COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[The Free North]

https://twitter.com/yascha_mounk/status/1297226437905260545?s=21

I fear that if students can't socialize, the resulting anxiety and depression will be far more dangerous than the functionally 0% death rate 21 year olds have from COVID. 

[The Free North]

I'm seeing a lot of people on twitter showing place in Florida that are completely open, no one wearing a mask, etc and then justifying it by showing places with universal mask mandates and huge restrictions (IL/NY) that have the same exact death rate per capita.

It really is insane how the letter next to your governors name determines what type of life you live these days.

[The Free North]

https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1368261041696632832

When this is all over, I intend to get very very drunk and do the exact same thing.

Cant wait

#BurnItAll

[The Free North]

I don't follow the logic here at all.

[The Free North]

It's clear that some on the so-called left are just as bad as those on the right. Wearing a f-cking mask in a grocery store isn't harming anyone. Vaccines and masks together have the potential to crush this virus, but so many want to relinquish some of our best tools.

The problem is that you have one group who has done both of these, and one group who has refused to do either--and so many here are directing their rage at the vaccinated people who no longer wish to wear masks, rather than the unvaccinated who are both refusing to vaccinate and would similarly simply refuse to follow mask mandates.

Shout out to my fellow fully vaccinateds who have still been wearing a mask and socially distancing while in public.

Don't include me in this, I've been socially distancing since long before the pandemic because people have no concept of personal space.

That sounds more like social anxiety than anything else tbh.

[The Free North]

https://twitter.com/AndySwan/status/1420131409646264334

[The Free North]

Deaths arent ticking up at all. The variant is infecting people but no one is getting very ill from it. Hospitalizations continue to fall.

Cases in the UK beginning to fall as well, I think this is the last gasp of the virus.

[The Free North]

So now there's a lambda variant? This is just getting silly.

I can safely say this coming up right when I'm finally feeling confident to go out again really isn't good for the anxiety.

Turn off the news and you'll be fine.  Fully vaccinated people are not dying in record numbers.  In fact, they aren't really dying at all.  You might get a cold... so what? You're more likely to get into a fatal auto accident or be a victim of gun violence.  Seriously~!

I have literal anxiety and panic disorder so rationalizing it away doesn't work unfortunately. I've also permanently ceased going on various main roads around here due to a few close calls. If anything checking the news (at least Atlas, I've avoided cable news already for years prior) is removing unknowns and what ifs that I'd otherwise dwell on.

It's just frustrating feeling just as I feel able to overcome one worry, here comes another possible one.

I gotcha my man. Its 100% not as bad as it might seem. These variants are not killing people who are vaccinated and if you didnt have the vaccine your chance of dying was functionally 0 anyways if you were a healthy under 50 guy/gal.

Hope you can work through it. Always good days ahead.

[The Free North]

We need a vaccine mandate. Life can't fully return to normal unless everyone, or at least like 90%, is vaccinated.

Look at what happened in Chicago this past weekend. Life is 100% normal in a lot of cities.

[The Free North]

Honestly I know there is a lot of doom and gloom amongst some here, but compare the death rate now to last spring, or even to this past January. We're seeing cases go through the roof and deaths aren't moving very much.

Just a quick look at the numbers at the Jan peak we had a max of about 250k cases/7 days with deaths peaking at about 3k/7 days for a death rate of .01%.

Now we've got cases at 120k/7 days with deaths at 600. Even if that lags a little, we've got the death rate down by half to .005% and we know most of those are from the 1/2 of the country that is not vaccinated.

The point being that Covid is very much not the flu, but if we can get people to get their shots, we can turn it into the flu. What I mean by that is we will have new variants as the flu does and perhaps need new shots each year, but doing so will reduce the risk of serous illness or death massively for the general public at which point I feel most Americans can comfortably live their lives as they did before.

[The Free North]

Honestly I know there is a lot of doom and gloom amongst some here, but compare the death rate now to last spring, or even to this past January. We're seeing cases go through the roof and deaths aren't moving very much.

Just a quick look at the numbers at the Jan peak we had a max of about 250k cases/7 days with deaths peaking at about 3k/7 days for a death rate of .01%.

Now we've got cases at 120k/7 days with deaths at 600. Even if that lags a little, we've got the death rate down by half to .005% and we know most of those are from the 1/2 of the country that is not vaccinated.

The point being that Covid is very much not the flu, but if we can get people to get their shots, we can turn it into the flu. What I mean by that is we will have new variants as the flu does and perhaps need new shots each year, but doing so will reduce the risk of serous illness or death massively for the general public at which point I feel most Americans can comfortably live their lives as they did before.

To further this point, in the 2018-19 flu season we had 35,000,000 cases and 34,000 deaths for a death rate of 0.0001%

We know that about 99%+ (The CDC said only .8% of deaths in May were from unvaccinated)  of the current deaths are from the unvaccinated so if you do some backhand math you can assume our 7 day death rate at 6 people out of 120,000 cases/7 days which in turn is a death rate of 0.00005%, less than the flu rate.

Yeah its janky and what not, but I think there is a lot of reason to be hopeful, even with this latest wave.

[The Free North]

I have Covid currently and its a complete non-event. I had a fever for 24 hours that was easily controlled by Tylenol and then had a few days of feeling tired with chills. Its been almost a week and i'm back to normal again. Very thankful for the vaccine as I have no doubt that likely made this process much easier.

[The Free North]

Someone should really make a convenient web app where you can enter your age, demographics, co-morbidities, and vaccine status and it will output an estimate of your probability of getting infected and dying of covid.

Why? Read the stats above, its functionally 0 anyways. That would only serve to keep those who are already chronically afraid inside and masked up which helps no one. The virus can be deadly if you do not have the vaccine. if you are vaccinated, its not worth thinking about for another second of your life.

[The Free North]

Jimmie was that you?

https://twitter.com/newdougman/status/1516538851636002825

So i'm of 2 minds here.

On the one hand, other peoples mask preference is none of my business. I don't know people's risk factors or health conditions. It's not appropriate to make a comment about a strangers clothes or hair style, don't say anything about whats on their face either.

That being said, some of these folks make me want to punch a wall. If you've taken a look at the data and decide a mask is still warranted, thats fine, thats your choice, wear it inside, wear it outside, wear it to bed, I don't care. But, of the 10% of the population around me still masked, a solid 90% of those people are wearing flimsy paper or cloth makes that we know do absolutely nothing. We're 2 years into this thing we know what helps and what doesn't. If you're virally averse enough to still mask up, how are you careless enough to not buy a proper mask that will actually defend against the disease you're ostensibly so afraid of.

The dissonance is astounding.