Dr. Hemmati: Omicron could speed up the end of the pandemic
Dr. Houman Hemmati explains that if the omicron variant is highly infectious but has a low death rate, it could ultimately lead to the end of the pandemic.
Dr. Houman Hemmati, a Ph.D. research scientist, explained how the latest variant of COVID-19 could actually bring the end of the pandemic sooner. On "Fox & Friends First," he said that the omicron variant, based on the few reports from South Africa, could be highly infectious and cause little disease, meaning that many people around the globe could be exposed and develop antibodies that would provide protection from future variants.
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DR. HEMMATI: There is a lot of data that remains to be seen. There's always a chance that this is much more infectious, much more deadly than what we have heard about so far. So far, we have just a trickle of reports coming out of South Africa. But hypothetically, if this doesn't cause significant disease or any real major disease whatsoever and happens to, on the flip side, to be highly infectious such that everybody gets it – imagine lots and lots of people, including currently vaccinated people get it and it's impossible to avoid.
All of a sudden, you can have a scenario where you have a large subset of the population, if not the entire population, who has gotten a mild version or even no version of the disease, but has developed antibodies and has resistance such that if there ever, later on, comes a more deadly variant, you're protected.
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