FNC’s Dr. Marc Siegel is keeping his head when others are channeling Chicken Little. He understands that the social, psychological, and economic damage from living in fear far outweighs any health hazard of the latest supposed COVID variant.

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Siegel: President Biden announced his five point winter plan to combat COVID on Thursday in remarks at the NIH.

I was very glad to learn that his doesn’t include more lockdowns and shutdowns or school closures. Instead, he focused on:

1. Expanding the nationwide booster program with more outreach. 2. Opening new family vaccination clinics. 3. Making free home tests more readily available, covered by insurance and with more central locations for the uninsured. 4. Expanding the medical surge response team to respond to an increase in COVID cases. 5. Expanding international support with a stated goal to “vaccinate the world.”

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Are these ideas useful? Yes. Will they solve our COVID problem or the tremendous collateral damage it has and will cause? Answer: no.

Will Biden’s new plan quash the new variant or diminish our rising hysteria over this unknown risk? Answer – not quite. We have a viral problem here in the United States, and it isn’t the new COVID variant, omicron. The much larger problem goes beyond COVID to the fear it creates. (More about that in a moment.) Don’t get me wrong, we certainly need to learn more about the virus and the new variant. Early indications from South Africa reveal that it is fairly spreading easily, there is a heightened reinfection rate, it can sometimes cause severe illness (data on hospitalizations are still emerging), but almost all those hospitalized are unvaccinated.

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In other words, being fully vaccinated likely offers substantial protection against this variant, especially if you have recently been boosted or have had the vaccine on top of having had COVID (a combination which offers substantial immunity). Early indications from Pfizer and elsewhere indicate that the smattering of antibodies produced by the vaccine will offer a significant level of protection against omicron, especially when it comes to severe disease.

I believe this protection will likely be augmented by a recent vaccine dose or recovery from COVID. The president didn’t provide a tangible plan on Thursday of how his administration plans to reach out to the 60 million Americans who are still completely unvaccinated here in the U.S. without shaming them or coercing them into compliance. US COVID-19 Vaccine Progress Tracker | Vaccinations by State | USAFacts

I believe the best method would still be to get the vaccine into doctors’ offices like mine where a vaccine conversation, with a discussion about the cost/benefit, generally takes place…

We certainly have no room for a variant that resembles “the boy who cried wolf.” Though I am concerned about the number of mutations to the coronavirus, I am reassured by the likely immune protection along with the emergence of the new oral anti-viral treatments. There is no overall sense right now that this variant is more dangerous than delta, perhaps even less. Fear is its own virus. We think we are rational creatures until we encounter the unknown, the unknowable, the potentially deadly.

This piece was written by David Kamioner on December 4, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Biden Blames Trump For Biden’s Mistakes
Democrats In Media Bailing On Biden
Biden Doesn’t Understand Basic Economics

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