The Omicron First Death | We need to Talk.

man this is getting tiring folks it is

monday december 13th and omicron news is

taking over we even now have a news of

the potential first death of omicron now

i'm going to talk about this on some of

the wording that was used for this first

death we're also going to talk about

some other updates that could affect

markets uh and of course well our

society uh so folks let's just get right

into the news let's pop on over to

our usual handy-dandy flowchart so first

things first let's talk about this first

death according to boris johnson with

confirmation this morning one person has

died with omicron in britain

he says quote and sadly at least one

patient has been confirmed to have died

with

omicron now i am adding the emphasis why

am i adding the emphasis because folks

we know that when we look at south

africa many individuals who are

hospitalized and then are discovered to

have omicron are hospitalized for a

reason that is not omicron they just

happen to have omicron while they're in

the hospital and so my question is and

we don't have the details of this yet

but i think it's critical because i

expect that markets are negatively

reacting to as usual the headline that a

person with omicron has died but wait a

minute why did boris johnson say that a

person died with omicron rather than

from omicron why don't we have more

details here i think this is very

important i don't actually find this to

be a conclusive omicron death yet though

what do i know i'm just being skeptical

kevin let's pay attention to this

boris johnson did use this as an

opportunity this death and this is

expected for a politician to basically

pitch vaccines and boosters now i don't

blame that i'm a big supporter of choice

you all know that however i am

vaccinated i encourage people get

vaccinated i encourage the boosters now

i'm just being transparent about that

that does not mean i force it upon

individuals now

boris johnson here says the idea that

this is somehow a mild version of the

virus is something that i think we set

on the side and just recognize the sheer

pace at which this relates

or rather

spreads through the population properly

written here uh so anyway boris johnson

is using this as an opportunity to say

hey you know what look somebody just

died with omicron we can't call omicron

mild

i think this is political speech here i

don't think we've seen any evidence that

omicron is not mild we continue to see

reiterating evidence that omicron is in

fact quite mild that is literally what

the cdc director in the united states

says now believe the cdc or not it is

also what we see doctors say in south

africa it's also what harvard health

professionals say when they suggest that

we could be bringing the end of kovid

into our society with omicron as omicron

outpaces delta takes over delta and now

we have the more mild form which is

great perfect path for a virus to take

it goes from killing its host to no

longer killing its host so it could try

to survive longer i mean that's just a

natural mutation it's not like it does

that consciously right but anyway uh

some other things to note and some of

these quite uh important so very

important to pay attention to these

first united states infections have

passed 120 000 per day and this is the

highest level since the delta surge

we've had in september

we do expect that uh cases will continue

to rise but according to bloomberg most

of these cases continue to be described

again as mild while we expect cases to

rise remember though

most folks and the market are going to

think that okay cases are going to go up

then hospitalizations and then deaths

are going to go up and this whole first

death thing is going to reiterate that

belief but

if indeed omicron does prove to be more

mild we might see cases go up

and hospitalizations and deaths not

actually move now this is a little bit

complicated by the fact that delta is

still the predominant variant in the

united states so the more delta cases

you have the more hospitalizations and

more deaths you're gonna have so you're

gonna have this weird transition period

that's going to leave the market very

uncertain and very confused and when you

get titles like of individuals expecting

a tidal wave of infections in the united

kingdom well then you're going to have

some more potential drama as well okay

now omicron is now in more than 30

states including in my county which is

the county of ventura california

expectations are that omicron can fuel

75 000 deaths this winter in england

again these headlines not great news

right this is potentially another reason

why our markets are pained right now the

two-shot dose of pfizer is estimated to

be just

22.5 percent efficacious against omicron

this is really bad 22.5 efficacious

against omicron very very bad now they

do say it could limit severe disease

this is according to experiments in the

south african lab studies that have been

released over the weekend here uh i uh

read about this not only in the new york

times but also in time.com and on

bloomberg and other sources so this is

pretty well sourced uh 22.5 for two dose

not great this is another reason we're

seeing a lot of push for boosters

because boosters are expected to be 70

to 75 percent efficacious

and again that's because of that that

massive drawdown in antibodies and the

mutations to that tip of the covet spike

protein keep in mind the reason you can

still limit severe disease is because

you still have a somewhat resilient t

cell response which is good t cell

responses are created by vaccines but

also by prior disease which is worth

noting however take a look at this there

is a severe reinfection risk with

omicron that if you've previously had

covet you are three to potentially as

much as eight times as likely

to get coveted again

with omicron compared to some of the

other variants because we've previous

previously thought that hey if you've

had coven it's harder for you to get

coveted again because you actually have

more of a a lasting antibody and t cell

response if you've actually gotten the

disease versus the vaccine like getting

the vaccine was

i'm sorry getting the disease was one of

the best ways to prevent getting it

again

but that changes with omicron which is

bad

okay next set of news

mild cases mild cases okay here's

another report that came out it is a

morbidity and mortality weekly report

that's released by the cdc they are

suggesting that so far four out of five

individuals who are getting omicron are

vaccinated so obviously this is leading

a lot of especially the anti-vaxx groups

to say

why am i bothering getting the vaccine

obviously the goal is to avoid severe

disease we don't want people dying but

then of course now the question is are

people dying well boris johnson didn't

really give us clear information on this

so tbd but anyway symptoms right now

according to the cdc cough tiredness

headache congestion runny nose okay this

is mixed reports some people say yes

runny nose some people say not however

very few instances of requiring

ventilators oxygen and as of the time of

this morbidity report no reported death

by omicron yet now we know that's

potentially now different because of

what boris johnson said this morning but

we'll see

children we do also see more hospital

admissions excuse me because of omicron

however short stays and so far no

reports of respiratory complications in

this particular case with children here

uh not from the cdc but rather from

south africa's uh health minister

okay then myocarditis it's worth making

a note here because this is something

that's been circulating on social media

here and i just want to provide some

statistics from the wall street journal

now

one of the big things is right now

scientists are not sure why it seems

like there's an increase in myocarditis

or pericarditis in in some small number

of cases in individuals particularly in

boys

a vaccine

is worth noting the vaccines per a

united kingdom study have a

99.995 percent chance of survival over

one year so getting the vaccine really

really really low chance that you're

going to die from it at least per

research now myocarditis was diagnosed

in 2.3 percent of 1597

college athletes who had covent so this

is interesting that 2.3 percent of

individuals who had coveted and

especially college athletes they got

myocarditis which is inflammation of the

heart now there's limited data on

myocarditis in those who aren't

vaccinated versus vaccinated so there's

still a lot of research to do but so far

we do know that out of one million boys

aged 12 to 17 you'll end up seeing

somewhere around 67 cases of

myocarditis that works out to about one

in about 15 000 people are going to get

myocarditis now there's some theories

for this i'm going to talk about in just

a moment for girls it's a lot less it's

about one in a hundred and eleven

thousand so much much more rare

none of these cases uh ended in death

and most of them were mild and resolved

quickly so again according to the wall

street journal and a theory there are a

couple theories for this but one of the

theories is that the mrna

vaccines

create a protein that your body can have

an inflammatory response to and that

potentially people are getting that in

their heart especially if there's an

improper injection of a vaccine directly

into somebody's vein sending basically

the vaccine the drug to the heart muscle

through your circulatory system

theories these are just theories but the

highest risk of myocarditis is really

within seven days of getting your second

dose of pfizer or mrna

and most get better without medical

treatment and these are the sources for

that so if you want to pause and look

those up you can look at those

now china did also detect its first case

of omicron in a port city

this is a potential risk factor

obviously for markets and supply chain

constraints the last thing we want to

hear is more port shutdowns

in south africa south africa's national

institute for communicative communicable

diseases mentions that cases are

skyrocketing still higher over the

summer but we went from literally zero

cases to over 50 000 cases in less than

three weeks in south africa so in a very

short period of time we were becoming

we were rivaling case counts of what

we've had earlier uh in the summer

especially with our delta waves

hospitalizations have inflected down

though this is actually a very good sign

if you look at hospitalizations in south

africa they've started to inflict down

after initially going up

and that could be because people were

fearful that they had covered they're

checking themselves into the hospital

and now people are are not as worried

because we're finding the symptoms from

a mild and so you're getting less

hospital admissions so it's very good

it's to some degree to see cases go up

but hospitalizations go down because

again it reiterates the mild nature of

omicron

again reiterating here omicron largely

evades antibody resistance if you get

the booster you should have or expect to

have around 70 to 75 percent efficacy

which is still not

the 90 that we were used to originally

right but then again that night and this

is this folks is only in the early days

of the booster so even if you get the

booster and you're up to 70 to 75

percent you know after six months you

could be right back down to 20 30 40 we

obviously just don't know yet uh with

the boosters too early to tell we do

already know that the spread rate of

omicron is 4.2 times that of delta not

of alpha of delta that's huge it's very

this this thing spreads like crazy

uh uk is already uh instituting more

limits changes coming to vaccine

passports new york cities requiring

masks indoors unless full vaccination is

required to enter

uh it is worth i made this little note

here

it's worth noting in the early days of

covet there were a lot of folks they

would wear masks and then they'd say oh

i got coved but it was a nothing burger

uh you know i was asymptomatic or

whatever masks could actually increase

your odds of being asymptomatic because

one of the ways you are deemed

asymptomatic is is getting a lower

exposure to the virus when you get a

lower exposure to the virus your body

potentially might not be symptomatic but

you actually might be carrying the virus

and you might actually be fighting it

and masks can help lower your exposure

though i do want to just you know quick

psa mention that if you're just wearing

the the generic cloth masks that you

kind of get off etsy so you have like

one of these right here this little

rogue world of warcraft rogue masquerade

these things kind of suck

especially when people wear them like

this all the time it's it's worthless

like you may as well virtually not even

wear these these are deemed like 15

percent effective

you you really should be looking at

surgical masks if you're going to wear

them surgical masks surprisingly kind of

easier to breathe into uh those are

somewhere around 50 to 60 percent

effective uh and then of course an n95

if you were really concerned a valveless

n95 could put you in the neighborhood of

80 to 85 80 to 90 effective depending on

on how you wear it typically you don't

have to shave to have that

maximum efficacy

on other news we have the minnesota

health care systems a group of doctors

ran an advertisement a page-wide

advertisement saying that they're

heartbroken and overwhelmed describing

the virus situation as critical because

of daily death tolls this is mostly

expected to still be because of

delta worth noting we also have about

three percent of our military that are

still not vaccinated this is about 40

percent of active duty military and this

is just days away from joe biden's

cutoff for them to get vaccinated

ghana's main airport will start finding

airlines 3 500 for every passenger who

is not vaccinated or test positive on

arrival into ghana that's interesting

putting a lot of

onus on essentially the airlines

france 81 percent of population is up to

one shot vaccine protests in italy and

germany saw 8 000 protesters and in

vienna we saw 44 000 germany is now

fearful that protests

protests that ended in violent

altercations with the police could end

up leading to more violence over vaccine

passports and other aspects

regarding merck we got an update

regarding merck here that the university

of north carolina did a study on the

merck pill this is uh if you had severe

uh

severe well if you were at risk of

having a severe case of covid you could

potentially get this murk pill under

emergency use authorization however now

there's an expectation that potentially

uh there there could be birth defects uh

or or cancer induced in a developing

fetus

because of how this drug interferes with

rna replication which is obviously

designed to destroy the virus but could

potentially also affect children now

merck responded and said the hamsters

that were tested were exposed much

longer than humans would have been which

to some degree kind of reiterates uh

that that there is a problem but the

exposure time that makes sense sometimes

when you get lab rats or hamsters or

whatever you get overexposed

but the theory is hey if you overexpose

and nothing happens then you're more

likely to be safe if you overexpose when

something happens okay well now you've

got to turn back the dial and you go at

what point

does this start creating an issue more

on that from the new york times

and so really what's next uh we still

have talk uh the chief executive of

south africa is a largest private

healthcare group look what he uh he

wrote over here he said this may signal

the end of covet 19 with its with it

attenuating itself to such an extent

that it's highly contagious but doesn't

cause severe disease in the early days

it's the early days but i'm less panic

panicked it feels different to me on the

ground this is good uh this is this is

very good so uh this is a complete

omicron update here uh with some more

information on all the drama that's

going on and a response to this first

death uh so let's stay tuned for more

information from this

from well from from great britain and of

course elsewhere if you appreciated this

update consider sharing the video folks

we'll see in the next one thanks so much

goodbye