COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

[Horus]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

Cheering what on? I've never seen Bandit post anything anti vax so what's the problem?

[Calthrina950]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

Cheering what on? I've never seen Bandit post anything anti vax so what's the problem?

Bandit is an odd poster in many ways, but his concerns about the response to the pandemic have always seemed reasonable to me. And he has mentioned that he got vaccinated.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

Cheering what on? I've never seen Bandit post anything anti vax so what's the problem?

I'm not quite sure where you got the idea that I was accusing him of being anti vax...

Anyways, his daily reports of people flouting Covid restrictions is what is odd to me.

[Horus]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

Cheering what on? I've never seen Bandit post anything anti vax so what's the problem?

I'm not quite sure where you got the idea that I was accusing him of being anti vax...

I never said you were.. But you said he was "cheering this on." What exactly is he cheering on? Because if he's vaccinated and encouraging others to get vaccinated, he certainly isn't cheering for COVID...

[CEO Mindset]

Daily reminder that liberal "concerns" about the vaccines+Politicizing it back in 2020 are why the vaccination rate in the US is 15-20 points below what it would have been otherwise.

You can thank the liberal media, twitter bluechecks/social media "influencers" for Delta.

[emailking]

Covid-19 vaccine for 5 to 11-year-olds is safe and shows 'robust' antibody response, Pfizer says

In a highly anticipated announcement, Pfizer said on Monday a Phase 2/3 trial showed its Covid-19 vaccine was safe and generated a "robust" antibody response in children ages 5 to 11.

These are the first such results released for this age group for a US Covid-19 vaccine, and the data has not yet been peer-reviewed or published. Pfizer said it plans to submit to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization soon. FDA officials have said that once data is submitted, the agency could authorize a vaccine for younger children in a matter of weeks.

The trial included 2,268 participants ages 5 to 11 and used a two-dose regimen of the vaccine administered 21 days apart. This trial used a 10-microgram dose -- smaller than the 30-microgram dose that has been used for those 12 and older.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/health/pfizer-child-vaccine-data/index.html


US to ease travel restrictions on fully vaccinated foreign visitors

The United States plans to ease travel restrictions on all fully vaccinated foreign visitors starting in November, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Monday.

"Beginning in early November, foreign nationals flying to the United States will be required to be fully vaccinated -- fully vaccinated and they must show proof of vaccination prior to boarding a US-bound airplane," Zients told reporters, adding that the early November implementation timeline will give agencies and airlines "time to prepare."

The Financial Times was first to report the news.

The lifting of restrictions on travel to the United States will come as welcome news to thousands of foreign nationals with families in the United States who have been kept apart for almost the entire pandemic.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/biden-administration-international-travel-restrictions/index.html

[riceowl]

Daily reminder that liberal "concerns" about the vaccines+Politicizing it back in 2020 are why the vaccination rate in the US is 15-20 points below what it would have been otherwise.

You can thank the liberal media, twitter bluechecks/social media "influencers" for Delta.

Pretty depressing that the new reality seems to be "people don't like being told what to do, and if you tell them to do the right thing and then they don't do it, it's your fault."

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/09/10/nolte-howard-stern-proves-democrats-want-unvaccinated-trump-voters-dead/

[CEO Mindset]

Last century saw both "people being told to do "the right" thing" by "experts" along with resulting piles of corpses. Why tf would anyone sane or historically informed listen to "experts"?

[Inmate Trump]

Last century saw both "people being told to do "the right" thing" by "experts" along with resulting piles of corpses. Why tf would anyone sane or historically informed listen to "experts"?

What are you talking about

[Person Man]

Last century saw both "people being told to do "the right" thing" by "experts" along with resulting piles of corpses. Why tf would anyone sane or historically informed listen to "experts"?

What are you talking about

He’s going Godwin.

[CEO Mindset]

Last century saw both "people being told to do "the right" thing" by "experts" along with resulting piles of corpses. Why tf would anyone sane or historically informed listen to "experts"?

What are you talking about

He’s going Godwin.

I was talking about stalin and mao.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

A few weeks ago, I posted a ranking from a spreadsheet that estimates the percentage of people who are immune in every state, based on vaccination and case numbers found on websites. This is the latest ranking, which I just compiled:

New Mexico   87.64
Rhode Island   86.04
Arizona   84.85
Florida   84.55
New Jersey   84.11
New York   82.48
Massachusetts   82.28
Connecticut   81.97
Mississippi   81.91
Georgia   81.48
Nevada   81.24
California   80.89
Texas   80.87
Lousiana   80.25
Alabama   80.05
Delaware   79.61
Arkansas   79.50
Tennessee   78.74
District of Columbia   78.55
South Dakota   78.45
Oklahoma   77.98
Maryland   77.83
Illinois   77.53
Puerto Rico   77.44
South Carolina   77.02
Colorado   76.79
Kentucky   76.48
Pennsylvania   76.05
Kansas   75.75
North Dakota   75.27
Vermont   74.92
Maine   74.62
Virginia   74.51
Utah   74.26
Washington   74.21
North Carolina   74.06
Iowa   74.05
Wyoming   73.77
Wisconsin   73.30
Michigan   73.21
Minnesota   73.09
Nebraska   72.79
Indiana   72.39
Montana   72.25
New Hampshire   71.78
Oregon   70.77
West Virginia   70.18
Missouri   70.02
Idaho   69.98
Alaska   69.74
Ohio   69.17
Hawaii   67.98

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

Cheering what on? I've never seen Bandit post anything anti vax so what's the problem?

Bandit is an odd poster in many ways, but his concerns about the response to the pandemic have always seemed reasonable to me. And he has mentioned that he got vaccinated.

Yeah, some of his pre-vaccine comments were a bit much, but his post-vax attitude is very much in line with mine. We are not the problem anymore and I have no tolerance for pandemic responses that treat us as the problem.

He's more anti-mask than me, but mostly because...well, I just don't care that much about masks.

[Person Man]

A few weeks ago, I posted a ranking from a spreadsheet that estimates the percentage of people who are immune in every state, based on vaccination and case numbers found on websites. This is the latest ranking, which I just compiled:

New Mexico   87.64
Rhode Island   86.04
Arizona   84.85
Florida   84.55
New Jersey   84.11
New York   82.48
Massachusetts   82.28
Connecticut   81.97
Mississippi   81.91
Georgia   81.48
Nevada   81.24
California   80.89
Texas   80.87
Lousiana   80.25
Alabama   80.05
Delaware   79.61
Arkansas   79.50
Tennessee   78.74
District of Columbia   78.55
South Dakota   78.45
Oklahoma   77.98
Maryland   77.83
Illinois   77.53
Puerto Rico   77.44
South Carolina   77.02
Colorado   76.79
Kentucky   76.48
Pennsylvania   76.05
Kansas   75.75
North Dakota   75.27
Vermont   74.92
Maine   74.62
Virginia   74.51
Utah   74.26
Washington   74.21
North Carolina   74.06
Iowa   74.05
Wyoming   73.77
Wisconsin   73.30
Michigan   73.21
Minnesota   73.09
Nebraska   72.79
Indiana   72.39
Montana   72.25
New Hampshire   71.78
Oregon   70.77
West Virginia   70.18
Missouri   70.02
Idaho   69.98
Alaska   69.74
Ohio   69.17
Hawaii   67.98

It should be ending soon then right?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

It should be ending soon then right?

It almost has to. Some of the states with a higher number (such as Florida) seem to be dropping quite a bit.

[Dan the Roman]

It should be ending soon then right?

It almost has to. Some of the states with a higher number (such as Florida) seem to be dropping quite a bit.

We don't know length of natural immunity. Which is partially linked to horrible data collection on reinfection, which is not a conspiracy. The UK for instance does not consider 2nd infections to be distinct "cases".

We will know a lot more, sadly, in about a year.

1. How bad will things be in the Northeast this winter?
2. Will the SEC states have another, smaller, winter surge like last year? On top of this one.
3. Will the SEC states have a another one next summer and will it be bigger or smaller than this one?

[Person Man]

It should be ending soon then right?

It almost has to. Some of the states with a higher number (such as Florida) seem to be dropping quite a bit.

We don't know length of natural immunity. Which is partially linked to horrible data collection on reinfection, which is not a conspiracy. The UK for instance does not consider 2nd infections to be distinct "cases".

We will know a lot more, sadly, in about a year.

1. How bad will things be in the Northeast this winter?
2. Will the SEC states have another, smaller, winter surge like last year? On top of this one.
3. Will the SEC states have a another one next summer and will it be bigger or smaller than this one?

By “SEC” states, you mean the Bible Belt. If this thing is going to end, I’d expect it to be substantially weaker as we head into October and November. None of this crap about the news getting jammed with gender reveal parties turning into a scene at the ER after a 100 car pile up.

If this vaccine/herd immunity deal doesn’t work, that basically leaves us with Regeneron or something that’s going to be a slow motion Civilization Ender.

[Dan the Roman]

It should be ending soon then right?

It almost has to. Some of the states with a higher number (such as Florida) seem to be dropping quite a bit.

We don't know length of natural immunity. Which is partially linked to horrible data collection on reinfection, which is not a conspiracy. The UK for instance does not consider 2nd infections to be distinct "cases".

We will know a lot more, sadly, in about a year.

1. How bad will things be in the Northeast this winter?
2. Will the SEC states have another, smaller, winter surge like last year? On top of this one.
3. Will the SEC states have a another one next summer and will it be bigger or smaller than this one?

By “SEC” states, you mean the Bible Belt. If this thing is going to end, I’d expect it to be substantially weaker as we head into October and November. None of this crap about the news getting jammed with gender reveal parties turning into a scene at the ER after a 100 car pile up.

If this vaccine/herd immunity deal doesn’t work, that basically leaves us with Regeneron or something that’s going to be a slow motion Civilization Ender.

Vaccines are not a binary. They absolutely work. What they are not is magical forcefields. If you look at the UK they have had a fairly steady 30K cases a day, about 150K in US per capita terms, for four months now. But deaths are around a third as high.

If 90% took vaccines(instead of 76%) we can fully open up, drop most other restrictions and yes case numbers will wax and wane, and deaths will be a constant but they will be about 70% lower than at the moment.

The future is higher deaths, but bearable at least in the cities and suburbs with high uptake and decent health standards. Notice that even in the Deep South this wave passed Atlanta, Charleston, and New Orleans by.

The real dark spot will be rural America, which will have one more cause of death to add to the opiod epidemic, suicide, etc. Covid19 will hammer those communities relentlessly, and I fully expect many to lose 1.5% or more of 2020 population numbers to Covid19 by 2030.

My back of envelope math says about 800K more deaths by the 2024, elections but probably 700k of them unvaccinated and 90K of the vaccinated over 85. It will be two different American epidemics. And it won't destroy normal life because those who care will realize at some point vaccines protect pretty much everyone under age 80 w/o cormodibities. Perhaps with the need for a booster every 6-9 months but still.

[emailking]

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

[Bootes Void]

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

[All Along The Watchtower]

Interesting study from Cornell published in July:

Abstract:

This paper juxtaposes existing public policies and different planning paradigms with evidence from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City (NYC). Zip code tabulation area (ZCTA) data for NYC are used to address four main questions: (1) How do urban density and crowding affect infection rates? (2) How does the commuting environment relate to pandemic resilience? (3) How does the allocation of points of interest within a city impact the infection rate? (4) How do evident inequalities in a city influence vulnerability during a pandemic? The presented evidence is used to demonstrate that compact, well-mixed, and decentralized cities can increase pandemic resilience due to advantageous features such as short commute times and well-distributed points of interest. At the architectural level, more resilient apartment building typologies need to be developed to mitigate the ramifications of overcrowding. This analysis also reveals significant spatial disparities and how they disproportionally affect the pandemic risk of the vulnerable communities. These findings warrant a broader discussion on how urban design and planning can mitigate inequalities and transform cities into a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable urban environment.

A few excerpts:

The final MLR model in P3 shows the highest adjusted R2 value (0.646; p < 0.001), suggesting that the residential building density, building-level crowding, work commute time by public transit, reduced turnstile usage, and park area per capita could contribute at least 64.6% to the variation of the COVID-19 daily case rate during the NYC lockdown period.

Building-level crowding appears to be an unfavorable urban feature in almost all phases in the pandemic, probably because many residents sharing the confined circulation space and facilities in buildings (e.g. elevators and hallways) can facilitate disease transmissions. Room-level crowding also appears to seed the surge of the infection in vulnerable communities such as The Bronx according to the present case study. However, statistical evidence is needed in future studies for a more profound understanding about the effects of these crowding indicators and their potential interaction with other factors such as income and age (Ghosh et al. 2021).

Based on the presented evidence, it is proposed that a pandemic-resilient urban environment includes, notably, compact and mixed cities with decentralized urban activities, adequate affordable dwellings, resilient building typologies, good proximities between jobs and homes, restricted commute time, diverse mode choices, and balanced allocations of urban services and facilities in line with the residential density.

Link to the full study:
https://journal-buildingscities.org/articles/10.5334/bc.130/#B17

[Progressive Pessimist]

Daily reminder that liberal "concerns" about the vaccines+Politicizing it back in 2020 are why the vaccination rate in the US is 15-20 points below what it would have been otherwise.

You can thank the liberal media, twitter bluechecks/social media "influencers" for Delta.

Pretty depressing that the new reality seems to be "people don't like being told what to do, and if you tell them to do the right thing and then they don't do it, it's your fault."

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/09/10/nolte-howard-stern-proves-democrats-want-unvaccinated-trump-voters-dead/

Since spite is as necessary to their existence as food, oxygen, and water; in their mind it is our fault because we gave them a reason to spite us to the point of prioritizing it over their natural self-preservation instincts.

[cg41386]

They say that Covid won't be Eradicated completely even by 2024/ we will still be in masks and social distancing, this is our future

Nope.

COVID was probably never going to be completely eradicated, but nobody is putting up with this for that long. They barely do now.

I went to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati yesterday, and everyone was packed together with no masks. People even packed onto the streetcar with no masks, even though the streetcar claims to require them.

The fact that you're constantly cheering this on in this thread is a little odd. We get it, you're sick of COVID. Give it a rest.

Cheering what on? I've never seen Bandit post anything anti vax so what's the problem?

Bandit is an odd poster in many ways, but his concerns about the response to the pandemic have always seemed reasonable to me. And he has mentioned that he got vaccinated.

They've been anything but reasonable.

[cg41386]

snip

Forgive me, but I don't know how much I trust Florida's data.