urbanSTL

UrbanPlanner2022 wrote: ↑

Dec 31, 2021

It is absolutely not premature.  It’s scientifically proven that it is milder.

It appears to almost certainly be less severe, given the number of hospitalizations/deaths relative to the number of new infections. If it isn't less severe, we're about to see catastrophic losses in the next 2-3 weeks like none we've ever seen before, because it is most definitely much more infectious. We're likely going to hit 1 million new infections per day in the next week, and will probably be close to 3 million new infections per day by the end of January. But the current projections suggest that while the infection rate is about to skyrocket higher than it has ever been, the rise in hospitalizations and deaths will not be proportional relative to the infection rate. The highest daily infection rate we saw prior to omicron was about 500,000 new infections one day in late December 2020. A few weeks later, we hit our peak in daily deaths, at just over 3,400 on January 10, 2021. The current projection for expected peak infections is 2.8 million about one month from now. It stands to reason that if omicron is no less severe than previous strains, then we'll be looking at nearly 20,000 deaths per day by the second week of February, and yet, there are no models predicting the numbers will be anywhere near that high. To be sure, daily deaths are expected to spike again to about 2,000 per day, but that's nowhere near the peak rate we've seen, and certainly not remotely proportional to the expected infection rate compared to previous spikes. To be sure, the current vaccination rate is a big factor in why this thing isn't likely going to kill as many people as previous strains, but fortunately we don't need to worry about how bad this might be if almost nobody was vaccinated, because that's not the country we live in. The reality is, most of us are probably going to get this at some point, whether we've been vaccinated or not. And those of us who have been vaccinated will be mostly fine, save for a few days of feeling crappy. I certainly don't want COVID, but I accept that I will probably get it at some point, and I'm not overly concerned about it being significantly detrimental to my health in the long run - I'm double vaxxed and boosted, don't have any serious comorbidities, and am still relatively youngish (in my 40s).

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-s ... &tab=trend

It's probably less severe, but as every virologist/immunologist is saying, you can't just look at it in terms of cases to hospitalizations. Some of that lessened severity is probably due to the fact that the vast majority of the population has some level of immunity.

On a separate note, Winterfest's outdoor NYE celebration is canceled, which is ridiculous. The safest event on NYE downtown is not happening, but all of the totally unsafe ones will go on as scheduled.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/met ... b2b63.html

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Dec 31, 2021

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Dec 31, 2021

1) It is extremely premature to say that Omicron is milder than Delta. In May the news was full of articles about how mild Delta was.

I don't recall that being the case at all. But out of curiosity, I did a Google News search for articles published in May using the string "Delta variant + less severe", and I couldn't find a single article indicating that there was any meaningful scientific consensus that delta could be less severe than previous iterations of COVID-19.

Do you have a link to any of these numerous articles from May where medical experts were suggesting that delta was a relatively mild variant?

There's no meaningful scientific consensus that Omicron is milder either, it's basically just one doctor from South Africa making the news show circuit + various politicians and media. There literally hasn't been time to study Omicron to credibly determine severity.

Edit: to wit, https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 021-12-17/

Jared Polis strategy is what’s going to win out by end of January

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

Jared Polis strategy is what’s going to win out by end of January

I feel like this strategy might become less popular when the healthcare and supply chain systems collapse, but what do I know about politics.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

Jared Polis strategy is what’s going to win out by end of January

I feel like this strategy might become less popular when the healthcare and supply chain systems collapse, but what do I know about politics.

Do you just live to find the cloud inside every silver lining?

Happy New Year, Eeyore.

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

Jared Polis strategy is what’s going to win out by end of January

I feel like this strategy might become less popular when the healthcare and supply chain systems collapse, but what do I know about politics.

Do you just live to find the cloud inside every silver lining?

Happy New Year, Eeyore.

Are you blaming me for pointing out that it's a bad idea to ignore our deadliest wave of the deadliest pandemic in a century?

"What if we just pretend everything is fine?" has never solved anything.

A brilliant politician, boldly covering the Check Engine light with electrical tape.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

I feel like this strategy might become less popular when the healthcare and supply chain systems collapse, but what do I know about politics.

Do you just live to find the cloud inside every silver lining?

Happy New Year, Eeyore.

Are you blaming me for pointing out that it's a bad idea to ignore our deadliest wave of the deadliest pandemic in a century?

"What if we just pretend everything is fine?" has never solved anything.

A brilliant politician, boldly covering the Check Engine light with electrical tape.

Deadliest wave?

UrbanPlanner2022 wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

Deadliest wave?

Last fall, when we peaked at much fewer daily infections than we have today, the infection rate was around 1.03 and falling. Now the hospitals are already full, the infection rate is 1.50 and still growing, NYE-infected hospitalizations haven't started yet, and Omicron hasn't even arrived yet. What do you think is going to happen?

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

I feel like this strategy might become less popular when the healthcare and supply chain systems collapse, but what do I know about politics.

Do you just live to find the cloud inside every silver lining?

Happy New Year, Eeyore.

Are you blaming me for pointing out that it's a bad idea to ignore our deadliest wave of the deadliest pandemic in a century?

"What if we just pretend everything is fine?" has never solved anything.

A brilliant politician, boldly covering the Check Engine light with electrical tape.

It's not the deadliest wave of the deadliest pandemic in a century, neither in the United States, nor in the world.

Do you even bother checking your facts before you make such claims?

Last January, the global 7 day rolling average peaked at nearly 15,000 deaths per day. In the United States, that average peaked at around 4,400 deaths per day at the same time.

The current global 7 day rolling average is just under 6,000 deaths per day, and in the U.S., that average is currently at about 1,150 deaths per day.

So no, this is not remotely close to the deadliest wave of this pandemic. We are in a major spike, but this is nowhere near the worst part of the pandemic. The average U.S. daily death toll in September was nearly twice as high as it is right now.

I get that you have some weird need for everything to always be seen as the worst case scenario imaginable with this pandemic and that we should all be in a constant state of "WE"RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! AAAUUGGGHH!!!!", but there is a sane middle ground between pandemic denialism that wants to pretend like there's nothing wrong at all and that the COVID is just the sniffles and the opposite end of that, which is a nihilistic conviction that the entire global healthcare system is on the imminent verge of total oblivion. It's not all or nothing - it is possible to both take this pandemic seriously as the biggest public health crisis any of us have ever witnessed and to also believe that the world is not about to collapse. I hope you find that middle ground eventually.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

UrbanPlanner2022 wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

Deadliest wave?

Last fall, when we peaked at much fewer daily infections than we have today, the infection rate was around 1.03 and falling. Now the hospitals are already full, the infection rate is 1.50 and still growing, NYE-infected hospitalizations haven't started yet, and Omicron hasn't even arrived yet. What do you think is going to happen?

It’s arrived in NYC and it’s have 1/5th of hospitalization as last winter.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

UrbanPlanner2022 wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

Deadliest wave?

Last fall, when we peaked at much fewer daily infections than we have today, the infection rate was around 1.03 and falling. Now the hospitals are already full, the infection rate is 1.50 and still growing, NYE-infected hospitalizations haven't started yet, and Omicron hasn't even arrived yet. What do you think is going to happen?

Do you mean Fall 2020? If so, where in the world did you get the idea that daily infections peaked at that time? We were averaging around 100K new infections per day in early November 2020. By January 2021, that number was up to 260K new infections per day.

Also, where did you get the idea that omicron "hasn't even arrived yet"? Nearly 60% of all current infections in the United States are omicron (that's after having been revised down from a previous estimate). If you know someone who has contracted COVID in the past week, they probably have omicron. What percentage does it have to be for you to consider it as having "arrived"?

Two years ago the "worst scenario imaginable" was a couple hundred thousand Americans dead. We'll be a lot better off collectively if we start thinking about worst case scenarios as something to be actively avoided, rather than dismissing them as screeching nihilism.

We're basically guaranteeing that the health care system will collapse sooner or later, because we're heading in that direction and the only warning anyone will heed is when it is already happening. It's going to play out like Wile E Coyote looking down and realizing he's already fallen off the cliff.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 01, 2022

We're basically guaranteeing that the health care system will collapse sooner or later, because we're heading in that direction and the only warning anyone will heed is when it is already happening. It's going to play out like Wile E Coyote looking down and realizing he's already fallen off the cliff.

That's not going to happen, and about two months from now, after we see that the rise in hospitalizations and deaths isn't remotely close to proportional with the rise in infections, I will bump this post to remind you of how wrong you were.

To be clear, I do expect the hospitalization/death rate to increase. But the amount of that increase will make it clear what many are already coming to realize - omicron is vastly more contagious and vastly less deadly than previous strains of COVID-19.

The reality is that most of us, vaccinated and unvaccinated, are going to contract COVID-19 sometime in the next year or two. And most of us, especially those of us who have been vaccinated and boosted, will experience a few days of feeling crappy and then life will go back to normal. Some will die, and almost all of those who die will either be unvaccinated or be elderly or have serious comorbidities. If you're a reasonably healthy individual under 60 who has been vaccinated and boosted and you get a breakthrough case of COVID, there's a 99.99% chance you'll be fine after the infection goes away.

If anything is breaking my brain during this pandemic it's people referencing horrific scenarios as fait accompli to justify doing nothing. And somehow I'm the nihilist lol.

If everyone gets COVID this year we're looking at 500k deaths a year if Omicron is very mild, over a million if it isn't. Assuming that medical care continues to function normally while the entire country gets sick at the same time (see: Florida rationing water due to medical O2 shortages). Plus long term symptoms, disabilities, etc. I'm not sure how you look at that picture and shrug. "Oh well it probably won't be me dying. I'm sure mass illness won't have any deleterious effects on society."

Like, just look at the age and vaccination status of the average farmer and tell me you don't care if everyone gets infected.

There is a significant identification problem regarding Omicron's "mildness": it looks mild because many of the large Omicron outbreaks are happening in regions where either a significant share of the population is vaccinated (i.e. Portugal, UK, NYS) or has natural immunity from past infection (i.e. South Africa). Therefore one cannot simply compare the raw numbers of cases/deaths from Delta's mid-2021 surge, when many countries were still struggling to vaccinate their population, to those of Omicron. 

In case any readers still think this is "just the flu":

In the conference they explained that they're seeing deaths months after workers "recovered" from Covid from infection-related health consequences (heart attacks, vascular problems, etc.). These deaths don't get classified as "from Covid" because they're no longer "positive."

The mental gymnastics required to continue the siege mentality as it related to the Omicron variant has to be admired. People who have been insistent on "following the science" now have their heads buried in the sand because the science is no longer predicting the imminent collapse of human civilization. Given omicron's established infectiousness, the consensus by medical professionals and epidemiologists is there is no way to prevent infection if you continue to interact with other people in any setting. Given that, either things are going to be fine or they won't, there is nothing else to be done other than continue the course on vaccination.

Ebsy wrote: ↑

Jan 03, 2022

The mental gymnastics required to continue the siege mentality as it related to the Omicron variant has to be admired. People who have been insistent on "following the science" now have their heads buried in the sand because the science is no longer predicting the imminent collapse of human civilization. Given omicron's established infectiousness, the consensus by medical professionals and epidemiologists is there is no way to prevent infection if you continue to interact with other people in any setting. Given that, either things are going to be fine or they won't, there is nothing else to be done other than continue the course on vaccination.

THIS, THIS, THIS.

Whatever the underlying reasons may be, the rate of hospitalizations/deaths is not keeping up with the rate of infections for omicron. A lot of people are getting COVID right now, most of the new cases are omicron, and most people who get it aren't needing hospitalization. While it may be the case that it is entirely because much of the population getting infected has either been vaccinated or has some degree of immunity from a previous infection, the case still remains that this massive spike in infections is not being matched by a proportional spike in hospitalizations and deaths (we'd need to be looking at more than 15,000 deaths per day for it to match the current infection rate relative to previous outbreaks).

So what does all of this mean? If you're vaccinated, you are almost certainly not going to suffer especially dire outcomes, unless you are either very old or have other significant comorbidities. Yes, the unvaccinated are still playing with fire, and they are most definitely putting their lives at risk by continuing to remain unvaccinated. The vaccines are free and highly available, and all the information is out there. Short of rounding these people up and forcibly injecting them with a vaccine that they refuse to take voluntarily, I don't really know what can be done about them. The rest of society is not going to keep their lives on hold forever because 20% of the population thinks it's their God-given right to play Russian roulette with their health. I don't have any problem with continuing mask mandates in public indoor settings, or with the various vaccine mandates that are out there. But short of those things, I'm not sure what else we can do. We're not going to shut everything down again like it's March/April 2020, because the public support necessary to impose such measures just does not exist, never mind the fact that such a massive disruption of our everyday activities would have monstrously dire economic ramifications for a significant amount of our workforce, and unless we're willing to throw another few trillion dollars in economic stimulus out there, I don't imagine the millions of waiters, delivery drivers, and other service economy workers who would be directly impacted are going to be OK with not having an income to feed themselves and pay the rent for several weeks/months.



Unrelated pedantic sidenote: I've seen the Greek letter names for different COVID-19 variants both capitalized and uncapitalized, and I wasn't sure which was the correct form. According to the AP Stylebook, when you refer to COVID-19 variants by their Greek letter names, those Greek letter names are to be written uncapitalized. So the two most well know variants are properly written as "delta variant" and "omicron variant", as opposed to "Delta variant" and "Omicron variant".  There's no consensus on this, though, as The New York Times does capitalize the variant names, but the Washington Post does not. Anyway, AP says don't capitalize the names.

Ebsy wrote: ↑

Jan 03, 2022

The mental gymnastics required to continue the siege mentality as it related to the Omicron variant has to be admired. People who have been insistent on "following the science" now have their heads buried in the sand because the science is no longer predicting the imminent collapse of human civilization. Given omicron's established infectiousness, the consensus by medical professionals and epidemiologists is there is no way to prevent infection if you continue to interact with other people in any setting. Given that, either things are going to be fine or they won't, there is nothing else to be done other than continue the course on vaccination.

There is absolutely no consensus by medical professionals that nothing can be done, the consensus and reality is exactly the opposite.

Absolutely zero wealthy countries in the world have been unable to contain the virus. Every one was able to contain it up until their wealthy elites decided it was too expensive to continue, which happened in some places (USA) sooner than others (Australia). Once rich people insulated themselves with daily testing and expensive drugs, they lost interest in containing the pandemic beyond the needs of their minimum staffing requirements. We can crush the pandemic any time we want to, we just have to use the government proactively to support workers, which Western Liberalism will not allow and thus we are in the current situation. Japan even hosted an Olympic pandemic disaster, and managed to rebound and contain the pandemic afterwards. We can do amazing things when we treat workers like humans instead of greedy vermin.

But if you rule out doing anything, then yeah, we can't do anything (except reduce our life expectancy into the 60s).

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 03, 2022

Ebsy wrote: ↑

Jan 03, 2022

The mental gymnastics required to continue the siege mentality as it related to the Omicron variant has to be admired. People who have been insistent on "following the science" now have their heads buried in the sand because the science is no longer predicting the imminent collapse of human civilization. Given omicron's established infectiousness, the consensus by medical professionals and epidemiologists is there is no way to prevent infection if you continue to interact with other people in any setting. Given that, either things are going to be fine or they won't, there is nothing else to be done other than continue the course on vaccination.

There is absolutely no consensus by medical professionals that nothing can be done, the consensus and reality is exactly the opposite.

Absolutely zero wealthy countries in the world have been unable to contain the virus. Every one was able to contain it up until their wealthy elites decided it was too expensive to continue, which happened in some places (USA) sooner than others (Australia). Once rich people insulated themselves with daily testing and expensive drugs, they lost interest in containing the pandemic beyond the needs of their minimum staffing requirements. We can crush the pandemic any time we want to, we just have to use the government proactively to support workers, which Western Liberalism will not allow and thus we are in the current situation. Japan even hosted an Olympic pandemic disaster, and managed to rebound and contain the pandemic afterwards. We can do amazing things when we treat workers like humans instead of greedy vermin.

But if you rule out doing anything, then yeah, we can't do anything (except reduce our life expectancy into the 60s).

Even among governmental officials who want to do such things, we don't have the structural ability to make them happen, given the institutional constraints of our three branches of government. We don't have the congressional votes to pass the several trillion dollars in economic aid that would be necessary for the shutdown you seem to be suggesting, and the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally throw trillions of dollars at the problem, and if he tried, the Supreme Court Roberts Six would shoot him down before the ink on the Executive Order was even dry.

kipfilet wrote: ↑

Jan 03, 2022

There is a significant identification problem regarding Omicron's "mildness": it looks mild because many of the large Omicron outbreaks are happening in regions where either a significant share of the population is vaccinated (i.e. Portugal, UK, NYS) or has natural immunity from past infection (i.e. South Africa). Therefore one cannot simply compare the raw numbers of cases/deaths from Delta's mid-2021 surge, when many countries were still struggling to vaccinate their population, to those of Omicron. 

Comparing cases/hospitalization is one way but there are other ways that show or leads experts to believe that omicron is milder, things like how it infects and where etc. follow Dr.Eric Topol for that

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Jan 03, 2022

Even among governmental officials who want to do such things, we don't have the structural ability to make them happen, given the institutional constraints of our three branches of government. We don't have the congressional votes to pass the several trillion dollars in economic aid that would be necessary for the shutdown you seem to be suggesting, and the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally throw trillions of dollars at the problem, and if he tried, the Supreme Court Roberts Six would shoot him down before the ink on the Executive Order was even dry.

That's what I meant when I said Western Liberalism.