You will catch omicron. The only question: How sick will you get?

You absolutely, positively will catch the omicron variant of COVID.

Your family will catch it. Your friends will catch it. Everyone you know, and complete strangers all will catch it. Everyone. You will not be able to avoid it.

The only question: How sick will you get?

Some people won’t even notice any symptoms. Others may have sniffles or upset stomach. Some will need to be hospitalized.

Some will die.

Will wearing a mask, help? Masking and avoiding crowds may delay but not prevent the infection. The sole purpose of masking and other efforts will be to space out the need for hospitalization, thus helping to prevent overcrowding.

Other than that, you will find no way to avoid the virus.

What can I do? Vaccinate. Get the initial vaccinations and then get the boosters. This will help keep you from extreme illness and death.

You people who refuse to vaccinate will become sicker and more of you will die. It’s nature’s way of culling the less intelligent and thus, improving the human gene pool.

Everyone will catch the virus, but red states will do worse than blue states, and Republicans will do worse than Democrats.

Here is the latest from Science News:

The omicron variant is surging. Here’s what we’ve learned so far
In the weeks since omicron emerged, the variant has been identified in more than 85 countries. In many of these places, omicron infections are rising fast.

Omicron is responsible for nearly all new COVID-19 cases in South Africa, and is already the predominant version of the coronavirus in London. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimates that omicron will be the most common variant across the European Union by mid-January.

In the United States, omicron now appears to reign. The variant was responsible for an estimated 73.2 percent of new infections across the country for the week ending December 18, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s predictions.

That’s up from an estimated 12.6 percent the previous week and 0.7 percent the week ending December 4. Omicron now accounts for an estimated 92 percent of new cases in New York and New Jersey and 96.3 percent in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

With that in mind, omicron is likely to worsen the surge that is unfolding across the United States. Some places, including New York City, are already seeing large spikes in COVID-19 cases with numbers rising fast.

The CDC said the Omicron variant now accounts for 73 percent of new cases in the U.S.

It currently takes about two days for the number of omicron cases to double, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said. Highly infectious delta, in comparison, doubled every two weeks at.

Preliminary data from the United Kingdom show that omicron is around 3.2 times as likely to spread among households as delta is.

And people exposed to omicron may get sick faster — and therefore be able to spread the virus sooner — than people exposed to other variants. At a company Christmas party in Norway the median time that a person exposed at the party developed symptoms was three days.

It takes slightly longer for delta infections to cause symptoms — around four days — and about five days for non-delta variants.

Some preliminary studies done in lab-grown cells hint that omicron may turn out to be more transmissible than delta, though how much more is unclear. One reason may be because the new variant might make more copies of itself inside host cells than other variants do.

Vaccines may be less effective against omicron, but boosters offer hope. Early studies suggest that vaccines will still protect us, especially after getting a booster shot.

Lab-based studies of neutralizing antibody responses are a hint that protection from vaccines or previous infection might be diminished. Many of these same studies suggest that a third dose boosts antibodies back up to levels that should be protective against omicron.

A study in South Africa, for instance, found that the effectiveness of two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine at stopping infection dropped from 80 percent pre-omicron to 33 percent during the omicron wave.

Antibodies from people who had previously been infected but not vaccinated also perform poorly against omicron.

There was a less dramatic drop in the shot’s effectiveness at preventing hospitalization. Before omicron, the jab was 93 percent effective; it decreased to 70 percent amid the new surge.

Experts expect that vaccines will largely keep vaccinated people out of the hospital. But with many people still unvaccinated across the United States, only time will tell whether the beginning of 2022 will be as devastating as the start of 2021.

The bottom line:

1. Omicron is far more infectious than delta or previous variants.
2. Masks and social distancing will slow, but not prevent, the spread of the disease. Eventually, everyone will get it, though some may not have symptoms.
3. A previous COVID infection will not protect you from the omicron variant.
4. While vaccination does not provide total protection, it increases the odds you will not be sick enough to require hospitalization or die. The jab may save your life.

Politicians who discourage vaccination on the basis of “freedom,” merely are giving their constituents the freedom to sicken and die.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.

The most important problems in economics involve:

1. Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
2. Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics. Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
3. Social Security for all
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
5. Salary for attending school
6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 
8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
9. Federal ownership of all banks
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY