Omicron: What can you do to stay safe this holiday season?

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Shannon Rae Gre...:       Hey there. I'm Shannon Rae Green, and this is 5 Things. These Sunday episodes are special. We're focusing on just one story instead of five, to go a little further into one topic. Let us know what you think. You can always tweet me @ShannonRaeGreen. That's R-A-E. Today I've asked Elizabeth Weise, USA Today's incredible health reporter, to talk about the Omicron variant. You've likely heard her voice before on lots of 5 Things episodes since the pandemic has started. Hi Beth. Thanks so much for being here.

Elizabeth Weise:             Hey, happy to be here.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       So Beth, you know that I have multiple sclerosis. I take medicine to fight the disease that makes me immunocompromised, but my doctor tells me that this wanes, depending on how recently I've had my infusion. I also have an unvaccinated toddler, my son, Phoenix, and like so many Americans, I really want to celebrate the holidays with people I haven't gotten to spend as much time with as I would normally want. Plenty of people have these concerns like me, and various complications like I do when it comes to planning what to do over the upcoming break. And now we have Omicron. You've been covering this so closely Beth, an expert in one of your recent stories so that it seems Omicron is spreading every place at once. What should people know about the new variant?

Elizabeth Weise:             Well, I tell you, Christmas, boy, this Christmas, actually last Christmas wasn't confusing. It was just stay home and don't go out. And this Christmas, we have options. So what do we know about Omicron? Not as much as we would like, because it's still early days. I mean, it's not even a month since it was first identified. So think about how fast science is moving, that we can say anything even a month before a new variant was identified. So that's a good thing. So what we know about Omicron, it appears that it results in milder disease, which then Delta or previous variants, especially in vaccinated and boosted people, evolutionarily that makes a lot of sense because if you're a disease, you don't want to kill the people that you, in fact, you want them to be happy and going out and infecting other people because then you get to infect other people and you continue on in the world as a virus.

                                           So Omicron appears to be milder. If you are vaccinated and boosted, if you get Omicron, anecdotally, what we're hearing is it's like a bad cold/the flu that lasts two or three days and you're okay. That is still early days. And a lot of it's from outside of the United States. So you can't do apples and apples. I mean, South Africa's population is different than ours, different immunologically and that's where a lot of the data is coming from. That said, when I ask virologists and immunologists, what are you doing? This is what they tell me. And this is in fact, this is a discussion that my family's been having, because we're supposed to have 12 people over for Christmas Eve dinner and then we'll have a small family Christmas dinner, and then we're having a boxing day dinner. So there are going to be a lot of people coming through our house.

                                           And what we've decided is everybody is vaccinated and boosted. And then we're going to ask folks to do an at home test, the day of, just so that nobody with florid COVID walks through the door and then we're going to stay calm and we're going to get together. We'll probably have a couple of windows open and it's a little cold, but that's okay. Fresh air is always good. My brother-in-law who's older has decided not to come because he's older and was a little, maybe not this year. The pieces that we don't have yet are. So if I'm vaccinated boosted and I get Omicron, actually, and I have a mild case... Immunologically. I wrote a story that posted today that that kind of is like a super immunity. You're just turbocharged with immunity because every time your body is exposed to COVID, whether it's through getting COVID or having been vaccinated, it learns and each time it learns better.

                                           And by the third or the fourth time, it's really good at knocking back this virus. The one thing we don't yet know is if you have a mild case of COVID Omicron or any other kind, any other variant, what are your chances of getting long COVID? Because frankly, as someone who's relatively young and relatively healthy, I'm not worried about COVID killing me. I am worried about long COVID, because we've talked to a lot of people who have it and it is horrible and we don't have a lot of data yet on who it is that is likely to get long COVID afterwards. So that's the one caveat that just still gives me the hee bee jeebies.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Yeah. And do you have any idea how long it might take to find out whether this variant can cause long COVID?

Elizabeth Weise:             It's that whole long part of long COVID. It can not show up for months after you've been infected and then folks who have long COVID, it takes them a really long time to get properly diagnosed and to start getting treatment. And so, the biggest cohort that I've heard of that they're working on is up in Seattle at the Fred Hutch. They've got a big cohort of people who have long COVID and they're following people, but yeah, it's going to be months. I mean, we're starting to see little snippets of data and it may be that milder cases are less likely to result in long COVID, but I would not... Would I bet folding money on that? Oh, not yet. Not yet, but we'll have more information in months, and we'll have a lot more information about Omicron. We've a lot more than we did and we'll have even more in weeks.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Right. So you've just shared a lot of wonderful tips for people who are gathering in their homes. What about people who might be traveling, going to hotels? Is there anything else that they should be considering when they're deciding whether to put the kibosh on heading out to see family?

Elizabeth Weise:             So truth be told, flying is pretty safe. The air in airplanes at this point, it's like being in a surgical unit. It is really clean. When I'm on planes, I wear a N95 and I don't eat or drink, which is boring, but that's just what I do. I've spent the last two years covering this virus and however mild it is, I really don't want this virus in my body and I'm trying to keep it out. If you wear an N95, would not eat or drink and that's hard, I don't worry about flying. Hotels I also, I don't worry about. The good thing is we now know which we didn't a year ago that you don't really get COVID from touching surfaces.

                                           It's not like you're going to walk into the bathroom and somebody touched the doorknob and you're going to touch it and that. Yes, you should wash her hands and yes, you should clean surfaces that you... if you get take out food, I would wipe down the table before you put down the food, that sort of thing. But it's not just the fact of being in a hotel room and not in your house is going to infect you.

                                           We had a family wedding that I went to and I just wore a mask everywhere. It was in a part of the country where I got some mean looks and I'm like, "Well, that's fine. You can look mean at me. I'm still going to wear this mask," and I'm happy and I didn't get COVID so it was good. So yeah. I'm not worried about hotels. I will tell you that I haven't really eaten out at a restaurant since this all started inside. Actually. That's not true. I did in one, but all the windows were open and it was like a gale force wind. So I wasn't too worried, but yeah. Hotels. Flying. Those are of concern at this point.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Eating indoors. Yes. A concern, at least for you.

Elizabeth Weise:             Eating indoors in a crowded restaurant with a bunch of strangers whose vaccination status I don't know, or whose COVID status I don't know? Yes. Eating in my own home with people whose vaccination status I know and who I love and trust, and I know they're telling me the truth, who've also tested that day. I'm not real worried.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Yeah. That sounds like a good system, Beth. So who are the people who are most at risk when people are going to be gathering?

Elizabeth Weise:             People who aren't vaccinated. Because as one guy said to me, he's like, "Yeah, you get great natural immunity from having had COVID. But to get it, you're playing Russian roulette." Because you don't know if you're going to be one of those people who gets really sick. You also don't know if you're going to be one of those people who gets along COVID so anybody who's unvaccinated, kids have pretty strong immune systems. I'm sure you've done a ton of research on that. So little, little kids, a little less worrisome. Folks who have immune systems that are not firing on all cylinders like you? Caution is a good idea. Maybe you do Christmas dinner, but you don't hug everybody. And I miss hugs. I miss hugs a lot. I still go in for the hug and I'm like, "Oh no, I shouldn't do that."

                                           So yeah. folks who have compromised immune systems, people who are not vaccinated, people who are 70 and above. If you look at the death rates that's who's dying in this country is people who are 65 and older, 75 and older, you start to see a lot of deaths at this point. One in every hundred people 65 and over in this country has died of COVID.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Yeah. So people like me with compromised immune systems, we just compromise a little. We get to go to the dinner, but maybe not hug. That is something I can definitely do and I will be happy to be able to be in the room with the people I love. Is there any information yet about risk to unvaccinated kids?

Elizabeth Weise:             Haven't seen anything new yet. CDC is on it. I know that they actually released some new protocols today for kids who can't yet be vaccinated and it's looking like kids who, even if you're you're exposed, but not symptomatic, those kids are probably going to do fine, but that's a watch this space area.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Right. And thank goodness for that, that kids who are unvaccinated don't suffer the way that adults do. At least we haven't seen yet. Are you hearing anything about asymptomatic spread of Omicron?

Elizabeth Weise:             I'm not. And so we know that Omicron is just insanely effective at replicating itself through people. It is so contagious. It appears to be contagious even if you're asymptomatic, but it could be that... So if I were to come to your house and I had asymptomatic Omicron and you caught it from me, you might have asymptomatic Omicron. So we're both asymptomatic. So is that a bad thing? It's always at the margins, right? 98 people are going to be fine, but do you want your grandmother to be the hundred? Yeah. We're still that, for Omicron, we're still learning.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Right. So what should people do if they do get symptoms that make them think that they might have COVID?

Elizabeth Weise:             If you can, if you've got it where you live, get one of these nifty at-home tests. I actually listened to a talk by some researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, at the beginning of the week. And it was interesting because they were using rapid tests in a really specific cohort, and the woman who did said, "When we started this out, we weren't really sure how well they worked."

                                           Turns out the rapid tests are really good in terms of picking up cases of COVID, where they fall down is you can get false positives. So you could take the test and if it tells you you're negative, there's a really good chance you're negative. If it tells you you're positive, there's a possibility that you're still negative. But because they've set them such that they're on a hair trigger and they will veer towards telling you you're positive because they want to make sure they don't send people who are positive out into the world thinking they're negative.

                                           So if you test negative, you probably are negative with these tests. And then you can follow up if you choose. They're a little hard to find in some places and they're a little expensive. I actually just bought one at Walgreens and it was what, 20 bucks. Oh, the other thing is when you take those tests, there's two in the box and they're meant to be taken, you take one. You see what result you get and you take the other 12 to 24 to 36 hours afterwards. And then you've got really a robust response. So it's not meant, oh there's two tests and you can give them to two different people. It's really meant the same person does it sequentially.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       That's good to know. All of that is good information, especially the false positive. That's really good information to have. Yeah. So I think that you have really helped me in thinking through what I'm planning to do with my family. And I think that because all of us are fully vaccinated, some of my family members are even boosted. So I want to ask if there's anything that I haven't asked you that I should?

Elizabeth Weise:             Be careful, maybe avoid hugs, but see people. We have learned in the last... think of where we were two years ago and where we are now. I am so thankful. My Christmas letter this year, I wanted to write the whole thing about how thankful I am for the vaccine. But it was put to me that perhaps I needed to dial back on it and talk about other things. The fact that we have a vaccine now is so amazing, and I am so grateful that I don't wake up thinking, "Oh my God, I could get a disease that could kill me."

                                           I wake up thinking I could get a disease that would make me feel bad for a bit, but I'm not going to die and my family's not going to die. I don't think I told you this story before. I'm a science fiction fan. So I love time travel books. I love alternate history books and shout out to 1632. But when I was doing a rapid test, I had the weirdest feeling, because I'm looking, it's in my kitchen, I've got the paper open and I'm reading it through. And it's kind of like an Ikea, it explains how you do everything with the little drawings and the back side's in Spanish and you're used to these now, but I was reading it, and stick this up your nose and put it the reagent, wait five minutes. And then you'll know whether you have this virus.

                                           And I was just thinking, "Boy, if somebody, if there was a little black hole and this test had dropped onto my desk two and a half years ago and I would've opened it up and it's from Walgreens and it's clearly, this is mass produced and these are all over the place." And I would think, "What in the hell has happened in the future?"

                                           I just had this moment of dislocation. How is it that I am looking at this thing and how is this normal? And yet it is. And how amazing that we went from, not having any idea how to even test for this thing, to I can do it at my kitchen table for 20 bucks? So I leave you with that.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       Certainly, it's so amazing that we have this and it does feel like what we're experiencing is something certainly out of a science fiction novel, but thank goodness for science. That's how I feel. How can people find your work, Beth?

Elizabeth Weise:             So you can search my name. Elizabeth Weise, W-E-I-S-E, in USA Today and it pops up. I spend 10 hours a day researching COVID and writing about it. And that's because USA Today pays me a salary that allows me to pay my mortgage. And I need that salary so that I can do this work as do we all. So subscribing to newspapers that provide you with information that's useful is a good thing. Think of it as your Christmas donation to the world, because we need newspapers and we need to pay the people who make the content like you, Shannon, so that you can listen to it. So yeah, maybe get that for somebody for Christmas, a subscription to USA Today.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       That's such a great idea. Yes. I am going to drop a link to our subscription offers, which we have some good deals, in the episode description. Beth, thank you so much for sharing all that and thank you for being on the show today.

Elizabeth Weise:             As always. It is a pleasure.

Shannon Rae Gre...:       If you liked this episode of 5 Things, please write us a review on Apple Podcast. You can also tweet us @USAToday. I want to say thanks to Alexis Davies for her help editing this episode, Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with 5 Things you need to know for Monday. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Shannon Rae Green. I'm wishing you all the best as we ring in the new year. Drop me a line on Twitter. I'm @ShannonRaeGreen. I'd love to hear from you. Until then, I'll see you next Sunday.