When Denmark’s Case Fatality Rate (CFR) dropped to 0.04% (7-day-runng average) in January 2022, the government of Denmark declared the pandemic was over. With a CFR so low, noting that the CFR for influenza is about 0.1 to 0.15%, that made reasonable sense. In early February most restrictions were subsequently lifted. It was said that life had returned to normal despite the Omicron variant being about. Denmark was one of the first countries to get the Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220201-denmark-returns-to-life-as-we-knew-it-despite-omicron
What has happened in the last 2 and a half months? The CFR has risen to 0.54% (7-day-runng average) and it looks to be rising as well. 0.5% is more than just a flu. This is a 10-fold increase over the last 2 months. The CFR could have gone up if they stopped counting cases properly as CFR = deaths/cases, but I would hesitate to think but so much.
When we look at the CFR for covid19 around the world there are some countries that are still of concern but I think a lot of their higher rate has to do with not testing enough and not counting all cases. I expect this to be the case in Peru, Philippines, Mexico and maybe Bulgaria, but not in Hong Kong. The situation is unclear. Look at Sweden for example, who have also recently lifted all restrictions and allowed international travellers to return. Their CFR is now floating around 2%, which is huge. Are they also not counting cases to such an extensive degree?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/travel-news/sweden-reopens-for-international-travellers-removes-all-covid-19-border-restrictions/as90632901.cms
When people first looked at the variants at play it looked like the BA.2 variant was active in both Denmark and Hong Kong at the same time but as time passed researchers were able to distinguish the variant in Hong Kong as being BA.2.2, which is different to BA.2. Could this subvariant BA.2.2 be more deadly. Australia, has a new subvariant BA.2.3 starting to kick in with some other BA.1 subvariants like BA.1.17 and BA.1.14
I am still not sure the pandemic is over quite yet with these new emerging subvariants, especially the new recombinant variants, like deltacron.
Although it is generally true (but not always) that a virus becomes more infectious and less virulent as it mutates, the same in not true of recombinant variants, as they do a quantum jump in their genetics. I warned that recombinants might be an issue in January 2021 when there were so many actively infected people (18 million then in January 2021). The number of actively infected now is over 44 million and because more people are vaccinated now, many more could be active but with mild or no illness. That number of actively infected could well be over 100 million right now. That is a major concern, as the “virus pool” is where mutations and crossover occur.
As vaccines do not stop transmission and infection, it is quite plausible tat many people could be infected with more than one variant or subvariants at one time and the likelihood of crossover increases.
The next two months as vaccines wear off and become essentially useless will be very telling to where we are going, but one thing is certain, life will never be normal again like it was with #zerocovid. Thanks a bunch to the Australian Premiers for throwing #zerocovid away so easily. We will now have to live with the virus, and the uncertainty surrounding its ongoing evolution.
Meanwhile, The CMO of Australia Paul Kelly, who I blame for the murder of lots of elderly people by pushing #astrazeneca onto them, has come up with a ‘brilliant’ plan to also get the CFR in Australia from covid19 deaths down to zero. The idea is to STOP counting covid19 deaths. Then CFR = 0/cases = 0. He wants to lump them all into excess deaths so we do not know who died from covid19, influenza, or dare I say it from the vaccines. It is nothing more than a way to hide even more data from the public. We hardly get any data as it is and i have already highlighted to you in previous posts how the TGA is trying to hide children dying from the vaccine. I found a boy aged 9 died from the vaccine on 11 March 2022, and girl aged 9 died on 25 March 2022. Then I looked at only one day, the 28 March 2022 and found that a boy aged 6 died, and a young man aged 19, plus 7 more people died than what the TGA said in its summary in the header. Read my other post for more details.
update 17April22
This is the latest on variants in Denmark. It seems the main subvariant that was active in Denmark was BA.2.9 and not BA.2 as originally thought.
The CFR continues to rise slowly in Denmark.
