COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

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I see Slow Biden is finally delivering the COVID message he should've delivered at the start of the Delta wave.

He'd better be right on his gamble that the effect of Omicron will be more mild per case than before given a population mostly vaccinated or recovered. I think it has good odds of success, the data from Europe and SA support this conclusion. But if he's wrong, then very soon we'll soon see a repeat of India where hospitals are in meltdown, we're all begging for oxygen containers on Twitter and Facebook, and corpses start accumulating in the streets.

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Tbf OSR is probably one of those people who thinks a business having capacity limits is a lockdown (not saying I want capacity limits, but that he doesn’t know what a lockdown even is)

I almost am tempted to want another true lockdown (stay at home order) for a day just to get the “nO mOrE lOcKdOwN” crowd to realize how silly they are.

The stay at home orders in the US, honestly, fell far short of what the term "lockdown" should entail. There was no enforcement at all to actually keep people home, closure of nonessential businesses left open many exceptions for "life sustaining" or "essential" businesses, and private gathering restrictions were loosely enforced at best.

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The stay at home orders in the US, honestly, fell far short of what the term "lockdown" should entail. There was no enforcement at all to actually keep people home

What about all those people who went to jail in Ohio?

Citation needed

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The stay at home orders in the US, honestly, fell far short of what the term "lockdown" should entail. There was no enforcement at all to actually keep people home

What about all those people who went to jail in Ohio?

Citation needed

Back around March or April 2020, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran a list of people arrested in Hamilton County for being more than a few miles from home.

OK, I stand corrected. I'm not aware of such enforcement happening anywhere else in the country, not in NY or NJ nor PA where I was staying. As far as I could see it was on the honor system. I'm surprised to see this happen in OH and not a blue state but Mike DeWine  nowadays is not a typical Republican.

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The stay at home orders in the US, honestly, fell far short of what the term "lockdown" should entail. There was no enforcement at all to actually keep people home

What about all those people who went to jail in Ohio?

Citation needed

Back around March or April 2020, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran a list of people arrested in Hamilton County for being more than a few miles from home.

OK, I stand corrected. I'm not aware of such enforcement happening anywhere else in the country, not in NY or NJ nor PA where I was staying. As far as I could see it was on the honor system. I'm surprised to see this happen in OH and not a blue state but Mike DeWine  nowadays is not a typical Republican.

I was curious about Bandit's claim, since he didn't provide a link and it turns out that they were charging people who were committing crimes or overdoses during the curfew hours, so no, they weren't actively charging people for violating curfews

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/04/22/coronavirus-od-victims-charged-violating-stay-home-order/3003064001/

Yes, I found the same article, and it's not exactly police patrolling the streets questioning everyone about where they're going, but still it is the first example I have ever heard of someone being charged with violating shelter-in-place orders. This definitely counts as enforcement so I stand corrected.

Also I am aware of the Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn getting in trouble for holding huge gatherings in violation of the gathering restrictions, as well as some large indoor private parties held by "knuckleheads" (Phil Murphy's term) being broken up in NJ. That's what I meant by loosely enforced gathering restrictions; some high profile enforcement but not strict at all.

In any case this doesn't change the point of my post that the American "lockdown" was full of loopholes, exceptions, and loose enforcement, and really doesn't do the term justice. China, Australia, and NZ, what they do, now that's a lockdown.

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What exactly are "mild" symptoms?  Is it basically just anything short of being in the hospital?

Yes, mild symptoms have included anything which is not shortness of breath or low SpO2, which generally requires hospitalization, Link:

    Asymptomatic or Presymptomatic Infection: Individuals who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 using a virologic test (i.e., a nucleic acid amplification test [NAAT] or an antigen test) but who have no symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19.
    Mild Illness: Individuals who have any of the various signs and symptoms of COVID-19 (e.g., fever, cough, sore throat, malaise, headache, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of taste and smell) but who do not have shortness of breath, dyspnea, or abnormal chest imaging.
    Moderate Illness: Individuals who show evidence of lower respiratory disease during clinical assessment or imaging and who have an oxygen saturation (SpO2) ≥94% on room air at sea level.
    Severe Illness: Individuals who have SpO2 <94% on room air at sea level, a ratio of arterial partial pressure of oxygen to fraction of inspired oxygen (PaO2/FiO2) <300 mm Hg, a respiratory rate >30 breaths/min, or lung infiltrates >50%.
    Critical Illness: Individuals who have respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction.

However, having said that, circumstantial evidence with Omicron seems to be that for many vaccinated people, mild symptoms really are "mild" by the usual human definition, i.e it is an annoying cold-like illness rather than a serious flu-like illness that puts you in bed. Also there is less reported loss of smell and taste. This is not scientific and obviously YMMV.

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Trump should really stop doing this. Has there ever been any issue on which he's been so out of touch with his own base?

Are you seriously criticizing Trump for this when after 4 years of mayhem and doing ridiculous sh*t seemingly out of spite, we finally see him publicly doing the right thing for once and promoting the vaccine? Honestly I don't even care if he takes credit for the vaccines if he can get some of his numbskull supporters to get it.

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To anyone who says this pandemic is nearly over, I'd encourage you to look at vaccination rates in places like Nigeria.

The issue in Africa is not lack of vaccine supply, it's lack of vaccine demand and poor infrastructure for delivering them. Multiple articles have come out about this, saying that 45% of the vaccines delivered to Africa have not been administered, SA asked vaccine companies to halt shipments, etc. This is a talking point that seriously needs to die.

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The above graphic is promising but I’d also urge caution until a few more weeks have passed so we can see a clear indication of fewer deaths.


Deaths lag.

Deaths lag by about two weeks. It has been four.

Cases are also rapidly declining in South Africa. We would have known if hospitals were overwhelmed and people were dying in the streets like India in April.

It's like people are deliberately avoiding good news.

I'm convinced there is a segment of society (not Trump virus necessarily) who preferred living in COVID mode. They actually enjoyed the isolation and staying at home, they want the "new normal" to continue forever. These are the types of people who are fine with eternal masking but won't get vaccinated or don't think the vaccines are effective. They are incredibly misanthropic, and a bigger threat than the Trumpers who won't vax or mask. At least the latter group is out of COVID mode

Only on this forum could someone make a serious post declarnig that responsible people, who want to keep themselves and people they care about safe from COVID-19, and whose greatest sin is minimizing their time in public, are a "bigger threat" than a bunch of numbskulls who willfully spread a deadly disease around and who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government. What, are you a restaurant owner salty about the people who cancelled their holiday party reservations?

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The above graphic is promising but I’d also urge caution until a few more weeks have passed so we can see a clear indication of fewer deaths.


Deaths lag.

Deaths lag by about two weeks. It has been four.

Cases are also rapidly declining in South Africa. We would have known if hospitals were overwhelmed and people were dying in the streets like India in April.

It's like people are deliberately avoiding good news.

I'm convinced there is a segment of society (not Trump virus necessarily) who preferred living in COVID mode. They actually enjoyed the isolation and staying at home, they want the "new normal" to continue forever. These are the types of people who are fine with eternal masking but won't get vaccinated or don't think the vaccines are effective. They are incredibly misanthropic, and a bigger threat than the Trumpers who won't vax or mask. At least the latter group is out of COVID mode

Only on this forum could someone make a serious post declarnig that responsible people, who want to keep themselves and people they care about safe from COVID-19, and whose greatest sin is minimizing their time in public, are a "bigger threat" than a bunch of numbskulls who willfully spread a deadly disease around and who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government. What, are you a restaurant owner salty about the people who cancelled their holiday party reservations?

Just go hook yourself up to the metaverse already. Leave the 99% of us who still value sharing pheremones and seeing faces alone.

I understand you don't care that you're playing Russian roulette repeatedly for the rest of your life, given that you're going to catch COVID-19 approximately once every 6-12 months if you don't bother to protect yourself. But the virus is ridiculously contagious and vaccines don't provide anything close to sterilizing immunity. Your rights end when they infringe on mine, and I have the right to safe public spaces just the same as you. You don't get to spread noxious fumes in public indoor spaces just because you couldn't be bothered to put on a 5c mask that doesn't interfere with anything you want to do.

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The above graphic is promising but I’d also urge caution until a few more weeks have passed so we can see a clear indication of fewer deaths.


Deaths lag.

Deaths lag by about two weeks. It has been four.

Cases are also rapidly declining in South Africa. We would have known if hospitals were overwhelmed and people were dying in the streets like India in April.

It's like people are deliberately avoiding good news.

I'm convinced there is a segment of society (not Trump virus necessarily) who preferred living in COVID mode. They actually enjoyed the isolation and staying at home, they want the "new normal" to continue forever. These are the types of people who are fine with eternal masking but won't get vaccinated or don't think the vaccines are effective. They are incredibly misanthropic, and a bigger threat than the Trumpers who won't vax or mask. At least the latter group is out of COVID mode

Only on this forum could someone make a serious post declarnig that responsible people, who want to keep themselves and people they care about safe from COVID-19, and whose greatest sin is minimizing their time in public, are a "bigger threat" than a bunch of numbskulls who willfully spread a deadly disease around and who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government. What, are you a restaurant owner salty about the people who cancelled their holiday party reservations?

Just go hook yourself up to the metaverse already. Leave the 99% of us who still value sharing pheremones and seeing faces alone.

I understand you don't care that you're playing Russian roulette repeatedly for the rest of your life, given that you're going to catch COVID-19 approximately once every 6-12 months if you don't bother to protect yourself. But the virus is ridiculously contagious and vaccines don't provide anything close to sterilizing immunity. Your rights end when they infringe on mine, and I have the right to safe public spaces just the same as you. You don't get to spread noxious fumes in public indoor spaces just because you couldn't be bothered to put on a 5c mask that doesn't interfere with anything you want to do.

I get colds 2 or 3 times a year. I get the flu every year or two. Omicron is a bad cold or mild flu especially for the vaccinated which I am. I will not shut down my life for a routine illness. Please never leave your house again.

You don't have the right to imprison me. I have the right to safe public indoor spaces free of noxious fumes, especially since this can be largely ensured if you put on a 5c mask which doesn't prevent you from doing anything. Smokers lost this argument decades ago and if the pandemic continues like it has, you will lose this argument too.

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I tested positive for covid via a home antigen test this morning.  I was feeling very fatigued yesterday (Dec 25), and has a rough fever and cough last night, but pretty much feel fine now except for some general congestion.

The weird thing about this is the context in which I apparently got it, which is most likely from my 2-year old daughter.  She could have been potentially exposed in several ways over the last week, since she was visiting a new day care room and attended a small christmas party with other kids.  And she became sick with a fever and cough 3 days ago (Dec. 23).

She seemed to be feeling better the next day (Dec 24), but I took her to a rapid care center to get a professional covid test anyway that morning.  And she tested negative. 

I’m not really surprised that I got covid eventually, and I’m not at all surprised that I got sick a few days after she got sick.  But it’s confusing to me how I got sick with covid from someone who tested negative for covid.

So one of the following things had to be true, each of which independently seems unlikely:
1.) My daughter had a false negative test, despite getting a high quality test from a medical professional
2.) I had a false positive test, despite clearly having covid symptoms
3.) My daughter was sick from an unrelated illness, and I got covid from an unrelated source, despite us both having very similar symptoms two days apart

Sorry to hear you've been infected. False positive rates for home COVID tests are rather low (source), unlike false negative rates. The typical home test also contains two tests so you could test again with the other one. I'd guess a false negative for your daughter is more likely.

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https://twitter.com/Craig_A_Spencer/status/1475325900766031874

This is not a scientific study but I am cautiously encouraged by what Dr. Spencer is saying in this thread.  Previously a "mild case" of COVID could mean a weeklong miserable slog with fever, malaise, body aches and long term symptoms like loss of smell and taste, reduced lung function, brain fog. In my opinion this is not mild at all and thus I have expended considerable personal effort to avoid COVID. However, if COVID can truly be reduced to the severity of the common cold, then I wouldn't be concerned with it and it can be downgraded as a public health threat.

However, I'd say it's not so encouraging that we may need boosters to reach this outcome; recent studies indicate that we may need boosters every 3 months. This vaccine definitely has side effects and there is a limit to how often I'm willing to tolerate it. Also it's impossible to keep the whole population boosted in perpetuity so hospitals will likely experience surges and capacity issues and have to increase permanent capacity. Also medical personnel have started to quit already due to the strain of treating COVID patients, and to keep them in their jobs hospitals will probably have to pay them more. Ultimately this will ultimately raise medical costs for everyone.

I think this is a "median" type scenario for how COVID-19 becomes endemic, and honestly it's pretty mediocre. Containment measures will fade away and activity levels will go back to 2019 but society is decidedly worse than it was before.

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CDC has updated their guidance - no quarantine needed if boosted and exposed; 5 days of isolation instead of 10 if you get a test.

It's more complicated than this.

ISOLATION

The isolation rules are for people who are infected. They are the same for people who are unvaccinated, partly vaccinated, fully vaccinated or boosted.

They say:

—The clock starts the day you test positive.

—An infected person should go into isolations for five days, instead of the previously recommended 10.

—At the end of five days, if you have no symptoms, you can return to normal activities but must wear a mask everywhere — even at home around others — for at least five more days.

—If you still have symptoms after isolating for five days, stay home until you feel better and then start your five days of wearing a mask at all times.

QUARANTINE

The quarantine rules are for people who were in close contact with an infected person but not infected themselves.

For quarantine, the clock starts the day someone is alerted to they may have been exposed to the virus.

Previously, the CDC said people who were not fully vaccinated and who came in close contact with an infected person should stay home for at least 10 days.

Now the agency is saying only people who got booster shots can skip quarantine if they wear masks in all settings for at least 10 days.

That’s a change. Previously, people who were fully vaccinated — which the CDC has defined as having two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — could be exempt from quarantine.

Now, people who got their initial shots but not boosters are in the same situation as those who are partly vaccinated or are not vaccinated at all: They can stop quarantine after five days if they wear masks in all settings for five days afterward.

Good luck enforcing all this, particularly the parts with the mask-wearing. If we're going to use this then we need indoor mask mandates for sure.

Edit: I think this is a mistake in terms of public health. Yes I understand that the economy and society may grind to a halt with disastrous consequences if everyone has to quarantine at the same time. But just like the May mask guidance that led to mask mandates being rescinded, they made a public health decision for non-health reasons and then covered their asses with impractical and unenforceable fine print. They should have advocated that indoor mask mandates be brought back everywhere as a bare minimum measure of enforcement.

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Good to see we're being more rational about this than in some places. Based on the available evidence omicron actually does clear your system faster in around five days. Amazing how some of the loudest voices saying "follow the science" are turning on the CDC now that they've told them something they don't want to hear. Ultimately the CDC knows way more about this than you (and yes, that includes Fauci) and you trust them or you don't.

My comment saying more or less this got removed within a minute on reddit's COVID sub for being a "political post" but the hundreds of "OMG capitalism" comments are apparently not political and not being removed.

And you trusted the public health agencies last year in February when their failed testing indicated there was zero COVID in the USA? You trusted them last March when they told you not to buy masks and that COVID is not airborne?

Seriously, there is just too much smoke here. The CEO of Delta goes on TV and says the quarantine should be reduced to 5 days, voila, the CDC reduces it to five days, and pulls out without citation "scientific results" out of their back pocket, possibly out of their ass, that perfectly justifies it. It's not possible to draw any proper scientific conclusions about Omicron since we have known about it for just a month and Omicron cases are not even properly separated from Delta cases to do proper analysis. If they had an ironclad evidence beforehand, why didn't they reduce the quarantine before during a quiet period like May when they disastrously rescinded their mask guidance?

Just because Trump is not the president anymore, doesn't mean that the government is now incapable of manipulating data to justify a predetermined conclusion. I'm not even sure this conclusion is that bad; with how fast Omicron is spreading we could have been headed for huge supply chain and other societal disruptions. But the CDC should be honest like Fauci and say this change was made to keep the economy running, full stop, and stop pretending the new guidance will keep us safe.

This does not seem to have been very well handled at all. Part of the problem is that if this is going to be enforced, the eating establishments need to enforce it. Having the cops go in and ask for vax papers, and then if the patrons don't have them, they need to drop their half eaten burger on the plate and go into the paddy wagon (without paying the bill?), is well, nutter. Myself I assume that eating inside a restaurant is a risky scheme, period. This display is not going to change that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV3YUHGrxJ4

I'm sure this is missing context about why these people were arrested, as physical confrontation was probably involved, but in any case, I'm pleasantly surprised and glad that public health mandates are actually being enforced with force.

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Also, there has been plenty of evidence that the CDC and other public health agencies have not been exemplary sources of science and knowledge during this pandemic, and here's another one, today the CDC revised its estimate of Omicron prevalence for 12/18 from 73.2% to 22.5%. Gee, that's a just a simple rounding error, huh? A tiny mistake? Incorrectly write down a decimal point or something?

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Also, there has been plenty of evidence that the CDC and other public health agencies have not been exemplary sources of science and knowledge during this pandemic, and here's another one, today the CDC revised its estimate of Omicron prevalence for 12/18 from 73.2% to 22.5%. Gee, that's a just a simple rounding error, huh? A tiny mistake? Incorrectly write down a decimal point or something?

What institutions do you trust on these matters?

I don't think any institution in particular can be 100% trusted as they have to answer to their financial backers or in the case of government agencies have leaders who serve at the pleasure of elected officials. I'm not saying they're all totally unreliable, but their actions and words should be taken with some salt and it is fair to scrutinize them when there is a clear connection between the action and their backers' motives. I think peer reviewed scientific publications are the best we have in terms of delivering unvarnished scientific truth, given that it's hard to buy off or intimidate the whole scientific consensus, and I would give the CDC more credit if they showed their work and published it.

In the particular case of the CDC, they're done quite a bit to lose my trust, from misleading/false statements such as the guidance to not buy masks or Redfield being a Trump lackey, and also on the scientific front such their failure at testing for COVID in February 2020 or this comically inaccurate Omicron projection.

Honestly, I have sympathy for the view that since Omicron is mild and ridiculously contagious, we need to lower the quarantine so things keep running. I can put on 10 masks to go the grocery store but if there's nothing on the shelf I'm still SOL. I think Fauci got the messaging right this time. But I don't like being manipulated and misled, and the sudden change with not well-known science suddenly revealed makes me suspicious.

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I think it's time for the United States to abandon its "zero COVID" approach.

The US never, at any point, had a "zero COVID" approach, particularly because most of the serious measures were on the honor system and not well enforced at all.

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Hospitalizations in NJ are at 3604 today (source) and quickly rising. The peak last winter was 3800. Omicron may be less severe than Delta but now we are seeing that since it is ridiculously contagious, the sheer number of infected people can still cause a large number of hospitalizations. This forum should have treated this possibility more seriously instead of dismissing Omicron as the common cold.

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Hospitalizations in NJ are at 3604 today (source) and quickly rising. The peak last winter was 3800. Omicron may be less severe than Delta but now we are seeing that since it is ridiculously contagious, the sheer number of infected people can still cause a large number of hospitalizations. This forum should have treated this possibility more seriously instead of dismissing Omicron as the common cold.

So what, then, should “this forum” do about the unvaccinated people now clogging the hospitals? For most of us, Omicron *is* the common cold, if even that. It’s not reasonable to ask us to grind our lives to a halt at this point if the crisis isn’t going to be managed from the top.

This forum could avoid being rabidly anti-containment, screaming and pushing back harshly against any phantom or ghost that vaguely resembles a COVID restriction. I wouldn't be surprised if some of you even called or wrote your elected officials demanding that no restrictions be enacted come hell or high water. I suspect that this has moved the needle from the perspective of Democratic decision makers; they think that not only have they lost all Republican-leaners, but they are also losing a key constituency of supporters, young politically engaged liberals, over the COVID measures. Now, if hospitals overflow and people die needlessly in the Omicron wave, Democrats and Joe Biden will be blamed for not doing enough, and young liberals like the ones on this forum could very well have been the tipping point that caused them to make the wrong decision.

It's really too bad the opposing force, elderly people who fear for their lives, are busy hiding in their homes and not nearly as likely to yell online, get on CNN, or badger their elected officials.

Also, how many people are being hospitalized for COVID as opposed to going to the hospital for something else and happening to test positive?

I'm using the same data source for both numbers, the official NJ COVID page, so I'm comparing apples to apples.

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It's really too bad the opposing force, elderly people who fear for their lives, are busy hiding in their homes and not nearly as likely to yell online, get on CNN, or badger their elected officials.

This is certainly a novel perspective on the relative political influence of different generations. Politicians are notorious for neglecting the concerns of elderly people who vote every cycle — a group that never badgers elected officials — in order to curry favor with young people, who are engaged and reliable voters.

Yes, you are correct in general on young people vs old people in terms of political participation. However this forum is full of politically engaged young liberals. I would assume that many people on this forum donate their time and money to the Democratic party and write/call their elected officials. If they are now loudly denouncing COVID restrictions, and this is representative of the "young liberal" activist group, then Democratic decision makers could think that they're losing a key group of support and move in the direction of no restrictions.

Joe Biden made allusions to this when he said that he knew that restrictions and mandates are unpopular. This is despite ample polling showing mask mandates and vaccine mandates have the support of a majority of Americans, sometimes even 60-70%. I think what is happening is that the loud opposition consists of Republicans and younger Democrats, making decision makers think that they don't have majority support for restrictions, when there is a substantial population of elderly people who have basically disappeared from society because they're staying home as much as possible and their support for the mandates is not registering in the public eye.

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/experts-warn-omicron-blizzard-disrupt-us-next-month-2021-12-30/

"We are going to see the number of cases in this country rise so dramatically, we are going to have a hard time keeping everyday life operating," Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told MSNBC.

"The next month is going to be a viral blizzard," he said. "All of society is going to be pressured by this."

One of the main reasons NPI's are instituted in the first place is to keep society running and people supplied with necessities. If the quarantines themselves are threatening this then there is a strong case for the quarantine period to be rolled back no matter what the science says. I am still skeptical about the CDC's stated "science" but as Fauci said, we need to get people back on the job.

Incidentally I'm going to make a big break here from r/coronavirus. They have been consistently pro-containment but now they have revealed the real reason for that, they are young people who hate working and think the pandemic is a ticket to indefinite government-paid vacation, missing the point of why "work" is a societal necessity in the first place. Note the highest upvoted posts now essentially say "WAAAA WHY DO I HAVE TO GO TO WORK?!!?!?!?!??! DAMN CAPITALISM!!!!!1111!!!"

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Previous rules of virus are 'out the window'

The latest surge, which has sent case numbers exploding across the globe, is fueled by the Omicron variant, the most contagious coronavirus strain yet, health experts say.

The virus is now "extraordinarily contagious" and previous mitigation measures that used to help now may not be as helpful, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN on Friday.

"At the beginning of this pandemic... we all were taught, you have a significant exposure if you're within six feet of somebody and you're in contact with them for more than 15 minutes. All these rules are out the window," Reiner said. "This is a hyper-contagious virus."

Now, even a quick, transient encounter can lead to an infection, Reiner added, including if someone's mask is loose, or a person quickly pulls their mask down, or an individual enters an elevator in which someone else has just coughed.

"This is how you can contract this virus," Reiner said.

I'm sure all the anti-restriction people on this forum want this information suppressed, like Trump would. If this were widely known, a substantial portion of the population would lock themselves down, and then large parts of the hospitality industry would likely close due to suddenly being unprofitable, all of this with zero intervention by the government. This would be totally unacceptable to these people who demand their hospitality options open at all times come hell or high water.

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Previous rules of virus are 'out the window'

The latest surge, which has sent case numbers exploding across the globe, is fueled by the Omicron variant, the most contagious coronavirus strain yet, health experts say.

The virus is now "extraordinarily contagious" and previous mitigation measures that used to help now may not be as helpful, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN on Friday.

"At the beginning of this pandemic... we all were taught, you have a significant exposure if you're within six feet of somebody and you're in contact with them for more than 15 minutes. All these rules are out the window," Reiner said. "This is a hyper-contagious virus."

Now, even a quick, transient encounter can lead to an infection, Reiner added, including if someone's mask is loose, or a person quickly pulls their mask down, or an individual enters an elevator in which someone else has just coughed.

"This is how you can contract this virus," Reiner said.

I'm sure all the anti-restriction people on this forum want this information suppressed, like Trump would. If this were widely known, a substantial portion of the population would lock themselves down, and then large parts of the hospitality industry would likely close due to suddenly being unprofitable, all of this with zero intervention by the government. This would be totally unacceptable to these people who demand their hospitality options open at all times come hell or high water.

Quite the opposite: I expect this news is what will finally make people throw their hands up and say “enough, then.”

That’s where I’m at. Short of completely shutting down your life, there’s literally nothing you can do to avoid infection. People used to talk about “layers of protection” like they were slices of Swiss cheese: The holes in one slice would be covered by the areas in the next slice that didn’t have any. We’re at the point where that’s total BS though, because entire slices are one big hole. So why layer on with a mask and distancing and hand sanitizer and glass partitions when they don’t matter? You get this virus by walking past someone.

What I’m also getting at with the Swiss cheese nonsense is that I feel like health officials use that metaphor to justify the inconsistencies in their health orders. In BC, you can go to a hockey game with 9,000 people or to crowded Boxing Day events at the mall, but you can’t go to the gym. The virus is coming, the rules don’t make sense, and it’s becoming more and more clear that there’s nothing we can really do. The cost-benefit analysis should lead us to give up, at this point.

That's an argument to force the NHL (and NBA, NFL, etc) to play games without fans. But in just about every country, money talks, and sports leagues have a lot of that to throw around. I also disagree with your statement that the Swiss cheese/defense in depth argument is rendered useless and would argue Omicron means that we need to tighten and strengthen all of our defensive lines, not abandon them. That means, wearing higher grade masks, wearing them at all times indoors, etc.

Also to be fair, this is one doctor talking, without a scientific study. It will take months or years to verify what he said rigorously, even if it is believable due to how fast Omicron is spreading.

Time will tell how people adapt their behavior. This forum will surely give up on containment but I believe there is a substantial portion of the population that will go for stronger containment instead. I saw several articles in December about restaurants in NYC experiencing mass cancellations of reservations and expressing concern that they will not be profitable.

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Previous rules of virus are 'out the window'

The latest surge, which has sent case numbers exploding across the globe, is fueled by the Omicron variant, the most contagious coronavirus strain yet, health experts say.

The virus is now "extraordinarily contagious" and previous mitigation measures that used to help now may not be as helpful, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN on Friday.

"At the beginning of this pandemic... we all were taught, you have a significant exposure if you're within six feet of somebody and you're in contact with them for more than 15 minutes. All these rules are out the window," Reiner said. "This is a hyper-contagious virus."

Now, even a quick, transient encounter can lead to an infection, Reiner added, including if someone's mask is loose, or a person quickly pulls their mask down, or an individual enters an elevator in which someone else has just coughed.

"This is how you can contract this virus," Reiner said.

I'm sure all the anti-restriction people on this forum want this information suppressed, like Trump would. If this were widely known, a substantial portion of the population would lock themselves down, and then large parts of the hospitality industry would likely close due to suddenly being unprofitable, all of this with zero intervention by the government. This would be totally unacceptable to these people who demand their hospitality options open at all times come hell or high water.

I don't understand this post: the kind of people who would 'lock themselves down' are the kind of people who already know everything there is to know about the new variant anyway and would act accordingly.

Omicron Covid is one of the most infectious diseases known to humanity, rendering anything other than the most authoritarian, dystopian NPIs ineffectual. If anything, this means we need fewer restrictions, not more, since they will have nothing but the most vanishingly marginal impact on actual transmissibility and will only make people's lives more miserable with no meaningful change to the trajectory of the pandemic.

Unless you want people to be welded into their homes like in Wuhan there is no plausible level of social/economic restriction that will do anything to prevent everyone contracting Covid now. This is grounds for celebration, because it's extraordinarly mild compared to prior variants.

This will be over soon: the pandemic is transitioning from a medical phenomenon to a social/political one. If original Covid had been as mild as omicron and as transmissible we would never have heard of the phrase 'lockdown' because there would never have been any case for such a measure. The only reason we're even talking about public health restrictions now is because it's been normalised over the last two years.

I think you missed my point. I've long given up on government NPI's in the USA, aside from mask mandates, because they will not be put in place even if Omicron had the lethality of Ebola and corpses were piling up in the streets. I'm speaking of actions by cautious individuals in response to this news. I believe there is a substantial proportion of the population, who thought they were being mostly safe but if they were informed just how contagious Omicron is, would cancel that vacation, stop dining out, cancel that gathering they were going to hold, etc. This could then move the market and make hospitality unprofitable, forcing firms there to shut down, all of this with zero intervention by the government.

One could call this a "grassroots lockdown", and based on the posts on this forum, it would trigger people just as much as a government lockdown, which honestly undermines their "freedom" arguments since it would force hospitality firms to operate for their pleasure despite adverse market conditions.

Time will tell whether we see any effect like this, but I have seen several articles in December saying that restaurants in NYC were experiencing mass cancellations of reservations. My firm asked that we WFH for the first two weeks of January unless necessary and several of our competitors have done the same.