Is Omicron the end of the Covid plague?   

It’s hard times but it appears there is hope.  You just have to dig deep and sidestep the Covid doomsayers to find it.

The New York Times daily Covid chart is currently showing just a four percent increase in daily deaths, posting a figure of 1,345 deaths daily as against an increase of 69 percent in the total daily average of cases.

The Washington Post numbers show a 46 percent increase in infections but deaths down by 10 percent. The Times is based on a two weeks average; the Post is based on a one-week sampling.

Other test results in other countries reveal the same reality -- Omicron is not nearly the deadly killer Delta was or even close.

We know these figures are provisional and that deaths lag infection but either way, in the most important aspect of Covid, deaths are actually going down in the Post daily survey and slightly up in the Times analysis.  That could be very good news indeed.

Omicron is still a killer, but relatively less damaging compared to other diseases.

Some 690,000 Americans died of heart related illnesses last year just to put things in perspective -- that's just under 60,000 a month or so.

Even in terms of respiratory illnesses, Covid is clearly far more dangerous than influenza but 53,000 people died of the flu in 2020, which is no small thing.

Dr. Anthony Fauci among others has urged caution and warned the temptation to jump to quick conclusions must be avoided.

His words might be taken more seriously if the original quick conclusion was not contained in bold statements by many scientists that Armageddon had arrived with the omicron black death.

Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The correct response, of course, is to follow the science, but the science is just as baffled as we are when it comes to much of the working of this monster. Why, for instance, has the Omicron bug suddenly hit a brick wall in South Africa? Why has the disease essentially cleared off for now in Japan? 

Questions, so many questions, and part of the problem is that there is very little room for debate.

Nutters on the right consider Fauci the devil’s spawn or worse because he did not get every prediction right and proved all too human after all.

Then you have the right’s latest champion. Step forward Dr. Mehmet Oz, celebrity TV doctor, now running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania,

As Trip Gabriel in the Times noted in a profile of Oz, an MD certificate does not prevent you from making a fool of yourself.

Gabriel wrote, “A wealth of evidence now shows that the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were not effective at treating Covid-19 and carried potential risks.

“But in the early months of the pandemic, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician with a daytime TV show, positioned himself as one of the chief promoters of the drugs on Fox News. In the same be-the-best-you tone that he used to promote miracle weight-loss cures on The Dr. Oz Show, he elevated limited studies that he said showed wondrous promise.”

There was no efficacy.  It was all snake oil of course from the Land of Oz, but nevertheless he remains a much listened to voice. 

Forget Oz. We can only work with the facts we have and right now, some facts show Omicron is not nearly as deadly as the hype would have us believe.  

The truth will win out and our uneducated guess is we have turned the corner on Covid. Let’s hope so.