Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, December one. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: There's still much we don't know about omikron, the new
Speaker 1: COVID variant spreading through the world. We don't know if
Speaker 1: it's more transmissible or most importantly, if it causes more
Speaker 1: severe illness. Preliminary observations show that it could cause milder infections.
Speaker 1: If so, that could be good as we get on
Speaker 1: our way to the virus being endemic. Andrew Joseph, reporter
Speaker 1: at stat News, joins us for the bottom line, it
Speaker 1: will take weeks and more data before we know. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Andrew, Yeah, thanks so much. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the variant that everybody is talking about right now,
Speaker 1: omikron of COVID nineteen. Now, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that we don't know about this. President Biden was speaking
Speaker 1: the other day and said this is a variant of concern.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be panicking over this just yet. And that's true.
Speaker 1: There's so much we don't know about it. Cheap among
Speaker 1: things is we don't know if this variant causes much
Speaker 1: more severe illness and people and that's what everybody's looking at.
Speaker 1: It could be more transmissible, it could evade the vaccines
Speaker 1: a little bit. All that stuff will bear out, and
Speaker 1: it's going to take a couple of weeks, actually a
Speaker 1: few weeks to really get more data on all this.
Speaker 1: So this is really what we're talking about here, And
Speaker 1: from what we're hearing from some doctors so far that
Speaker 1: have been encountering this is that it might cause milder
Speaker 1: cases of COVID. So, Andrew, what do we know about
Speaker 1: this so far? Yeah, so some some South African physicians
Speaker 1: who are actually seeing this have said that the patients
Speaker 1: they've seen are generally mild cases. And that's true that
Speaker 1: as of now. But I think a lot of experts
Speaker 1: would say, like, you know, we need to see a
Speaker 1: lot more patients to get any sense of what if
Speaker 1: whether the severity of symptoms broadly changes, and so, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we need a little bit more time to see,
Speaker 1: you know, the trends and hospitalizations and death because COVID
Speaker 1: for a lot of people is a mild illness and
Speaker 1: so it could just be that these are the patients
Speaker 1: they're seeing. The patients that the South African physicians have
Speaker 1: reported seen have been generally younger who are as we
Speaker 1: all know, are more likely to have milder illness. So
Speaker 1: there's a couple other factors that play here, and we
Speaker 1: just need to see i think, more patient data in
Speaker 1: a little bit more time to know. Tell me about
Speaker 1: the difficulties with all that, because let's say you get COVID,
Speaker 1: you get a test, it's confirmed, you know, for people
Speaker 1: that have mild cases are probably gonna stay home. Who
Speaker 1: knows if that goes on to get sequenced by a
Speaker 1: lab somewhere. Maybe some people just get sick and stay
Speaker 1: home and never see a doctor or get tested, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's so tough to pit the two, you know,
Speaker 1: the variance against each other and see which one is
Speaker 1: much more severe, right because so you know, a virus,
Speaker 1: like everyone knows, is evolving and it can influence its transmissibility,
Speaker 1: can influence how it reacts to like our immune responses.
Speaker 1: But in theory, it can also become more or less virulent,
Speaker 1: basically cause less or worse disease on average. That's a
Speaker 1: really hard one to pick up and less you know,
Speaker 1: if it's like dramatic change, like no one's going to
Speaker 1: the hospital or everyone's going to hospital. You'll pick that
Speaker 1: up more quickly, but if it's a subtle change, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to pick up. And because there are so
Speaker 1: many other things that influence patient outcomes, like you know,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at a certain area, like what is
Speaker 1: the rough age demographics of the people, do a lot
Speaker 1: of people have underlying health conditions that make them more
Speaker 1: vulnerable to COVID? You know, what's the health care capacity like?
Speaker 1: And you know, and now there's the other thing that
Speaker 1: we're seeing is that in a lot of places there's
Speaker 1: a lot of population immunity out there, whether from vaccination
Speaker 1: or prior infections, and so that might mean that if
Speaker 1: you have that level of protection from past exposure to
Speaker 1: the virus or from being vaccinated, maybe you can't block
Speaker 1: the infection entirely, but you're going to have mild illness.
Speaker 1: So this could be also be a relic of that
Speaker 1: because South afris had pretty substantial waves of COVID already,
Speaker 1: and that's the exact point, right that what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in South Africa with them is they have had those waves.
Speaker 1: This amicron variant is happening in younger people, so we
Speaker 1: have yet to see how it really affects older people
Speaker 1: or people that have those comorbidities. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot still at play. That's why it's you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: talking about it, but it is you know, there's no
Speaker 1: need to panic just yet. We don't know enough about it.
Speaker 1: And even with the Delta variant when we talked about that,
Speaker 1: obviously that was responsible for some of the big waves
Speaker 1: that we just had recently, even that when the jury
Speaker 1: is still out on whether it caused more severe illness,
Speaker 1: Delta's biggest threat was how transmissible it was. And and
Speaker 1: actually transmissibility is kind of the thing that scientists worry
Speaker 1: about most because a more transmissible variant will cause more cases,
Speaker 1: and that's more illness and death than like even a
Speaker 1: variant that causes just like a more severe disease like
Speaker 1: on an individual basis. That's just the numbers game at
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, exactly. But to your point, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there were some studies and again this just kind of
Speaker 1: goes how hard it is to study this if it
Speaker 1: is a small difference, Like there were some studies that
Speaker 1: showed countries had a higher hospitalization rates during Delta waves
Speaker 1: and and you know a lot of doctors said the
Speaker 1: patients they were seeing seemed to be getting sicker and
Speaker 1: faster with delta, but other studies came to like to
Speaker 1: find that there were no differences between delta and earlier waves.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of yeah, it just kind of goes
Speaker 1: to show that. Like, it's pretty hard to know for sure,
Speaker 1: because these are difficult things to study in the environments
Speaker 1: in which these variants are spreading in and the fact
Speaker 1: that the variants are often spreading not at the same time.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, there's still a lot yet to know
Speaker 1: about this. But let's say some of these things hold true.
Speaker 1: Let's say people are getting much milder illness from this
Speaker 1: new omicron variant. Could that be a good thing. Could
Speaker 1: we be on our way to this virus being endemic
Speaker 1: something we live with, something more of a common cold
Speaker 1: rather than the pandemic that we're currently in in in
Speaker 1: you know, high debts and and all that stuff. Could
Speaker 1: this be something that is a positive almost I guess
Speaker 1: we're moving past it now. If these cases really are mild,
Speaker 1: or if a greater percentage of them is mild, let's say,
Speaker 1: because it's probably not going to be, that would be
Speaker 1: a great thing. Whether that means that the virus has
Speaker 1: changed to become just like cosm older illness or because
Speaker 1: it would show that prior exposure to virus or vaccination
Speaker 1: is turning this from like what can be a really
Speaker 1: serious infection into generally more of a mild infection. And
Speaker 1: that's how we kind of move, as you said, towards
Speaker 1: intimocity as opposed to like this acute emergency that we've
Speaker 1: been in now for almost two years. Well, we need
Speaker 1: more patient data. As you mentioned, it's going to take
Speaker 1: a few weeks before we really start to see the
Speaker 1: trajectory of what this variant is. It's popping up in
Speaker 1: a lot of countries, I believe. The last time I
Speaker 1: heard and this could change at any moment, right we
Speaker 1: still hadn't had any cases in the United States, but
Speaker 1: people are pretty much believing that it's going to be
Speaker 1: here at any moment, or could already be here. So
Speaker 1: just keep your ear out for updates on this. It's
Speaker 1: nothing to worry about just yet. We still need more
Speaker 1: data on all of that. Andrew Joseph, reporter at stat News,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I'm Oscar Ramiress and this has been reopening America,
Speaker 1: don't forget that today's big news stories. You can check
Speaker 1: me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday,
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