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Posted on 01/10/2022 9:56:36 AM PST by lightman
Maybe the record-setting omicron storm is the prelude to the sunnier place we’ve hoped for during two years of COVID-19.
Dr. John Goldman, a UPMC infectious disease specialist, believes it’s possible.
He bases it on the fact ultra-contagious omicron is touching so many people so fast it won’t be much longer until everyone has some immunity, either from vaccination or getting infected.
“What’s likely to happen in the next three to six months is that everyone who is not vaccinated will get infected, and what will end up happening is a population that has at least some partial immunity,” he said.
At that point, “I would expect this to become much more like a standard respiratory illness. Much more like the flu.”
Goldman stressed: “I would obviously prefer everyone to get that immunity by being vaccinated rather than by being infected.”
COVID-19 infections have been skyrocketing in Pennsylvania since around Christmas, with recent daily case counts nearly tripling those of last winter’s peak. The omicron variant is considered responsible for nearly all new infections.
Fortunately, COVID-19 hospitalizations, while also reaching an all-time high last week, haven’t increased at nearly the rate of new infections.
That likely reflects a growing body of evidence causing doctors to conclude omicron produces milder infection in most people then earlier strains.
Moreover, omicron may be especially mild for vaccinated people.
For months, doctors and hospitals have noted that unvaccinated people account for about 80% or more of people hospitalized with COVID-19, and even higher percentages of those in intensive care or on breathing ventilators.
However, Goldman noted last week that the portion of severely ill vaccinated people at seven UPMC hospitals in central Pennsylvania has fallen to about five percent.
Still, Pennsylvania hospitals are dangerously stressed, with emergency rooms backed up, patients getting cared for in make-shift spaces and hospitals cutting back on non-emergency surgeries.
Gov. Tom Wolf announced last week the state will send doctors and nurses to some hospitals and also establish regional sites to handle overflow. The regional sites, whose locations haven’t been announced, won’t open until early February.
Meanwhile, the influential University of Washington model says new infections may have peaked in Pennsylvania, and predicts hospital cases will begin to decline around Jan. 25.
As it stands, 64% of all Pennsylvanians are fully vaccinated, slightly above the national average of 62%. About 80% have received at least one shot. Pennsylvania as of last week was averaging about 49,000 doses per day, down from about 88,000 right before Christmas. The figures include boosters.
UPMC’s Goldman says it is becoming “a pandemic of the willing” in that most of the people who are severely ill or dying have chosen to be unvaccinated.
“To a great extent people have a choice. They can take the vaccine or they can take the infection. If they take the infection they are risking ending up in the hospital or dying,” he said. “So obviously, we are urging people to take the vaccine. But I think in the next three to six months everyone who is not vaccinated will end up infected.”
Goldman notes his predictions have sometimes been wrong. Most notably, he predicted the worst would be over for Pennsylvania last spring. But that was before the appearance of the more contagious delta variant, which triggered the present surge that has lasted more than six months, and before it became clear a significant number of people would reject vaccination.
Still, he believes that with omicron touching so many people and giving some immunity to the unvaccinated, we soon might reach the point where a big surge of infections will put, say, 25 people in the hospital, rather than the approximately 250 recently hospitalized at UPMC’s seven central Pennsylvania hospitals.
Experts no longer believe COVID-19 will ever totally go away.
But once we reach the point where outbreaks no longer threaten to overload the health care system and interfere with care for all patients, we will have reached the new normal of living with COVID-19 similar to how we live with the flu.
“I always preface this by saying I left my crystal ball at home,” Goldman said. “We are likely to get to a point by spring where the number of hospitalizations and deaths fall because almost everyone has pre-existing immunity. And then that’s what looks more like a standard winter illness.”
Pennsylvania Ping!
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Not with “DELTACHRON” lurking in the wings on Cyprus.
It is properly known as "BULLSHITACRON" and it is a danger only to idiots.
It doesn’t matter. Omicron is like 80% of the world getting a full spectrum vaccine all at once. For at least a few months, no one will be carrying the virus nor depending only on the weak-ass vaccines. That’s called herd immunity and is what had always caused pandemics to die out.
Nope - now its DeltaChron - just in time virus delivery system is working - keep trembling in fear, get you monthly jab, wear 2-3 masks indoors or outdoors.
Remember, Only You Can Prevent Covid!
Be Responsible, Obey the Authorities
Show Your Papers On Demand, Citizen!
Covid has been with us for thousands of years and it will still be with us for thousands more as long as leftists do not kill us all. Omicron likely will reduce the incidence of Covid over the next few months, then some other likely nearly harmless variant will evade people’s natural immunity and the common cold will continue to be with us.
Yes, but expect major resistance. It has been two years of masks, lockdowns, harassment, arrests, business shutdowns, firings and hysteria. The people who gave us those things are not going to want to let go of their power.
They have increased their power over us and are going to lie, cheat and steal so they won’t have to give up that power.
It’s time to pay no more attention to the fascists, and accept that we’ll be getting one major cold, and then the nightmare is over.
This chimera coronavirus was cobbled together in a lab in China, that’s why they called it a novel coronavirus, it’s new.
Dr. Fauci paid for its development.
We are not shackled by covid 19, but by government.
Since the "vaccines" obviously don't confer immunity on anyone, this Dr. John Goldman is a jack@ss whose medical knowledge appears to rival the nonsense we've heard from Joe Biden and that Puerto Rican nitwit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
*Coronavirus”, in many variant forms, has been with us for a long time, but Covid-19 is relatively new, from the Wuhan Level-3 Bio-Lab.
I tried to go to the grocery store and it was like Armegeddon in the middle of the day. Lines like you see if there was going to be 2 feet of snow.
The culprit is Omicron. It wasn’t panic buying. It was lack of store employees. Customer Service wasn’t even open because they had to man the cashier stations.
Hopefully this sweeps through soon.
Meanwhile, tennis players in Australia are catching COVID..and they can’t blame Joker because he was still in his hotel room until yesterday
Here comes Ebola.
— “We are not shackled by covid 19, but by government.”
Agreed.
No it will never end until after the 2024 election...if then
Yeah, he either misspoke, and meant ‘getting vaccinated and then infected and thereby getting immunity by way of a less severe illness’ or he’s an idiot.
Only we can free ourselves from this lunacy.
No, it will not. The only thing that will free humanity from tyranny is their middle finger and the will to use it.
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