This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 51%. (I'm a bot)
> BENGALURU: Karnataka health officials are a worried lot as two South African nationals who arrived in Bengaluru tested positive for COVID-19.
> Authorities are awaiting results of their genome sequencing reports to confirm whether it is the new Omicron variant.
> Speaking to the media, Bengaluru Rural Deputy Commissioner K Srinivas on Saturday said that of the international passengers screened at Kempegowda International Airport, two from South Africa have tested positive for COVID-19.
> "Their samples have been collected and sent for genome sequencing. It takes about 48 hours to receive the reports. We are waiting to ascertain if they are infected with the new Omicron variant," he said.
> WATCH |. The officer visited the Bengaluru International Airport to inspect the security and monitor the precautionary measures taken by authorities including the process of checking international passengers who arrive from high-risk countries where the Omicron variant of Covid is leading to an increase in cases.
> The WHO has classified the Omicron variant as a 'Variant of Concern'.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19-vaccine-study-omicron-anti-vaxxers-1.6315890
>A Canadian study that vastly underestimated the protection COVID-19 vaccines provide against the Omicron variant is being revised — but not before it spread widely on social media by anti-vaxxers, academics and even the creators of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
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>The Ontario preprint study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, suggested that any three doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were just 37 per cent effective against Omicron infection, while two doses actually showed negative protection.
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>The preprint has been shared on Twitter more than 15,000 times in the two weeks since it's been published, according to Altmetric, a company that tracks where published research is posted online. That's in the top five per cent of all research it's ever tracked.
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>Study updating findings with totally different results
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>But the paradoxical findings were later found to have been influenced by behavioural and methodological issues, such as the timing of the observational study, the way in which vaccine passports altered individual risk and changes in access to COVID-19 testing.
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>The results are currently being updated with additional data that showed completely different results, said Dr. Jeff Kwong, the study's lead author and an epidemiologist and senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto.
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>"We're in the process of adding two more weeks of data and it looks like there's no more negative VE (vaccine effectiveness). Our results are now more in line with the data from the U.K. where it's lower, for sure, compared to Delta, but never getting to negative," he told CBC News.
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>Many who shared the study on Twitter used anti-vaccination rhetoric to allege boosters didn't work against COVID-19, while others posited the vaccines should not have been approved for emergency use by the FDA in the first place because they did not meet its initial 50 per cent efficacy threshold.
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Today the op-ed section of the Washington Post features a piece by Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist who before the COVID-19 pandemic was known as a leading AIDS activist, criticizing the White House's handling of the current crisis: "President Biden is failing on COVID-19." Gonsalves accuses the president of unwillingness to change course and "reset" his policy, with a stronger push for mass vaccination as well as complementary measures including mass distribution of rapid tests and high-quality masks, in light of the rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.
Omicron was first detected only a month ago but Biden has been in office for eleven months. In the long run of Biden's presidency to date, what have been his main policy decisions to address the COVID-19 pandemic and what have been their positive or negative consequences? How do Biden's decisions and their consequences compare with the approaches taken by other national governments?
