NFL moved 3 games from this weekend to Mon/Tues. How that helps I don’t know as some teams have 20 players testing positive.
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Which is the point - to shrink the circle of people one has contact with. Sitting down (unmasked out of necessity) with hundreds of different people returning from different classes at different times 3 times a day, is quite different from eating with a limited friend group whom you would have hung out anyway.
The principle still applies - if you can temper the speed, you have a chance for management measures to “take”, such as isolation, testing, quarantine. If you instead you allow it to overwhelm your resources, then the semester will move entirely online.
Given the alternative, take-out dining is not a bad compromise. It had worked in September until numbers came down.
Other than the quick headlines, the professionals in South Africa have made an effort to warn NOT to jump to conclusions based on the severeness in THEIR specific population. There could be other explanations (e.g. demographics in SA) besides the variant itself being “mild”, that might affect the U.S. and European populations differently!
One concern was, that the outbreak had been among the young and healthy, so you observe less severe illnesses. Another difference can be how it might trigger the more vulnerable population to very quickly “act out of reason” to protect themselves, while in other countries people might tend to “act out of principle”, even if against their own self-interest.
So there’s early reason to HOPE that it will be “mild”, but for the moment, we don’t have the actual data yet to ACT on that ASSUMPTION.
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The takeaway food is putting lipstick on a pig, in my opinion. According to UK, this is 70x more contagious- the virus will find the contacts elsewhere.
The same “young” population was affected by Delta and the epidemic curve of cases/hospitalizations is MUCH MUCH lower with omicron in South Africa. Gauteng province is definitely at peak for cases and hospitalization curve completely different. If it was the opposite (bad news), everyone would be quick to point to it without qualifiers.
South Africa did not change restrictions.
New York City is exploding with cases today. The good news is, omicron will most certainly be over in the northeast by the time the kids go back to school in January. It doesn’t matter in the south since covid doesn’t exist there in most colleges. Cases don’t matter- hopefully the world will finally change from a case based approach to hospitalization tracking.
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Supposedly, about 70% of the population in Gauteng has been previously infected, according to an antibody study (plus some of the population is vaccinated). So it is possible that the mildness could be due to partial immunity from previous infection and/or vaccination that, while not enough to prevent Omicron infection, is enough to limit the seriousness.
In theory, this cycle over several variants and mutations could be how it can become just another common cold, where everyone has partial immunity that is not enough to prevent infection, but is enough to prevent infection from becoming serious*. But (a) we do not know if this will be the case in the future, and (b) Omicron is still putting people into the hospital (albeit at lower rates than before), so even if that is the case, it is not yet at the “common cold” level.
*It is proposed that the 1889 “flu” pandemic was actually the emergence of the OC43 coronavirus in humans, which is now considered one of the common cold viruses.
Even if omicron proves to be mild, we still have some colleges surveillance testing and isolating positive students for ten days so what will they do when a giant number of kids are positive? They won’t have space. So I’m afraid what they will do is revert to remote classes and no social events so they’ll have fewer positives. We really need to have the CDC re-examine isolation rules.
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Supposedly 80% of Americans have prior immunity from infection or vaccination. Certainly college students do, 95%!
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They can’t, unless they do it for flu. Shortly we will have the real Case fatality rate for Omicron in US (very very low in South Africa). That’s when the rubber will have to meet the road.
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At what point is Covid going to be treated as the regular flu might be treated? So far Omicron has not resulted in severe hospitalizations or deaths. Anyone that wants to be vaccinated or boosted can be, and those that are and get the virus will most likely have mild symptoms. My son attends a school in the South that doesn’t do regular testing. They stayed open through finals. Most kids had Covid last year so when a wave hit at the start of Fall it went through quickly and they’ve had few issues since. Constant testing for each subsequent variant, abrupt shutdowns, online-only classes seems so drastic at this point. Is zero-Covid our goal, or should we look at this as something chronic we have to learn to live with and manage? Seems like the consequences of mental health issues, lost education, and economic turmoil is worse than the actual virus at this point.
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Covid probably won’t be treated like the flu as long as there are 1300 people dying per day of it in the US. As that is where we are right now, I will admit to being shocked that so many are surprised by the reactions to large increases of infections.
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Not sure if this was already posted
We don’t yet know if Omicron is mild and even if it is, it will flood the hospitals, which is always the biggest issue.
We don’t really know how effective boosters are (but two shots apparently aren’t), or how much prior infection helps. South Africa had Beta which may have offered more immune protection against Omicron.
Monoclonal antibodies don’t work against Omicron, except for one that is being stockpiled. The Pfizer pill is hopeful (not so much the Merck), but people have to get it early, there are supply problems, and it is expensive.
I really hope Omicron, which has some of the genetic material of a cold, turns out to be milder than Delta, However it is also unclear whether you can get both at the same time or sequentially, and whether Omicron can “take over.”
Colleges are wise to close for 2-3 weeks (depending on their start dates) so they can evaluate the situation after students return from travel and gathering.
There are pessimistic and optimistic ways to look at this. I am in the middle kind of pending. We have N95 masks and wear them.
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Yes, Harvard going remote through January 21, but finals are over and spring classes resume January 24th, so this doesn’t really affect the typical students. Hopefully everything will be ok for the semester. They expect Omicron to peak in the Boston area the first week of January, so if that occurs, it seems likely that spring semester will be back to normal-ish. 
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People keep repeating this with increasing desperation, as though saying the words “learn to live with” will make the virus less damaging and lethal.
I don’t know what to tell you. If you want much higher odds of a short and crippled life, go out and treat it like the flu. Otherwise, come to terms with the fact that we’re watching a very potent virus turning all the safe tumblers and finding its maximum efficiency in spreading. There’s no reason for it to get milder as it goes. This line from a recent paper is worth burning into the retinas:
“Viruses have no intrinsic tendency to evolve towards lower virulence; evolution simply selects those that excel at making more of themselves.”
Understand, too, that this thing has room to get a lot worse. You were hearing relief from scientists because at least this still uses a spike/ACE2 receptor mechanism for entering cells, which we know how to deal with. Nothing that we know of says it can’t evolve to shut down the immune system in a way reminiscent of HIV. The more opportunity it has to spread, the more shots the roulette wheel has at coming up “immune-wiper”. If you need a reminder of what’s worse than zoom school, take a trip down memory lane:
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The NFL has decided to drop its testing of vaxxed players unless they show symptoms. This should dramatically decrease the number of cases reported and the cancellation of games. Vaxxed Players who feel well can play. I expect colleges will eventually follow suit
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This is what a lot of colleges are doing now.
Well I don’t disagree with this idea but I can tell you that students just don’t get tested if they feel sick. Colgate doesn’t test unless sick and lots of kids avoided that. I think only the kids who end up really feeling really sick give in and get tested. Campus is 98 percent vaccinated and booster required for second semester. I’m so used to Bowdoin and their surveillance testing that Colgate’s plan really threw me for a loop but I have to say I felt ok with it.
This is anecdotal but all of the kids that S19 knew at Bowdoin who tested positive this year felt pretty sick. They test everyone twice a week and more for the kids considered close contacts and he doesn’t think anyone ended up positive without symptoms. So maybe there actually isn’t a lot of asymptomatic spread on campuses.
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I’ll take my chances and live my life, as I have done for the past 54 years, with the knowledge that I could die on any given day from hundreds of different causes. I follow the rules - I wear the masks, I have all three shots. I have confidence in the science, that even if I get Covid - the vaccines will do their job in making it less severe and keep me out of the hospital. You can’t really outrun the virus unless you’re willing to live alone like a hermit. The effects from isolation are just as devastating and have equally concerning “long term” complications (and sadly can also lead to death).
Again though, to paraphrase a headline, this is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Until we address that issue, it will continue be a “one step forward, two steps back” existence. Look around at how divided Americans are on this issue - while all the handwringing is going on in here over what colleges should and shouldn’t do re surveillance testing, thousands are freely traveling to Europe, NYC, Hawaii, etc., gathering in large indoor sports venues (anyone see the UNC/UK game in Vegas?), going to concerts, living their lives. This country failed miserably at handling Covid from the start, with each state getting to choose how strict their Covid protocols were, and now many people are done with it. I’m seeing less and less mask-wearing in public and no one is enforcing it.
The healthcare industry has some big decisions to make on how to handle those who have chosen to be unvaccinated - but at some point, the vaccinated need to be let off the hook.
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Even if we agree Omicron is serious, the sudden closing of schools is terrible for nearly everyone involved. My D’s school is strongly encouraging everyone to leave campus while she still has a few more exams. We will spend today with her in the car (masked, windows down) when she ordinarily would have spent a day like today at the library or studying with a couple of classmates. Instead, she’ll be in the car and then isolating in her bedroom (she was exposed but has yet to test positive). Far from ideal.
I don’t know when we return to normal. Given the possibility of Long Covid and my own co-morbidities, I can’t afford to treat this like the flu. But I can agree that the sudden college closings are probably unhelpful and I’m all for trying to minimize them.
One possible game changer is the yet-to-be-approved anti-viral pill. If it really works and becomes readily available, that might stabilize colleges when they experience outbreaks. But that requires more surveillance testing, not less.
And there it is! Which is exactly what I said would happen and what colleges will go to. Omicron has changed everything… come Tuesday, the president will announce an increased focus on hospitalzation and not cases. Soon CDC and government policy changes will follow and colleges will also make changes. Testing only sick people, probably a reduction of days for quarantine of positive cases and elimination of quarantine requirements for close contacts.
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I hope changes are coming in CDC policies because they have made quite a few missteps so far. There have been data for months showing that the current isolation period could be reduced (especially for those who were vaccinated) and CDC has chosen not to act on that.
There is also data supporting a test-out of isolation strategy, which again onhave not implemented on a wide-scale basis (although we do see some K-12 school districts adopting this now).
And don’t even get me started on the lack of rapid testing. This is going to be the rate limiting factor…there aren’t enough tests available to undertake the test-out of isolation strategy, nor are there enough tests so that people can get access to the forthcoming Pfizer pill treatment which needs to be taken with 72 hours of symptom onset (and a confirming test because we can’t treat people with the cold or flu with this new product because it will be in short supply and costs $$).
I look forward to hearing what Pres. Biden says on Tuesday.
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