COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Torie]

Believe it or not I have never seen anyone indoors in my 75 mile range of travel or so not wearing a mask indoors, which is a requirement except in restaurants where you have to eat, and I don't eat inside at restaurants. If I did see someone mask-less in say a grocery store, I would snap at the perp, flee in the opposite direction,  and speak to the store manager and chew him or her out for not enforcing the must wear mask rule. Outside I very rarely wear a mask, and try to keep my distance from people. If I can't I turn away and face a wall, or if on a tight hiking trail with someone coming at me from the opposite direction, slip on the mask briefly. I certainly would not spend any time standing and/or talking  to someone less than say about 10 feet away, as opposed to just keep moving along. We now know very well what spreads the virus and what does not.

I hope to be near the head of the line in getting the vaccine when it comes out. I will let you know how that works out.

[Torie]

This article really depresses me. I think we need some policy shifts, and we need them sooner rather than later.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/565743-delta-variant-raises-fears-of-worsening-mutations

[Torie]

Yeah, participating in Bear Week this summer is not a main steam thing. I get it.

So I want to know what the odds are that the sum of the percentage of the vaccinated + those who got Covid and are still here = herd immunity before enough time has passed to make likely that a new horrible and much more deadly strain mutates out as to which the vaccines are not effective. And given those odds, what policy changes seem appropriate, e.g., you need a chip encoded vaccine passport that is very hard to forge, to get inside anywhere, and those who do not enforce that are shut down. This odds and the degree of the calamity, should drive the policy, no?

[Torie]

Fauci update on booster shots:

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/566526-fauci-booster-shots-for-immunocompromised-very-high-priority

[Torie]

Dan and I have decided to cancel our trip to Sturgis.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/566824-thousands-of-bikers-descend-on-sturgis-amid-delta-spread-fears

[Torie]

Even though he is gay and cute, I am not particularly fond of my local alderman in Hoboken (all hat, no cattle most of the time, whose MO is to cast aspersions on other people' motives when he probably is the prime suspect in that department), but he has come up with what I think is a good idea. Bars who agree to require Vax ID's to get in, get a waiver of their outdoor street and sidewalk seating municipal fees.

https://patch.com/new-jersey/hoboken/councilman-wants-incentives-bars-requiring-customer-vaccines?utm_term=article-slot-1&utm_source=newsletter-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

[Torie]

I've noticed that in the week since the employee mask mandate came back at my job, the numbers of customers wearing masks has increased again. It's probably up to around 35% or so now. Given how things have progressed, how likely is it that we will have a permanent minority of people wearing them going forward?

One hopes that at some point the covid family of variants "degrades" down to an ordinary form of flu or the common cold. I hate wearing masks and do it only because I consider it essential in certain settings, but it does degrade the quality of my life, and I certainly would stop when it is prudent to do so. I don't think very many are so risk averse that they would just keep doing it once the evidence is there that the virus no longer poses a serious health threat. That still leaves the question of when, and how long the wait is, which is a huge question, and the elephant in the room. On that one, I have no idea.

[Torie]

If you require proof of vaccination at a large public event, there will likely be breakthrough infection, but these should really be nothing to worry about, since all the data suggest that catchining covid if you are vaccinated is much less dangerous than the flu or any number of other viruses.   This is complete different than a public event that doesn’t require vaccination.

While the body count will/is far less, does it not still equally facilitate the mutation of new variants, including one that might as to which the existing vaccines are not effective? Just asking. I am not sure. The idea that one can contract the virus outside after 15 seconds of contact is sobering.

[Torie]

I just got a call from my contractor up in Hudson, NY. I am in Hoboken. A mason showed up to do some work on the lintels on a house that I am redoing that is well ventilated because it was gutted, and has some "holes" in it. Two days after, the mason and two of my contractor's workers got sick. All three who got sick had not been vaccinated, one with a very high morbidity risk, but thankfully, not sick enough yet to have to go to the hospital. My contractor and everyone else has now taken tests. Yes, my contractor was vaccinated. Delta is really, really contagious, even in very well ventilated settings. For the moment, work has stopped.

Below is the image of the "super-spreader" site.

[Torie]

All the sound and fury about individual "rights" and so forth aside, it seems obvious to me that the lesser evil is to have mask mandates with "teeth" in them as to enforcement and penalties, as opposed to locking down hospitals as to "elective" procedures, restaurants, bars, and so forth.

In that regard, Dan and I took the NYC subway the other day, where masks are mandated, and about 20% of the riders were not wearing masks (many of them looking like types who might well not be vaccinated), and to top it off, one muscled young man in a tank top fondling his girl friend, was smoking a joint. No enforcement personnel were anywhere to be seen. It scared the hell out of me. We will not be riding the MTA again anytime soon. While an inconvenience for us (for essential appointments we can use a car - far more expensive and less convenient but we are fortunate enough to be able to do that), for those who rely on the MTA to go to work, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, while the spread of the delta virus is facilitated. I really feel for such people, and am concerned about them.

I simply see myself no other alternative or reasonable choices here, that are anything other than outright cruel and reckless.

Am I missing something?

[Torie]

I just don't see how we will ever have another bad surge.

Delta basically infected most people who were unvaccinated.

90% of americans have either natural or vaccine antibodies.

I just don't see the math working out for another surge.

maybe a surge of breakthrough, mild cases.

I hope so, but I would be careful assuming this before we get through the winter.  Alaska currently has the worst outbreak in the country by almost a factor of 2 and it has Midwest in November/Northeast in December weather right now.  They are also only slightly below the national average in vaccination.

Have you read something that documents mass outbreaks among those who have had covid previously and/or been vaccinated? How many are left who have had neither? Does anyone know? I want the data and I want it now

[Torie]

Have you read something that documents mass outbreaks among those who have had covid previously and/or been vaccinated? How many are left who have had neither? Does anyone know? I want the data and I want it now

There have been some mass outbreaks among heavily vaccinated populations. Here is a study about an outbreak in a prison, which was ~80% vaccinated. Overall, 93% of unvaccinated prisoners were infected, and 70% of vaccinated prisoners. Moderna was more protective than Pfizer, but even with Moderna 54% got infected, whereas 85% of Pfizer vaccinated prisoners were infected.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7038e3.htm

So you can pretty clearly see the issue with waning immunity and reinfections from that.


Also... another thing I think probably a lot of people are not considering/understanding is that evolution of a new variant after Delta is not just a question of if the variant is vaccine resistant. It is also a question of whether it is DELTA ANTIBODY resistant. Different variants produce different antibodies upon infection, and someone who has been infected with Delta may be immune to re-infection with Delta specifically but not immune to re-infection with a different variant. Incidentally, that is part of the reason why we don't have a Delta-specific vaccine now and are still using the old vaccines, it is because if they made a Delta specific vaccine it would be less protective against other variants, since most other variants are more closely related to the original COVID strain than to Delta.

So, if hypothetically, the entire population were infected with Delta and became immune to that (and if that were permanent immunity), then what we would expect to probably happen would be for another variant that doesn't get defeated (or not as well/easily) by Delta antibodies to evolve. We should certainly worry about the possibility of vaccine resistant variants, but that is not the whole story, and we could have another wave hypothetically of some other variant through the unvaccinated population even if that other variant is not vaccine resistant at all.

Thank you. In scrolling the article, I don't see anything about how mild the symptoms were for the vaccinated.

I hope it is wrong that unless we send the unvaccinated to Devil's Island, this will go forever until covid degrades to an ordinary flu because it is best for a virus to not kill its host, but I suspect my hope is unrealistic. And because the unvaccinated are the hosts for new variants, one of which might be really bad news, I am basically a jack booted thug when it comes to the unvaccinated, and willing to take quite Draconian action, i.e., the way NYS is now firing unvaccinated health care workers. It's about time.

[Torie]

FDA authorizes Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccine boosters for all adults

The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized boosters of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for all adults, the companies said.

The agency expanded emergency use authorization for booster doses of both the mRNA vaccines beyond who was eligible previously; boosters had been authorized for anyone 65 and older who was vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines at least six months ago and for certain adults at high risk of infection or of severe disease.

Pfizer and BioNTech requested authorization last week based on results of a Phase 3 trial involving more than 10,000 participants; it found boosters were safe and had an efficacy of 95% against symptomatic Covid-19 compared with the two-dose vaccine schedule in the period when the highly transmissible Delta was the dominant strain. Pfizer released the booster efficacy data last month; it has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.

Moderna requested authorization of its 50-microgram booster dose for all adults on Wednesday.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/health/covid-vaccine-boosters-fda-cdc/

If you didn't get a booster because you were healthy in a low risk job and under 65, well now you can!

This is great news. Boosters for all should have been the decision from the beginning. This is especially true now looking at the ongoing train wreck in Europe, where countries are seeing record cases and full hospitals despite high vaccination rates. I think that waning immunity is definitely playing a part in that, especially of Pfizer as Moderna is nonexistent over there, and the same could be a problem in the US too since the general population got their vaccines in April and May so now would be when the effectiveness starts to wane.

Yes, when I get booster 2 this coming February, I am going to switch over to Moderna. Pfizer seems to be an inferior product as to efficacy. And now "the science" suggests that you get more protection with the switchover.

[Torie]

Well, it now seems that break through cases are are killing with ruthless efficiency. 28% of the the hospital admissions are break through cases in Michigan, as are 24% of the deaths. So now, the issue is whether I need to cancel our thanksgiving plans. One of the celebrants has not had a booster shot, and I don't know how long it has been since she had her jabs.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/22/covid-surge-winter-523109

[Torie]

The dumbest Senator of them all, by a co8u try mile, says not to worry - the Fauci guy is just hyping the covid danger in the same way that he hyped the danger of AIDS.

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/584388-fauci-cals-johnsons-aids-comment-preposterous-i-dont-have-any-clue

[Torie]

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.

[Torie]

Notice that a quarter of the ICU cases are breakthrough cases, and that the queues for surgeries are long due to a lack of ICU beds. I am extremely concerned about Omicron variant.

https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-intensive-care-unit-coronavirus-trial-survival/

[Torie]

Notice that a quarter of the ICU cases are breakthrough cases, and that the queues for surgeries are long due to a lack of ICU beds. I am extremely concerned about Omicron variant.

https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-intensive-care-unit-coronavirus-trial-survival/

This article doesn't mention anything about ICU cases or breakthrough cases being tied to Omicron.

"While 76 percent of people in Belgium are fully vaccinated, approximately 75 percent of those in the COVID ICU are not."

[Torie]

Notice that a quarter of the ICU cases are breakthrough cases, and that the queues for surgeries are long due to a lack of ICU beds. I am extremely concerned about Omicron variant.

https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-intensive-care-unit-coronavirus-trial-survival/

This article doesn't mention anything about ICU cases or breakthrough cases being tied to Omicron.

"While 76 percent of people in Belgium are fully vaccinated, approximately 75 percent of those in the COVID ICU are not."

What does this have to do with Omicron?  It says nothing about whether these ICU cases are the Omicron variant.

It does not mention Omicron.

[Torie]

Notice that a quarter of the ICU cases are breakthrough cases, and that the queues for surgeries are long due to a lack of ICU beds. I am extremely concerned about Omicron variant.

https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-intensive-care-unit-coronavirus-trial-survival/

Delta is by far the dominant variant in most of Europe right now, where are you getting Omicron being an issue from? All data coming out of South Africa, where it is dominant, is still indicating milder symptoms.

Guess what, CNN? Nobody cares. I've been vaccinated, so what else does CNN want me to do? Wear 3 masks?

You apparently care enough to make this absurd comment that adds no value to the thread.

 I hope you are right. What I have read suggests as to an otherwise far more contagious variant, with milder an open question, particularly how much milder, , but I have no desire to be your interlocutor  on this one any further, so let the public square take a default judgement against me.

[Torie]

We will have a day with over 300,000 infections in a single day, possibly 400,000.

Do. Not. Panic.

We will have to measure it by hospitalization and notable illness.

We are nearing final victory over the pandemic. The miracle of modern science has turned this into the cold/flu for everyone but the moron unvaccinateds. We cannot allow the public health goons and the Enemy of the People press to treat this like pre-vaccine covid. We need to all collectively stand up, live our lives, and return to normal.

In other news, it is near impossible to find rapid at home covid testing kits anywhere, so the planned Xmas gathering is now at risk. The management of all of this really sucks.

[Torie]

I wear a mask outdoors because it’s cold as hell right now.

Oh my. The only thing gayer than that would be to wear make-up to keep out the cold. Here is a back shot of me yesterday in a hood near you holding a poop bag,  on a 7 mile trek sans mask (take my word for it, and who wants to power walk with a mask on?), where for the first time ever, the dog seemed to make it clear it was dog basket time.

[Torie]

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

[Torie]

Unfortunately tested positive this afternoon, but without symptoms thankfully. Starting the 5 day quarantine in my apartment. The most frustrating part of it is that it's unclear where I got it, either from family or when I briefly went out to get a beer with a friend. The great thing about the booster at least is that I feel fine right now wheras if I was unvaccinated I just know I would be completely ill.

Good luck! I live in perpetual angst of contracting the virus, but reports like yours give me more confidence that if I get the virus, it won't further impair by much my anticipated life span, suck heart and all. So I hope you will post some good news 5 days hence, that all is well. I want to get out of covid prison so bad, but cannot in good conscience at the moment. I have a pack that still needs me.

[Torie]

This is the best and most insightful article I have read about Omicron, which poses all the right questions, not only for myself but for how to fashion public policy appropriately.  As for myself, I wish I knew all the answers. If I did, the odds will be higher than they are now that I can prudently end my self exile from life sooner rather than later.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/24/do-the-omicron-numbers-mean-what-we-think-they-mean