New Year’s Eve Trafalgar Square celebrations cancelled.
that was California as of mid-November. As you probably know, CA is back to masking for all indoors.
Thanks. Very helpful study as that responds directly to a question that I have had.
@MarylandJOE, the problem is in the idea that service and goods provision has to work the way it has before, that there has to be rigidity in planning, and that most out-of-home workers have to be in high-contact danger. We’ll be having waves of a dangerous virus for quite some time, which is what the Ferguson group at Imperial said was likely nearly two years ago now. And we can adjust to deal with this, being out when things are fine, going back in when they’re not. It means making some changes.
People need electricity. I have solar panels that generate more than I use (and I bought them with a 20-year low-interest block-grant loan under a program with income caps, which more places should have), but because I don’t store the energy I’m still partially reliant on the grid. However, how many linemen have to work shoulder to shoulder? How many are working indoors in confined spaces? How many are doing jobs in confined spaces that could wait until virus spikes pass, and are there because of money and electricity convenience, not electricity need? How many are traveling crammed together in vehicles out of convenience? How many are working desk jobs that actually don’t need to happen in an office?
And so on. I’ve still got work to do tonight, so won’t lay out a whole vision of how actually we could move a lot away from 20th-c models of work and make it much easier for many more people to work without significant covid exposure. The point is to stack the odds.
The interesting thing to me, though, is that upthread a bit I said, “It’d be good if about 70 million more people [in a country of 330 million] could learn to be happy staying home in a pandemic,” and several people reacted as though I’d said “I’m coming to your house to manacle you to your sofa.” Especially after “that would be impossible” was met with “I think probably not, here’s how, one instance.”
If that’s you, What Up With That?: Samuel L. Jackson & Carrie Brownstein - SNL - YouTube ?
I found the same thing happened about six or seven years ago, btw, when I started experimenting with energy conservation. I’d say what I was doing, and people would wig like I’d said I was coming to disconnect them.
My bathroom’s looking awesome, btw – once I got started painting, I realized how truly gross the popcorn ceiling was after 20 years of showers, and…now it’s less gross. I was not, however, able to get my second shingles shot today – I went in, and was told by a desperate-looking pharmacist that now I have to make an appointment. No problem. If a delay isn’t problematic, though, it might be a few more weeks. Place was full of the maskless, ain’t going back for a while.
As a reminder, eyeballs also have ACE2 receptors, so hanging out masked in high-omicron areas is still going to challenge your vax unless you’ve got goggles/helmet, esp if others are maskless/unvaxxed.
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Omicron is now 73% of new cases. That’s an incredibly fast increase. It is much more contagious and not really deterred by most measures. This thing is flying through highly vaccinated populations. Obviously being vaccinated will provide a level of protection against severe illness from Omicron and that is great.
In the end I think this wave will reach almost everywhere. It’s going to quickly infect the majority of Americans vaccinated or not. In the case of vaccinated individuals this may actually be a good thing in many instances as it potentially boosts the immune system even more against Covid. For the unvaccinated hopefully this turns out to be a milder strain and many can get some level off immunity built up with milder cases. Either way almost all of us are going to be exposed at some point over the next several months if not sooner.
I can’t isolate completely. I have an in-person job. The country depends upon my doing my job. Many, many others cannot isolate completely. I don’t actually know anyone that can. Obviously, as stated above, some that are trying still go out in public at some point. We all really do depend on a bigger world to take care of us. Certainly there are those that can limit their exposure more. Others are out interacting in society and relying on their vaccination to provide them with a strong level of protection and that’s fine too. We all have different needs, different risk tolerances and different ideas about what is right for us, and that’s really OK.
At this point, those that are vaccine hesitant may be too late to get a good response before being caught up by the wave of Omicron. After Omicron moves through more people will certainly have more immunity built up one way or another. Hang on it’s about to get interesting for a bit.
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How ever one thinks about the Omicron variant, about its severity or inevitability, we need to avoid the situation where too many are infected at the same time to overwhelm our healthcare system. Some people, because of their job functions, need to interact with others. That’s completely understandable. But do we have to have concerts, athletic games, crowded bars, etc. at this point in time? There’s certainly risk in everything, but why take unnecessary risks?
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We know a mother and daughter who just got diagnosed with Covid Saturday. M vaccinated in mid-seventies with significant health issues, including diabetes mild symptoms. D forty not vaxed healthy, in bed, major flu symptoms.
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Probably the most common risk of COVID-19 generally is indoor dining at restaurants (or bars etc.).
However, winter holiday indoor family gatherings will increase transmission, particularly in colder places.
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I’m glad I spend most of my time in places (NYC and Boston) that either have vaccine requirements for indoor dining/recreation or are about to. It’ll also be interesting to see how NYC’s vax requirement for private employers goes. With my personal risk and the risk of those immediately around me attenuated, I’ve felt comfortable continuing to dine out, though that may change somewhat with omicron.
Ultimately it feels like it’ll take a much wider vaccination effort in the developing world to truly end the pandemic. Though the younger populations there are keeping outcomes fairly good, variants will continue to emerge essentially unchecked in places with vax levels around 10%. And as the feeble flight-cancellation efforts for omicron showed, a highly transmissible variant just can’t be stopped. All of that being the case, I don’t think I (and many others in high-vax areas) will again want to endure indefinite cycles of isolation. Zero-Covid is impossible, so life goes on, with some reasonable accommodations.
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It’s probably not viable at this point to ask families not to gather for the holidays. There will surely be cases as a result of these gatherings, but family members are motivated not to infect their loved ones. The bigger concern is about large gatherings where people don’t know each other and they could become super spreader events. With Omicron, hundreds, if not thousands, of people could be infected at each of these events.
COVID-19 exploded last winter, and it appears to be growing more rapidly now in colder areas where people stay indoors more. Big events that only a small subset of people go to may not make as much difference as the indoor gatherings (or indoor restaurant dining) that a much larger subset does.
Family members may not want to infect each other, but presymptomatic contagiousness makes it difficult to avoid (the reason COVID-19 is much more difficult to avoid than flu).
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I think people who go to those crowded events tend to be the most socially active, so if they’re infected, they could spread the virus more quickly and broadly. Indoor events are certainly riskier, but I’m of the view that crowded outdoor events are also risky now with the presence of the Omicron variant.
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BIL and wife refuse to get vaccinated, due to politics–bad move.
BIL and wife spend 3 weeks vacationing in Tennessee, whose vax rate is only 50%–bad move.
BIL and wife come home sick, both test positive for COVID, wife is home but feels poorly, BIL is in hospital with pneumonia and a possible blood clot.
I find that I am simultaneously very sad and very angry—all this could have been prevented.
Ugh.
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Exactly. It’s all about odds-stacking. It’s not going to be perfect, but it can be much, much better.
Everywhere I turn, though, the complexity problem comes up. And I think increasingly of biology. Living things are incredibly complex, and yet their internal operations are very crude. There’s lots of waste, lots of things going the wrong way, then the right way, or getting made and not used. Nothing has to know much about the rest of the system, or even that systems exist. This is incredibly robust. Systems fail in part and everything else continues to limp along; you don’t run into trouble until you get irreversible and cascading system failures.
One thing biology is not is “agile”. If you want a tissue to learn to do 16 new dances in a week you have a dead system. One new dance that takes advantage of built-in abilities takes a long time; seamless mode-switching takes longer. A tissue is a very sophisticated thing, but “agility” is just not how it rolls.
I don’t think anybody is thinking about public health this way. Not that I’ve heard of.
I hope this is true. My kid’s aunt and uncle just pitched a fit and called off any kind of Christmas gathering because her grandparents said they weren’t comfortable getting together in person, and could we do a zoom thing with them. So now they’re down to one out of three grandkids for Christmas. The aunt and uncle are chronically lousy people, but it’s a little extra to keep the grandkids away from saying hi.
We arrived at FIL’s to find he went to Walmart to get us two rotisserie chickens for supper - AFTER we told him we were bringing crab cakes (a favorite of his that we splurge on for him). He tells us how crowded Walmart was when he was there. UGH! We brought everything we need. He didn’t have to go out anywhere, esp inside anywhere.
BUT, at least as H was trying to talk him into getting the booster, he said, “I already went and got it,” and is detailed about the whole experience so we believe he’s telling the truth.
May it work if he got exposed… He got it last week, so it hasn’t been two weeks yet, but at least he opened his eyes to reality and went to get it. We can breathe easier about him since he refuses to stop going places. I get that part. He lives alone and he’s 93. Does he stay home lonely until he dies or take his chances doing things he enjoys? Plus, he’s had 2 funerals for close family members in the last month. Neither were Covid related, but I can’t see him staying home and missing those.
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I took my dad to see West Side Story this afternoon. The theater was very uncrowded and Dad wore his mask the whole time even though it wasn’t required. I figure what the heck, since he goes to church unmasked around unvaccinated people! This was much safer. We liked the movie.
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My son’s neighborhood has a movie theatre, fairly small (not a multiplexorama) that started hosting special screenings where the covid rules are seriously amped up. You have to show proof of booster, everyone is masked, 6’ away, no concessions, air cleaners running, reservations required. He has lots of medical fragility so he practically cried, it was so nice to be out and regarded as worth the effort.
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Some data points. Younger S’ friends (siblings) now have covid. They had it - and gave it to their parents and dad wound up in the hospital - last Xmas. And they are both vaccinated but I don’t know about boosted. I’m guessing they got it at school in the DC area where omicron is beginning to rage.
Older S’ northern VA Health District is still on a vertical trajectory. They have gone to better than us to a case rate 4x higher in a couple of weeks. They are now around 110 cases/day per 100K. However our hospitalization rate is 6x higher than theirs. They are a highly vaxxed and young area and we are not. But omicron hasn’t hit here yet. I suspect it will be very bad when it does.