Now that we’ve got used to Greek letters for every new wave of Covid (Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron), let’s christen a new wave: Lambda, from the Greek letter Λ. In all countries the Omicron waves shoots up and then shoots down.
That’s the shape of every Omicron wave in every country: whether high-vaccination rate (UK, Israel, Denmark) or low vaccination rate (Uganda and South Africa). Whether with or without mask mandates. Whether with or without vaccine passports. Whether with or without lockdowns. All between 6 and 8 weeks. A Lambda. We can all see this on Worldometer, up to the minute.
So it’s strange to see Secretary for Food and Health, Sophia Chan Siu-chee warning us that “we must use the coming two to three months to curb the pandemic with several measures”, (“HK to discharge patients faster as caseload soars”, 27 February). It’s going to happen anyway. Regardless of all the panic and the “ several measures” that include extensive lockdowns, mass testing and vaccine passports. These “ several measures” will only delay the inevitable. Which is — like everywhere else --- having Omicron pass through the whole population. It has done so everywhere else; why should it be any different in Hong Kong? Meantime in those countries life is returning pretty much to normal.
ADDED: My guess: it’s over, HK’s Omicron Wave, by mid April.
Is Sophia Chan making her strange comment so that she can say, when we see the inevitable down spike of “Lambda “, that "we controlled Omicron”? Could she be that cynical? One hopes not.
In short, our government, our people, are agonising every day about mass testing, lockdowns, vaccine passports, “little boxes" to isolate people, when the reality is it will all just happen regardless. At the very most, the measures will only delay the inevitable: territory-wide infections.
Which is not a bad thing: Israel has a new paper in pre-print ("Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections”) that shows natural immunity (from having had the virus) has significantly greater and longer lasting protection than vaccines alone (“hybrid immunity” of vaccine plus infection is even greater). This new analysis, this new science, should factor in to our government’s Covid strategies.
That’s the new science.Yet we seem to be living in the “old science” of early Covid. Time to smarten up, Carrie and Sophia!
LATER: turns out one of the variants is already called “Lambda”, as per the clip at top, link here
