Blue-Light Special

Does anybody remember the  K-Mart Blue-Light Special?  To refresh your memory, while innocently meandering around K-Mart, suddenly over the loud speaker … “Attention Shoppers; For a limited amount of time, a Blue-Light Special at the head of aisle four; XXX marked down 25%!” Those in the store would rush over to the head of aisle four, as nobody wanted to miss a Blue-Light Special! However, what used to be, is no more, as in 2002 K-Mart declared bankruptcy and closed over 200 stores (apparently three still remain), and consequently the Blue-Light Special is largely a thing of the past.

I just read something Covid, Omicron, and immunity that I thought perhaps Dr. Fauci and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, should be interested in. But how to attract their attention? Perhaps a “Blue-State Special?” It could go something like this:

“Attention experts, Doctors Fauci and Walensky, in a new study from Qatar, there is new information about natural immunity specifically related to Omicron and its most recent variants, BA.4/BA.5.”

The background:

Omicron became the dominant virus strain in many countries in late 2021. Since then, a number of subvariants have taken hold. BA.5 is the strain currently dominant in the United States.

The gist from this study:

While protection from an Omicron infection provided robust shielding against reinfection from BA.4/BA.5, those who contracted a pre-Omicron strain had little protection, according to the Qatari scientists, who were led by Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.

From Epoch Times:

“Protection of a previous infection against BA.4/BA.5 reinfection was modest when the previous infection involved a pre-Omicron variant, but strong when the previous infection involved the Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 subvariant,” the scientists wrote.”

What I can conclude from this is that natural immunity from a pre-Omicron variant was quite good in protecting against pre-Omicron Covid reinfection. However, that same natural immunity (pre-Omicron) is no longer nearly as good against the present Omicron variants that seem to be better at evading protection. Thus individuals that had pre-Omicron Covid are now susceptible to getting infected with an Omicron variant. In other words, my prior statements that it would be very unlikely to get Covid twice are no longer valid with Omicron now the predominant player. That’s the bad news … mea culpa, mea culpa. 

Likewise, it seems that a Covid infection in the recent past was most likely due to an Omicron variant, and thus individuals are reasonably protected against a recurrent infection with an Omicron variant, and that’s the good news.

To close, if anyone knows where either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Walensky live, perhaps a flashing blue light put in front of their respective houses might get their attention !

7/18/22

californiacontrarian

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