BA.2 - Pandemic of the Boosted

When Jason Kenney made an announcement that Alberta was going to dump the Harmful REP program on February 8th, 2022, he was very cautious in the words that he used for the balance of easing the restrictions and said that we may have to slow down on some of these if hospital rates increase.

In this, he also included that because 90% of the population of the province had their first jab and that high risk were boosted, that we’d be prepared for any new variants that we may come across.

As it turns out…this may be bullshit.

Shocking, right?

He, with the help of Canada’s top Doc - Teresa Tam and Alberta’s CMOH - Deena Hinshaw hasn’t actually gotten anything right over the last 2 years, so why would we expect that to change now.

Let’s check it out.

While he is correct in that there has been a large booster roll out and this on the decline now - Flat-lined since December - were the words I believe he used, (must be applying to those who have gotten their first jabs), still seems to have been a lot of others who have been Boosted since the end of December but that too has tapered off.

And if we dive into the population who has taken these 3rd jabs, we find it is those who have always been at high risk:

In some of these age groups, they are close to 100% fully vaccinated, and most are above 80% boosted. How do we know that these are the high risk groups?

Well, if we look at the death rate of this group, they make up a staggering 89% of the mortality rate for the province, from COVID.

And what has helped drive these high Booster Shot numbers?

That’d be Dr. Deena Hinshaw, herself. Through daily updates and Twitter, she’s continued to use these same words - Vaccines have been extremely helpful in reducing the severe outcomes risk…blah, blah, blah.

And she continues to say this in spite of evidence that this is actually not true. The current numbers from Alberta’s provincial data, up to February 10th, 2022, when she made this comment look like this:

Where 84% of the current cases, 70% of Hospitalizations and 72% of the deaths for 2022 are in the Fully Vaccinated and Fully Vaccinated + Booster. These deaths happen to still be in those High Risk groups, by age group:

Where they still make up 89% of the total deaths in the province, despite being the highest double vaccinated and triple vaccinated group, after 2 years of pandemic response, 1 year of vaccinations and 6 Months of Vaccine Passports!

Where and how Dr. Deena thinks that Vaccines have done anything is beyond me. But, wait…it’s actually about to get a lot worse and perhaps throw us back into some stages of Lock Downs and possible see the REP program brought back.

How?

It’s like this…the Boosters have basically painted a large Bullseye on the back of the highest risk patients from a new strain of the Omicron Variant, known as BA.2. A Danish study has already been completed on this and published →Here.

Of what it does say:

We found BA.2 to be associated with an increased susceptibility of infection for unvaccinated individuals (Odds Ratio (OR) 2.19; 95%-CI 1.58-3.04), fully vaccinated individuals (OR 2.45; 95%-CI 1.77-3.40) and booster-vaccinated individuals (OR 2.99; 95%-CI 2.11-4.24), compared to BA.1.

If you are unvaccinated, you have an increased risk of BA.2 by 2.19x over our current Omicron. That increases to 2.5x for Fully Vaccinated and seeing the Highest Risk increase in the Triple Vaccinated by 3x.

If you are boosted, you are 3x more likely to get BA.2.

And:

We conclude that Omicron BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1, and that it also possesses immune-evasive properties that further reduce the protective effect of vaccination against infection, but do not increase its transmissibility from vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections.

While the vaccinated may not transmit it faster it will spread faster than the current Omicron Variant and faster in those who’ve been fully vaccinated or boosted.

But the real question, will this be a problem in Canada or even Alberta?

Hard to say.

Right now, BA.1 in Canada has seemingly crested and may be on the decline (data still being accumulated) - which Jason Kenney noted in saying that we’ve made it past the peak of Omicron.

But, BA.2 is already in Canada and seems to be making a bit of a play here.

Summarized…

1. BA.2 is already in Canada - which I might add, arrived here despite the government telling us that Vaccine Passports would keep us safe from this exact thing;

2. BA.2 Spreads faster in all populations but highest in those who have been vaccinated 2.5x and boosted 3x;

3. The highest population of boosted, in the province of Alberta, are those aged 65-69; who also happen to be,

4. The highest risk for mortality to COVID.

I have been saying for several months now that if we did absolutely nothing throughout this entire pandemic, we would be better off. As it turns out, if we just simply didn’t vaccinate anybody, they’d now be at less risk of catching and dying from COVID - Omicron - BA.2.

What we are seeing now is that by the advice of Teresa Tam, Dr. Deena and reiterated by Jason Kenney is that we’ve painted a target on the back of our highest risk population and that we may be seeing a Pandemic of the Boosted before we’ve fully gotten back to normal!

This, without knowing what other variants might be next to hit Canada.