Could Omicron’s Mild Symptoms Signal the End of the Pandemic?

By Yehudit Garmaise

Scientists report that Omicron, which was discovered in South Africa two weeks ago, is causing a new spike of COVID and may be able to reduce the effectiveness of current vaccines: making boosters more important than ever, however, some doctors, such as Monica Ghandi, MD, a leading infectious disease expert, is more optimistic.

Dr. Ghandi cautiously told New York Magazine that the mild symptoms created by COVID’s newest variant could signal that the worldwide population has finally built up its immunity to the COVID virus, and the pandemic could be winding down.

Although physicians do not actually know how the 1918 influenza pandemic, which caused at least 50 million deaths, ended after 16 months, many scientists think that the population may have received more immunity from the virus after it became more transmissible, which is what could be happening now with Omicron, Dr. Ghandi, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, pointed out.

"This may signal the end of COVID-19," Richard Friedland, the CEO of Netcare Ltd., corroborated to TJVNews, "which may be attenuating itself to such an extent that it is highly contagious, but doesn't cause severe disease.

"That's what happened with the Spanish flu."

Dr. Ghandi contrasted the mild degree of illness among people infected with Omicron, with the frightening severity of illness that ravaged India when Delta first emerged there in March, when only 4% of Indians were vaccinated.

A higher vaccination rate among adults protects children, pointed out Dr. Ghandi, who added that a current 70% vaccination rate in New York means that the state is more protected than when only 52% of the population was vaccinated when Delta first emerged.

Now that 60.4% of Americans and 42.7% of people worldwide are vaccinated, many doctors are cautiously saying that Omicron “is not that bad,” said Dr. Ghandi who explained two reasons why Omicron could be a less dangerous virus than Delta.

“One is that the virus could have evolved to become less virulent, which we’ll need experiments to show,” said Dr. Ghandi, who emphasized that not much is still known about Omicron: two weeks after its arrival. “Or the second reason is that there’s just more immunity now, in December 2021, so it manifests more mildly.

“I don’t think we have the answer yet.”

If Omicron turns out to be a less severe strain of COVID, but more transmissible, as many physicians have claimed, Dr. Ghandi said that would be good because “It would mean that more and more people would get immunity or more immunity.

“Even if they’d already been vaccinated, they’d get more immunity,” as T cells, B cells, and antibodies would be stimulated by Omicron. “But in the best-case scenario, it would hasten the time when we’re all immune and the pandemic essentially comes to an end.

“[COVID] being less virulent in these constant descriptions is in no way a bad thing. It is a good thing. That is all I am saying.

"I really don’t whether this is the end of the pandemic, but it is possible.”