"We must now add murderous incompetence, culpable negligence, perfunctory conduct of government response, wantonly foolish ideology-driven reliance on organisations and individuals who conspicuously lacked the necessary attributes to perform their assigned tasks. 2/
"Abbasi equated the lethal results of political decisions during the pandemic to ‘social murder’.This describes what occurs when those in power force the population to live in conditions that increase,inevitably,their risk of avoidable and premature death. doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n3…
UK data: Omicron is as severe as Delta for cases that would be infected by Delta, and infects people who would not be infected by Delta (due to immunity of prior infection or vaccination). Those cases are less severe. By Simpsons paradox Omicron seems less severe, but is more. 1/
Also the medical definition of "mild" continues to mean "not hospitalized".
Both so-called mild cases and long covid that can follow can be devastating and life changing.
A just released study shows that the virus remains active in many organs of the body including many places in the brain for months after infection. The "acute" phase of the infection is only the beginning.
NIH Study: "SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple extrapulmonary tissues early in infection...[and] throughout the brain for up to 230 days
"We show SARS-CoV-2 disseminates across the human body and brain early in infection at high levels, and provide evidence of virus replication at multiple extrapulmonary [outside the lungs] sites during the first week following symptom onset.
2/
"We demonstrate conclusively that SARS-CoV-2 is capable of infecting and replicating within ... the heart, lymph node, small intestine, and adrenal gland...high levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA and evidence of
replication in colon, lymphoid tissues, and ocular tissues.
3/
Motility was reduced in 60% of men less than one month after COVID infection, 37% of men 1 to 2 months after infection, and 28% of men >2 months after infection.
Mean sperm count was reduced in 37% of men less than one month after COVID infection, 29% of men 1 to 2 months after infection, and 6% of men >2 months after nfection.
3/
UK scientists: bring in curbs now or face up to 2m daily Covid infections as Omicron spreads theguardian.com/world/2021/dec…
"The threat of Omicron was laid bare by government scientists last night as they warned there are now hundreds of thousands of infections every day. That number could reach between 600,000 and 2 million by end of the month if new restrictions are not brought in immediately.
2/
"The government’s SPI-M-O group of scientists, which reports to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), also warned that, based on their modelling, hospitalisations could peak between 3,000 and 10,000 a day and deaths at between 600 and 6,000 a day.
3/
"Over the summer, corporate executives across a range of U.S. industries scrapped their plans to bring workers back to offices in the fall.... Now a growing number of companies are again pushing pause as January approaches and COVID-19 infections surge.
2/
"This week, technology companies, banking institutions, ride-sharing corporations and plenty of enterprises in between announced they will yet again delay the elusive return to office. Corporations that already have butts in seats are sending workers home.
3/