Covid in Norway: Omicron BF.7 Spreads and is Said to be 'Fitter to Escape Immunity Provided by the Injections'

Also, more fearporn to get people to take a flu shot, which, at some 35% VE (last year), looks like a loser; note the 'subtle' differences how 'the jabs' are called and the hedging with the flu shot

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And now the predictable happened: a new ‘Omicron variant spreads in Norway, which can be fitter to escape vaccine-deduced immunity’. Here’s the legacy media news item, followed by a couple of ‘Bottom Lines’ below.

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Caption reads: ‘many are vaccinated: the new Omicron variant can be important to learn how well your vaccine works’

New Omicron Variant Spreads in Norway—can be fitter to escape vaccine-deduced immunity

‘We now have a situation where there is a lot of infection throughout Europe, but we have vaccinated the vast majority’, says Acting Director, Espen Rostrup Nakstad.

BA.5 continues to be the dominant Omicron variant in Norway, but now BF.7 is on the rise. The latter has been found in one out of ten tests analysed by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (IPH).

This May Have an Effect on the Vaccines

‘What is a bit special now is that this BF.7 variant, as well as a number of other variants that are currently circulating, have changes in five places in particular that code for the Spike Protein.’

And these changes can affect the vaccine you have taken and its protection.

‘This means that we must expect that the vaccine may not protect as well as it has done in the past, at least when it comes to transmission. But it is not certain that this has a big impact on whether you become seriously ill or not.

Nakstad also emphasizes that there are constantly emerging new variants of Sars-Cov-2.

‘It has been doing that for two and a half years. So, this is a completely natural development. What you see in Europe now is that there are changes that are also coming because the virus is trying to escape our vaccine-acquired immunity. It is completely natural for the virus to make such changes.’

Wash Your Hands!

‘We occasionally hear about people getting sick with Covid, and that these people get really sick with influenza-like symptoms.’

That’s also what Tove Røsstad, Municipal Chief Physician [Public Health Officer] in Trondheim, says. People are still being admitted to St. Olav’s Hospital with Covid but their numbers are stable.

Nevertheless, staff have been warned that there may be an increase in the number of infected people in the future.

‘It is expected that you will get a wave eventually, but you do not know how big the wave will be.’

[Tove Røsstad] calls on people in the risk groups—for both influenza and Sars-Cov-2—to get vaccinated. And as usual, it is important to think about who you meet and where you are if you fall ill.

‘Good hand hygiene always applies, and it’s a good idea to wash your hands when you get home and before eating. But there is no direct recommendation to avoid shaking hands. If you are sick, you can keep your distance from people and stay at home.’

Strong Immunity

Nakstad says it is also worth noting that, in addition to the new Omicron variant, we are also in for a season with several cases of influenza.

‘There could of course be a lot of people on sick leave, if we get a wave of infection and flu at the same time in the winter. But so far this autumn, it looks like these waves we have seen in Europe, they have not been very tall, and it looks like they have subsided already in several places.’

‘So, we are probably in a situation where our general resistance and population immunity are actually starting to strengthen. Despite the fact that we get more virus variants. So, we simply have to keep up and deal with it much like we do now.’

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Bottom Lines

Three weeks ago, we noted an uptick in Influenza fearporn in Norway and elsewhere (see here), which didn’t catch on.

Two weeks ago, we learned of overflowing ERs and more people beginning to question the safety (harm) of the Covid injections (see here).

While officials were super-quick to shoo away anyone who was even mildly inquisitive about this topic (rolling out the very same Dr. Nakstad), the published data hadn’t changed. For that one, we may venture over to the IPH’s dedicated ‘Covid-cum-Flu’ biweekly reports; the latest of which available dates from 27 Oct. 2022.

Covering weeks 41 and 42 noted (p. 3) that the Europe-wide increase of Covid patients was ‘weaker than in summer’. The number of hospitalisations of Norwegians for Covid-19 and Influenza had ‘remained stable for weeks’. There’s been around 100 hospitalisations for the former in the past couple of weeks, which is about 10X more than the corresponding numbers for the flu. Note that ‘other respiratory illnesses’ are causing around 1,000 hospitalisations per week (another magnitude).

If you’re asking yourself as to why the ‘vaccinators’ are relatively quiet—which is what I find most astounding in the above piece—it’s the fact, indicated by Fig. 2 on p. 9, that there’s literally no discernible difference with respect to Covid between those who took the injections and those who didn’t:

Note that one-dose recipients are specifically excluded from the above. No reason is given, but I’d suspect that they couldn’t even withstand a second jab (but I do wonder about their ‘incidence rates’).

That is, if you’re below age 65.

Now, if I’d be a public health official, I’d not really worry about Omicron whatever variant, but about the data summarised in Fig. 5 (p. 12):

Showing all hospitalisations for respiratory illnesses in Norway, the graph must be read ‘seasonally’, i.e., the exceptional 2021/22 peak in summer (blue line) continues with the dark red line and shaded grey area on the left-hand side.

We had a very weird and totally unusual surge of mid-summer hospitalisations: I, for one, would like Dr. Nakstad and his ilk to weigh in on it, to say nothing about legacy media. Alas, they are all trying hard not to talk about it.

Note, too, that the data in Fig. 5 also covers the comparatively strong Flu Season of 2017/18 and the subsequent years, thereby allowing for pre-Covid comparisons.

How bad the much-feared ‘Flurona’ season is, by the way, is tucked away on p. 28: both the Oslo metro region and Vestland (home to Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city) exhibited the ‘highest share of influenza-like illnesses’ in week 42, with both areas at .4%

Equal opportunity fearporn would be different.

The above is the granular detail about the (sub)variants of BA.5 currently circulating in Norway (part of Fig. 24, p. 33): why aren’t public health officials getting more ‘excited’ about all the other BA.5 variants? I mean, aren’t we supposed to be equal-opportunity fearmongers when it comes to numbering these variants?

Lastly, at least the IPH is borderline ‘honest’ about what the push to distribute the flu shots might get you: as we read on p. 41,

last season’s vaccine efficacy was moderate, with a good effect against Influenza A(H1N1) and lower efficacy against A(H3N2)…in total among 18-64 year-old, VE was 37% (95% CI: 3-59).

It is too early to tell about vaccine efficacy this season, and this will depend on which virus variant we will encounter and how well we meet that particular virus variant in the northern hemisphere.

Note the particularly odd discrepancy between ‘the vaccine’ in the above-cited legacy media piece vs. the very granular hedging offered here (with the quadrivalent flu shot).

All told, it’s probably reasonable not to panic, stay away from the flu shots (they didn’t work well in recent years), get out and take care of oneself. You know, as humanity has done for millennia without the ‘advice’ of public health officialdom.