Alex Berenson has been following the situation in South Africa. Based on early data, it appears that omicron – in addition to spreading very easily – is a mild form of the virus with an extremely low mortality rate. If this pattern holds, Berenson thinks that omicron may be our way out of the pandemic: widespread infection with a mild form of the virus may finally lead to the herd immunity which we were promised but which has remained so elusive.
But there is a catch: what if premature vaccination on a mass scale has screwed up in some way the normal process of herd immunity? Maybe the potential benefit of omicron will be limited to countries with low vaccination rates. Maybe the “vaccinate everybody” mania in the West will continue, as spiking omicron cases are used to justify ever more boosters and ever more mandates of an increasingly coercive and punitive nature.
Berenson also notes that in highly vaccinated Netherlands, in the most recently-reported week, the all-cause death rate is way up from pre-Covid levels – about 40% – and only about one in five of these deaths is said to be Covid-related. Are the vaccines having some subtle but deadly long term effect, or is this increase just an anomaly or due to some other combination of factors? Time will tell.
