by Tonya Breaux-Shropshire, PhD, DNP, FNP, MPH | Blog |
Omicron update. Omicron update. In this video, I featured Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. John Cambell, Dr. Mobeen Syed, and Dr. KeKe Fairfax to provide you with the most current update. More to come.
Transcript
00:00:03 Mr. Willie Breaux, Jr.
You are listening to hypertension resistant to treatment where you will get knowledge, training, resources and support.
00:00:10 Mr. Willie Breaux, Jr.
For better blood pressure control.
00:00:13 Mr. Willie Breaux, Jr.
If you are suffering with high blood pressure or blood pressure that is difficult to treat.
00:00:17 Mr. Willie Breaux, Jr.
This podcast is certainly for you. Here is Dr. Tonya.
00:00:25 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Hi, I’m Doctor Tonya and I’m here to teach you everything you ought to know about hypertension management.
00:00:34 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
I am a clinical scientist, and I’ve done research over 10 years. I’ve found some interesting things about hypertension and blood pressure control and medication-taking behavior.
00:00:46 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
I would like to share with you all of the information I’ve found as well as all the information that’s out there that will help you get control of your blood pressure.
00:00:56 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Stick with me and we’ll take this journey to improve your blood pressure.
00:01:03 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Thanks for listening.
00:01:07 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Hello hypertension resistors. So today I have an update on the OMNICRON variant and I have several clips from several experts to give us what we need to know. As of December 2nd 2021. So let’s get to it.
00:01:25 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
1st I have Doctor Anthony Fauci.
00:01:28 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
He is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
00:01:35 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
And the chief medical advisor to the President of the United States.
00:01:39 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
He will tell us about the first case of the Omnicron variant here in the United States.
00:01:47 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
We need to know about this person and what we need to do to protect ourselves and also.
00:01:54 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
He’ll tell us when we will know more.
00:01:57 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
About this very after Doctor Fauci, I will have Doctor John Campbell.
00:02:03 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
He is a health educator and doctor.
00:02:06 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
John Campbell will tell us his opinion about the latest vitamin D research paper.
00:02:12 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
If it’s credible or not, and he will tell us what’s going on in the world with this omnicron.
00:02:18 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Virus and about the vaccines.
00:02:20 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
When can we expect a tweak in the vaccines to directly be effective toward this new virus and he will also give us an optimistic view on the omnicron virus.
00:02:35 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
I have a.
00:02:35 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
But from Doctor Mobeen said he will help us keep everything in perspective about this new variant.
00:02:43 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
And lastly, I know many people are concerned about not having any antibodies once they’re fully vaccinated, and a lot of people I’ve read on several posts.
00:02:55 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Were concerned about this.
00:02:57 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
In other words, once you’re fully vaccinated, it’s not really recommended to go and get tested to see if you have.
00:03:06 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
The antibodies that will protect you against the COVID-19 virus, but some people are getting this testing and some people are turning up with good titers.
00:03:18 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Or in other words, there are many body levels are adequate and others have no antibodies after being fully.
00:03:25 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Fascinated and they’re getting really concerned about not having antibodies once they’re fully vaccinated, and they feel that they’re not protected.
00:03:34 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
And even some people are expressing.
00:03:37 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Doubt about the vaccine because they don’t have these antibodies, so I have doctor Kiki, Fairfax with the University of Utah who will tell us why not to worry.
00:03:49 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Doctor Fairfax spoke with Vincent Roleo at Microbe TV and essentially she is just telling you that.
00:03:57 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Both antibodies are really not necessary and she will be referring to childhood vaccines, but it’s the same for COVID vaccination.
00:04:08 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
I know that’s a lot, but I think it’s going to be useful information.
00:04:12 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Vision of all that you need to know right now.
00:04:16 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
So here we go.
00:04:18 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Let’s start with Doctor Fauci.
00:04:20 Dr. Anthony Fauci
You may have.
00:04:20 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Heard that the California and San Francisco departments of Public Health and the CDC have confirmed that a recent case of COVID-19 among an individual in California was caused by the Omicron variant.
00:04:35 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Genomic sequencing was conducted at the University of California at San Francisco.
00:04:41 Dr. Anthony Fauci
And the sequence was confirmed at the CDC as being consistent with the Omicron variant, so I know there are a lot of questions, but here’s what we know.
00:04:50 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Right?
00:04:50 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Now the individual was a traveler who returned from South Africa on November the 22nd, and tested positive on November the 29th.
00:05:01 Dr. Anthony Fauci
The individual is self quarantining and all close contacts have been contacted and all close contacts thus far have tested negative.
00:05:10 Dr. Anthony Fauci
The individual was fully vaccinated and experienced mild symptoms which are improving at this point.
00:05:18 Dr. Anthony Fauci
So this is the first confirmed.
00:05:20 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Case of COVID-19 caused by the Omicron variant detected in the United States and as all of you know, because we’ve been discussing this, this we knew that it was just a matter of time.
00:05:33 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Before the first case of Omicron would be detected in the United States and as you know, we know I’ve been saying it and my colleagues on the medical team and others have been saying it.
00:05:43 Dr. Anthony Fauci
We know what we need to do.
00:05:44 Dr. Anthony Fauci
To protect people.
00:05:46 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Get vaccinated if you’re not already vaccinated.
00:05:49 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Get boosted if you’ve been vaccinated for more than six months with an MRI.
00:05:54 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Or two months with J&J.
00:05:57 Dr. Anthony Fauci
And all the other things we’ve been talking about about getting your children vaccinated, masking in indoor congregate settings, et cetera.
00:06:04 Dr. Anthony Fauci
If you look at the things that we have been recommending, they’re just the same and we want to keep doing that and make sure we pay close attention to that.
00:06:12 Dr. Anthony Fauci
This is what we call in medicine and n = 1, which means.
00:06:17 Dr. Anthony Fauci
That you really can’t take anything away from a single patient.
00:06:21 Dr. Anthony Fauci
It is very it’s it’s.
00:06:22 Dr. Anthony Fauci
We feel good that this patient not only had mild symptoms.
00:06:25 Dr. Anthony Fauci
But actually the symptoms appear to be improving, but as we’ve said, there’s a lot of information that is now evolving out of countries like South Africa that have a much larger number of individuals, not only who are confirmed, but individuals who are probables, which means they are going to have a lot of experience which we will benefit.
00:06:46 Dr. Anthony Fauci
From here, as the weeks go by, some of you heard me say that in a matter of two weeks or two and a half three weeks, we’ll know a lot.
00:06:55 Dr. Anthony Fauci
About transmissibility, about whether or not it essentially eludes some of the protection from things like monoclonal antibodies, whether or not the disease itself in general, is going to be severe, and what is the difference in an individual who’s been vaccinated versus unvaccinated booster versus not?
00:07:15 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Boosted, we’re going to get that information.
00:07:17 Dr. Anthony Fauci
I think.
00:07:18 Dr. Anthony Fauci
I think I know that we don’t have enough information right now.
00:07:22 Dr. Anthony Fauci
As you know, and we’ve said this.
00:07:24 Dr. Anthony Fauci
That the profile of the molecular profile of the kinds of mutations that you see would suggest a that it might be more transmissible and that it might elude some of the protection of vaccines, but we don’t know that now we don’t know what the what the what the constellation of mutations.
00:07:45 Dr. Anthony Fauci
There are actually going to be.
00:07:46 Dr. Anthony Fauci
We have to be prepared that there’s going to be a diminution in protection, which is the reason why.
00:07:52 Dr. Anthony Fauci
I keep getting back over and over again and say why it’s so important to get boosted, but I think any declaration of what will or will not happen with this variant.
00:08:01 Dr. Anthony Fauci
It is too early to say we have 60 million people in this country who are not vaccinated or eligible to be vaccinated.
00:08:08 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Let’s get them vaccinated.
00:08:09 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Let’s get the people who are vaccinated, boosted.
00:08:12 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Let’s get the children.
00:08:13 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Vaccinated, that’s where we want to go is.
00:08:15 Dr. Anthony Fauci
I think what’s happening now is another example of why it’s important for people to get vaccinated who’ve not been vaccinated, but also, boosting boosting is really very important because the data that we get on.
00:08:26 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Boosting if you look at the level, for example of a antibody and neutralizing antibody peak following the second dose of a 2 dose M RNA.
00:08:36 Dr. Anthony Fauci
It’s like at this level if you look at the peak following the third shot boost, it goes way up here and people ask why is that important?
00:08:45 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Because our experience.
00:08:46 Dr. Anthony Fauci
With variants such as, the Delta variant is that even though the vaccine isn’t specifically targeted to the Delta variant, when you get a high enough level of an immune response, you get spillover protection even.
00:09:00 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Against a variance that the vaccine wasn’t specifically directed at, and that’s the reason why we feel, even though we don’t have a lot of data on it, there’s every reason to believe that that kind of increase that you get with the boost would be helpful, at least in preventing severe disease of a variant like Omicron.
00:09:19 Dr. Anthony Fauci
So right now I would not.
00:09:20 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Be waiting. People say, well, if we’re gonna have a a booster specific vaccine, should we wait if you are eligible, namely six months with a double M RNA dose or two months with the J&J get boosted now we may not need a variant specific boost we’re preparing.
00:09:40 Dr. Anthony Fauci
For the possibility that we need a variant specific boost, and that’s what the companies are doing, we have been the administration has been in contact with the pharmaceutical companies to go ahead and take the steps in case we need it.
00:09:53 Dr. Anthony Fauci
But the mistake people would make is to say let me wait and see if we get one.
00:09:57 Dr. Anthony Fauci
If you’re eligible for boosting, get boosted.
00:10:00 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Right now.
00:10:01 Dr. John Cambell
That higher levels of vitamin D in the blood could be protective against severe illness and death.
00:10:08 Dr. John Cambell
And some pretty convincing data, really.
00:10:11 Dr. John Cambell
Let’s look at what’s going on. So in the world, 226 cases actually confirmed of this sort of omikron variance.
00:10:20 Dr. John Cambell
That’s what we know for sure.
00:10:22 Dr. John Cambell
The real number, of course.
00:10:23 Dr. John Cambell
Is going to be way.
00:10:23 Dr. John Cambell
Higher now Moderna vaccine producers that they’re saying there’s going to be a.
00:10:28 Dr. John Cambell
Material drop off in the level of.
00:10:31 Dr. John Cambell
Efficacy of their vaccine.
00:10:32 Dr. John Cambell
We don’t say how much.
00:10:33 Dr. John Cambell
But basically they say it’s not going to be as effective against omnicron as it was against Delta.
00:10:39 Dr. John Cambell
For example, fires in meantime has applied to the FDA to boost 16 and 17 year olds, but there’s no timescale for that yet.
00:10:47 Dr. John Cambell
But that’s sort of.
00:10:48 Dr. John Cambell
This seems to be where the vaccine manufacturers want to go, which of course, is open to.
00:10:53 Dr. John Cambell
Quite a bit of debate.
00:10:55 Dr. John Cambell
Now Fire Chief scientist.
00:10:57 Dr. John Cambell
So he sends enough experimental vaccine to begin a clinical trial within about two months and a very high commercial scale of vaccine production isn’t going to be possible until early March.
00:11:09 Dr. John Cambell
This year, and it looks like Fry’s has probably.
00:11:11 Dr. John Cambell
Been ahead of the game compared.
00:11:13 Dr. John Cambell
To the other vaccine manufacturers on that.
00:11:14 Dr. John Cambell
So it’s not anything like.
00:11:16 Dr. John Cambell
As quick as we would thought.
00:11:18 Dr. John Cambell
In other words, what this means is that the Omicron variant is going to go around the world before we have a specific vaccine against it, and then of course, there’s the whole debate where they would want a specific.
00:11:29 Dr. John Cambell
Vaccine against it because if we’ve got a specific vaccine against the omicron, that means that other immune escape variants could easily evolve inside people that were.
00:11:39 Dr. John Cambell
Vaccinated against omnicron, so it’s not clear that that is the way to go at all.
00:11:45 Dr. John Cambell
As of yet, the Chief Scientific Officer though of Pfizer is cautiously optimistic that especially in people that have been boosting, that we are going to have quite a high level of protection against omnicron.
00:11:56 Dr. John Cambell
The cases are increasing quite dramatically in South Africa.
00:11:59 Dr. John Cambell
Nothing like their previous peaks, but not enough to cause some increase in hospitalization because of course the vaccination level in South Africa is that no.
00:12:08 Dr. John Cambell
But the key thing here here is this infection is going to.
00:12:11 Dr. John Cambell
The spread, if it doesn’t make people sick, then it’s good because it’s going to increase herd immunity if it spreads as rapidly as we believe it’s going to and it makes people just as sick as the delta variant, then we’ve got problems.
00:12:24 Dr. John Cambell
It’s very unlikely it will make people sicker, but if it did make people sicker, then we’ve got even more problems.
00:12:29 Dr. John Cambell
Of course, I’m hopeful, as we looked at yesterday.
00:12:32 Dr. John Cambell
And it’s going to spread rapidly and people will be less.
00:12:34 Dr. John Cambell
Ill but we.
00:12:35 Dr. John Cambell
Don’t know that for sure, but it would surprise me if this virus is really good at spreading, and really, what it making people sick, so I’m hopeful.
00:12:43 Dr. John Cambell
But we don’t know for sure yet, and we’re not going to know.
00:12:45 Dr. John Cambell
For some time.
00:12:47 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
I feel that it is the duty of the medical professionals, researchers, scientists to make their bosses aware that this is that, at least from a mechanism point of view, how severe or not severe this situation may be, so that the reaction can be a little more.
00:13:07 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Balanced I think we are reacting more and I think it is reasonable because we are afraid and scared of the previous.
00:13:16 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Times I think this may not be again, I may be wrong, but I think it may not be that way, so we should figure out the right approach and try to figure out the right approach.
00:13:20 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Yeah, exactly.
00:13:26 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Really, in the corner seven day, seven day moving average, can you see it is going down?
00:13:34 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
And again we can.
00:13:37 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
South Africa is about quarter or 28% vaccinated, so on one end there is a lot of noise that they are less vaccinated, so they have a higher risk and the doctors within the country are also saying that at the same time there is data as well. We have to keep everything in perspective so and again.
00:13:56 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
I’m not downplaying.
00:13:57 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
The virus up.
00:13:59 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
I wish it is milder and I wish it can zip through the system and it is mild and.
00:14:03 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
We can all.
00:14:04 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Get out of this evil situation, but we don’t know yet.
00:14:09 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
What is interesting for me?
00:14:11 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Is to see that after all the noise we it seems to be a fortunate thing that.
00:14:19 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
The cases are dropping.
00:14:21 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
You see here.
00:14:23 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
So it seems interesting to me or they have less vaccination, so there is a chance of spreading and the spread I think is occurring in vaccinated and non.
00:14:33 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Fascinated and I’ll continue to say that at least so far the information from Doctor Kutsia is that her outpatient patients, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, had milder cases.
00:14:46 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
They were youngsters.
00:14:47 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
They were able to recover at home within a couple of days.
00:14:51 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
I actually read over here.
00:14:54 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Give me one second, it is.
00:14:56 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
It was actually very interesting.
00:14:58 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
It could be.
00:15:01 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
If I can just find my mouse.
00:15:04 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
If Google had sent this message.
00:15:12 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Which is.
00:15:14 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Uh, it is interesting to see.
00:15:18 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Doc, so there is a link for bottom and then cases have risen, so this is from South Africa.
00:15:24 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Cases have risen over weeks two times and three times and six times and Monday on Monday.
00:15:30 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
It’s nine times the cases might be too soon for the hospital uptick to conclude.
00:15:35 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Severity makes sense.
00:15:38 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
My friends have it now window period of up to seven days from contraction, which is interesting because if a slower incubation period or if a longer incubation.
00:15:48 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Period is there.
00:15:50 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Then the virus should end up being milder because it is not causing damage very fast.
00:15:56 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Young infants got fever and high heart rate.
00:15:59 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
3 days after moms symptom onset.
00:16:02 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
She is double vaccinated with Pfizer main symptoms, headache and some body aches.
00:16:08 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Day three feels good, husband double vaccinated with Moderna with no symptoms.
00:16:14 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
Tested today but will only know tomorrow if positive.
00:16:18 Dr. Mobeen Syaed
So that is the news which I thought was very interesting as well.
00:16:22 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
I do a lot of work on vaccine induced immunity in general right and understanding the interplay between E cells and T cells and stromal cells.
00:16:32 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
For developing optimal vaccine induced immunity right and so work that I published back in 2015 demonstrated that this population of TFH memory cells was the most efficient at coming back into a germinal center and kicking off a secondary.
00:16:51 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
TFH cell response.
00:16:53 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
Which was optimal and needed to stimulate memory B cells to differentiate into plasma cells in a secondary response, right?
00:17:02 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
And that rapid re stimulation is what it’s actually protective, not your circulating long-lived plasma cells.
00:17:08 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
We really need to generate new or more efficient plasma cells from memory B cells, and this is important.
00:17:15 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
I think this is something that’s lost in people’s understanding of vaccine-induced immunity is that it’s not just about your antibody titers.
00:17:22 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
That [is]like 90 days after immunization.
00:17:24 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
It’s really about your memory B cells.
00:17:27 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
I’m a memory B cell.
00:17:28 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
And so that that fundamental understanding of what is needed for a secondary response, right?
00:17:35 Dr. KeKe Fairgax
Which is when you think about protection induced by early childhood immunization, you’re looking at what is able to generate a secondary response.
00:17:42 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Right, so essentially we don’t know a lot about this.
00:17:47 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Omnicron virus, but we will know more in about 2 weeks and just keep doing what you’re doing essentially.
00:17:51 Speaker 1
Right?
00:17:56 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
And if you don’t have any antibodies after being vaccinated, don’t be concerned.
00:18:02 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
It’s all about the protection induced by the vaccine to generate a second dairy response.
00:18:09 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
And I forgot to mention that some of the new symptoms that are being seen with some of the first cases are itchy throat cough.
00:18:16 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Headache, muscle pain, and doctor Campbell had interviewed one of the first cases who was a male and he complained of his bones.
00:18:28 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Hurting after a couple of days he said it cleared up all the symptoms cleared up, but he still had a cough.
00:18:35 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
He was one of the first cases in South Africa to be confirmed as positive or the omnicron barrier.
00:18:42 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Finally don’t wait for the new vaccine.
00:18:45 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
That may be specific to.
00:18:48 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
The Omnicron virus, because it may take a while for that to happen first of all, and secondly it may.
00:18:54 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
May not even be necessary, so that’s all I have for you today.
00:18:57 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Stay tuned to hypertension resistannt to treatment where I’ll tell you more about what everybody ought to know about hypertension and trending health topics.
00:19:07 Dr. Tonya Breaux-Shropshire
Thanks for listening and I’ll see you in the next one.
