 I thought it would be helpful to discuss what we know so far about the new Omicron COVID-19 variant and to be clear when I say what we know specifically I'm referring to what the experts know and what they're saying so far about this new variant. Now keep in mind that as I record this video we don't know very much so the information that I'm giving to you is subject to change and if you're watching this in December of 2021 or January of 2022 just click away from the video because by then all of this information will be outdated but here's what we know so far. Preliminary data from South Africa shows that this variant is much more transmissible than Delta having said that though only 25% of people in South Africa are vaccinated so that may be a contributing factor here and it does have a multitude of mutations and there are characteristics that suggest that it possibly has the capability of evading immunities but we don't know yet but Dr. Angelique Kotsy the South African doctor who first spotted the Omicron variant describes the symptoms as extremely mild with quote no cough or loss of taste or smell and one of the individuals who had this was only fatigued and achy and had a bit of a headache so if it's the case that it's more transmissible but the symptoms are less severe okay that's that's not as scary to me as Delta but I don't think that there is enough information yet to really say either way I don't think anyone should panic I think right now we should remain calm and try to learn everything that there is to know about this variant but there is a caveat so we don't know if the symptoms are going to be mild because as Dr. Ashish Jha explained in a guest essay for the New York Times I mean it's just too early to tell they say because the variant is so new scientists simply do not have adequate data yet to assess whether the new variant causes more severe disease answering this question will require careful case tracking in hospitals along with expanded viral sequencing efforts both in South Africa and elsewhere a key part of this analysis is ensuring that countries are doing adequate testing of a broad sample of people it will most likely take weeks to sort this out and that's the problem here right because it's not widespread yet because it's new the sample is just too small to make any broad claims about the way that this new variant is going to impact people and one big question that's really lingering that is on a lot of our minds is how is this going to affect vaccination is this going to lead to a decrease in efficacy well here's what the experts are saying so far Dr. Ashish Jha says it is extremely unlikely that Omicron will render the COVID-19 vaccines completely ineffective and right now there's not much data on how much the vaccines may be less effective against this variant although there is reason for concern Omicron has a large number of mutations including in the spike protein the part of the protein that the virus uses to bind to and enter human cells these areas of the protein are critical for vaccine induced and infection induced antibodies to protect against the virus even small hits to vaccine efficacy will leave us more vulnerable to infection and illness and can make it harder to contain the virus but preliminary data out of Israel shows that there has been no severe cases at least among unvaccinated people so in short there's a lot of information that the experts still need to make any definitive claims about this new variant but one thing that we do know since we've now been going at this pandemic for almost two years is we know what to do to protect ourselves social distancing works masking works you know trying to avoid person-to-person contact as much as possible that is effective and of course the most important thing that you can do is get vaccinated now if you are eligible I would also recommend that you get the booster because the efficacy of these vaccines has been shown to wane over six months I actually just got my booster on Saturday it's Monday at the time that I record this and honestly it was a piece of cake um my arm barely hurt I felt a little bit achy yesterday I feel fine now I mean I guess my arm still hurts a little bit but it's really it's no big deal it's not as bad as getting that second dose where I had a lot of symptoms at least for me I mean again everyone is going to be different but basically that's what you can do to protect yourself and people around you and one thing that I want to see improve is I want expanded access to these tests now you can buy a two pack of COVID-19 tests for like $15-20 and even though that's relatively affordable not everyone can afford that and there needs to be a program in the United States where these are delivered to people for free and they're widely available I don't think you should have to pay for a COVID-19 test especially if we want to get this virus under control so I think that more testing needs to be available to everyone we should all just have an abundance of tests so in the event we're going to go to an event or we're going to be around people or people are going to come to our homes we can test them just to make sure that they're not you know positive for COVID-19 now what we've learned so far is that there are more and more countries that are detecting the Omicron variant it's already in Hong Kong the UK Canada and Israel but as Trevor Branch points out we've only banned travel from African countries which is interesting because even if we don't have much information about the Omicron variant we do know that people who don't live in Africa are just as likely to spread it as people in Africa so that is weird and honestly banning travel may not necessarily be the best way to fight this studies have shown that this can actually lead to more problems and the thing about COVID-19 cases coming from other countries is that if we stopped hoarding vaccines and if the pharmaceutical companies actually allowed these countries to produce their own generic versions of the COVID-19 vaccines as a species we'd be more protected against variants so for serious about containing the pandemic and moving on from COVID once and for all we have to have a serious conversation about pharmaceutical greed and these first world countries hoarding vaccines but that's a different story for a different day because it requires a lot of nuance and I do want to get into that but what I will look at is this really insightful albeit super depressing look at the cases of COVID-19 in the country's most affected and as you're going to guess we've been hit the hardest because we suck at controlling the virus we're number one he said sarcastically with an overwhelming sense of dread in his voice yeah so you know I initially panicked because I know the way that America operates we're not going to make any changes it doesn't matter how terrifying a new variant may or may not be we're not going to change anything so it's just going to run amok and we're all going to be fucked again but I am not going to hold on myself to panic this early again there's so many uncertainties so many unknowns and evidence just isn't clear yet there's not enough for experts to make any clear definitive statements so we just have to wait and see but again we've been going at this now for a really long time so we know what to do to protect ourselves and our loved ones so let's do that and uh let's uh cross our fingers and hope for the best when it comes to omricone