the Alpha variant. So the number of deaths would be far lower than when Alpha swept through an unvaccinated population.
People would still likely change their behavior. Wash hands, stay home, avoid crowded public places… Just like they do whenever there is a bad virus. So I tend to think that would curb some of spread, especially among the elderly and high risk, who are more wary of viral spread. But also, we would probably count more reasonably, instead of counting a pregnant mother in the hospital to deliver her baby who tests positive as a Covid hospitalization as we now do.
Would the lack of masking mean a worse outcome? No. Surgical masks and cloth masks are ineffective. The CDC admits that.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has admitted that cloth masks have never been effective.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/the-cdc-admits-cloth-masks-are-ineffective/
What percentage of people wear N95 masks 100% of the time? On average, about 30% of people. SEE BELOW.
In Germany, they switched to N95 masks for all and it made little difference. So, no, I do not think the lack of masking would have a huge impact on this THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.
CONCLUSION:
If Omicron was the first introduction we had to Covid and it started in 2022 with Biden as President, there would be a far less drastic response, deaths would be counted more reasonably. At this moment, if we took a snapshot of the data, we wouldn’t have a good reason to lockdown. The spread would happen much faster, so there would not have been time for drastic measures. The national psychology would withstand the threat with the help of a compliant media. And Big Tech would, ironically, ban anyone over-dramatizing the threat. Comparisons, ironically, would be more to a bad flu season.
Since we would not pursue lockdowns, closures, restrictions, masking, etc., if Omicron was the beginning of the pandemic in 2022, we should clearly not impose lockdowns, closures, restrictions, and masking now! It’s the same decision based on the same data!
We should overcome the PTSD of the past two years and return to normal now. We should follow the UK’s lead and remove the mandates.
For healthy people under 65, particularly if they are vaccinated, the risks with Omicon are no worse than the flu. And vaccinated or not, you’re going to catch and spread Omicron. The only difference is that vaccinate people will have an easier time with Omicron when they catch it.
Will hospitals flood? There is no evidence of that currently. And we see cases for this wave are already cresting. So I would say no. But I am open to being convinced if data emerges.
“During a period with mixed Delta and Omicron variant circulation, SARS-CoV-2 infections with presumed Omicron variant infection were associated with substantially reduced risk of severe clinical endpoints and shorter durations of hospital stay.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1
“UK Government advisers estimated the overall figure stood at around 0.25 per cent before Omicron burst onto the scene, down from highs of around 1.5 per cent before the advent of life-saving vaccines.”
Omicron is less lethal than Delta. “The Washington modelling estimates the figure actually sits in the region of 0.07 per cent, meaning approximately one in 1,430 people who get infected will succumb to the illness.”
Even if the above estimate turns out to be unrealistically low, it’s highly likely Omicron’s IFR for vaccinated people is NOT higher than .1% like the FLU. And positively for young, healthy people it is not.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10358361/Omicron-nearly-100-TIMES-deadly-seasonal-flu-scientists-believe.html
The early data from South Africa and elsewhere would have reduced the fear, and the fact the wave is declining already in South Africa would have calmed tensions.
We are only maintaining the restrictions now out of PTSD over what happened for the last two years and not for current need based on data. It’s time to return to normal. This all should be is great news! The Brits are getting back to normal. What about us?
Go and live your life!
Moo!
— The Cow
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Great article! Thanks for all the work.
And agree: Trump derangement syndrome played a huge part.
China's response played a huge part as well. Potentially coincidence. This book argues otherwise: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KPJQZWW/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_navT_a_7C5AR8HSHKRRMVGQCWDD I haven't read it but have seen a lot about it on Twitter.
This is a thread on Twitter by the author:
https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1454830348324380674?s=20
At least enough here to raise eyebrows.
I have made access to this free. I welcome any and all comments and will respond to each.