COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Del Tachi]

And another layer of stupidity from Missouri

https://www.ky3.com/2021/08/03/doctors-warn-not-take-drug-horses-sold-farm-home-stores-treat-covid-19/

People in rural Missouri are rushing out to buy a drug called ivermectin which is used to treat horses for worms and does nothing for Covid in humans.  Vaccine bad, random horse drug good.

OH MY GOD!
What the hell is that!

Ivermectin is prescribed for patients all the time.  It had multiple, FDA-approved, on-label uses in humans.  Using the paste form used for livestock from your local co-op is a bad idea, but it isn’t quite analogous to drinking antifreeze or something. 

[Del Tachi]

When is the Delta surge projected to level off?

I saw some recent projections saying it would level off right about now. "TheLawyerCraig" on Twitter might have posted some.

Robert Redfield is saying it’s very likely another variant, more dangerous than Delta, is coming this fall.

People who say things like this with such evidence-lacking certainty really do validate the claim some are making that people just want this go to on forever out of some apocalypse fetish.

Some people do want this to go on forever and have an apocalypse fetish (i.e., liberals.)

[Del Tachi]

Thank you America! There is an overwhelming mandate to start punishing the non-vaccinateds, and the government must act on it.
https://twitter.com/dataprogress/status/1428392292491173890?s=21

Data for Progress is a certified joke.

[Del Tachi]

Data for Progress is a certified joke.

Someone's triggered.

Data for Progress, by its own admission, is not a polling firm.  It's a "think tank for the future of progressivism."  Their business model is selling advocacy groups the polling results they want for their fundraising/communications strategies. 

[Del Tachi]

WSJ: EU Set to Recommend Halting Nonessential Travel From the U.S.

This is just embarrassing. They obviously have to do what's necessary to keep their people safe, so I don't fault them, but it's still humiliating for all the anti-vaxxers to be dragging us down. COVID is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back for US-EU relations.

The U.S. is more vaccinated than many EU countries. 

[Del Tachi]

The US death toll from Covid-19 just surpassed that of the 1918 flu pandemic

Despite all the scientific and medical advances of the past 103 years, the Covid-19 pandemic has now killed more Americans than the 1918 flu pandemic did.

More than 675,000 people in the United States have died from Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University. That surpasses the estimated US death toll from the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century.

"If you would have talked to me in 2019, I would have said I'd be surprised," said epidemiologist Stephen Kissler of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

"But if you talked to me in probably April or May 2020, I would say I would not be surprised we'd hit this point."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/health/us-covid-deaths-surpass-1918-pandemic/index.html

This is the official death toll from Covid -19 so far, the actual number are much higher as alot of them don't get counted

Population adjustment would suggest that far, far fewer Americans have died of COVID-19 than the Spanish flu. 

[Del Tachi]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Globalbiosec/status/1448841367103234051

I am surprised the table is symmetric given that I have always been told that regular cloth/surgical masks do not protect the wearer, they only stop the wearer from infecting others. (That's why they stop/slow down transmission, but wearing a mask won't mean you don't get infected)

The table is symmetric because it's only an arithmetic transformation of the CDC's 15-minute "time to infectious dose" threshold for contact tracing (an assumption that has no scientific basis, btw) calculated from estimates of leakage obtained from a study where different types of mask material were fitted to mannequins in a lab, lol.  If you actually read the CIDRAP post imbedded in the tweet it's quite plain in stating that public masking offers no measurable benefit in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and should be considered, at best, a tertiary method of controlling the pandemic.

The whole write-up by CIDRAP is a good read if you actually want to understand the science/politics of masking policies (i.e., not any red avatars in this thread lol) 

[Del Tachi]

If a person is vaccinated in a different county from where they live, which county is it counted under?

I would assume the one where they were vaccinated, but that's an interesting question.

All COVID statistics - new infections, deaths, vaccinations, etc. are reported based on the record's permanent address.  This is consistent across states and Federal reporting to omit any possible double-counting.  The conspiracy theory that Florida was systematically undercounting COVID infections/deaths originated from the observation that the state was (correctly) not counting snowbirds and non-residents in their totals. 

[Del Tachi]

If a person is vaccinated in a different county from where they live, which county is it counted under?

I would assume the one where they were vaccinated, but that's an interesting question.

All COVID statistics - new infections, deaths, vaccinations, etc. are reported based on the record's permanent address.  This is consistent across states and Federal reporting to omit any possible double-counting.  The conspiracy theory that Florida was systematically undercounting COVID infections/deaths originated from the observation that the state was (correctly) not counting snowbirds and non-residents in their totals. 

If people leave their havens of vaccination and public health safety, and venture to Florida, get COVID in Florida, and then return home, why shouldn't that count as a COVID case for Florida?  You could literally have a lockdown bubble with extremely stringent public health measure, but if your residents can still go down to Florida and get infected, then your state will still have higher COVID numbers than it deserves solely due to Florida's insanity.

First of all, if you can leave your "haven of vaccination and public health safety" and travel to Florida then are you really living in the miserable-sounding "lockdown bubble" you suggest?  Your idea of what makes an effective lockdown seems to be colored by nothing more than sheer masochism, lol

Secondly, you don't count non-resident statistics because it is very difficult to do as a matter of practicality.  Americans do not have to register or report when they travel out-of-state.  Public health bureaus are rightfully more interested in the demographic characteristics of who's getting vaccinated (i.e., where they live) rather than what state they are lining-up in to get the jab.  Those are two good reasons before we even get into the data integrity issues surrounding possible double-counting   

[Del Tachi]

It’s not quite a lockdown, but most of the fast food restaurants in my area still have never reopened for in-person dining.

Some of them are open around here, but a lot of them are still closed.

Is there any government policy, federal, state, or local, which is forcing these restaurants to stay closed? I'm not aware of any such policy in the NY/NJ area for at least the past 6 months. Or is it the choice of the restaurants themselves? If it's the latter, why are you blaming the government, or Joe Biden, or the Democrats?

In Georgia, no restaurants are required to have their dining rooms closed.  Most are open, but there are a few fast food places that are still doing drive-through only.  This may be more due to difficulty finding enough staff than out of concern for COVID.

I also encountered a hybrid model at a Steak N Shake up in Fort Oglethorpe (NW corner of Georgia) a couple months ago.  Their dining room was open, but they no longer had table service.  Instead, you placed your order at the counter and they called you when it was ready to pick up, packed in to-go bags like a drive-through order.  Every second table was closed off to create social distancing.  There were bins of silverware, napkins, condiments, etc. from which you served yourself.

I have also noticed it's become more common in my area for full-service restaurants that used to be open all day to now close for a couple of hours between the lunch and dinner shifts (2:00p to 5:00p), presumably for staffing reasons. 

[Del Tachi]

Omicron might as well be the common cold, which is what COVID-19 was always going to mutate into anyway

[Del Tachi]

If his VP were not the person that is in fact VP, but someone in whom one can repose some confidence in the person's temperament and competence, the better option would be for Biden to resign actually. So no, no, and hell no. In fact, I would prefer Dr. Fauci as POTUS at the moment. I mean that.

Your idea isn't as crazy as it sounds actually, but only because Fauci already thinks he's a president of sorts lol