COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[IAMCANADIAN]

https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1366846908480815106
Homie knows that he finna keep slipping in the karen burbs, and he tryna get the same valley swings like Trump among the mask hating mexicans to offset those losses. Purely political move.

Like srsly, I am pissed off rn, i see like 4 mexicans working in my next doors neighbors yard with 0 distance apart and no masks, those people hate masks, I am no longer surprised at all they swung like 30pts in the valley towards Trump

Nah. I think he's worried that the Biden Administration's COVID-19 response is going too well, so he and his fellow Republican governors have decided to kill a few hundred-thousand more of us to make Biden look bad.

Almost like Governors and state legislatures bear the brunt of responsibility for COVID spreading in the states, and the Trump killed ____ amount of people talking point was nonsense.

[IAMCANADIAN]

I think Texas and Mississippi were too quick to remove restrictions, but when is the right time to lift them? It seems like the virus won't be truly eradicated and we'll have to live with it like the flu.

Once enough people are vaccinated or at least everyone who wants to take a shot has been offered one. I don't know why people make such a big deal out of that. Wearing a mask while going into a store or wherever keeping a distance to strangers is not possible isn't that hard. Of course it's annoying to wear, but it helps save lives. And I'd much rather wear a mask than being on ICU or dead.

If masks are so effective in containing the spread of coronavirus, it should not be a big deal if mask mandates are allowed to expire.  You will still be able to go about wearing a mask, while continuing to take measures recommended by your health unit or the WHO.  Mask wearing isn't going to be banned.

I think most pro mask people are well aware that masks have minimal impact of controlling the spread of Coronavirus. They just need to make sure that everyone complies for the symbolic purpose of "showing that we care".

[IAMCANADIAN]

The "if yours works, why do I need one" argument has been debunked many times in this thread.

You can wear an industrial respirator which will make it virtually impossible to get Coronavirus through airborne transmission. Of course lazy leftiasts don't want to do that because they are very inconvenient to wear and they want to make everyone feel the pain with them.

[IAMCANADIAN]

Immunity from getting COVID lasts all of about three months, often less.

Yeah, this is definitely not true.

There's going to be a lot of variance in the length of immunity, and we don't yet know the average length of immunity. But the reason we don't know the average length of immunity is that we haven't hit it yet.  It's at least a year, and probably significantly longer.

If average immunity were only three months, we would literally be seeing tens of thousands of cases of reinfection worldwide every day.  Instead, there have been less than 100 total worldwide cases of confirmed reinfection across the entire course of the pandemic.

Reinfection rate isn't being tracked closely, and clearly you're paying zero attention to the spikes in new cases in NYC.

I think most pro mask people are well aware that masks have minimal impact of controlling the spread of Coronavirus. They just need to make sure that everyone complies for the symbolic purpose of "showing that we care".

Anybody with half a brain--including health experts--have stated over and over the purpose of wearing a mask is to stop the spread from people who are not aware they are infected, as it takes 7-10 days for symptoms to show up (and asymptomatic people are also contagious). If we had actual widespread use of masks, such as similar rates to what's required for herd immunity (and at all times while in public) you'd have a much lower rate of spread, and significantly fewer deaths--and you wouldn't have full ICUs.

There's a reason why Japan and South Korea have had roughly 3% of our infection rate and 0.6% of our fatality rate.

I live in Toronto where there are mask mandates indoors with about a 99% compliance rate. Our largest spike in cases was well after the mask mandate came into effect.