Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

@mutz87 literally justified COVID protocols to me within the last week. Now all of a sudden everyone is flipping on a dime, then expecting us to believe that it's because "circumstances have changed."

The circumstances haven't changed. Omicron has likely peaked, but it's not the last variant that will come. Our healthcare "experts" justified ongoing protocols during Delta (even as it waned) because of possible future variants and more people will die from COVID.

This change of tune is due to the changing political winds. People are tired of COVID and Democrats are sensing that they can't keep this up much longer without significant blowback. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

 

Depends on what the expectation is of an emerging variant. The expectation is it will keep trending towards less deadly. Obviously if a Delta-type version re-emerged that would be a problem.

For me you probably want to see COVID deaths fall below flu deaths at least. But even if it sticks around and kills 50k a year, it would be pretty horrible as that is effectively doubling our expected annual deaths from a respiratory illness. It would be nice to see it driven it much lower, or even become rare to see it contribute to a death.

The idea we should ignore 900,000 deaths and go about our lives will never be anything but a pure evil take.

 

It may be political, but the data also supports it for now.

A lot of people relaxed before the delta wave. But then saw it prudent to take precautions when it started spiking, ditto for this omicron wave. I live in a deep red area, the mask usage thing (observationally) I have no doubt is correlated to the spikes in cases regardless of whatever the idiots in Tallahassee are saying/doing.

 

Why is a Delta-like variant a problem but not an Omicron-like variant? What's the magic number that changed your mind?

What changed from literally a week ago to today?

 

I've mentioned on here several times that when circumstances change, so have policies. Things loosened up around the country multiple times already and in many places, tightened up multiple times following the peaks and valleys of the spread.

This should have been expected, perhaps other than from those who (wrongly) imply that stricter rules were some effort at permanence such that loosening is only some pure political act.

 

The data has not changed in any significant way, Democrats are just scared of the blowback.

 

What changed from a week ago to today, Mutz?

Why now and not a week ago?

 

With Omicron being so infectious and milder than Delta, it's possible that we're near the light at the end of the tunnel. Once the Omicron wave subsists, we might be able to relegate COVID to endemic status.

 

Thanks pa. I don't doubt that at all. The findings from the trials had been holy smokes striking as I remember. I'm curious about how this affected the death rates between vaxxed vs unvaxxed, which have been extremely large since April 2021.

I'll have to wait to see the data on deaths. Through Dec 4 they have been consistent with older folks leading the way but vaxxed vs unvaxxed remaining stark. Though some preliminary NY & Seattle data suggest similarity to delta.

 

The data hasn’t changed? You do realize some of these localities are down a literal 90% on their hospitalizations?

We were basically in this same place a year ago, and some of these big cities with heavy restrictions already pretty much did this before before Delta put their health measures back on. Remember NYC and their 4 “phases” to their “reopening”? That was a year ago!

I do think these NE governors probably should have not really said anything for another couple weeks, to see the death numbers really come down.

 

Word. It's a wonderful development too.

There were many experts cautiously discussing endemic status as the likely (hopeful) possibility back when omicron began to spike right before Cristmas. What I think needs push back against, however, is the suggestion that restrictions were some type of authoritarian effort. If they were, then we wouldn't have seen things loosen up around the country multiple times, as they are now again.

 

"In any significant way," BLING.

What some (unnamed) localities being down 90% in hospitalizations is cause to take a complete 180 on your position on mandates and lockdowns... to allow people to make their own risk assessments and their own decisions?

That's contrary to everything that we've been told over the last two years. We were told people making their own risk assessments were science deniers and selfish. Again, @mutz87 last week was just telling me how bad things still are with respect to COVID.

 

Have you followed how much cases have sharply dropped nationally, and especially in the big states?

That's what has changed. This was predicted to happen based on what we learned from South Africa.

 

Tell me the magic number, Mutz. What point exactly did you switch from COVID is "infecting and killing people at an alarming rate" to "COVID is subsiding?"

We have seen dips and spikes throughout the pandemic. Even through the dips, we were told that we had to keep taking precautions because of the possibility of a future variant. If we disagreed, we were selfish science deniers.

COVID will still be here next year, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some new variant next year. People will still die from COVID.

 

We are talking about the northeast states here. NY, NJ, etc. Look at their charts. They have cycled all the way down.

While I think some of these people are overly eager to end some of these mandates, so in that sense it is political they didn’t “observe” for like 2 more weeks. It doesn’t exactly line up with the really bad references to totalitarianism, Fauci as Dr. Mengele, that it was always about govt “control” etc. If they are afraid of voters over this issue, doesn’t seem like it gave them much totalitarian control afterall. Maybe… just maybe, they just wanted to save some lives all along.

 

I question your vague assertions about being called selfish and suspect that there's more to the specific back and forths than you allude.

In any case, with cases dropping by about 75% nationally and in the big 4 states, I would think that it's a fair reason to begin loosening things up. There is of course a chance for more variants and if so, we will see a public health response to what is happening on the ground, but given the specifics of omicron being very mild and now cased sharply dropping, it's why we've been hearing talk about endemic status.

 

Well if you have to support mandates and lockdowns to care about saving lives, then I guess anybody who opposes mandates and lockdowns no longer care about saving lives.

 

When Delta waned, did we or did we not have a lower 7-day rolling average than we do now?

 

Yes. In fact, the 7-day moving average for omicron ending today is nearly 5k cases larger than delta's peak (using world-o-meter data). But omicron's drop is about 13% larger than delta's and in half the number of days, and with a 5x larger absolute drop (697k vs 132k).

I can't know with any specific insight, but I doubt that public health experts are only considering 7-day moving averages. I'd add too that when delta waned, it was only about two weeks later that we saw the emergence of omicron and cases were already slowly rising.

 

If one is in the middle of a raging pandemic - during a peak wave -screaming about govt tyranny, mask mandates, spreading misinformation about how the vaccines are the debils work, etc. Then yeah, such a person pretty much demonstrates they don’t care about saving lives.

If we are seeing hospitalizations drop 80% or 90% to adjust the policy (the opposite of surging), it is at least a supportable position to start talking about again dropping those measures, though they should certainly emphasize vigilance. Spiking the football tends to bounce back up and hit these politicians in the nuts, so they should always be measured in what they say.