The Omicron surge of cases has been like a wildfire around the world..
It has swept across cities, states and countries similar to the way in which a wildfire burns through a dry prairie.
It has consumed continents.
Look at what has transpired in Europe over the last six weeks in terms of new daily Covid-19 cases.
By comparison, it makes Covid look like a minor annoyance for the previous two years.
(All charts below are population adjusted per million people).
The same is true in North America although the surge has begun subsiding.
There is no place that the impact of Omicron has been so stark as in Australia.
Australia had 5 times more cases of Covid in January, 2022 than during the entire previous 21 months of the pandemic.
And Asia.
The Omicron variant was first identified in Botswana and South Africa on the continent of Africa.
That would lead you believe that the Omicron wildfire burned the most intensely on that continent.
You would be wrong.
The Omicron wildfire barely shows up when comparing Europe, North America and Australia to Africa.
The same holds true when comparing it with all of the major continents.
When you look at Africa by itself, rather in comparison with other continents, you can can see that there has been a recent surge in Covid cases that is now declining.
However, it is also clear that the Omicron surge has still been much more muted there than it has in other areas of the world.
That is also evident in looking at the data for South Africa in isolation where Omicron was first identified.
Why is this?
If you looked at the low Covid cases in Africa and Asia throughout the pandemic, compared to the rest of the world, it might be easy to consider that there might be a genetic factor involved.
Are those with Asian and African genetic makeups somehow not as susceptible to the virus?
However, that conclusion does not hold up in looking at CDC case data in the United States in which African Americans and Asian Americans (as well as other minorities) all had higher case rates than Whites as of the peak of Omicron cases the week of January 8, 2022.
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| Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographicsovertime |
If you were a vaccine skeptic you might conclude that the vaccines were actually helping the virus rather than hindering it.
Africa has the lowest vaccination rates while also having the lowest case rates.
How is that possible if you are to believe the narrative about how effective the vaccines are supposed to be?
The most likely explantation is age.
The older someone is the more difficult it is for one's natural immune system to defend against the infection.
The median age on the continent of Africa is 18 years of age.
It is 42 in Europe and 35 in North America. It is 31 in Asia.
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| Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-median-age-of-every-continent/ |
It also could be a function of testing.
The more you test the more cases you are going to find.
For example, compare daily cases in Israel vs. Palestine.
Then compare tests in Israel and Palestine.
Israel is conducting 26 times the number of tests per capita as Palestine.
That could explain the case difference by itself.
One of the more interesting theories I have seen about why Africa and Asia have not see the same wildfire of Omicron as Europe and the United States is that a prior version of Omicron was circulating in Asia and Africa for up to two years before Covid was first identified.
This theory is based on the fact that Omicron appears to be more genetically diverse (older) than the original Wuhan virus. In simple terms, it appears to be more like a distant cousin than a direct descendant of the original Wuhan virus.
Those who subscribe to this theory believe that Omicron was circulating widely within Asia and Africa for many, many months before the Wuhan virus appeared. It may have its origins as far back as 2017 in China.
This may explain why infection rates for the Wuhan virus were also lower in Asia and Africa than other parts of the world as some cross immunity was built up in these areas of the world before the Wuhan virus began to spread around the globe.
This is a tweet from someone who believes that Omicron does not have a natural origin while also graphically showing how far removed Omicron is from other variants of concerns such as Delta.
I am not an epidemiologist but that does not look like a close relative of a recent mutation.
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| Credit: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/the-omicron-hypothesis-part-2 |
Some believe this might mean that the two related viruses both actually escaped from the Wuhan lab separated by a couple of years. The parent of Omicron that might date back over four years and the Wuhan virus two years ago.
No matter how it occurred something seemingly has conferred greater immunity against Covid to those in Asia and Africa over the last two years than the rest of the world.
In the chart below, Zone III, which includes North America, South America and Europe has 16% of the world's population but has had 62% of the Covid deaths since the pandemic began.
Zone I, which includes Asia and Africa, has 45% of the world's population but has only accounted for 3% of the deaths.
The "Ethical Skeptic" believes it must be due to an Omicron ancestor that was circulating in these region of the world as far back as in 2018.
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| Source: https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1480576072802615299 |
The lack of an Omicron wildfire in Africa is just another one of the mysteries of Covid.
It defies a normal and natural explanation.
Just as almost everything else does about the virus.
One thing is for sure.
You can bet Tony Fauci and his friends know far, far more about all of this than they will ever admit.
Will the truth and justice ever be served in unraveling these mysteries?
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