This is not March of 2020

We are much better equipped to deal with any new variant, compared to March of 2020.

Hi friends,

Good afternoon and happy Monday! As the new week starts, I’m sure we will be seeing an avalanche of news regarding Omicron - many more countries reporting cases (probably including the US), more travel restrictions, more updates on how Omicron affects people, and how well the vaccine works against it.

With all that we will also see a flurry of misinformation and fear mongering: “the vaccines don’t work!!” , “why get the vaccine if you can still get the variant anyway”, “there is no test for this variant!!”, “we’re doomed!!” and so on.

I wanted to inject some reason into this situation this morning, and share this tweet from Dr. Ashish Jha, who is a well respected voice on Twitter:

Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH @ashishkjha

Is it possible #OmicronVariant sets us back to square one? No We have lots of tests that'll detect Omicron We have therapies that'll work Our vaccines MAY take a hit but will still provide some (may be a lot) protection We are in a MUCH better place This isn't March 2020

Let’s talk about it.

Some sections of the news and opinion leaders on social media are making the Omicron variant out to be the end of the world - this is extremely irresponsible, premature, and not true.

As Dr. Jha states above, this is not March of 2020.

We are not completely helpless or caught completely off guard with COVID like we were back then. We know much more about this virus than we did back then. We also are able to test for it. One good thing about Omicron is that it can be detected with a PCR test (It has an S-gene deletion). We know a lot more about how to manage and treat patients with COVID-19. We also have more treatments for COVID-19 that were not available when this pandemic first started! Medications like dexamethasone and monoclonal antibodies that have been shown to improve outcomes, and remdesivir in some cases.

More importantly, WE HAVE OUR VACCINES - we didn’t have those back in 2020! The vaccines have done an excellent job at reducing rates of infection, severe disease/hospitalization and death. Against the variants, while efficacy against infection has gone down, the vaccines continue to protect against severe disease, hospitalization and death, and I have no reason to believe that it would be any different for Omicron. With a booster shot, protection against infection goes right back up to over 90%. Now again, with Omicron, we don’t quite know yet to what degree vaccine effectiveness is going to be affected, but we can make an educated guess.

That leads me to this: if you are not vaccinated, PLEASE GET VACCINATED. It is the best way to protect yourself. If you haven’t gotten your booster yet, go get your booster. The data at this time is strongly in favor of getting boosters. Getting vaccinated and boosted is the best way to protect yourself. Don’t wait for Omicron.

Yes, Omicron has many mutations, but they are unlikely to render our current vaccines completely ineffective, because the immune response generated in response to the vaccine is complex and has multiple levels of protection. I’ll have a brief post on that later, so be sure to subscribe and stay tuned!

That’s all for now. Just wanted to write this quick post to try to counter some of the hysteria we’re seeing in mainstream media and on social media. I’ll be back later with more updates.

Stay safe!

Dr. Siyab