COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[GeorgiaModerate]

German authorities classified the United States as “high risk” on Friday because of the rising number of cases there, affecting unvaccinated tourists who wish to travel to the European country.

After weeks of being able to visit Germany relatively easily, American tourists and other nonessential travelers will have to quarantine for 10 days, starting Sunday, if they cannot document full vaccination or immunity from a past infection. They can shorten their quarantine with a negative test on the fifth day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/world/europe/germany-us-high-risk-list.html

[Matty]

R(t) continues to fall off a cliff in nevada, Arkansas, and Missouri

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1426620738736381956

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Keep in mind though that some of the new shots are not actually new people at all though... some are people who already got vaccinated sneaking booster shots already despite them not being formally authorized yet, since you can see on the news that other countries already have started giving out booster shots, and in addition the USA is throwing away a bunch of unused doses anyway...

[GeorgiaModerate]

‘We cannot stretch anymore’: Hospital leaders on Mississippi Gulf Coast, a delta variant hotspot, share horror stories

Reading stories like this makes me want to weep.  This is such a completely avoidable tragedy.

[GeorgiaModerate]

An interesting story of a breakthrough case: Larry Brown, who has the distinction of being the only basketball coach to win championships in both the NBA and NCAA (that's professional and college basketball, for non-fans) contracted the Delta variant although he was fully vaccinated.  Brown is 80 years old, but recovered fully in 10-12 days.  This is a good example of the vaccine mitigating the effects of the virus on a person who would normally be at high risk due to his age.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2021/08/13/larry-brown-covid-delta-variant-memphis-basketball-assistant-coach/8131576002/

[LabourJersey]

Keep in mind though that some of the new shots are not actually new people at all though... some are people who already got vaccinated sneaking booster shots already despite them not being formally authorized yet, since you can see on the news that other countries already have started giving out booster shots, and in addition the USA is throwing away a bunch of unused doses anyway...

Is there any evidence for this, at all?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Keep in mind though that some of the new shots are not actually new people at all though... some are people who already got vaccinated sneaking booster shots already despite them not being formally authorized yet, since you can see on the news that other countries already have started giving out booster shots, and in addition the USA is throwing away a bunch of unused doses anyway...

Is there any evidence for this, at all?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/11-million-americans-are-believed-to-have-obtained-unauthorized-covid-19-vaccine-booster-shots/ar-AANaEGm

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lying-about-vaccination-status-crossing-state-lines-pretending-to-forget-id-some-people-are-going-to-intense-lengths-to-get-unauthorized-covid-booster-shots/ar-AAN1PxW

Also happening with kids who are under 12 and not yet formally approved by the FDA

https://www.wbrc.com/2021/08/15/parents-are-sneaking-underaged-children-vaccines-pediatricians-advise-against-it/

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Also happening with kids who are under 12 and not yet formally approved by the FDA

https://www.wbrc.com/2021/08/15/parents-are-sneaking-underaged-children-vaccines-pediatricians-advise-against-it/

Given that the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged the FDA to immediately approve the vaccine for younger children, I can’t fault any parent for wanting to vaccinate their child.  And doing so would in fact get us closer to herd immunity, so it’s really a win for everyone.

Nevertheless, the article quoted doesn’t actually include any evidence of anyone having done this.

[pbrower2a]

‘We cannot stretch anymore’: Hospital leaders on Mississippi Gulf Coast, a delta variant hotspot, share horror stories

Reading stories like this makes me want to weep.  This is such a completely avoidable tragedy.

Incompetent leadership!

Republican Governors of Ohio and Indiana both had shutdowns early... and may have saved huge numbers of lives by so doing. I may be a partisan hack, but pols who do right deserve to be re-elected if they seek re-election.

Nobody not intimately involved in medicine or public health had any idea that COVID-19 was on the way, but now we know what pols have met COVID-19 competently and which haven't. 

[Non Swing Voter]

155,000 cases today and 770 deaths, both peaks for this wave so far.

God…when are cases going to level off? Seems like a new record is set everyday.

I have seen some talk on Twitter that the positivity rate has been flattening this week, which can be a leading indicator that cases are about to peak.

Well if twitter says so then that conjecture could definitely be right.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1427306661346091009

[pbrower2a]

Anti-vaccination cranks are dying for their beliefs. They die for nothing.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1427377370273665027

[Meclazine for Israel]

You are most likely going to get COVID multiple times in the next decade.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/pfizer-moderna-astrazeneca-herd-immunity-delta-covid-evolution/100366038

"Over the next decade, [it's] likely we will be infected multiple times. [And it's] much, much better if [the first infection] is in a vaccinated state."

Vaccination is our only hope.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1427377370273665027

Who could have possibly predicted that things wouldn't go smoothly trying to open schools for in-person classes for a population of totally unvaccinated (at least for the under 12s), unmasked students (probably mostly all sitting in poorly ventilated indoor classrooms with no attempt to improve the ventilation, and eating together indoors in large communal cafeterias with hundreds of students at once, all at the same time) in the middle of a massive surge of a new variant that is ~2x or so as contagious as the previous Alpha variant, and while local hospitals, along with basically other hospital in the state as well as in nearby states have run out of ICU beds. After all, we have reports from other countries like India and the UK that the Delta variant seemed to be more infectious, and also that children seemed to be getting more often infected, leading to the logical conclusion that the same thing couldn't possibly happen in America, because American children are different from Indian children and British children, since American children are American, whereas those other children "over there" are not.

Since nobody could have possibly foreseen the possibility of large numbers of students getting infected with the highly contagious delta variant (and then spreading it to their family members when they go home) under such conditions, I guess it was totally impossible to deal with this pro-actively and make any sort of contingency plans for what would happen next in the unexpected event that this transpired. So instead of being pro-active in response to a disaster that nobody could have foreseen, it is a good thing that we can be re-active, and moreover have those reactions be constrained by gubernatorial fiat to rule out some of the reactions that would be more likely to have a mitigating effect.

As people, it is gratifying to know that we belong to such a wise, prudent, and farsighted species. 10/10 would lemming-cliff-jump again.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

You are most likely going to get COVID multiple times in the next decade.

Yep, this is a very important point. The thing which we should be concerned about is that right now, we don't know what the effects of being infected a large number of times are.

We know that you have, for example, a certain percentage chance of dying from getting COVID one time based off of demographics.

However, suppose that you have one moderate case that requires hospitalization and a bit of oxygen, but not ventilation and is not life threatening. In that case, what happens if you get infected a second time? Is your risk of a more serious case and death higher than it would have been if you were not infected previously? It seems plausible that could be the case.

Or, what if you get COVID once, and you are basically asymptomatic or lightly symptomatic, but... it turns out on the cellular level, you have some lung scarring as a result (this sort of thing has been found repeatedly, e.g. https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/06/12/covid-19-survivors-even-with-mild-symptoms-could-see-lifelong-lung-complications-san-antonio-doctor-says/). So what happens the second time you are infected after that? If your lungs are not in as good a shape the second time going in, does your chance of death increase? And what if you suffer further lung damage, or other effects from being infected the second time? Does that then increase your chance of death when, two years later, you get infected for the third time?

More so than any real risk of getting infected once, that is what I am concerned about. We simply do not know the cumulative effects over time. And because we don't yet know, it would be wise to be careful until we know more.

Because of this massive delta wave, we probably will start knowing more about that soon. Over time there are going to be more and more people who were infected in the earlier waves who will start being re-infected with the Delta variant. Scientists will be looking at how they react to re-infection, and will start being able to do studies with enough re-infections to start drawing some inferences. Hopefully the inferences will be encouraging.

[Roll Roons]

I'm not necessarily defending them. But I am wondering exactly what DeSantis and Abbott could have done. It's no longer feasible to do lockdowns, and I feel like there's only so much you can do to convince people to take vaccines. Beyond a certain point, you can't fix stupid.

[soundchaser]

Not fight cities and counties trying to implement mask mandates recommended by the CDC, for one thing.

[DaleCooper]

I'm not necessarily defending them. But I am wondering exactly what DeSantis and Abbott could have done. It's no longer feasible to do lockdowns, and I feel like there's only so much you can do to convince people to take vaccines. Beyond a certain point, you can't fix stupid.

At this point the only thing I can think of that might have worked is some kind of government promise to lift the social distancing restrictions once a certain percentage of a county had received the vaccine. That gives incentive while also allowing for some hope as far as normalcy goes. Of course, one of the most important things these Republicans could've done was excise all of the anti-vaccine conspiracy mongering from their party.

Not fight cities and counties trying to implement mask mandates recommended by the CDC, for one thing.

This is so beyond irrelevant at this point that I struggle to understand why people are still bringing it up. We're done with the masks. The only people who will even consider wearing them are a small handful of health-nut conspiracy theorists who think Big Pharma tainted the vaccine, or people that are already vaccinated and at extremely low risk. Any breath wasted on mask mandates rather than figuring out how to increase the number of vaccinated Americans is nothing but a distraction now.

[compucomp]

Not fight cities and counties trying to implement mask mandates recommended by the CDC, for one thing.

This is so beyond irrelevant at this point that I struggle to understand why people are still bringing it up. We're done with the masks. The only people who will even consider wearing them are a small handful of health-nut conspiracy theorists who think Big Pharma tainted the vaccine, or people that are already vaccinated and at extremely low risk. Any breath wasted on mask mandates rather than figuring out how to increase the number of vaccinated Americans is nothing but a distraction now.

People on this forum keep saying this but it's just in total contradiction to all the polling we see on this issue. 58% of adults plan to wear masks "always" or "most of the time" in public indoor spaces, and 69% support mask mandates (Source). It's not just this poll either, several other polls report similar results.

It's pretty clear now that vaccines alone are not enough to stop Delta from spreading out of control; breakthrough cases are not rare and such people could spread the virus just as much as unvaccinated infected. Vaccine mandates are great and I'm glad they're gaining traction, but we need mask mandates and vaccine mandates to control Delta, or whatever variant later takes its place which is guaranteed to be even worse. We can only hope the two together can slow the spread enough so that we don't need to bring back social distancing which actually harms the economy.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

People on this forum keep saying this but it's just in total contradiction to all the polling we see on this issue. 58% of adults plan to wear masks "always" or "most of the time" in public indoor spaces

Then why aren't they? Every time I go to Kroger, it's about 10%.

[DaleCooper]

Not fight cities and counties trying to implement mask mandates recommended by the CDC, for one thing.

This is so beyond irrelevant at this point that I struggle to understand why people are still bringing it up. We're done with the masks. The only people who will even consider wearing them are a small handful of health-nut conspiracy theorists who think Big Pharma tainted the vaccine, or people that are already vaccinated and at extremely low risk. Any breath wasted on mask mandates rather than figuring out how to increase the number of vaccinated Americans is nothing but a distraction now.

People on this forum keep saying this but it's just in total contradiction to all the polling we see on this issue. 58% of adults plan to wear masks "always" or "most of the time" in public indoor spaces, and 69% support mask mandates (Source). It's not just this poll either, several other polls report similar results.

It's pretty clear now that vaccines alone are not enough to stop Delta from spreading out of control; breakthrough cases are not rare and such people could spread the virus just as much as unvaccinated infected. Vaccine mandates are great and I'm glad they're gaining traction, but we need mask mandates and vaccine mandates to control Delta, or whatever variant later takes its place which is guaranteed to be even worse. We can only hope the two together can slow the spread enough so that we don't need to bring back social distancing which actually harms the economy.

I'm very skeptical of that polling. Maybe it's accurate and this is just yet another example of America's cultural divide, but I can tell you right now that nowhere near 58% of adults in Nebraska plan on wearing masks always or most of the time, not even in Lincoln or Omaha. It's vaccines or bust as far as combatting this virus goes. Sorry to be blunt, but it's how I feel and the evidence seems to back me up. The vaccines work and everything else is just settling for less.

[compucomp]

Not fight cities and counties trying to implement mask mandates recommended by the CDC, for one thing.

This is so beyond irrelevant at this point that I struggle to understand why people are still bringing it up. We're done with the masks. The only people who will even consider wearing them are a small handful of health-nut conspiracy theorists who think Big Pharma tainted the vaccine, or people that are already vaccinated and at extremely low risk. Any breath wasted on mask mandates rather than figuring out how to increase the number of vaccinated Americans is nothing but a distraction now.

People on this forum keep saying this but it's just in total contradiction to all the polling we see on this issue. 58% of adults plan to wear masks "always" or "most of the time" in public indoor spaces, and 69% support mask mandates (Source). It's not just this poll either, several other polls report similar results.

It's pretty clear now that vaccines alone are not enough to stop Delta from spreading out of control; breakthrough cases are not rare and such people could spread the virus just as much as unvaccinated infected. Vaccine mandates are great and I'm glad they're gaining traction, but we need mask mandates and vaccine mandates to control Delta, or whatever variant later takes its place which is guaranteed to be even worse. We can only hope the two together can slow the spread enough so that we don't need to bring back social distancing which actually harms the economy.

I'm very skeptical of that polling. Maybe it's accurate and this is just yet another example of America's cultural divide, but I can tell you right now that nowhere near 58% of adults in Nebraska plan on wearing masks always or most of the time, not even in Lincoln or Omaha. It's vaccines or bust as far as combatting this virus goes. Sorry to be blunt, but it's how I feel and the evidence seems to back me up. The vaccines work and everything else is just settling for less.

I said mask mandates and vaccine mandates, both in combination. Now that vaccine mandates are gaining traction and becoming more acceptable I'm happy to advocate for them too.

I think the most likely explanation is that people who will wear masks will also go out in public less often; for example I'm sure there is still something like 10-15% of the population that stays home all the time and gets everything delivered. So you're less likely to see them and disproportionately see the people who don't wear masks because they also go out in public more often.

[compucomp]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/us/vaccination-booster-shots.html

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has decided that most Americans should get a coronavirus booster shot eight months after they completed their initial vaccination, and could begin offering the extra shots as early as mid-September, according to two administration officials familiar with the discussions.

Officials are planning to announce the administration’s decision as early as this week. Their goal is to let Americans know now that they will need additional protection against the Delta variant that is causing surging caseloads across the nation.

The first boosters are likely to go to nursing home residents and health care workers, followed by other older people who were near the front of the line when vaccinations began late last year. Officials envision giving people the same vaccine they originally received.