I recently had a scare when a person that I had been interacting with at a social gathering revealed to me that he had COVID-19 the week prior. Luckily, he wasn’t contagious when I saw him, a week after showing symptoms. But he did explain how he got it, even though he already had the Omicron strain of COVID six months ago. He said he was at a friend’s house for dinner, and the friend recently returned from Florida. He said the friend had a conversation with him, and the friend said that he should be careful and wear a mask, to protect himself from COVID. That friend managed to infect his entire family and him also, for a total of seven new infections. The wife, children, uncle, etc. all came down with it. The guy I know was triple vaccinated but he still got the new subvariant (even though he had COVID six months ago). The new subvariant is resistant to the immunity that was established when everybody was getting sick in November to January.
So it came as no surprise that I saw a new report on TV today, that the BA.5 subvariant is now the most common cause of COVID, and that COVID cases are 33 per cent higher than before. BA.5 makes up 70 per cent of all new cases, in a Forbes magazine article with the headline, “Is Omicron BA.5 ‘Worst Version’ Of Covid-19 Coronavirus Seen?”
It is unknown if BA.5 is physically worse on people than Omicron was.
Robert Nelly
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