COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Cherokee County, Georgia, a few miles to my west, is opening schools today.  Some highlights:

Out of 43K students, 23% will be starting remotely.  Whichever option parents decided (home or remote), they have to stay committed to that for the first nine weeks for elementary schools, and the entire fall semester for middle and high school.

Face masks are mandatory for teachers and staff, but only recommended for students.

Due to space constraints, they will not be able to consistently maintain six feet of distance between students.

The district is not doing temperature checks. They ask parents to check their child’s temperature before coming to school and getting on the bus daily, and the same goes for school staff.

I expect this to be a disaster.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/this-1st-day-school-cherokee-county-will-look-very-different-than-other-years/SXIPJOW2JJG3VPJTMFBT3OJQEU/

Aug. 3 is much too early even in a normal year. Other than that, I don't think there'll be any problems. I guess somebody had to go back early just to prove school is doable.

A lot of people have already been interacting like normal this summer, so school probably doesn't pose any new risks.

Cherokee always seems to start a little earlier than anyone else in metro Atlanta, although in general I agree that GA schools do start way too early.  My county (Forsyth) was scheduled to start this Thursday (the 6th) but has delayed it by a week.

The early start in the South has to do with farming (at least ancestrally), no? (Or at least that's the way it was explained to us in Texas). 

I think that was the original reason for starting in August, as opposed to after Labor Day, as some parts of the country use.  But it used to be late August, and only in fairly recent times has it moved to early August (or even July 31 in Cherokee one year!)  AIUI, there were a couple of reasons for this:

1. They wanted to end the first semester before Christmas, so as not to have exams hanging over students' heads over the holidays.

2. Some districts wanted a more balanced schedule, with a shorter summer vacation and more breaks during the school year.

A lot of older public schools in the Midwest and Northeast don't have air conditioning, so a later start is common in those places to avoid schooling during the hottest weeks of the year.

Air conditioning is a way of life in the Deep South. 

Now it is.

I did all my schooling in South Carolina, but I didn't have any air conditioning at school until eighth grade. The most important piece of school equipment was the big box fan at the front of the classroom. At least it gave kids a reason to be at the front of the class.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

https://mobile.twitter.com/6abc/status/1293891405736271873

Who knew that ending the $600 unemployment subsidy would mean folks would go out and apply for work?

Huh?  Lower unemployment claims mean that fewer people got laid off, not that more are looking for work.

It's the number first-time unemployment claims (not "layoffs" per se), and continuing claims were also down by 600,000.  The total number of Americans claiming unemployment fell by more than 3 million to 28.26 million for the week ending July 25.  The data suggests enhanced benefits provide an incentive for people to stay away from returning to work. 

Jobs would have to be opened, first. Which anecdotally, I know isn't happening. Which is fine because I already have a job but it would be great to have something lined up for tomorrow.

Also anecdotally, I know of several small retail businesses/restaurants who have been advertising positions and not receiving any applications.  I've even seen national reporting suggesting such.

You'd have to be really desperate for the money to take a public-facing job in retail or restaurants right now considering the increased personal risk, especially in Mississippi which has the third highest per capita rate  in the U.S. right now.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

To be fair, many medicines are poisons if you take too much. Of course that doesn't mean all poisons are potential medicines. Moreover, oleandrin is similar in its pharmacology to digoxin, so there's no logical reason to think either would be effective in providing even symptomatic relief for COVID-19.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

No more people using their 96 year old great grandmother card as an excuse to act on a moral high ground. Nursing homes played a huge role in allowing this spiral out of control. Their business practices are immoral and "for profit" nursing homes are immoral. I can not believe there has not been more discussion on nursing home reform!

Reform would be extremely expensive. That's why it hasn't happened. The greatest expense of nursing homes is labor, and it isn't paid particularly well.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Any thoughts on the announcement regarding convalescent plasma?

This is news?

This is a treatment for viral diseases that long predates coronavirus. If it weren't gonna work, we'd all be screwed since it would mean we'd be unlikely to be able to develop effective vaccines.

Anyway, I fully expect Trump will oversell it, in which case it politically bites him in the ass. Politically, he'd have been better off if the announcement had waited until October so there would be no time for his exaggerations to be exposed.

Hasn't it been in use for quite some time?

On an emergency, experimental basis. What this announcement means they've verified that it works the way it was hoped it would.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

At this point, I have to wonder if it might be appropriate to impeach Pence for failure to invoke the 25th Amendment when it needs to be.

More seriously, the only way I can see how even Trump might think he's making a good political move concerning the stimulus is if he somehow thinks he can use the stimulus after the election to steamroll the Congress into approving his contested election.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1313879186126319617

Oh yes, I love Covid-19.
Clearly I enjoy the fact that our president killed 200,000 people, I just love worrying for my own life, I just get such a high off of watching the World suffer. Seriously just shut the f**k up. You have been so consistently wrong on the trajectory of Covid-19 and the efficacy of masks, you have no reason to post anything here anymore.

It’s telling that you care more about what some hippie old fart thinks than about the thousands of people who have lost their lives and the serious repercussions of this pandemic. We can argue and disagree on the best way to fight the pandemic, but your constant denial of the seriousness of the situation is getting older than your “I am totally still a moderate Republican” act.

Given what passes for "news" in this thread and all across USGD, what Jane Fonda says re: COVID-19 certainly makes the cut for post-worthiness.  I don't care what she says, but very few people here care about "who" says something as long as conforms to their pre-existing worldview. 

The fact that you believe our president is personally responsible for the deaths of 200k people just proves that you are not a serious poster, and you never have been on this issue.  Extended lockdowns, school closures and other such restrictions are highly damaging, unsustainable and worse than the disease itself.  Continued insistence on these measures and "social distance" has probably permanently hampered the resiliency of our country and communities.  At every step of the way, you have refused to treat COVID as what it is - a manageable public health problem, and instead defaulted to the politics of fear and death obsession. 

Manageable!?!?!?!?

I guess if your standard is that it doesn't kill everyone it infects, COVID-19 isn't a major problem. However there is a considerable difference between thinking lockdowns have been overdone and ignoring basic preventive measures such as using masks as Typhoid Trump has done. Trump's focus has never been on managing the pandemic itself, but on managing the perception of the pandemic. It's shown once again that he's all about style rather than substance. Anything substantial he's accomplished has been a fortuitous byproduct of his quest for style. Moreover, I can't think of a single thing Trump has actually accomplished these four years that Republicans would think is a good thing that any other Republican president wouldn't have also accomplished.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We survived similar global pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968-69 that no one even talks about today. 

First off, unlike COVID-19, those were influenza pandemics where a good portion of the population had some protection from exposure to other strains.  Also, in both cases, vaccines were available within months. If we'd been able to follow the vaccine development timeline of either of those prior pandemics, we'd have been deploying a coronavirus vaccine this past summer. (To be fair, the speed of vaccine development then was due to prior work on influenza vaccines in general, and if the current pandemic was an influenza virus rather than a coronavirus, we'd probably have had a vaccine widely available by this past summer.)

Second, for better or worse, society today has a lower tolerance for risk than it did fifty years ago, in large part because of the success we've had in dealing with viral diseases. When dying from a virus is rare, people understandably are going to be more freaked out by the possibility than when it's not that uncommon.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The 1957-1958 pandemic was a new strain which many persons had no experience with. It appears that there is a memory aspect to immune response, and people respond to the strain they first encountered - they are fighting the last war. The population was less than 1/2 the 2020 population and deaths were about 1/2.

If you only count deaths so far.  Unfortunately, unlike the H2N2 pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic is nowhere near ending.  We'll be lucky to have the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 stay under 300,000, even if we get a safe and effective vaccine in a timely fashion, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it exceed 500,000 if we don't get a vaccine by the end of winter.  At this point, the most important thing is to get a safe and effective vaccine produced, distributed, and used.

Unfortunately, Trump's political posturing has made it much less likely that people will believe a vaccine is safe or effective if one is available before Trump leaves office. That more than anything, is why Trump needs to leave office, since even if he legitimately wins the election, his own political blustering ensures the pandemic will last longer than it ought to because of reluctance to trust a Trumpcine.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't need herd immunity, I have nerd immunity!

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Louisiana State University to require fans at football games to show proof of vaccination or recent negative test:

LSU will require anyone attending Tiger Stadium who is 12 years of age or older to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within the last 72 hours, the school announced on Tuesday.
...
Those younger than 12 will not have to show proof of a negative PCR test. However, masks will be required for children between 5 and 11 years old and encouraged for those younger than 5.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32077089/proof-vaccination-negative-covid-19-pcr-test-required-enter-tiger-stadium

And here's the counterpoint, which it greatly pains me to post:

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1430238454617722883

There should definitely be proof of vaccination but other than that this is the correct policy for outdoor events.

The primary reason to even consider different standards for indoor and outdoor events is that people are spread out at most outdoor events. That's definitely not the case for the stands at a sporting event.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Louisiana State University to require fans at football games to show proof of vaccination or recent negative test:

LSU will require anyone attending Tiger Stadium who is 12 years of age or older to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within the last 72 hours, the school announced on Tuesday.
...
Those younger than 12 will not have to show proof of a negative PCR test. However, masks will be required for children between 5 and 11 years old and encouraged for those younger than 5.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32077089/proof-vaccination-negative-covid-19-pcr-test-required-enter-tiger-stadium

And here's the counterpoint, which it greatly pains me to post:

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1430238454617722883

There should definitely be proof of vaccination but other than that this is the correct policy for outdoor events.

The primary reason to even consider different standards for indoor and outdoor events is that people are spread out at most outdoor events. That's definitely not the case for the stands at a sporting event.

Lolla was 90% vaccinated and people were packed like sardines. So long as a crowd is full of fully vaccinated individuals they should be able to get as close to one another as they like.

I remember the days when libertarians at least pretended to care about potential harm to others. The vaccines we have for COVID are quite capable of keeping someone out of the hospital, but not as much when it comes to keep them from getting infected and spreading COVID to other people.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Once we have vaccines approved for all ages we can be a bit more blasé about the effects upon the unvaccinated. Until then, it's definitely too early to talk about "Mission Accomplished" .

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Apparently the committee wants better safety and efficacy data before generally approving boosters instead of just immune deficient individuals. Considering that at present, COVID isn't generally fatal if you've received the standard two doses, a mild bit of caution on their part doesn't bother me.  In any case, getting COVID vaccines approved for kids under 12 strikes me as more urgent than getting booster shots approved for the 12-65 cohort.