GroveHillWanderer

And where exactly have you seen that narrative? No medical expert or reputable media source has ever said that, as far as I'm aware. It has always been recognized that the vast majority of Covid cases do not result in death but with even a relatively small case fatality rate, the actual number of deaths is still phenomenal, simply due to the incredibly high case numbers overall.

More like 38% actually. Figures below from the Thai MOPH, via the Mor Prom app.

The sources I quoted did not give that kind of breakdown. However it if helps, the data from the UK article mentioned that in terms of hospital admissions: For the only other age groups it mentions the proportions are similar. So whatever your age, you're 4 to 6 times more likely to be hospitalised if you're unvaccinated.

Not necessarily. There's no definitive proof that constantly repeated boosters (of vaccines designed for the original strain) will continue to confer additional immunity indefinitely. According to some scientists the law of diminishing returns may apply. For instance, in the article below Dr Marion Pepper of the University of Washington says: Will we always need Covid-19 boosters?

No we're not. We are told that it's less severe than Delta, is all. It's still causing hospitalizations and even some deaths, albeit at a lesser rate than previous variants, apparently.

That's a bit of an urban myth. It may have been true once upon a time, but not so much nowadays. How clean is the air on planes?

Given that vaccines by their inherent nature are eliminated from the body within a couple of weeks at most, that no vaccine in history has ever had long term adverse effects and there is no known biological mechanism whereby this could happen, just how do you propose that these vaccines could cause those kinds of effects? As stated by a virologist in the article below: 3 things to know about the long term side effects of Covid vaccines

Not necessarily, at least if it is Omicron and the info in that earlier post is correct that it has an incubation period of only 3 days.

That's not the picture at the vast majority of the UK's hospitals. According to a report on the BBC News yesterday morning, around 90% of people being admitted to ICU or being put on ventilators in 12 different NHS trusts across the country were unvaccinated. Here's just one example from London. Unvaccinated ‘account for 90 per cent of Covid hospital admissions' In the US, the figures are remarkably similar. Between 81% and 96% of recent coronavirus patients requiring in-patient care received no COVID-19 vaccine or are only partially vaccinated.

Did any of these fully vaccinated people test positive, break out of the quarantine facility they were in and then go on the run through multiple areas? Unless they did the comparison is not valid.

According to the results of the Cov-boost study done with over 3,000 participants in the UK, an mRNA booster gives the biggest increase in antibody levels, no matter what your first two doses were. Coronavirus Covid booster shots significantly strengthen immunity In the same study, those that got a third AZ dose as a booster experienced only a 3-fold increase in antibody levels.

Oh, it existed alright - it just hadn't been identified and/or named at that point. ???? Nigeria has found cases of it in old samples dating back to October. Nigeria discovers omicron variant was there back in October

This is a non-story, surely? They did the same with several roads near us in Hua Hin recently. The roads were closed to vehicle traffic while the work was going on and as is due to be the case here, the roadbed and footpaths were raised to the appropriate level before the roads were re-opened.

According to the South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla, in an article published just today, it's simply a consequence of the increased infections. The same article also characterises him as saying that: South Africa sees positive signs amid omicron wave Also, a Reuters article yesterday about the findings in a report from Tshwane, South Africa says the following: Severe illness in S. Africa's Omicron outbreak lower than past waves Although the report also cautions that, "It may take a few weeks for hospitalisation outcomes to accumulate."

According to reports I've seen from various sources including Thai PBS World, they were translators working for a religious organization, attending a church meeting in Lagos. 2 more Omicron cases detected in Thailand

Not necessarily, as your very next paragraph points out. Many (if not most) of them were not being admitted because of Covid and it was only discovered on admission that they had Covid, precisely because the infections they had were mild or even asymptomatic.

All the people in the party who tested positive (70 of them) were fully vaccinated - I'm not sure the same has been confirmed for the other 50 people in the same hotel (but not in the party) who also caught it. But in any event, all the evidence I've seen so far is that whether vaccinated or not, there have been no serious illnesses or deaths confirmed from Omicron infections. This may change - as more and more people get Omicron there will almost certainly be some serious cases and deaths, especially in older folks with comorbidities but again, and from what I see, I think there's still reason to at least hope that Omicron is going to be milder than previous variants.

Yes, and for me with my rose-coloured glasses, the take away from that briefing is that there is still only evidence of mild disease with Omicron. And although that could change, I still prefer to take a more optimistic outlook. For instance, there's another story from Norway where 120 people got Covid in a hotel where an early Christmas party was being held on November 26. Not all of them are definitely confirmed as being Omicron cases yet but that is the working assumption. As stated by Norwegian health authorities, all cases were mild or asymptomatic. Europe's biggest Omicron outbreak appears mild

No vaccine has ever had long term side effects and there's no scientific rationale for thinking mRNA vaccines will be any different. As one epidemiologist put it: Things to know about the long term side effects of Covid vaccines

That info is from nearly two weeks ago. Here's part of what they said in their latest update. WHO Covid weekly update Dec 7, 2021 It may still be too early to be sure but I have not seen any reports of Omicron causing severe illness or death, from anywhere in the world as yet. Perhaps I'm just a hopeless optimist, but as far as I can tell, the evidence (albeit limited) continues to be encouraging on this front.

So the obvious implication is that they now have tests that can.

The question I was answering was not why does it need to be altered, but how could it be altered while retaining accuracy. But since you've asked, the reason it needed to be altered is because it implied that people could have the Omicron variant simply by virtue of being African, which is patently ridiculous. In any event, I see that the headline has already been changed to a more accurate one - "PM orders travellers from Omicron areas to be traced and tested."

The other point to be made is that it's probably a little bit pointless to be over-concentrating on African countries when at least three European countries have already stated that they had cases of omicron from before South Africa ever announced that the variant was present there. As other countries go back and retest old samples, I reckon there's a good chance we'll find out it was already present in plenty of them as well. Don't forget, people weren't testing for omicron before, because they didn't know it existed.

It could incredibly easily be altered and retain accuracy. You just have to look at the headline from two days ago which referred to "arrivals from African countries." In fact that would be a better headline because obviously it's not their nationality that's the issue here, it's where they've travelled from. People don't just spontaneously develop the omicron variant because they're African.

According to the WHO they skipped Nu because it was too easy to confuse with "new" and Xi because it is a common surname and the guidelines are to avoid using the names of people or countries. Mu (which comes before Nu, not after) was not skipped, it was already assigned to another variant detected in Colombia.