If you vaxtards would stop supporting the derp political play, we may get back to 'normal'.
Thank you for your work
It is becoming increasingly obvious that Omicron is the pandemic ender. Rapidly accelerating through the population, falling deaths, probably have reached peak velocity...
The only question is when this is over in 4 - 6 weeks, will we follow South Africa and end all restrictions — or will there be an ongoing political play?
Time will tell, but any 1 March, we should be back to complete normal from a scientific stand point.
Joe Biden is not going to do anything, which is good. Blue states would be hesitant to give up their powers they've gained through coronavirus restrictions and that may just force more people to move to red states which we've seen the past two years.
There are some crazy places. Montgomery County, MD (NIH headquarters) is one of them. Most of the country is not like that, fortunately.
Good news, new cases seem to have peaked in the Northeast.
I hope you’re right but it may be a little too soon to say. Deaths are a trailing indicator as I know you know. But it could be any of or combination of things including vaccines, better treatments, and a less virulent strain all working in our favor.
Unfortunately, daily deaths are pretty much the same they were before vaccines. But infections are triple what they were at the peak in 2020! So I am hopeful that this will be the end of it as you are but with this many new infections it’s just too early imo to say for sure. With 750,000 infections a day it’s going to take several weeks to see if Omicron is less deadly or if the vaccines are preventing deaths from climbing in proportion.
It is an anecdote, but I know of several people tested positive in the last few weeks - I knew very few before Omicron. All of them suffered flu like symptoms but none of them required anything more than at home care, bed rest, fluids. Some are still recovering. All of them are relatively young and otherwise relatively healthy people. I do worry about my elderly relatives right now and hope they avoid the virus.
Not peaking here yet.
If you vaxtards would stop supporting the derp political play, we may get back to 'normal'.
“when this is over in 4 - 6 weeks”
Immunity in the population should be broad and deep.
After most of the Delta wave at the end of October (the last published update), the CDC’s Nationwide Blood Donor Seroprevalence Survey showed that 92.9% of samples from blood donors 16 or older, had COVID antibodies. They estimated roughly 2/3 of that was from vaccination, and roughly 1/3 from natural infection. Vaccination has continued pretty steadily since then, and over 75 million (about 1/4 of the pop.) have gotten booster shots.
Not only will Omicron likely raise that 92.9 percentage significantly, it will also likely layer on stronger immunity to those previously infected or vaccinated, like a booster shot, but with the broader immunity to more features of the virus, that comes from natural infection.
Projections out of Europe anticipate that over half of their population will likely have been exposed to Omicron by the end of your 4-6 week timeframe. No doubt a good number of those, more than once.
In past waves, CDC estimated that only about one out four actual infections were actually officially recorded. Because Omicron is milder, fewer infections cause people to get tested. Some estimates indicate that the rate of asymptomatic infections is significantly higher than past waves (one I saw estimated up to 90% asymptomatic, in the USA, vs. 18% for the original strain). Positive results from the now common home tests are less likely to be reported. Given the high number of new cases now being reported, we could actually be having 1-2% of the population (or even more) exposed to Omicron every day.
We do seem to be hurtling toward the end of his pandemic.