What do you make of "Omicron" (COVID Variant B.1.1.529)? Big deal? No big deal?

Continuing to frequent "places with faces" makes the unvaccinated a menace whether or not they end up in a hospital by making others ill.

Doctors and nurses who stay away from family and friends to avoid passing covid to them come to mind for me. Not much of a reward for taking care of the rest of us.

Of course. Years ago, as a teacher I organized the school lunch room concession that handled hot food delivered to the high school by a nearby restaurant. After consulting with my dietician wife (a high school foods teacher), I made darn sure students running the concession practiced good food handling measures. I wasn't in the cafeteria all lunch hour, but like I was with my father when he was in skilled nursing care I showed up when least expected, so much so I was in the end expected to show up any time. The first thing I did when entering the cafeteria backroom? I washed my hands. Every time. No exceptions.

 

Thank you very much! I'll be placing my orders for these 3M masks Monday, because I'm convinced these mutations are going to keep on coming, and they may get much worse....

 

I'm rather hopeful my wife and I won't at some point need the masks.

 

A large study of the UK Health Security Agency, after it worked alongside Cambridge University MRC Biostatistics unit to analyze 528,176 Omicron cases and 573,012 Delta cases, found that Delta is 3 times more likely than Omicron to result in hospitalization.

This seems to confirm the hope we all had that Omicron would indeed be confirmed to be milder.

Also, the same study said that people who received 3 doses of the vaccines are 81% less likely to be hospitalized with Omicron. So the vaccines do provide some protection against Omicron after all, provided that there is a booster. Apparently even the vaccines first thought to be useless against Omicron like the AstraZeneca, do protect when a booster is given.

In other news, Omicron seems to have peaked in South Africa one month after its emergence. It could peak in the United State in mid-January or late January.

Hospitalizations are creeping up in the United States. Data from New Jersey indicates that of hospitalized people with Omicron, 70% are unvaccinated and 30% are vaccinated. That is less good than what I had hoped for. But it doesn't say anything about boosters, and we know that protection against Omicron requires boosters. So maybe most of the 30% weren't boosted.

I think that people who are vaccinated and boosted will be fine, and hopefully this wave will pass in a couple of months (will peak in one month then pass in two months).

 

The fully vaccinated 62% have 30% of the hospitalizations. The unvaccinated and under-vaccinated 38% have 70% of the hospitalizations.

 

And that is a statistic that speaks volumes for itself....

Perhaps when the unvaccinated come jamming into what little space remains in our hospitals with the virus (in any variation), they should be given a bottom-priority for admission.

I know, I know... this would never happen -- but if we don't do something, and SOON, our hospitals could be temporarily overwhelmed with the unvaccinated during this winter (which is now not even two weeks old)! If these people are going to come barging into the hospitals, does it really matter at that moment whether they have 'regular' COVID, "Delta", or "Omicron"...?!

 

I can't see that happening, but it might be justice if it did.

Some states may be overwhelmed by virus cases, more likely than not red states. It will be very uncomfortable if we triage covid patients and the vaccinated are sacrificed.

 

EXACTLY!!!!!

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A good, albeit long talk released today with Peter Attia MD, sits down with Drs. Marty Makary and Zubin Damania (aka ZDoggMD) on Omicron and what it may mean in making this virus endemic and part of the common respiratory viruses circulating moving forward.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0x...ZV17GRfKabZnuybH8TA&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1

I've followed ZDoggMD on youtube from the beginning. He's a big proponent of the vaccine, especially early on, but is questioning how much 35-45% efficacy of the boosters after 10 months given that Omicron is likely to hit everyone and seems to be more like the common cold than the original strain that hit the lungs hard.

My family was hit with a stronger than usual head cold this winter. We rode it out for a few days. I now know about 20+ friends and family, both vaccinated and unvaccinated that have tested positive for Omicron. All had more or less the same symptoms. Hopefully Omicron is the way out for everyone.