Ageing Left wing Actress Whoopi Goldberg has got Covid. She is triple vaxxed and says that unless everyone gets vaccinated, this is what we are going to face. But, the elephant in the room is that she is vaccinated! Further, a Danish study of almost 12,000 households has discovered that Omicron spreads faster than Delta among those who are fully vaccinated, and even faster between those who have received booster shots. Hence omicron can avoid alleged vaccine-induced immunity. Further, unvaccinated individuals were about as susceptible to infection as vaccinated.
“The View host Whoopi Goldberg expressed “shock” at catching COVID-19 despite the fact that she had been triple vaccinated.
The actress and TV host missed the first episode of the show and had to appear via a remote live link from her home after she was infected with the virus over the Christmas period.
According to Goldberg, she “left a couple of weeks ago, just before the break, because somebody I had been around tested positive for coronavirus.”
“So, I’ve been gone a long time, I feel,” she added. “And I was all excited and, you know, they have to test us, and so they sent people to test me, and they tested me, and it was like, ‘Oh no you’re not coming back. We’re not sending anybody to your house. You have corona’. And it was like, wait what?”
“It was a shock because you know I’m triple vaxxed, haven’t been anywhere, haven’t done anything.”
The host followed her explanation that despite being triple vaccinated she still caught the virus by encouraging people to get vaccinated.
“Unless everybody gets vaccinated, this is what we’re gonna be facing for the next little while,” said Goldberg.
Of course, the fact that Goldberg was infected despite being double vaccinated and boosted isn’t a shock at all, since the virus still spreads amongst the vaccinated.
A new study out of Denmark found that the Omicron variant spreads even faster within vaccinated communities.
According to a summary of the study, “Omicron spreads faster than Delta among those who are fully vaccinated, and even higher between those who have received booster shots.”
The likes of Whoopi should consult this:
“A Danish study of nearly 12,000 households has discovered that Omicron spreads faster than Delta among those who are fully vaccinated, and even faster between those who have received booster shots, indicating the variant’s ability to better dodge vaccine-induced immunity. Unvaccinated individuals were about as susceptible to infection as vaccinated. Those with a booster were less susceptible.
The Omicron variant was found to evade the immunity of vaccinated individuals much more easily compared to Delta, while among the unvaccinated, it spread only somewhat faster than Delta, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Statistics Denmark, and Statens Serum Institut.
The likelihood that one person infects another—secondary attack rate (SAR)—was 17 percent higher for Omicron than Delta in unvaccinated households, 161 percent higher in fully vaccinated households, and 266 percent higher in those with a booster shot “demonstrating strong evidence of immune evasiveness of the Omicron VOC,” said the preprint of the study.
A fully vaccinated individual in an Omicron-infected household was about as susceptible to get infected as an unvaccinated one. Boosted individuals were about half as susceptible. For Delta, fully vaccinated were about 57 percent less susceptible and boosted about 84 percent less susceptible than unvaccinated.
Transmissibility—the likelihood that one infects another person—was about the same for both variants, the study found. Unvaccinated were about 40 percent more likely to transmit the virus than fully vaccinated and about twice as likely than the boosted.
There were altogether 11,937 households involved in the study, out of which 2,225 already had Omicron. After one to 7 days, the team followed up with the households and found 6,397 secondary infections. The SAR was found to be 31 percent with the Omicron, and 21 percent with the Delta variant.
Omicron has spread to 90 countries worldwide and has become the dominant variant in the United States. However, the strain has proven to cause mild symptoms compared to earlier variants like Delta, and results in fewer hospitalizations.
“The Omicron VOC (variant of concern) has been reported to be three to six times as infectious as previous variants, with a short doubling time, including early estimates from countries with a high vaccination coverage indicating doubling times of 1.8 days (UK), 1.6 days (Denmark), 2.4 days (Scotland) and 2.0 days (United States),” from the study.
The researchers endorsed “non-pharmaceutical interventions that were used to control the previous variants of SARS-CoV-2,” saying those are “also likely to be effective against the Omicron VOC.”
Seventy-eight percent of Danish citizens are fully vaccinated with two doses, while almost half have received a booster shot. More than 80 percent have received Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine.
The effectiveness of vaccines is reduced to around 40 percent for symptoms and 80 percent for severe disease with the Omicron variant. With booster shots, the effectiveness was reduced to 86 percent for symptoms and 98 percent for severe disease.
The vaccination effectiveness with Pfizer-Biotech for preventing infection with the Omicron variant is only 35 percent, the study found. “The advantage of the Omicron VOC seems to be a combination of high transmissibility and increased immune evading abilities,” it said.
“We therefore suggest that adapted or improved vaccines may be necessary to mitigate the spread of the Omicron VOC.”
The Danish team added that more studies are required to understand the latest COVID-19 variant, as they concluded, “Our results confirm that booster vaccination has the potential to reduce Omicron VOC transmission in households, although vaccination as a strategy for epidemic control is increasingly challenged by the immune evasiveness of the Omicron VOC.”
A preprint of the study was published on Dec. 27, and it has not yet been peer-reviewed.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1.full
“The Omicron variant of concern (VOC) is a rapidly spreading variant of SARS-CoV-2 that is likely to overtake the previously dominant Delta VOC in many countries by the end of 2021.
We estimated the transmission dynamics following the spread of Omicron VOC within Danish households during December 2021. We used data from Danish registers to estimate the household secondary attack rate (SAR).
Among 11,937 households (2,225 with the Omicron VOC), we identified 6,397 secondary infections during a 1-7 day follow-up period. The SAR was 31% and 21% in households with the Omicron and Delta VOC, respectively. We found an increased transmission for unvaccinated individuals, and a reduced transmission for booster-vaccinated individuals, compared to fully vaccinated individuals. Comparing households infected with the Omicron to Delta VOC, we found an 1.17 (95%-CI: 0.99-1.38) times higher SAR for unvaccinated, 2.61 times (95%-CI: 2.34-2.90) higher for fully vaccinated and 3.66 (95%-CI: 2.65-5.05) times higher for booster-vaccinated individuals, demonstrating strong evidence of immune evasiveness of the Omicron VOC.
Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the Omicron VOC primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility.”