Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/SymnIpKXzWA   The Omicron variant of CoVid may be better able than previous variants to evade the human immune system because it contains snippets of genetic material similar to those in common cold viruses that have adapted to infecting humans.  This suggestion comes from the Cambridge Mass. analytics company Nference.   The researchers theorize that persons co-infected with Covid and common cold coronaviruses could have both viruses replicating in their lung and gastrointestinal lining cells.  During this process, genetic material from both types of virus could co-mingle leading to hybrid viral offspring bearing characteristics of each parent virus.     Omicron seems to have arisen in South Africa where many have HIV-driven immunosuppression and could more readily be simultaneously infected by multiple types of viruses.  The best defense against it is two shots of an mRNA vaccine and timely boosters.   https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-12-04/Research-reveals-links-between-Omicron