COVID-22

After all, that's what the Omicron strain really is.

Omicron is a new disease that is nothing like the original Wuhan strain of COVID, and it's creating more havoc than even the Wuhan strain did when there were no vaccines.  Mainly because one thing vaccines did not take care of was access to vaccines. But it's also because the virus has mutated to the point where vaccines are less effective.  What if a future strain is completely vaccine-resistant?

Numerous experts have speculated that Omicron is so contagious that the latest surge of infections - already plummeting in South Africa, where the Omicron strain was first detected, and beginning to recede in the United Kingdom - will give us so much immunity in the form of antibodies, in tandem with vaccinations, that it will end the pandemic once the virus can't infect anyone. "Driven by the inexorable, inevitable spread of the Omicron variant and the use of vaccines, the global population will generate immunity to this virus," Australian physician Nick Coatsworth told a news site from Down Under.  Dr. Julian Tang, a respiratory-science professor at Leicester University in Britain, concurs.  "The virus will evolve itself out of the pandemic strain very soon and become milder, more transmissible to the point where you may only need to think about vaccinating the more vulnerable members of the population," he said.

To assume such a thing would mean that there's no chance of the virus mutating into something more contagious, as everyone assumed when Delta was receding. But it obviously did.  And so there's no reason to assume that a new strain - the next Greek letter to be used is pi, by the way - won't be worse than Omicron.  The only solution to avoid new mutations (I won't call them variants, a variant is a German station wagon) and prevent contagion (I won't say "transmission;" it's a virus, not a radio signal!) is to vaccinate more people.

That's where we're really far off.  

In a good deal of the world, many countries have met or exceeded the World Health Organization's year-end goal of vaccinating 40 percent of its populations, even with so much misinformation of and resistance to vaccines.  In the Western Hemisphere, every country has met that goal except for Guatemala, Bolivia, Surinam, Haiti, Jamaica and a few of the countries in the Lesser Antilles.  In Africa, however, you can count on one hand with fingers to spare every country that met that 40 percent standard at the end of 2021.  In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and, at 211 million people, the seventh most populous country in the world, the full-vaccination rate is a pathetic 2 percent.  And there are other undervaccinated countries in Europe and Asia, as well.  

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has declared that the booster programs of wealthy nations lead to the hoarding of vaccines by these same wealthy nations and deny poorer countries the ability to get more vaccines, which will thus prolong the pandemic by allowing new strains - especially one that throws the proverbial finger to vaccines by evading them completely and making them worthless - to proliferate.  Dr. Anthony Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy have disputed this, insisting that there are plenty of vaccines for everyone, including boosters, and Dr. Fauci has noted the numerous vaccine supplies the U.S. has already donated for the rest of the world.  American protests of the World Health Organization's lecturing, however, seem irrelevant in light of all the donated vaccines that have expired or have arrived in poorer countries without any plan to distribute them.  One must conclude that the plan to vaccinate the world is not getting anywhere.

Or maybe it is.  As of December 21, the latest date for which data is available, 48.3 percent of the world's population have been fully vaccinated - about 3.76 billion people, with 4.49 billion people, or 57.5 percent of the world's population, have gotten at least one dose.  And if you look at the chart below - click on it to enlarge it and see it better - the vaccination rate is going upward in a steady diagonal climb, with a couple of big jumps in the spring and summer of 2021. 

It's for that reason, as the seriousness of the Omicron surge makes itself clear, that World Health Organization Director-General Tedros (he's Ethiopian, they go by first names there) sees hope and optimism for the pandemic to end in 2022. On the other hand, maybe Omicron will end the COVID plague and turn the virus into an endemic contagion, like the flu.  But we still have to get the rest of the world vaccinated to prevent future strains.  If not, we won't end the pandemic.  The pandemic will end us. 😢 😭