Fascinating. I was surprised by the very last graphic. Businesses and restaurants are clearly good places to contract covid. Think I’m going to pass on restaurants until it gets warm again.
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The closing of these hospitals is terrible. Residents will have to drive an hour to get to an ER. Of course, these problems precede COVID but I am sure COVID did not help the bottom line.
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Fortunately in San Diego there are plenty of restaurants with outdoor heated seating. Temperatures might be in the low 60’s or high 50’s in the evening, but the heaters are more than adequate. We dine out occasionally, but never indoors.
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I think the number of cases contracted in restaurants/bars would be much higher in an area where there is colder weather and everyone dines/drinks indoors.
How is “fully vaccinated” defined? Does it include having had the booster shot?
I’d like to know how many people who have also had the booster are being hospitalized / in ICU / on ventilators.
AFAIK,no.
At this time, fully vaccinated means 2 doses, no booster.
And now we’re getting into the problem that started months ago: over the summer, when there was discussion/delay over who should get the booster and when, while data from overseas was showing the necessity of getting a booster, and people in this country saw declining antibody levels and increasing “breakthrough” cases, multiple people assessed their personal level of risk (pre-existing conditions, anxiety, common good, and workplace/social) and started obtaining boosters on their own. So now we don’t know how many people have officially received a booster (or even 2).
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The answer is, not enough. Not enough have received the booster to help greatly in stopping omicron, but hopefully more will get boosted every day.
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Not just Omicron…not enough have been boosted to help stop Delta. The Northeast is having a surge in cases and I believe the majority are still Delta.
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If the vaccine companies started making Delta-targeted vaccines in the summer, would they be available now?
If they use the stated timeline referred to upthread, then yes.
I don’t see any Delta specific trials on clinicaltrials.gov or Pfizer’s website. Moderna’s website shows a couple of Delta products in development (phase 2 and preclin/phase 1, respectively) but those trials aren’t on clinicaltrials.gov. That’s all I have time to check, but if the companies believe Omicron is likely to become dominant, they are likely to immediately stop other variant specific trials.
I believe the rule of thumb is 10 weeks to ramp up production. That, of course, assumes approval of the variant vax.
btw: Delta was believed to be covered well enough by the original vaccines, so the manufacturers stopped the trial process for a Delta-specific variant. Now, the question is whether Omni is virulent enough for a specific vax? If it ends up to being ‘just like the flu’, perhaps a general vax will be ok.
However, if Omicron causes only mild cases (at least in the vaccinated), but is still treated as a dangerous virus requiring those who test positive to isolate or quarantine, then there is still benefit to having an Omicron vaccine if it can prevent mild and asymptomatic cases.
yes, even if omicron doubles over 2 days (some even say every 1,7 day) it’s still got a LONG way to go before it takes over Delta. And a big problem is that, so far, it looks like Delta is meaner. However Omicron seems to affect children more. 
It may be faster than you think. 30% of Covid cases in London are Omicron.
How far behind is the Eastern US compared to London?
A couple of weeks? If that. Probably less. Omicron was announced around/on Thanksgiving, and they started finding cases soon after. Also regular Covid numbers were quite high in the UK at that time.
The UK expanded their booster mandate only very recently, and just lowered it to 18+ today. They also shortened the 6 months between doses to only 3 months.
In general, it seems that, although Omicron is more likely to cause a breakthrough case, it is indeed mild. It also seems that Omicron may cause milder cases of COVID than previous variants, even in the unvaccinated. While that may not be true, it would not be surprising.