Fear is not the answer to Omicron

 

A couple of people I know are in a frenzy, like most governments in the world. They fear the havoc the latest variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could do.

I think the most feared word in the world right now is Omicron, the newest variant of the virus that continues to devastate the planet.

And the earlier variant, Delta, isn’t even finished with us yet. It continues to cause death and suffering everywhere.

Many nations, including Malaysia, have banned the arrival of people from certain countries where the Omicron was first found or where it spread rapidly. The World Health Organization thinks it is unfair and an overreaction.

In Malaysia, the result of a second Covid-19 test on a South African student, the country’s index Omicron variant case, has returned negative. Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah also said all seven close contacts were free of the virus.

Yesterday, national unity minister Halimah Sadique told the Dewan Rakyat that there would be no Thaipusam procession next month due to the threat of the Omicron variant. There will be strict rules and guidelines for Hindus observing Thaipusam.

How bad is Omicron? Nobody knows. Initial findings indicate it carries an unusually large number of mutations and there is concern that it could trigger a new global Covid-19 peak based on the fact that the emergence of Omicron in South Africa was accompanied by a sharp rise in infections.

Scientists in South Africa said last Friday that Omicron appeared to spread more than twice as quickly as the Delta variant. However, early indications are that Omicron may not be as severe as the Delta variant.

No one, for instance, has died so far from being infected with the Omicron virus.

The White House’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said, “Thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging regarding the severity”.

The director of the US National Institutes of Health Dr Francis Collins noted that there was no data so far to suggest that Omicron caused more serious illness than previous variants, although it could move from person to person faster.

According to a Reuters report, research shows the Omicron variant 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.

It quoted researcher Venky Soundararajan of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data analytics firm nference, as saying that by inserting this particular snippet into itself, Omicron might be making itself look “more human”. This, said Soundararajan, who led the study, would help it evade attack by the human immune system.

What does this mean? It could mean the virus transmits more easily while only causing mild or asymptomatic disease. However, as the variant is new, more research needs to be done over the next few weeks to determine its severity.

William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and co-director of the school’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said although Omicron had the capacity to be serious, it “doesn’t mean the sky is falling”.

“We’re not going to be able to securely nail down things like transmissibility among vaccinated individuals, or the risks of severe illness to vaccinated individuals, for weeks or even months. Even then, we’re still not going to be clear on things like age and the amount of time since people have had their shots, and exactly which shots they got, and so on.”

He noted a case in Israel where a person who had received three vaccine shots transmitted Omicron to another person who had also received a booster shot.

He said they had no idea yet as to what Omicron could do in very highly vaccinated populations.

“But I think that it’s reasonable to say that whatever is going to happen with Omicron could happen really quickly. The other thing I would point out is that anybody who has talked about the ‘end of the pandemic’ has been doing people a disservice. Because you don’t get ‘ends,’ what you get is a point where, gradually, people are able to chill, and they chill at different rates depending on their own attitudes about risk.

“Eventually, we get to a point where the pandemic is in the rearview mirror, but that point is going to be different for everybody. “

The head of Covid-19 care at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem,  Dror Mevorach, who has treated more than 5,000 patients in four waves, sees some hope in the situation.

He told The Times of Israel: “On the one hand, Omicron is a menace, but on the other hand it may represent the variant we wish for. What is it that we wish for? One hope is that the disease disappears. But, if it doesn’t, we want a variant that’s transmitted easily but causes only very mild disease.

“It looks now like Omicron could represent this, and I see this possibility. If this is the case, it could transform the disease from something that is very threatening and causes illness and mortality, to something that is more like the flu, which does cause illness and mortality but in smaller numbers. I’m optimistic — though I know that in three or four weeks, that could change.”

What all this means is that we should not panic or worry too much. We cannot control the mutations of the virus and we cannot stop another variant from emerging but we can control its spread by observing certain health practices, including wearing masks, keeping clean and avoiding crowds if possible.

Also, we need to get good sleep because studies show that people are more anxious when they are sleep deprived than when they are rested. Their immune systems could suffer too.

Gradually, we need to come to terms with the virus and, as Hanage says, to be “chill” about it.

As Marie Curie said: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.