COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Sol]

Doesn't it seem strange that these new variants always seem to come just when we are managing the one before it? They don't come all at once, and why is that? Are these things being engineered? And now we are being told by pharmaceutical companies to get boosters. What? We are allowing pharmaceutical companies to run the dialogue?

I believe there is something fishy going on. I'm tired of being a human pin cushion. I think we are being hoodwinked.

We're not being hoodwinked. It's omicron because we're on O.

Well they skipped nu and xi. Nu because it sounds like new, and xi because that's the name of the leader of China.

So this is totally tangential...but can anyone explain why the Chinese President's name is transliterated as "Xi" and not "Shi"?  I.e. why is an "sh" sound in Chinese written as "x" in English, when "x" is almost never pronounced as "sh" in English words?

Chinese has two sounds which map on roughly to English "sh." One is written with "sh" (as seen in Shenzhen) while the other is written with "x." The two sound alike to English speakers but are articulated with different parts of the tongue--they're [ʂ] and [ɕ] in phonetic terms. A similar distinction is made in Polish and Russian.

Pinyin is designed to be a very efficient writing system, avoiding the many digraphs of earlier systems in favor of streamlined but somewhat unusual uses of superfluous Latin letters. "X" for a "sh"-like sound is unheard of in English but is extremely common in the languages of Iberia--it's still used that way in Portuguese, Basque, and Catalan, and was used that way in Spanish in the recent past until the spelling changed largely to "j" and the pronounciation to a further back "kh" sound like Scottish loch. So using "x" for such a sound was natural, especially for trained linguists who'd be familiar with this history.

I'm also not as up on the history of Pinyin as I ought to be, so take this with a grain of salt, but Pinyin I think was also designed to be as much for domestic use as for foreign consumption--as a computer input, as an aid for Mandarin learners or kids learning to write, etc. So a system which is more elegant and simple would be more important.

Speaking subjectively, Pinyin is an excellent system. The representation of the aspiration distinction is particularly inspired.

[Sol]

At this point, we should shift our focus to COVID-positive individuals with little to no symptoms who go to the hospital. Hospitals should reject all COVID patients with mild or no symptoms (maybe send them off with some preventative meds in case more severe symptoms do develop) so the rest of us aren't forced to pay for their hysteria

The problem with this is that Omicron is widespread enough that a decent percentage of hospital admissions who are coming in for completely unrelated issues will test positive.

[Sol]

Okay so, they're probably planning to lift it in the spring/summer if it becomes reasonable to do so, with the emphasized statement to the public that "you should expect a very realistic chance of it returning in the fall / winter but we'll see how things evolve between now and then".

Sounds... about right?

It should never be brought back, period.

Making definite statements about how safety protocols should be in the future despite not knowing what the conditions could be is foolish.

I'll just respond with this excellent quote from Blairite:

Alrighty, I'm going to do an overly-long text wall of a post articulating my thoughts about Covid and why I'm on the hard-reopen vanguard of the Democratic Party. Please ignore if this is all too self-indulgent...

You can't just make a virus go away by screaming "I'M GETTING ON WITH MY LIFE". The logic that just issuing a verbal decree that the pandemic is over will end it is exactly why this pandemic will not go away in reality. You can symbolically declare whatever you like, but in reality that won't stop surges in the future. COVID isn't a person, it is a virus that doesn't care about symbolism. My point is that you can be "done" with COVID restrictions, but you cannot be "done" with COVID itself. You can still get sick and no politician can save you from that.

Here's the thing. The ideal world is one without Covid in it. At one point, we thought mRNA vaccines would get us to that world. And in reality, they've gotten us close enough for people who want to protect themselves. People who don't want to protect themselves can deal with the fallout--and we don't need to make policy for them. Covid spread *does not matter* if vaccinated people aren't dying. Because the vaccines are pretty damn good.

But perhaps more importantly, the tradeoff between restrictions and freedom is very different than in 2020. In 2020, the deal was "we have restrictions until a vaccine is released to protect the vulnerable. Once the vaccine is out, everyone can go back to normal." The cost-benefit calculation is different now. In 2020, the rational choice was to wait a few months until vaccines came out to lift restrictions. We had an immediate, clear solution that would reduce Covid risk. There was a short-term payoff to delaying reopening. No such solution exists today. There is no particularly good reason to expect Covid circulation to be lower in 2024 than it is right now. There is no new vaccine coming--we already have the vaccine. Therefore, the abstract benefit of delaying stuff into the future has been eliminated. I think this is where your argument breaks down. There is no medium-term amount of time over which we can expect Covid risk to meaningfully fall. If this is as safe as things can be, it is not reasonable to expect people to make choices that will minimize spread and save lives. The cost, unlike in 2020, is simply not worth the benefit because you can promise no hard end date after which life will return to 2019. "Don’t do X for some defined period of time after which X will become dramatically safer" (i.e. March 2020-May 2021) is very different than “don’t do X indefinitely.” (i.e. any restriction after May 2021).

Therefore, the only rational choice--in decision making, in risk mitigation, in anything--is to treat Covid like it is, indeed, "done." If future surges cannot be stopped by the mRNA vaccines we all have today, there is no reason to make any effort to stop them.

"Get on with our lives" could mean any number of things.  I got the vaccine, and got on with my life.  Now the only way COVID impacts me is that I occasionally have to wear a mask, which I don't mind at all.

Bagdad GMAC's timeline:

Aug 2021: Afghanistan debacle isn't real!
Oct 2021: Inflation isn't real!
Jan 2022: Restrictions aren't real!

I mean, in the past couple of weeks I went to a football game, the new Matrix movie, a Broadway show, dinner with friends at several restaurants, and an eSports tournament. I literally can't think of anything I could do before COVID that I can't do now, and I live in the ~*liberal hellhole*~ of NYC.

What does "getting on with your life" equal if not the above?

Life is 90% of the way back to normal. Those on the right who think that it is still April 2020 in blue states are entirely detached from reality, but that also does not mean it is 100% of the way back to normal. And because--as I said above--risk mitigation against Covid is not rational, we need to be 100% of the way back to normal.

Here's some stuff that is still happening:

• Concerts, conventions, speaking events, and big gatherings are still being cancelled because organizations don't want to host during Covid.
• People--particularly kids in K12--who are exposed to Covid often have to isolate for a full week.
• Asymptomatic people with breakthrough cases have to isolate for five days.
• Millions of people are still working from home as big employers (and federal agencies, particularly in Washington) push back a return to the office by 2-3 months every 2-3 months. This is particularly decimating to all the businesses that rely on bustling downtowns and office workers to serve.
• Schools, universities, and most businesses still have mask mandates. Many schools also have weekly testing requirements.
• In-person Social Security offices have been 100% closed for two full years. For people without reliable internet access (usually poor and old), this is devastating--and erodes trust in our state capacity.
• You have to wear a mask on the train, on airplanes, and going grocery shopping.
• Service sector workers have to wear masks 8-10 hours per day, every day.
• Transpacific travel is still entirely shut down. (Not our fault, but still). Even where international travel is open, people have to get a PCR test before every flight.
• And crucially, RULES KEEP CHANGING. Back in 2017, I could plan 6-36 months ahead with some certainty. I knew what my life would look like. But two years of constant fluctuation from institutions breaks down the trust and the certainty people need for stability in their lives. And this breeds a constant, toxic feeling of precarity in everything we do.

None of these are individually a big deal, but collectively they add up. I think it has been reflected politically. Right now, Joe Biden should be very popular and Americans should be very happy. It's the roaring twenties 2.0. For most people alive today, 2020 was the worst year of their life. It was destabilizing, it was miserable, it was lonely, and it was desperate. Things are better. Even with inflation, most people are doing at least as well as they were in 2019. We can now do *most* of the things we could do in 2019. We have the fastest GDP growth of recent times anywhere in the world. Forget BBB for a moment--everyday voters should approve of Biden 60-40 on the merits of "life isn't like 2020" alone. More importantly, questions like "Is America getting better or worse?" should have 75-80 percent of people answering "better." But for some reason, that isn't happening. I believe it is because two years on, these constant, individually small but collectively immiserating vestiges of the pandemic are sapping the national spirit and making people feel like their lives aren't that great--even though materially, they are.

Biden and Harris have appropriately rejected the worst instincts of the lockdowners, but they haven't articulated a specific date at which life will be exactly like February 2019. A date where masks will not be required anywhere--even airplanes. A date where nobody will have to isolate for testing positive. A date where absolutely no services that were once offered in person are offered only virtually. I know that Covid-19 hawks feel that masks are a no-big-deal low-cost intervention. If we're being entirely rational, it's correct that they don't cost anything. But they offer us extraordinarily marginal protection compared to vaccines so they're frankly not worth bothering with. I was 100% on board with mask mandates right up until May 2021 when everyone had access to the vaccines. I was fine with a national law and fines for non-compliance. But today, they're an unceasing visual and tactile reminder of the misery of the pandemic. Everytime you don't see someone's face, it puts you back in that unpleasant bunker mentality. They don't allow you to look forward and feel optimistic about our current national state, even though there's a lot to be optimistic about. I do not believe most people will feel like we've put the pandemic behind us until we stop seeing (and wearing) masks everywhere we go. Especially on the faces of the President and Vice President.

It's interesting how behind the Democrats are on a lot of issues like this. Virtually everyone on the right and a supermajority of independents agree, but the Democrats are in a dead heat, and that's only the general population. Amongst Democratic politicians (and even primary voters) I bet that their numbers look more like an inverse of the independents.

The left has a similar delusion with cancel culture, where the popular opinion is plain for all to see, but Democrats simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge it.

You're probably right, but do we really have to treat the phrase "cancel culture" like an appropriate combination of words for adult political culture? It's a real pet peeve. We have a word from zoomer slang (cancel) and threw culture on the end (which isn't correct word choice) and now have boomer pundits uncritically repeating it ad nauseum. The whole thing feels surreal.

[Sol]

There's not a future where we don't have rolling covid epidemics, variants, etc. for the rest of our lives. Things will get better of course but it's a slow path down. In all likelihood, every single person on the planet will get covid or a descendant, possibly about once a year. The costs of this will be reduced by excellent treatments, the amazing MRNA vaccine technology we have now, and by increasing rates of immunity, but just like the common cold, there's evidence that this immunity will fade or be evaded in ways that won't stop ever-present transmission. But covid will never go away and will probably notch a nasty cost, much like influenza.

Realistically then, how can we calibrate our response to the covid pandemic? The promise of restrictions, social distancing, and masks was that they would postpone the inevitable harm of covid, at first until it could be eradicated, and when that clearly became impossible, until the harm could be cut down to minimal level. The harm has been cut but it's fairly clear that covid has a permanent foothold in human and animal populations.

Then, there's really only two responses: either you are in favor of continuing these precautions indefinitely, to stave off what can be staved off (which is very little) or you acknowledge that we're in a new normal where many people will die of covid.

The former is very appealing, as denial often is--but it is denial. Many of these interventions are quite ineffective and have very poor compliance, and the one that does the most--social distancing--bears the most horrific cost and had astonishingly low rates of compliance even in the worst days of 2020.

The latter is much less appealing, because it shows that there has to be a grim reckoning of whether these precautions are worth the awful cost of delayed surgeries, major learning delays, and social isolation and the consequent mental health crises. There is a lot to be done to lower the cost that covid will exact on us--improving ventilation, encouraging work from home, mandating paid sick leave, and creating as many accommodations as possible to make it so that immuno-compromised people can keep themselves safe, including a comprehensive social safety net which can allow people to live well without having to work. We should also try paying people to get vaccinated, and that's something that we oughta shell out the big bucks for. But the unfortunate truth is that covid exists and will keep on killing and disabling people no matter what we do, and attempting to impose various draconian interventions with massive downsides with no clear end in site just immiserates people.

Ultimately, I understand where the restrictionists are coming from, but listen: you all aren't looking at reality. Covid is here forever, and every single person on the planet will get it again and again, plus most deers and minks and whatever. There's no staving this off. And frankly, in America the choice is lifting everything now or after the midterm elections, with additional policies designed to torment trans teenagers and destroy public schools. People are wrong when they say covid is over--covid is normal and will always be so, and recognizing that we can't live in a strange and damaging way to avoid something as fundamental to present conditions as sunlight and the wind is just recognizing reality.