73% of all US Covid cases are Omicron. First US death from Omicron has been reported in TX. A person in their 50s with health conditions, unvaccinated. 
Shaking my head. This will be twisted and paraded around by antivaxx conspiracy theorists. See?! We told you?! They are coming for you!
I had said upthread our hospital predicted all cases would be omicron around Christmas. The last run last week was in the 80-90% range. The run tomorrow will be over 90%.
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Itâs 75 percent of new cases. They issued a clarification. But in a few weeks it likely to be 50 percent of all cases.
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Yes, it was obvious they were talking about newly diagnosed cases.
I got chipped with my first dose and upgraded to 6G when I was boosted. 
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I guess not obvious to everyone. The Washington Post issued the following correction â An earlier version of this live story misstated the prevalence of the omicron variant in the United States. According to a predictive model from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 73 percent of new U.S. coronavirus cases reported Dec. 12-18 were projected to have contained the variant, not 73 percent of all U.S. cases. This live story has been corrected.â
Shaking my head. I guess the average Joe the reader canât get the math straight⊠
The NBA is having more COVID-19 positive tests, mostly with the Omicron variant, but has noticed that only âa very small number ofâ boosted players tested positive and (if they do test positive) clear the virus faster with no or mild symptoms (players testing positive must sit out for 10 days or two COVID-19 negative tests more than 24 hours apart). About 97% of NBA players are vaccinated, and 65% are boosted.
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This article on a Covid vaccine developed at Walter Reed and going through trials is interesting.
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As I read through this, itâs clear how it could potentially immunize against all currently known variants. I canât figure out where the ability to neutralize future variants comes from, or if that just means itâs adaptable ones later mutations are known.
There was a 60-minutes story not too long ago about it. I canât recall exactly, but it supposedly attacks certain features (not the spike protein) that are common to all coronaviruses.
Thatâs what I was wondering, if they put some of the other antigenic proteins on the surface too.
Hereâs an article about how this type of vaccines may work:
https://www.science.org/content/article/vaccines-can-protect-against-many-coronaviruses-could-prevent-another-pandemic
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Pfizer pill got EUA.
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Thanks! Thatâs a print and read. 
The page US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say - Defense One says that âUnlike existing vaccines, Walter Reedâs SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.â
I.e. they can put a large number of different known strains of spike proteins into the vaccine. In theory, they could also put predicted mutations of spike proteins in it as well.
However, there is also no theoretical reason why other vaccines cannot include a mixture of different spike proteins (or coding in mRNA or viral vectors).
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I heard an interesting explanation of what might be happening:
We know memory B-cells mount an antibody response 48-72 hours after exposure. With a 7-day incubation period with the initial variants this wasnât much of an issue. With Delta the incubation period shortened to 3-5 days, likely due to the fact that Delta produces a higher viral load. Shortening the incubation period with a higher viral load overwhelms the body, making the memory B-cell response less effective, resulting in more âbreakthroughâ infections. At 48-72 hours, the viral load is so high, you end up with symptoms. Boosters, or third doses, get circulating antibody levels so high that it âbuys timeâ if you will during that 48-72 hour window that youâre waiting on your memory B-cells to kick in. (Boosters help bridge this gap.) With omicron, the antibody binding potential is lower, making them less effective but still helpful.
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That makes sense.
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I read a theory something like this but also that it takes the antibodies time to respond as well, so that the faster replicating variants outrun them at first. Breakthrough infections happen during the time between initial replication and antibody response. But then the antibodies kick in and reduce symptoms. Hence many positive results but milder disease.
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