COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[morgieb]

Why does there seem to be a reoccurrence of red this week?

When you dip to a point with fewer daily cases than has been seen in over a year, a small increase is inevitable, and the percentages start to get wild. I wouldn’t worry too much about it until we start seeing it consistently for a few weeks.

The UK and Israel which have had fairly good vaccination programs are seeing a rise in Covid Cases. Deaths remain to be seen but it seems unlikely so far

America's vac strategy was mostly Pfizer + Moderna, whereas the UK relied heavily on AZ which needs both doses to be effective against Delta (whereas Pfizer can give you a lot of effectiveness with just one). The death rate will be interesting, yes - if caes are high but deaths are almost non-existant, does that make it any different to the normal flu?

[morgieb]

Why does there seem to be a reoccurrence of red this week?

When you dip to a point with fewer daily cases than has been seen in over a year, a small increase is inevitable, and the percentages start to get wild. I wouldn’t worry too much about it until we start seeing it consistently for a few weeks.

The UK and Israel which have had fairly good vaccination programs are seeing a rise in Covid Cases. Deaths remain to be seen but it seems unlikely so far

America's vac strategy was mostly Pfizer + Moderna, whereas the UK relied heavily on AZ which needs both doses to be effective against Delta (whereas Pfizer can give you a lot of effectiveness with just one). The death rate will be interesting, yes - if caes are high but deaths are almost non-existant, does that make it any different to the normal flu?

This is the case with deaths, not so much with symptomatic transmission/contagiousness. 

Yes. But isn't one shot of Pfizer as effective as two shots of AZ in preventing hospitalisations? I guess my point is that the UK's strategy likely needs more full vaccinations to 100% work.

But even then hosptialisations & deaths haven't really risen which shows the effectiveness of the shots. Anyone arguing that it is not our best defence against the virus is silly.

[morgieb]

Obviously a mask mandate is much less onerous than any sort of shutdown.  But wearing a mask every day is still much more onerous and much less effective than just getting vaccinated.  So reimplementing a mask mandate before we implement a vaccine mandate would be inexcusable.

I guess the problem with a vaccine mandate is that the backlash politically could be extreme and drag the confidence down of vaccines for far more deadly diseases. Even I'd struggle to support a vaccine mandate (but would be in favour of making things difficult for non-vaccinated people in other ways)

[morgieb]

This data is from England and a few days old, but I think it shows the risk that the health system gets overwhelmed is pretty minimal. Unfortunately due to the Delta variant and vaccine hesitancy (in the US) there will be unnecessary deaths, but the justification for an outright lockdown was to protect the health system. Now that the vaccine is available, people will just have to take personal responsibility for their health. Mask mandates are pretty costless so a few limited restrictions to save lives are justifiable. And in countries like NZ that eliminated rather than tried to suppress the virus, we may be able to try a different strategy for our full return to normal.

I don't get why NZ hasn't been vaccinating more. You have no virus but don't you want to get rid of all the international travel restrictions & isolation?

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

I think availability is a bit of a question mark as well?

[morgieb]

I will not fight against indoor mask mandates. Especially in crowded venues.

I will! I’ve done my part — I’ve worn the masks, got the vaccine, did the year+ of social isolation and online work and online school. I’ve done everything asked of me, the whole time. And I’m done! No more. Vaccinated people are much less likely to shed virus, much less likely to contract it, and are almost never hospitalized. The only reason to impose a mask mandate on the vaccinated is security theater to coddle people who have already been offered and refused a vaccine.

We’re headed toward a country where half the people are unvaccinated and doing whatever they want, and the vaccinated half is stuck doing masks/isolation/whatever else in a futile attempt to accommodate the other half. I’m tired of it. If some antivaxxers want to risk it, that’s on them, but the rest of us need to stop moving the goalposts and get back to normal life. In the county I work in, we’re at 89.4% of 16+ year olds vaccinated. 99%+ of hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated, and we only have a dozen patients hospitalized with COVID. The hospitals aren’t being overrun, we’ve vaccinated nearly everybody, and the vaccines work. We can't let the small handful of unvaccinated take our lives hostage.

I am not going to push a mask mandate but I will not rally against one either. Bigger fish to fry.

I just DEMAND businesses and schools remain open.

Unless there's a high proportion of "breakthrough infections" I think places closing isn't a genuine concern. Even most of the anti-vaxxers tend to be congregated in red states.