Zero Omicron will be as effective as Zero Covid

It's Been Nearly Two Years and We Haven't Learned a Thing

Nov 29, 2021

Are you guys as alarmed as I am with how quickly the world has enacted travel restrictions and is contemplating new lockdowns over the "dreaded" Omicron Variant?

Breaking911 @Breaking911

BREAKING: Biden Administration to ban travel from South Africa, 7 other African nations by non-US citizens beginning Monday due to COVID-19 variant - AP

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

When asked if the Omicron variant will prompt new COVID lockdowns, Fauci hints that it is likely, tells America to “prepare for the worst.”

This is based on nearly no evidence, as of yet, that the variant poses any additional risks beyond the dominant strains already widely circulating.

Carl Heneghan @carlheneghan

Update on Omicron: ‘It is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible; It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease’

who.intUpdate on OmicronOn 26 November 2021, WHO designated the variant B.1.1.529 a variant of concern, named Omicron, on the advice of WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE). This decision was based on the evidence presented to the TAG-VE that Omicron has several mutations that may have an impact on h…

It should be noted that detection of cases lags behind transmission, and this is especially true with detection of new variants. Restricting travel from southern Africa now will do nothing to slow the spread since the variant has already been detected on other continents and undoubtedly has already reached our shores.

Here's a Venn Diagram of our current policy, does this make sense any sense?

(You can add Canada and Australia as additional countries with confirmed Omicron cases)

Ngozi @udnore

Nothing to see here folks. These are a completely evidenced based policies… 🤷🏽‍♀️

Does this look like a ration policy to you? There's a reason the WHO's 2019 Pandemic Plan strongly recommended against border closures, they are futile and counter productive.

The point is, we don't yet know if Omicron is more contagious or if it poses greater risk of vaccine breakthrough, but if it does there's nothing we can do about it. Preventing the spread of Omicron is going to work out as well as preventing the spread of Covid has worked these last 18 plus months.

Zero Omicron won't work just as Zero Covid didn't work.

So why does that appear to be our government's policy?

The New York Times is already running Op Eds emploring us to “Get Our Act Together” and advocating or tougher containment measures than have been applied to date. The Illusion of Control is so strong with these people, it’s hard to tell if our policy makers will ever learn how limited our abilities to control the virus actually are.