COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Pericles]

Greg Abbott issues executive order banning vaccine mandates for private businesses

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/11/texas-greg-abbott-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/

Not sure that he actually has the ability to do this, but nonetheless, what a POS.

Give this God-forsaken hellhole of a state independence and be done with it.

Within a few elections they could be the ones saving the rest of America from this kind of stupidity though.

Been hearing it for years. Heard the same story about Florida too, and we see how that went.

It wasn't credible in 2011 but it is now. Going from Romney +16% to Trump +9% and then Trump +6% is a clear trend and it's also clear that Democrats have a lot of room to grow, they're not going to exhaust that growth anytime soon.

[Pericles]

Which vaccine is the best overall (of course there are different ways to judge it)? In New Zealand we could only get Pfizer, though I'd have been happy to get any.

[Pericles]

I'm not getting a booster either for a long while so I'm going to be bloody furious if you people hoarding boosters means we get a variant even worse than Delta.

[Pericles]

How many counties have 90%+ of the eligible population vaccinated? Do any?

[Pericles]

https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1453370544733229057

I wonder if they had other measures like a vaccine requirement to get in.

[Pericles]

Has any thought been given to how the US could respond if the virus in the next pandemic turns out to be as contagious as Delta? So firstly, extrapolating from this graph, at the peak of the current Delta wave, just simply taking the death rate from the unvaccinated population and applying it to the entire US population means the death toll would have been over 6,000 a day, double the actual peak. It's impossible to know how the wave would have gone in this hypothetical, but it's easy to see that with millions more vulnerable elderly people and no vaccines limiting the spread of the virus, the death toll would be even higher.


It is also clear from the Australian and NZ experience that lockdowns, even in a partially vaccinated population, do not stop Delta spreading but merely slow the growth of case numbers. This does not mean that lockdowns are useless, because if you went against Delta with no lockdown and no vaccine, inevitably the healthcare system would be overwhelmed very quickly. However, locking down for a year as a deliberate policy while you wait for the vaccines is unlikely to be acceptable in most countries and not in the US. So it's a very scary scenario and I don't have a good answer for it.

[Pericles]

Dems might soon realize that we are in month 20 of the pandemic and that for better or for worse the country is ready to or has moved on, dems cannot keep acting as if it’s March 2020

Dems aren't acting like its March 2020, they want people to get vaccinated so we don't see another hospital overflow.

GOPers on the other hand continues acting like there's no pandemic, and thus keep filling up hospitals to own the libs.

They should be clearer with this ambition, perhaps by weighing up new restriction against clear criteria of either high numbers hospitalised or rapidly rising hospitalisations, with only a bit of minimal consideration of case numbers in case they are growing exponentially. The unvaccinated will get infected eventually, unfortunately that means there are many tens of thousands probably still left to die. This does need to be spread out though-which is hard with the Delta variant-so that at least the unacceptable outcome of rationing healthcare, avoidable deaths and harms to non Covid patients doesn't happen. Plus, the vaccination rate could rise slightly and as time goes by the vaccinated may be more protected because of both boosters and better treatments, so that's another reason why if it's not too costly, flattened curves are still better than exponential ones.

[Pericles]

As I've said before, some people will wear masks in public permanently, and in some jurisdictions and contexts, mask mandates will be permanent.

Mandates shouldn’t be permanent. I would argue they are unnecessary in most of the US given our current numbers. If things change, my stance would change but for now I think it should be a personal and business decision.

Some 'contexts' makes sense, it should be a norm at least for a long time for people to mask up in hospitals, nursing homes, places like that. I'd accept that in certain settings where it wouldn't be that inconvenient but there is a high transmission risk, eg public transport or even just some flights, masking is also a good idea. People should be a bit more careful than they were in 2019, not just against Covid but against infectious diseases generally, eg it should be encouraged more to stay home when you're sick.

[Pericles]

The Netherlands has actually gone into a partial lockdown-with business closures but not the stay at home orders-and they have a higher vaccination rate than the US. While Australia's lockdown is over, New Zealand's largest city is still going with the lockdown-likely until November 29. So it's not an impossible response everywhere. At the moment, I don't see it happening in the US, and the states where the outbreak could get really bad are not going to impose any extra restrictions.

[Pericles]

Are the borders already closed to South Africa and the other risky African countries? The good thing about strong border requirements is that you can delay the arrival of the new variant and so plan for it. NZ for example knew how to respond to Delta because we were one of the last countries in the world to get it, and despite other errors in the response were able to prevent a large outbreak and keep most of the country Covid-free until we are now reaching our world-leading vaccination rates.

[Pericles]

The cost of doing nothing is so great that governments need to be going at least as far as they are now. If Omicron does turn out not to be more dangerous than Delta or even somehow less dangerous, that's great but it's better to take a precautionary approach and act to prevent the pessimistic scenario when our knowledge is so poor.

[Pericles]

Code:

The cost of doing nothing is so great that governments need to be going at least as far as they are now. If Omicron does turn out not to be more dangerous than Delta or even somehow less dangerous, that's great but it's better to take a precautionary approach and act to prevent the pessimistic scenario when our knowledge is so poor.

Really?  What are the costs of doing nothing, exactly?  And what are these effective measures governments need to take - more masks?  They've worked so well to stem the tide of Delta (not), I'm sure they'll be effective against a variant that is far, far more infectious.  Travel bans?  Its already in Europe, across multiple countries.  Its almost certainly already on every continent by now.  The last thing governments should do is ineffective, virtue signalling travel bans and NPIs just to make it look like they're "doing something" to their scared, sheep populaces.

Mass death and lockdowns obviously. The cost of preventing the pandemic at the very beginning, or keeping out later variants, is so much less than the cost that America has ultimately suffered.

[Pericles]

IF it is indeed true that omicron is a mild version of covid that is also very contagious, we need to actively encourage its spread. It would essentially be nature providing us with a free vaccine

Govts should “bomb” entire third world cities and regions with omicron droplets to get as many people infected to commence mass immunity

Or you could just administer the actual vaccine, idiot.

[Pericles]

IF it is indeed true that omicron is a mild version of covid that is also very contagious, we need to actively encourage its spread. It would essentially be nature providing us with a free vaccine

Govts should “bomb” entire third world cities and regions with omicron droplets to get as many people infected to commence mass immunity

Or you could just administer the actual vaccine, idiot.

Natural immunity is stronger and has far better "logistics" than any human-run program could. I mean, bombing other countries with viruses, no matter how benign, is completely absurd, but still.

No it isn't, at best it's similar but in no way is it safer than the vaccines.

[Pericles]

Masks on public transport would be one of the last things to go, that seems like a relatively easy thing to make permanent even. It's not even as bad as restrictions that make people wear a mask all day regularly.

[Pericles]

While political leaders should consider other factors like economics, they do need to be getting that independent, honest science/health-based perspective.

[Pericles]

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-africa-reports-rise-in-number-of-kids-hospitalized-with-covid-19-omicron-variant/2747608/

Is there any indication that the variant is more likely to make children severely ill, rather than more children being hospitalized because there are more infections (so the harm is all being caused by the increased transmissibility)?

[Pericles]

The vaccine efficacy data is certainly worrying. It now looks as if the Omicron wave could be severe, but either a new vaccine within a few months or enough triple-dosing offers hope. Therefore, it is wise to try and delay the spread with restrictions.

[Pericles]

We don't actually know that Omicron is mild enough or that it's potential mildness outweighs the increased spread especially if that is also driven by reduced vaccine efficacy. We can't rely on a few known cases from southern Africa.

[Pericles]

It seems pretty clear that Omicron is nothing to worry about, and is in fact a good thing if it can outcompete Delta. With three doses of Pfizer, the time to worry about COVID is over. Happy holidays, everyone!

How many people are triple dosed? Doesn't seem like the right time to just ignore the problem.

[Pericles]

We are going to be getting these new vaccines every six months or so, aren't we?  Instead of late next year like they originally anticipated, we could be looking at getting that fourth dose around late spring into early summer next year. 

That would be my guess but we'll see. I'm good with the doses if it means we can keep everything open. Hopefully the side effects will get better over time because my shots all sucked, a lot. Whereas the flu shot I recently had was almost nothing as far as side effects.

The booster was supposed to last for several years. I'm worried by the Omicron variant though, even if the booster gets vaccination back to its two dose effectiveness against the original variant, that doesn't assure me that a fourth vaccine won't be required in the next year.

[Pericles]

It's looking good that Omicron will be mild, but it's too early to know for sure, so caution is appropriate right now. NZ is lucky that our border reopening wasn't going to begin until mid January so we don't have to change anything yet and can use this month to see Omicron's real world effects.

[Pericles]

After all our arguing about mandates and restrictions, here's something that should unite us all in outrage:

Supply shortage of new antiviral drug threatens fight against omicron

Pfizer says it expects to have 180,000 courses of the treatment available by the end of 2021, with 30 million available globally in the first half of 2022, rising to 80 million by the end of next year.

But with about 120,000 new COVID-19 cases every day and rising just in the United States, the demand for the antiviral product is spiking sharply.

“It's kind of a drop in the bucket in the short term,” said David Boulware, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.

“There's definitely going to be a shortage,” he added. “People have this expectation of ‘Oh yeah, I'm just going to go get this Paxlovid.’ That's not going to happen [at least in the next few months].”

Experts said the initial authorization could be restricted to the most high-risk groups, like unvaccinated people and the immunocompromised.  

Unvaccinated people may be high risk but they are high risk by choice. They are a bunch of numbskulls who believe in bizarre conspiracy theories and Trumpists who think COVID is a Democratic hoax. It would be more fair to put them dead last on the triage priority list than to give them first priority for the Pfizer drug.

Don't be stupid. Unvaccinated people still have a right to have their health and lives protected, and  prioritising the most at-risk patients is logical to prevent the healthcare system being overwhelmed for everyone. The latter is the reason people are mad at the unvaccinated in the first place, if it just affected their personal level of protection then the vaccinated could get on with their lives. The most important point though is that people should not effectively be punished with severe illness or death for what is still a personal choice. It really is as simple as saving those who are most at risk first, no ifs or buts.

[Pericles]

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1473065319769862145?s=20

Very good news.

Hopefully, but I'm worried it's like that late increase in deaths in the Delta wave. Deaths are a lagging indicator so we need more time to know for sure that Omicron is mild and can't overwhelm the healthcare system/cause mass death among the vaccinated. In the meantime, people should be responsible and take precautions by wearing masks and having a few less social contacts than normal.

[Pericles]

I got my booster today and then did a bunch of Christmas shopping in Madison.  I saw a pretty fair number of unmasked people in the stores despite a mask mandate being in effect.  From my experience, people at Madison stores have been pretty consistent with wearing masks when a mandate is in effect.  I’m guessing these stores and malls are currently getting a good number of shoppers from more rural, maskphobic areas as Christmas approaches. 

That's just silly it's really not hard to wear a mask while you're shopping. The people I sympathize with are the retail workers who have to wear them all day.