*We thank Mayor Alex Edelman for asking Dr. Marc Sicklick to once again share his insights with our community.
As we approach two years of this pandemic, where are we going?
Newspapers and politicians keep parading out Covid headlines on a daily basis. Most contradict each other, many on the same page, and most of us are sick of reading it. One negative outcome creates a headline. Thousands of good outcomes don’t. We all want to return to a normal life, without the continuous fear that our lives will be shut down, not by disease, but by politicians.
Based on early data, the omicron strain seems to be very contagious but apparently not as deadly as previous strains. The South African patients seem to have a mild form of COVID, and this seems to be hitting the unimmunized hardest. Most of those hospitalized in South Africa are not immunized, and the remaining minority of vaccinated who do end up hospitalized is a group that includes many who are only partially immunized or who had a less effective vaccine. So unless deaths go up, or chronic COVID numbers go up, it really is not time to panic.
What does immunized mean? Immunized should mean having maximum immunity. Immunized means having received the primary doses AND the booster. The primary doses were never going to be enough, and this should have been part of the original message. Needing a booster is not a sign of vaccine failure. It is a reaffirmation of the concept that proper immune development needs several steps over a period of time.
When a government official announces that X percent has had at least one shot, that is not a medical statement. It’s a political one. The protection from one shot is far from optimal.
Almost every other vaccine that we and our children receive needs a delayed dose to maintain and to increase immunity.
It’s interesting to note that in Israel everyone over age 12 who is six (6) months from their second Pfizer shot is eligible for, and encouraged to get the needed booster, while here in the United States, this week it’s only for those 16 and above.
The numbers of people being infected are going up, just as they were expected to do, as we head indoors. Some of the good, late summer predictions were for the number of infected to triple by mid-winter before falling in the spring. That appears to be accurate. It may go even higher than that when omicron is figured into the calculations.
If the early impression of omicron is correct, meaning very contagious but not severe, aiming to wipe this out is analogous to what was done with small brush fires in the West. Aggressively extinguishing the small fires that were basically harmless and served to destroy the underbrush in a limited, controlled way led to an overabundance of fuel for the devastating large fires that came with loss of life and property.
We need some time to see what will happen with omicron. Not years. Not months. But a few weeks. In the interim, we should continue to be careful, to immunize FULLY which includes boosters, to not go near other people when we are sick, and to avoid large indoor crowds.
Other mutations will continue to appear. Viruses mutate. The viruses will mutate towards better survival for themselves- meaning more infectious but not more deadly. Viruses that kill their host don’t have a long-term existence. Dead hosts don’t spread the disease so they are a dead end for a virus. Rapid death robs the virus of its vectors of spread.
Our concern should not be the number of cases. It should be the level of damage and devastation.
Past variants have appeared in India, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and elsewhere and all were hyped as a potential doomsday bug. I’m not minimizing the danger, but social distancing, vaccines, masks, not exposing people when sick, and good judgment have moved us through the pandemic and should continue to do so.
Sincerely yours,
Marc J. Sicklick, M.D.
Does he even stop to consider that maybe what got us through this, is not social distancing and masking and shots, because places like florida have fewer cases and enforce none of the above, but treatments, such as Hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and a whole host of other treatments? What about natural immunity? What about the fact that after hatzalah stopped bring people to hospitals, at least in New York and treated people at home with oxygen the numbers dropped dramatically? Good doctor kindly explain how states with the harshest mandates also had the worst outcomes?