President Joe Biden, 79, said Friday he wanted to be “cautious” about restricting flights from Southern Africa due the World Health Organization’s [WHO] newly labeled Omicron variant, considered highly contagious compared to the already dangerous India-based Delta variant. Delta variant now accounts for about 99% of Covid-19 cases worldwide, something scientists fear could happen with the Omicron strain. No one knows yet whether the Omicron variant is more deadly, other that its rapid infection rates in South African countries, then jumping to Europe, Asia and possibly the U.S. Vaccine makers like Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johunson-Jansen pharmaceuticals are testing whether current Covid-19 vaccines are effective in resisting the Omicron strain, something feared by virologists. Biden’s decision to wait until Monday, Nov. 29 to ban flights from South Africa makes no sense.
If U.S. infectious disease experts believe that Omicron is the next deadly, super-contagious variant like Delta, then the ban on flights to-and-from South Africa should have been immediate, not waiting the weekend. Reports on Omicron showing up in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, shows how rapidly the new variant spreads. Cases have showed up in Hong Kong, Botswana and Belgium, attesting to the rapid spread of the virus. Scientists don’t know whether the Omicron is more lethal or just more contagious due multiple mutations on the virus’ spike protein, the entry point going into AC2 receptors in human cells. It’s no accident that Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] virologist Shi Zhengli and University of North Carolina microbiologist Ralph Baric admitted to injecting harmless bat coronaviruses with Angiotensin II [ACE2], a beta-blocker heart medication.
When you consider the U.S. delay in flights between the U.S. and South African states, it’s hard to imagine the Omicron virus has not already made it to America. While Biden’s 80-year-old chief medical officer Dr. Anthony Fauci says there are no confirmed cases of Omicron in the U.S., it doesn’t mean the deadly virus isn’t already here. No one could confirm cases of Delta variant in the beginning before it became the dominant coronavirus infection in the U.S. Time will tell if Omicron replaces the Delta varian as the most dominant strain the U.S. No one knows yet It could take weeks before vaccine makers know whether current vaccines can stop the spread or life-threatening symptoms from the Omicron variant. WHO thought enough of Omicron to label it a “Virus of Interest” [VOI], a designation once given to the Delta variant that spread rapidly all over the planet.
WHO officials said the Omicron variant had so many mutations it was concerned about whether or not current vaccines could stop infections. “This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning,” WHO said Friday. “Preliminary evidence suggest an increase risk of re-infection with this variant, as compared to other” variants of concern. WHO’s Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce reported that the high number of mutations make vaccines and other treatments less effective with Omicron. When the Omicron was named Friday, Wall Street went into a nosedive with the Dow Jones Industrials losing over 900 points. If bad news about Omicron continues, it could trigger a wider sell-off, careening the U.S. economy back into recession. No one knows yet whether Omicron will start spreading like wildfire that it’s already done in Southern Africa, prompting Biden’s travel ban.
Unlike with 75-year-old former President Donald Trump, the media hasn’t blamed Biden for holding information about the Omicron virus from the press. Former Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, 78, accused Trump in his book “Rage,” of knowing everything about the deadly novel coronavirus Jan. 28, 2020 but withholding information from the American public. Trump banned flights to-and-from China Jan. 31, 2020, yet to Woodward said he sabotaged the U.S. response to Covid-19 pandemic. No one in the media questions why Biden would wait over the weekend before restricting flights to-and-from Southern African states. More than likely, Omicron is already spreading like wildfire in the United States, with several flights from South African already coming to the U.S. Woodward hasn’t asked Biden why he hasn’t required proof-of-vaccines to fly domestically in the United States.
Democrats and the media did a masterful job with the help of political hacks like Woodward and Fauci to hang the entire Covid-29 epidemic on Trump. But Biden gets as pass on just about everything related to the virus and foreign policy. If Omicron spreads like wildfire in the United States, no journalists will blame Biden for dithering on the decision to ban South African flights. Biden’s chief medial adviser funded the research that created the deadly coronavirus in a Wuhan, China lab. China refuses to cooperate with concerned scientists trying to figure out the origin of the virus. Fauci insists the virus evolved naturally in Wuhan but offers no proof to back it up. Fauci calls the “lab leak” explanation a “conspiracy theory,” because Beijing doesn’t want to admit it created the world’s most deadly pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Biden gets a free pass but his approval ratings have tanked.
