COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Mike DeWine has tested negative for coronavirus in the more accurate tests:

https://twitter.com/GovMikeDeWine/status/1291548735772798977

May have been a false positive with the rapid tests.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The anti-vaccers comprise more than a third of our total population, and most of them are Republicans:

Poll: 35% of Americans, most Republicans would reject COVID-19 vaccine

More than one-third of U.S. adults and a majority of Republicans would not receive a free, government-approved COVID-19 vaccine if one was presently available, a Gallup survey showed Friday.

According to the poll, 35% of U.S. adults said they would not get the vaccine, compared to 65% who said they would. The share was the exact same 65/35 split among both men and women.

The age group that expressed the most skepticism about a vaccine were those between 50 and 64 years old (59%) -- and the group that was most accepting of a vaccine were between 18 and 29 (76%).

By race, the survey found that two-thirds of White Americans (67%) and 59% of non-Whites would take the vaccine, despite the virus more heavily affecting the Black and Latino communities.

As someone who is anti-restriction, I am deeply disturbed by the anti-vax undertones it has taken.  When there is a better way to get immunity, we should all take it.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

With Florida throwing its doors back open, how long will it take before we start noticing a spike in cases? About two weeks?

Not gonna happen. Guaranteed.

Tennessee also ended all remaining restrictions this week.  But, the thing in Tennessee (and probably Florida) is that there haven't been any significant restrictions in a while.  Large, maskless gatherings have been happening.  Restaurants have been bustling like there was no covid.  My church's attendance is almost back to pre-covid levels (and 99% don't wear masks).  Groups of friends will play sports with each other, inherently coming in contact with others.  People hug and shake hands when they see each other.  Other than my work (by national corporate policy) still being work-from-home, my life is basically back to where it was in February (and actually, I'm probably seeing more people due to prioritizing community more).  That's the same for most people I know.

So, these liftings of the handful of restrictions that still remain might get press, but people's behavior has long shown that covid is over (not in terms of virus spread, but in terms of people being willing to forego living normally) in large swaths of America.  In my bubble of young evangelicals in suburban Tennessee, you would never even know that there was a virus.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

With Florida throwing its doors back open, how long will it take before we start noticing a spike in cases? About two weeks?

Not gonna happen. Guaranteed.

Tennessee also ended all remaining restrictions this week.  But, the thing in Tennessee (and probably Florida) is that there haven't been any significant restrictions in a while.  Large, maskless gatherings have been happening.  Restaurants have been bustling like there was no covid.  My church's attendance is almost back to pre-covid levels (and 99% don't wear masks).  Groups of friends will play sports with each other, inherently coming in contact with others.  People hug and shake hands when they see each other.  Other than my work (by national corporate policy) still being work-from-home, my life is basically back to where it was in February (and actually, I'm probably seeing more people due to prioritizing community more).  That's the same for most people I know.

So, these liftings of the handful of restrictions that still remain might get press, but people's behavior has long shown that covid is over (not in terms of virus spread, but in terms of people being willing to forego living normally) in large swaths of America.  In my bubble of young evangelicals in suburban Tennessee, you would never even know that there was a virus.

One thing I've continued to notice-and which I've made note of-is that the numbers of maskless customers at my job have increased, and are increasing. The breakdown is probably closer to 75-25% at this point. I am starting to seriously doubt whether or not all of this can be sustained for another six or seven months. Yes, I'm aware of the deaths and illnesses attributable to this virus, but I've grown increasingly frustrated with the masks and all of the other dystopian restrictions which has been brought out because of the virus.

Grocery stores seem to be pretty much masked up (even though we have no mask mandate in my county), but it kind of feels like a front because grocery stores are really the only place people actually seem to be wearing them.  Although, I suppose you could make an argument that everyone has to eat, but by choosing to go to some other place, you are implicitly accepting the (small) increase in risk.

I've taken a step back from this thread because I find debating covid to be uniquely unproductive, but I was just wanting to say that people who don't want to be social distancing (which is probably most people in terms of actions, if not in stated poll responses) haven't been social distancing in months and that this isn't going to suddenly take a bunch of people from quarantine to normal life.  People have already divided into one camp or the other.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The WHO now estimates the IFR at just 0.13%.  Covid may be super contagious, but, in terms of severity of the illness, it literally is just the flu.

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1312180625412038656

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The WHO now estimates the IFR at just 0.13%.  Covid may be super contagious, but, in terms of severity of the illness, it literally is just the flu.

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1312180625412038656

This does seem to confirm what has been speculated for months-that far more people have contracted (and recovered) from the virus than official figures would suggest. And it is blatantly obvious by now that the virus most severely affects the elderly, obese, and those with pre-existing conditions. But I'm not sure if I'm willing to go so far and dismiss this virus as "just the flu." This is the most serious pandemic which has struck in decades, and more than 200,000 Americans have died from it-a number that also shouldn't be dismissed.

I agree that this is the worst pandemic in my lifetime (that's obvious), but that is almost wholly explained by covid being more contagious than the flu, not by it being an especially severe illness to those who get it.  Swine flu was also super contagious (maybe even moreso than covid), but it's now believed that it was as much as 10 times less deadly than the seasonal flu.  So, I think it's unfair of people on the right who try to compare covid to swine flu.  If anything, a severe flu season that happens to be caught by 2-3x as many people is the best comparsion.

An interesting comparison to me looks like 1957-58's "Asian Flu", which is estimated to have sickened 15-20% of the global population, but had a low fatality rate as well (listed as "<0.2%" on Wikipedia).  To my knowledge, that didn't cause major stops to society or modifications in how we live our lives.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Unless he's quoting a knowledgeable source directly, there is no reason to ever (ever) take Berenson's word on COVID seriously.

Also... does he think that in spite of missing hundreds of millions of cases, we managed to detect and count every single death?

That's a fair point, although I would add that it's a lot easier to miss mild or asymptomatic cases than it is to miss deaths, and there is the debate of what exactly is a covid death (which there isn't really a perfect answer for), so it's never going to be possible to get an exact IFR.  Maybe 0.2-0.25% is more fair, but there is some overcounting in addition to some undercounting.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The CDC is reducing the suggested quarantine time for those exposed to covid from 14 days to 7 days with a negative test or 10 days with no test, presumably trading off a slight increase in risk for higher compliance.  Other countries have already made similar moves.  I'll be honest; when I was potentially exposed in late October, I quarantined 11.5 days (plus a negative test) before resuming my normal life.  In fact, after almost 12 days and a negative test, I was more confident I didn't have it then than I am on any random day where I feel fine (note, I wasn't under a legal quarantine order, but was just trying to do the right thing).

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cdc-to-release-revised-guidance-reducing-covid-19-quarantine-time-from-14-days-to-7-10?fbclid=IwAR1p-k6JCLQhvuNCvH6pqjxrP2IirTwR04y6UFRBXs_JtTY05M9Xx70fN2c

[100% pro-life no matter what]

New Hampshire becomes the 24th state without a mask mandate, effective tomorrow.

Actually, if Louisiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia were to repeal theirs, it would kind of look like a passable election map.  New Hampshire voting to the right of Ohio and North Carolina would be a little odd, but it would be in the theoretical range of possibilities.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

A new study published earlier this week estimates that more than 900,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, nearly double the amount recorded by health officials and trackers.

Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, for example, has the coronavirus death toll in the US at around 581,000 people. A tracker from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a number within the same range, at about 577,000 deaths.

“We’ve been saying – and the CDC has been saying all along – that it is very likely that we’re undercounting,” Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/fauci-no-doubt-undercount-covid-19-death-toll-2021-5

Very bad news. In comparison the number of people who died from the flu in recent years ranged from 23,000 to 61,000 annually. And without containment measures it would have been even worse. So the idea that the pandemic was nothing was obviously wrong.

If this is true, that means coronavirus has killed more Americans than either the Civil War or the Spanish Flu did.

A study based on excess deaths needs to account for excess deaths created by our response to covid.  This will include very tangible mental health-related deaths, but also physical health ones due to things like delaying cancer screenings, and even less tangible things like older people just losing the will to live due to isolation.

And, even if you took that at face value, you would need to scale it to the population before comparing it to historical events.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I don't know what the exact recommendation will be, but I'm not going to start wearing a mask due to a virus I'm vaccinated against.  Tennessee has banned mask mandates, so there's no chance we will have a mandate here, anyway.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

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.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Cases are down 72% statewide and 77% here in Williamson County versus less than four weeks ago.  That means that cases are declining even faster than they rose in August (that same chunk of the rise took almost six weeks statewide and almost seven in WillCo).

I'm really thinking that we now might have herd immunity and expect that we'll be back in the early summer "virtually no covid" range in the next couple months.  Maybe we will get a little ripple in the winter, but I can't see another big wave happening.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

If the reports are true that Omicron is considerably milder than past strains, isn't this a good thing?  Don't we want it yo become the dominant strain?  Zero covid is never going to happen, but it will eventually likely be pretty harmless.

Though, unless it significantly evades natural immunity, I think much of the South will have a hard time spiking again, at least not to the extent of previous waves.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The WHO said the other day that there hasn't been a single recorded death from the Omicron variant.  If it turns out that this is just a cold, we need to stop treating it any differently from other colds (and that includes stopping testing and no longer encouraging those who have it to quarantine).

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The WHO said the other day that there hasn't been a single recorded death from the Omicron variant.  If it turns out that this is just a cold, we need to stop treating it any differently from other colds (and that includes stopping testing and no longer encouraging those who have it to quarantine).

I would agree with not requiring quarantine for Omicron as long as the data on the mildness of the variant holds up.  And we should certainly lift any Omicron-related travel restrictions.

But I'm not sure what you mean by "stopping testing" given that you can't know exactly which variant you have before you test, and much deadlier variants are still much more prevalent than Omicron.

If Omicron is as contagious as it is, it's likely it will outcompete Delta and bring it to extinction, just like Delta did with the original virus.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It's time to completely end quarantines and testing, but cutting it from 10 to 5 days for those who have it is a step in the right direction.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

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.

If the original covid had been omicron, I'm not even sure we ever would have heard of covid in the first place.  At most, there would have been a few people talking about a "spring cold" going around in 2020.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

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.

Why? That's just postponing the inevitable by a week or two. Every single person in the world is going to get omicron.

Your triple masking does nothing, omicron will come for you all the same.

You're entitled to your opinion. I believe there are many who believe otherwise, particularly if this doctor is right and his statement becomes widely known, enough to move the market. We'll see who is right.

However, if I'm right and the hospitality industry starts to contract simply due to market conditions, then if you're bashing "lockdowns", like many have already done on this forum, you've totally undermined your "pro-freedom" arguments and have shown that you're authoritarian in the other direction. You're demanding that the hospitality sector stay open for your pleasure, regardless of what Omicron does and what market conditions dictate.

People can believe whatever they'd like about the transmissibility of the omicron variant. The facts are, it will get all of us at some point in at most the next 60 days, probably less, if it hasn't already. Nothing I stated was an opinion.

And I'm not demanding anyone stay open. If a business wants to lose money and shut down, they have that right. Virtually none will.

No, it's your opinion. It's still possible to avoid being infected by avoiding all human contact and sanitizing everything. I don't believe Omicron has evolved to be Lysol resistant. Also getting a booster does help a bit to prevent infection. If one can't tolerate avoiding human contact, then one incurs risk of catching it. How much human contact you need and how much risk you want to incur, that's up to personal opinion.

If you're willing to stick to what you said about voluntary business shutdowns, then I will respect your opinion. But there are multiple active threads where people are whining about "lockdowns" which are really voluntary business shutdowns and that really is not a respectable opinion since their "pro-freedom" arguments turn into hypocrisy.

Do you do this?

No, not religiously, but I adjust my activities based on the perceived risk. Omicron might be ultra contagious but it's still true that if I expose myself less, then I have a lower chance to be infected. Right now the risk of being infected is very high so I restrict my social activities and mobility. That's my opinion on what I should do. Fine, you perceive the risk differently, so you have a different opinion and go about your life as if it were 2019. However there are clearly many people who think along the same lines as me since restaurants in NYC were reporting mass cancellations of reservations in December.

I really don’t mean to criticize you or your opinion, but when would you feel comfortable abandoning COVID NPIs such as masking and staying at home unless for essential activities?

I think the most realistic scenario to hope for is when science conclusively establishes that the severity of omicron is similar to the common cold for vaccinated people. Right now it looks like it could be true, or it might be somewhere between common cold and flu, we're not sure. What scares me most about breakthrough infections is not that I'll get hospitalized, but that I'll suffer a "mild case" where I am bedridden with fever, body aches, and chills and then suffer long term effects like loss of smell and taste, decreased lung function, brain fog, etc. This was common with breakthrough Delta infections, but if we can be sure breakthrough omicron is like the common cold and this kind of disease severity is rare, then it should cause far less concern.

Loss of smell and taste is not common with the Omicron variant.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It remains to be seen whether another variant will come after Omicron that is capable of causing a major wave, but I think two things are pretty clearly true at this point:

1. SARS-COV-2 is never going away
2. The disease that we came to know as COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 doesn't really exist anymore.  Each new variant seems to be milder than the previous one, and this one has a whole different set of symptoms than previous ones.

The combination of these two puts us in a situation where we have no end game.  As long as the virus keeps circulating, people will keep testing positive.  But, with these new variants (and I'd think the next one will be even milder than Omicron), the disease that the virus causes is less and less.  The biggest question is what the first country will be to finally say "people with covid are encouraged to live their lives if they feel up to it" and not endorse any precautions that would not have been taken for a cold in 2019.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

2 is false, every new variant has been deadlier than the previous ones until Omicron miraculously became milder. It should also never be a goal for people with Covid to live their lives if they feel up to it. People should stay home until they're not infectious whenever they're sick, not just with Covid, and the government should support people so they can do this. We should not think it is OK to infect others.

That's not how we treated any cold or flu for all of modern history up until this.  I don't want to live in some sort of bio-security state.

It remains to be seen whether another variant will come after Omicron that is capable of causing a major wave, but I think two things are pretty clearly true at this point:

1. SARS-COV-2 is never going away
2. The disease that we came to know as COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 doesn't really exist anymore.  Each new variant seems to be milder than the previous one, and this one has a whole different set of symptoms than previous ones.

The combination of these two puts us in a situation where we have no end game.  As long as the virus keeps circulating, people will keep testing positive.  But, with these new variants (and I'd think the next one will be even milder than Omicron), the disease that the virus causes is less and less.  The biggest question is what the first country will be to finally say "people with covid are encouraged to live their lives if they feel up to it" and not endorse any precautions that would not have been taken for a cold in 2019.

2 is false, every new variant has been deadlier than the previous ones until Omicron miraculously became milder. It should also never be a goal for people with Covid to live their lives if they feel up to it. People should stay home until they're not infectious whenever they're sick, not just with Covid, and the government should support people so they can do this. We should not think it is OK to infect others.

I'm going to aim this series of questions to both of you then. If we accept, on the one hand, that coronavirus is never going to go away, and on the other hand, that people should be cautious and more cognizant of their health going forward, then what is the "new normal" that should be devised? Should that "new normal", as some advocate, include rolling mask mandates? Vaccine mandates and vaccine passports? Quarantines? Some form of expanded virtual learning or work from home? Or should there be a reversion to the conditions of 2019, as much as possible, with perhaps more minor modifications? How much longer should we continue with life as it is now?

I support a full return to 2019 immediately, with no testing or quarantines.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I am confused as to how omicron is killing people while at the same time, not resulting in many people needing ventilators?

Wasn't everyone that was dying of covid dying because they literally could not breath?

If people are dying, but not due to their lungs failing, what are they dying from re: covid?

What is omicron's upper respiratory/sinus nature targeting that is killing people?

A mix of deaths with covid (not from covid) and some from the last Delta infections, as Delta was still circulating at a significant level until around New Year's, perhaps?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Tennessee's health commissioner said today that Omicron has peaked in the cities and will soon peak in the rural areas.  Judging from other places, that would mean that it could vanish by mid-February.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Last winter's peak in the U.S. was on Jan. 11. This winter's peak was on Jan. 13. But I'm sure it's different from state to state.

There being the significant difference that 2020-21's winter wave was elongated but less sharp, while 2021-22's will be very short-lived but very sharp.  In other words, cases in mid-December and (I hypothesize) mid-February were/will be much lower this winter than last, but the opposite is true in mid-January.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

According to covidestim.org, the Rt is now below 1 in every state except Tennessee. It's down to 0.29 in Utah, 0.31 in Rhode Island, and 0.4 or lower in a host of other states.

Tennessee only reports data once a week, so the data is pretty old at this point.  Would guess its past peak in TN as well.