COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Fauci’s guidance, however, is also irresponsible, and I would expect more from him and the CDC.

If we want people to be vaccinated, we need to remove the recommended restrictions for vaccinated people.  The refusal to do so really does make it -appear- like public health officials have little confidence in the vaccines, despite all the evidence that they are stupendously effective.

He's playing it safe. He also knows the way many people in this country have been acting.

The CDC has already said it's fine for people that are vaccinated to congregate with others that are also vaccinated. I don't see the issue there. As for in public, everyone has to abide by the same regulations or the whole system breaks down. Wearing a mask and staying socially distant while at the grocery store is one of the easiest things you can do. If you're arguing for exemptions for those that are vaccinated, how exactly do you keep track of that? There's already a mass hysteria on the right over things like vaccine passports (because it's apparently necessary to keep a COVID vaccine top secret?).

We should absolutely have different rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated people.  Why should the lifestyles of responsible people be held hostage to the whims of anti-vax conspiracy theorists?

And I don’t understand the whole “how do you keep track that?” argument.
You need a license to drive a car.  How do we keep track of that?  I drive my car almost every day, and I often go years without anyone asking if have a license to drive it.  And yet, almost everyone on the road abides by the requirement to have a driver’s license.

No one makes an argument like “Well, some people aren’t safe drivers, and even if we require a test for safe driving, we won’t be able to tell the safe drivers from the unsafe ones while they're on the road, so therefore no one should be allowed to drive!”

How would it be any different with a vaccine card?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Fauci’s guidance, however, is also irresponsible, and I would expect more from him and the CDC.

If we want people to be vaccinated, we need to remove the recommended restrictions for vaccinated people.  The refusal to do so really does make it -appear- like public health officials have little confidence in the vaccines, despite all the evidence that they are stupendously effective.

He's playing it safe. He also knows the way many people in this country have been acting.

The CDC has already said it's fine for people that are vaccinated to congregate with others that are also vaccinated. I don't see the issue there. As for in public, everyone has to abide by the same regulations or the whole system breaks down. Wearing a mask and staying socially distant while at the grocery store is one of the easiest things you can do. If you're arguing for exemptions for those that are vaccinated, how exactly do you keep track of that? There's already a mass hysteria on the right over things like vaccine passports (because it's apparently necessary to keep a COVID vaccine top secret?).

I agree, it is very easy to do. Yet we've got folks in here practically saying "f*** the masks, I don't have to wear them anymore if I'm vaccinated".

Wearing a mask is generally only an inconvenience, but we still can't go to concerts or sporting events or pools or even many restaurants.  Why shouldn't these things be able to open up for vaccinated customers?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

First Poll:

https://twitter.com/benwakana46/status/1382436908689657867?s=20

I guess I’m glad to see this, but the Neil Malhotra critique is important to consider.  This poll basically just breaks down the same way all polls about confidence in the vaccines did even before this.  It’s pretty likely almost no one’s mind was changed.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Has anyone seen an explanation for how Gibraltar has apparently vaccinated 105% of their total population?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

New Hampshire becomes the 24th state without a mask mandate, effective tomorrow.

Actually, if Louisiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia were to repeal theirs, it would kind of look like a passable election map.  New Hampshire voting to the right of Ohio and North Carolina would be a little odd, but it would be in the theoretical range of possibilities.

New Hampshire leads the nation in vaccination rate right now, and by a pretty decent margin.  So this seems pretty justified to me.

I wish more states would explicitly link the lifting of restrictions to vaccination rates (e.g. mask mandate will be lifted once 50% of adults are vaccinated).

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/ChadLivengood/status/1382138404977119233

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/michigans-governor-again-resists-imposing-new-restrictions-as-cases-keep-surging.html
Michigan’s governor again resists imposing new restrictions, as cases keep surging.

Michigan’s worst-in-the-nation coronavirus outbreak shows no signs of abating. Daily reports of new cases continue to climb. Hospitalizations are approaching peak levels. And deaths are rising, too.

But Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who unapologetically locked down her state last year, signaled again on Wednesday that she had no plans to impose new restrictions.

“Instead of mandating that we’re closing things down, we are encouraging people to do what we know works,” Ms. Whitmer said, stressing that a mask mandate and occupancy limits remained in place in the state. “It’s not the policy problem. It is a variant and compliance problem.”

Ms. Whitmer finds herself overseeing a rapidly escalating crisis with no easy solutions. Sixteen of the 17 metro areas with the highest recent case rates in the country are in her state, which has accounted for more than 10 percent of all U.S. cases reported in the last week.

Instead of ordering a new shutdown, Ms. Whitmer spent much of her news conference on Wednesday talking about the benefits of therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies, and urging people to be open to those treatments if they are given a Covid-19 diagnosis. She also pleaded with residents to wear masks and get vaccinated.

Imagine the outrage and the adjectives DeSantis would face, if it was him.

How many of those 4,011 covid patients were vaccinated?

I'm also curious how many are children.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It’s good to see cases dropping for a full week now, but I’m perplexed by the fact that the drop in daily deaths seems to have stalled out.

What are the demographics of the people still dying of covid?  The elderly are like 80% vaccinated now.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If the prices and mask requirement are the same in both zones, wouldn’t everyone prefer to sit in the socially-distanced zone?  What exactly is the advantage of the Vax Zone?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Interesting but unsurprising:

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1397609331810619397

It’s hard to believe that 54% of Trump voters are fully vaccinated when only 50% of all US adults are actually fully vaccinated.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1404498489183137794?s=20

If the American public is so soft that they can’t handle staying at home six-eight weeks (at most) while still having places to communication via the internet, that is just pathetic.
Clearly we deserve what is coming to us.

And that still doesn’t account for lack of social distancing afterwards and lack of mask wearing. Cut the bulls**t.

Why would staying at home for “six-eight weeks (at most)” have accomplished anything in the long term?  This is what they did in most of Europe did, and many of those countries experienced much worse surges than we ever did once they opened back up again.

Nate has easily been one of the most reasonable public voices on these issues throughout the whole pandemic.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

What exactly is the alternative strategy that would have saved more lives? A bunch of maga masks?

Voluntarily deliberate infection & quarantine.

Or at the very least massive vaccine challenge trials.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Maybe we're finally ready to puncture the conspiracy of silence surrounding how this happened and stop blaming ordinary Americans who struggled with demands that they put their lives on hold for a year.

I don't understand what one of these things has to do with the other.  Should we have taken different preventative measures had we known it was a lab leak?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

What we could do is very very easy: implement a national vaccine mandate.

It is absurd that we put up with economic shutdowns for months and a mask mandate for over a year, but we are unwilling to mandate something that will literally just inconvenience people for a few hours but solve the problem completely.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Delta variant is more likely to put a young adult in the hospital, though the chances are still small. If you're vaccinated your chances of that are still very small. This is just what I'm hearing from the doctors on TV.

Uhh....
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1407033868914499585

This information about the Delta variant makes me start favoring the reimplementation of preventative lockdowns.

These stats make no sense to me.  They appear to be showing that the overall CFR of the delta variant is only about 0.1%.   That alone seems very unlikely to me, not to mention several other weird anomalies in this table.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The Delta variant has to be taken seriously. It's not just the UK, in Israel which leads the world in vaccinations they are seeing clusters around schools developing among the unvaccinated and it is in turn infecting people who have been fully vaccinated. All countries should step up their vaccine efforts and continue tracking/monitoring and lockdowns in breakout areas.

I think the Biden administration should try to implement a mandatory one year lockdown on all non essential businesses and implement a permanent mask mandate. That will bring case numbers down to about 50 per day and prevent more serious variants from developing at least in the US.

Respectfully: no part of this suggestion would work.

It will keep case numbers down and allow the vaccine manufacturers time to develop a better COVID vaccine that can neutralize any potential variants that develop.

The vaccines we already have in the US are easily strong enough to fight off any variants we have seen thus far.  Everyone just needs to get them.   A vaccine mandate would be far more effective and far less intrusive than anything you are suggesting.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

What we could do is very very easy: implement a national vaccine mandate.

It is absurd that we put up with economic shutdowns for months and a mask mandate for over a year, but we are unwilling to mandate something that will literally just inconvenience people for a few hours but solve the problem completely.

I would be all for a nationwide vaccine mandate, but at least judging by its rulings on other cases regarding COVID restrictions, the Supreme Court would strike down a vaccine mandate in a 5-4 ruling.

Not only would it not be in line with SCOTUS rulings, merely trying to implement it would be a shot in the arm (unintentional pun hahaha) to anti-vax movements and harm the vaccination efforts.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that vaccine mandates are constitutional.
I would agree that this would have to come from congressional legislation and not a mere executive order to be assured of SC approval.

And how would a vaccine mandate harm vaccination efforts?  It's not like mask mandates led to fewer people wearing masks.  A lot of people were only wearing them because they had to, and took them off as soon as mandates were lifted.  I'm pretty sure the same thing would happen for most vaccine hesitant people.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Read the article. As seems to be par for the course, the headline doesn’t give the full picture.

I was thinking the same. Doesn't Israel have one of the highest vaccination rates of any country? To me this still indicates that the rate of vaccinated people, while higher than we'd like, is still a lot lower than the headline seems to want to imply.

The article said 57% of the Israeli population had been vaccinated.  I'm surprised it's this low.  I recall Israel hit 50% back in February, and it seems like they have basically stopped vaccinated ever since then.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Obviously a mask mandate is much less onerous than any sort of shutdown.  But wearing a mask every day is still much more onerous and much less effective than just getting vaccinated.  So reimplementing a mask mandate before we implement a vaccine mandate would be inexcusable.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Obviously a mask mandate is much less onerous than any sort of shutdown.  But wearing a mask every day is still much more onerous and much less effective than just getting vaccinated.  So reimplementing a mask mandate before we implement a vaccine mandate would be inexcusable.

A vaccine mandate would be struck down 5-4 on the Supreme Court, would likely include exemptions, and would serve as a literal shot in the arm to the anti vaxxer movement. On the other hand, a National mask mandate would be much easier to enforce and would be deemed as Constitutional.

People keep saying a vaccine mandate would be struck down without any sort of evidence.  There are plenty of vaccine mandates in place now and they’ve always been upheld when they have been tested.   And a mask mandate would not be easier to enforce because you have to keep enforcing it all the time everywhere.  You only need to get the vaccine twice.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

We don't need new mandates on masks, we need to be enforcing the mandates on masks that we already have. 

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If anyone is still vaccine hesitant, consider this:

https://twitter.com/StevenTDennis/status/1409955273465344004

It's a weird pattern that in most of the stats I've seen recently, vaccinated people account for a much higher % of covid deaths than covid cases.   Whereas during the first several months of the year, everything we heard about vaccines suggested they prevented deaths much more effectively than infection itself.  So what's going on here?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I remember after Biden's election victory that many on the online left thought he would come into office on January 20th and lockdown the entire country. Haha he has literally done the opposite.

Biden would have zero authority to lockdown the entire country and a vast majority of states would refuse to comply.

And we shall not become another Australia. Eventually, Australia will have to open up and have their entire population extremely vulnerable to covid as there is virtually no natural immunity down there.

Australia and NZ are going to be vaccinated too and end up avoiding massive loss of life, and actually avoid a lot of the economic impact too.

Australia seems like they’ve been a massive failure.  Why are they locking down yet again at the slightest sign of infections rather than actually trying to get vaccines?  They are way behind virtually ever other developed country in vaccination despite having the most draconian lockdown policies in the world.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Now that the US has way more vaccine supply and demand, is there any reason not to go ahead and get a third or fourth dose?  (Besides having to lie about already being vaccinated.)

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don't want to go back to lockdown either, but there are intermediate measures we can take. Mitigation is not a bad thing. I still fail to see how masks are some apparent massive violation of rights to some people. They are one of the most effective measures we have against this virus (and viruses and other pathogens in general) after vaccines.

The key here is “after vaccines”.  If masks are still less effective (and less convenient) than vaccines, we should not be implementing a mask mandate before we implement a vaccine mandate.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Would it have been possible for the US Congress to literally declare war on the coronavirus, so that people spreading false pro-virus propaganda could be charged with treason?