COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Dr. MB]

https://twitter.com/EricFisherSBG/status/1389971982100402179
Clever idea.

Dodgers Stadium opened up a "Vaccinated Zone" 2 weeks ago wherein social distancing is not enforced (But mask-wearing is unless you're eating or drinking).

Though they're certainly not offering free tickets.

What's their rationale for that? Not only are they fully vaccinated but it's outside. It makes zero sense.

[Dr. MB]

I'm still going to wear one so I don't look like a Republican.

Well it's not only Republicans who've been taking their masks off lately.

[Dr. MB]

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2021/05/two-oregon-counties-want-to-prevent-teens-from-getting-covid-19-vaccine-without-parental-ok-despite-law.html

Two counties in Oregon are supposed to pass laws that ban people under 18 from getting a vaccine without parental permission (even though Oregon state law doesn’t require permission if you’re 15 and up). Unsurprisingly the county commissioners proposing this said they had no plan to get the vaccine and think it’s experimental and unsafe.

”My children are not the property of the State of Oregon, Rep. Wilde,” Berschauer wrote. “And if you think for a moment that the parents in Yamhill County, especially mothers like myself who went through agonizing labor to birth and bring these children into the world, are going to accept that state bureaucrats can bribe our kids with pizza and iTunes gift cards in order to be injected with an experimental, trial vaccine WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION, you are out of your mind.”

Sure, but have you ever considered that your children aren’t your property either? What an asshole

[Dr. MB]

Personally, I'll be double masking, and observing. I was SO EXCITED to see that Mr. Peep’s Adult Superstore has extended their masking to atleast July 5th. Taboo Videos on MLK hadn't, but there wasn't a single unmasked person in there. All Adult Super Shop? Same deal.

But like, I'm back to curbside at Xpose and Dolphin Gentleman’s Club, for sure. I wish the local clubs would do a masked hour/s, basically to continue the protection they were doing for older folx/immune compromised folx. Its like the most basic anti-ableist thing they could do.

[Dr. MB]

This contradicts an earlier study which put it at 88% effective. Wait for more data on this.

[Dr. MB]

Outside in Portland pretty much nobody was wearing a mask anywhere (but I didn't go inside). I went inside Michael's in Beaverton and they had a masks required sign but I think they just never updated their policy since the Oregon mask mandate was only repealed a few weeks ago. Obviously they weren't enforcing it since some of the employees including the woman who looked like the manager were maskless.

[Dr. MB]

Multnomah County put in a “recommendation” to wear masks indoors. Obviously it’s unenforceable. I think it’s just so they can act like they’re doing something while not truly riling people up because enforcement here is gonna be left to the businesses’ discretion.

[Dr. MB]

So Democrats and others who take the virus seriously, if you refuse to put on a mask now, you're both endangering yourself and endangering others like the unvaccinated plague rats. Do the right thing. Wear a mask.

don't think i will, thank you for the concern

[Dr. MB]

Well, I came back from work about an hour ago, and I can say that nobody has changed their masking habits (as of yet). I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of people ignore the CDC guidance and continue on as before. And it's highly unlikely that there will be any new mask mandates in Colorado at this point.

This is a massive political loss for Democrats, and if it continues into 2022 it will greatly impact their performance in the midterms.  Most people have moved past COVID.  The hysterical people on Atlas or Twitter claiming Republicans are death squads are a very small minority of Americans.  The new masking rules are confusing and aggravating to many.  Why get vaccinated if you still have to mask up?  People are waking up and moving on.

In your dreams (or your Trumpist bubble): a poll from a few weeks ago found that 68% of people reported wearing a mask outside their home, including 77% of vaccinated:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/07/08/mask-wearing-plummets-especially-among-unvaccinated--but-delta-variant-creates-growing-anxiety-about-covid-19-polls-find/?sh=6546d3276b85

The poll also found 68% of respondents said they wore a face mask outside their home in the past week, down from 79% in May.

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed their guidelines on mask wearing for the fully vaccinated, the share of fully vaccinated Americans who reported wearing masks plunged from 90% in May to 77% in June.

Of course. I don't think there's been a week since the pandemic began where I never wore a mask. I've had to go to the doctor/dentist and still there are plenty of stores/places of public transport where masks are required. But like, anecdotal evidence I know, but ever since Oregon repealed its mandate a month ago mask use where it's not required has been maybe 30 to 40% at the very most, usually lower depending where you go. And this is Portland, one of the biggest liberal bubbles of them all. Wearing a mask occasionally, when required, is something I think most people have done but that doesn't mean we have one on whenever we leave our house.

[Dr. MB]

Multnomah County just re instituted a mask mandate. With a $1000 fine for anyone who violates. If that isn’t the definition of insanity then idk what is.

[Dr. MB]

I've got some concert tickets for October and gonna be annoyed if I have to wear a mask at it. But since it's inside I guess I'm not gonna get my hopes up.

[Dr. MB]

Kate Brown is gonna put in a new statewide mask mandate tomorrow. What an idiot.

[Dr. MB]

Kate Brown is gonna put in a new statewide mask mandate tomorrow. What an idiot.

And yet, Oregon clearly has one of the best track records in limiting deaths from Corona.

I live in a county with over a 75% vaccination rate and several counties are around that mark as well. I can even see the justification for mask mandates in a state like Louisiana but here it makes zero sense whatsoever.

[Dr. MB]

Stanford is now mandating covid tests every week for both unvaccinated AND vaccinated students. What the hell? What kinda stupid logic is this?

[Dr. MB]

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.

Do you personally know anyone who still does that? I don’t know anyone who still locks down and stays at home nearly all the time.

[Dr. MB]

Less than 1% of Americans have schizophrenia. Come on guys.

How do you explain the behavior? There is PROBABLY a benign explanation or some other explanation but this sort of behavior that is being exhibited by so many people isn't what any reasonable person would consider "normal".  I guess if it means anything, people claiming to be abducted by aliens don't really appear to have anything wrong with them if we control for everything else, but then again that isn't a rational end of the story. Either 1) they HAVE been abducted by aliens, 2) there is something wrong with them, or 3) something else is happening that we don't understand and just because we don't understand it doesn't mean everything is OK or that nothing exists.

From all that we know, this is some sort of induced mass psychosis that is connected somehow to the end of a society and the start of another one. Maybe there is some sort of tangible connection between individuals in the societies they identify with. It could be related to the sort of thing that animals freak out about before someone dies, there is a major disaster, or something like that. We really don't know and there is nothing right now that can explain it and it should be studied but we don't even really know how to do that.

extrasensory perception

[Dr. MB]

extrasensory perception

No evidence any such phenomenon is real, at least not backed by scientists who believe far weirder things like relativity and quantum mechanics because the evidence compels it.

The universe is a strange place. There's so much we don't know. I'd never count out the possibility.

[Dr. MB]

Nate Silver's been incredibly woke here. He's a needed reasonable voice in the midst of chaos.

[Dr. MB]

https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-governor-issues-outdoor-mask-mandate-due-to-surge-in-covid-19-cases

F**K YOU KATE BROWN

What kind of absolute idiot thought this was good public policy? I’m not wearing masks outside I don’t give a f**k what people think. Nobody wants this.

[Dr. MB]

This tweet was from last week but I'm still posting it to make the point that despite what this forum thinks there is genuine grassroots support for masking from a substantial portion of the population.

There's no grassroots support. It's just a few elites, the media, and laptoppers.

Around here, it's never the blue-collar types who bop around in masks.

This cultural divide is tough to overstate. To this day, I have only met one blue-collar worker personally that wears a mask purely by choice, and even he is a college-educated blue-collar worker.

The support for masking is now more than ever a top down thing, as far as class and especially education goes.

That describes my dad. I think it's a little different here in Oregon just because it's a much more culturally liberal place. Observation is key but time and venue can drastically differ even within the same town or the same street. If you're out on Friday night here in Eugene nobody is gonna have a mask on while that same street during the daytime could be mostly masked up. I had to pickup some food from a restaurant over the weekend and I wore a KN95 mask because I was recently exposed to Covid (next day I took a test and it came back positive) but waiting at the bar were a bunch of burly biker-looking dudes who looked at me like I was some freak. Go literally three miles out into Springfield or west Eugene and a solid 10-15% of people are defying mask mandates inside stores and hit any rural area and that number skyrockets.

[Dr. MB]

I genuinely hope masks stay as a fashion thing. Not because I like it, but ONLY because it will be a very slight bit of joy in an otherwise dark time (the early RP state will be the worst prolly) to see the conservatives getting upset.

Yes my parents may be gone, I may be in a cell, but at least the cons will be a bit triggered.

Study: Masks make people look more attractive. I wouldn't know if this is accurate, but I know for some people the area covered by the mask is less attractive than the rest of their face.

Yeah it’s the truth. I’ve seen many people where I might turn my head at first but then they take their mask off and it’s a hard pass.

Especially never trust anyone who only has pics of themselves in masks on Tinder. What are they hiding?

[Dr. MB]

1. It requires people to get an injection that causes COVID for a day and possibly repeat this process every 6 months. This is a far greater imposition than to ask someone to put on a mask, an additional piece of clothing.

The vaccine literally does not "cause COVID for a day" or any other length of time, as there is no part of the actual virus in the vaccine, but instead uses pieces of the spike protein that bridges to allow the actual viral infection.

You know what I mean, the side effects of this vaccine are far beyond any other vaccine I've taken, I needed to take time off work for the fever and chills, and this is a common reaction. Now I willingly tolerated this three times but wearing a mask never made me feel so ill I had to go to bed.

After the 2nd vaccine I had a headache for a day vs the booster shot where I only had arm pain for a couple days. Compared to when I got a meningitis B vaccine which woke me up one night with shooting pain up and down my arm, it’s nothing.

[Dr. MB]

I have seen essentially zero change in NYC since the mask mandate was lifted. Nearly everyone is still masked indoors.

It’s gonna be a slow climb down for a lot of folks. Saw the same thing happen last summer on a lesser scale.

[Dr. MB]

The mask mandate officially is over today in Oregon. Feels nice.

[Dr. MB]

The places being hit hardest by BA2 seem to be the ones who kept a tighter lid on Omicron through restrictions. Every successive variant seems to be just a little better at getting past defenses - but unless the damage they do starts reversing course, it won't be enough to cause total chaos. And a place that was heavily hit by Omicron like US/UK is likely to see only a minor effect due to how few reinfections there will be.

It looks like the uptick in the U.K. is already tapering off a tiny, tiny bit.

Also the UK always had a bit different trend line compared to here. Look:



Their Delta peak flattened it all out and cases didn't decrease much at all until Omicron hit.

vs. USA



We did actually have a bigger dip with Delta and the Omicron fall was a lot sharper.