Will we be able to travel again in 2022?


When will we be able to fly again?



 Another year has come and done and I have not set foot on a plane again. Last time I was on a plane I was rushing back to get into South Africa before the world shut done in March 2020. I was on a trip to Brazil and Kenya and even while in Brazil, a few of the meetings were canceled because of the virus. By the time I got to Kenya, all of the meetings, but one, had already been cancelled, so I cut my trip short by four days and rushed to get back home. It is times like this that you need the help of your trusted travel agent (Jessica Cameron). She manged to get my flights changed and get me home. There were already people (mostly from Europe) who were stuck in Kenya and could not get flights back to Europe. Travel and the world would not be the same, at least for the next two years. 


 

Flying on Business class to Brazil - the only way to fly!

 

Road side stall in Kenya

 
Road side photos in Kenya


My last flight before lockdown. 

In November 2021, my wife and I ventured out of Bloemfontein for the first to visit family in Durban. It was during this visit that the news of the Omicron variant broke. A new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with a large number of different mutations, many of which are in the spike protein. Now for a bit of science again. The spike protein of the virus is what allows the virus to attach to the host cell. Changes in the structure of the spike protein can mean that the virus can now bind to more cells. If this is the case, the virulence of the virus tends to increase. Another problem is if there are changes in the structure of the spike protein, there is a very high likelihood that the antibodies which have been produced, particularly from of genetically engineered vaccine (like most which are available), will not be able to bind to the new variant and will not be able to neutralize the virus. There was an immediate "knee jerk reaction" and all travel to and from South Africa was stopped. Not the the virus originated in South Africa, but because we were good enough to find and notify the world of the variant. 


 

The Omicron variant has proven to be highly transmissible -  hence the very high numbers of new cases around the world - on same days even reaching over 2 million new cases in a single day - but not highly pathogenic - i.e. not causing very serious disease. The numbers of hospitalisations as a result of Covid-19 are not going up at the same rate as the number of infections. 


Now - let me gaze into my crystal ball again. You might have noticed that my predictions in my previous posts about Covid-19 have been quite accurate! Omicron could very well be the beginning of the end. With the virus being highly transmissible - many people will get exposed and have a good natural immune response - which will be much better that that obtained from the vaccines (I am NOT saying the vaccines are bad - they are just highly specific). As this variant is causing less disease - large sections of the population will get good immunity - which is basically the concept of herd immunity. I do not think that this virus will go away in total and we will be living with it for many years to come - but it will become just another virus which causes a mild upper respiratory infection - or more commonly known as a common cold! 

The blog is getting too long and I still wanted to have a rant on the unit-vaxxers - so maybe I need to do a different post on this.




Just a nice photo of a virus to end with

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