Good news continues to keep coming out of South Africa but it’s baffling the experts. Is it just me or does it seem like any/all GOOD developments always seem to baffle the experts? Strange how they never seem to be baffled by BAD developments, it’s just the GOOD developments that puzzle them.

Anyway, between November 18 and December 8, cases spiked like crazy in the Johannesburg / Pretoria area where the Omicron variant was first identified. By spiked like crazy, they leapt from a hundred cases a day to around ten thousand a day. But just as fast they went up, they headed back down on a steep slope. Adding to that bit of good news was that South Africa’s R-naught, the measure of how fast the virus is spreading, is back under 1.0, which means the virus is retreating. Now can you see why the “experts” are baffled, the Omicron onslaught they were expecting never materialized.

So, the wave looks to have been only a few weeks wide. That is MUCH narrower than previous waves. In fact, ALL metrics, cases, positivity rates, hospitalizations, and excess deaths thus far look far more favorable compared to previous waves there.

Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner and now Pfizer board member, said this on twitter about the numbers out of South Africa:

“Epidemic curve in Johannesburg/Pretoria that was straight up and continues straight down suggests we’re missing something fundamental about variant. Either attack rate is narrowed to sub segment of population, we’re undercounting mild or asymptomatic infections, or something else.”

Missing something fundamental, what could it be? Perhaps the virus is behaving like viruses of the past, you know, as they mutated, spreading faster while at the same time becoming less dangerous, nah! Personally, I feel sorry for the chumps, I mean the experts, they must be do disappointed about being wrong about South Africa so far, but lets cut them some slack, after all it’s not like they have any history or previous pandemic’s or viruses to base their guesses on, right?