COVID-19: Chapter 9 - OMGicron

Yes I agree with this. I was just pointing out that numbers falling is still a good thing if we are about to have an omicron surge. Makes hospital overruns less likely.

1 Like

Odds 4 year old knows their birthday and is incapable of lying to the pharmacist at your direction is approaching 1.0.

4 Likes

I have a four year old who is almost 5. Iā€™ve asked around a few places, and havenā€™t found anyone willing to give him a vaccine before his birthday. I donā€™t think lying about his birthday is a great idea, partly for the reasons Dan mentioned, so we will just wait a few more weeks.

1 Like

Hold birthday party, tell kid she is 5, EZ game.

12 Likes

Yea 4 year old knows her birthday and if asked chances of blowing it are near 100%. It probably goes something like ā€œIā€™m 4 but my daddy told me to tell you Iā€™m 5. My birthdays in 2 months. ai want x, y, z for my birthday.ā€

We are good at pranking her mom, so if I told her it was a prank she would tell them she was 5, then get excited for the reveal and blurt out ā€œHa joked ya, Iā€™m really 4.ā€ She loves to misuse joked.

But Iā€™m assuming they arenā€™t going to ask her, Iā€™m just going to write down a fake birthday on paper and sign something. And if I get caught it will be embarrassing, but what are they going to do, arrest me? I can always play dumb about not knowing how old they had to be. It seems like the risk reward is clearly there.

4 Likes

When I got my 6 yo Vaxxed at Walgreens I filled everything out online in advance. The pharmacist asked no questions of my child whatsoever. YMMV

1 Like

How would insurance work if it is a rare case where something goes wrong? I dont actually have any idea.

Just in time for YoGabbaGabba variant.

CVS, Walgreens unlikely to ask the kid their age. They will likely ask the parent. As long as this doesnā€™t get the child to pipe up and correct parent you will probably be ok.

The counterpoint to this is that based on the rate of mutation of the virus and the numbers of mutations observed, the virus might have been circulating as early as the last half of September in a population where sequencing is low (there are a lot of such places just north of South Africa). Thereā€™s plenty of room for error in that phylogenetic analysis, and since mutagenesis is at least usually a random process, assuming a constant rate of mutation is imperfect, and you can have a lot of them happen at once just by chance. So, itā€™s not ridiculous to think that there would have been prior populations we might have heard about. However, the places without much sequencing also may not be compiling and sharing hospitalization and death statistics as completely, so that also could explain why we arenā€™t hearing about bad outcomes.

It sucks, but thereā€™s just a massive fog of war here. All we can really do is wait for better data, which is being compiled, and protect you and yours against delta, which is unlikely to be usurped around you within the next month or so at the very least.

4 Likes

I know some folks who were planning international travel next summer right before their kidā€™s 5th birthday. Their doc apparently will give the kid the vax off label prior to then if itā€™s not approved for 2-4 earlier than that. Doesnā€™t seem ridiculous to me, but this is a massive YMMV situation.

RE: THe US isNā€™t seqUEnciNG THAt MuCh

https://twitter.com/scottjbecker/status/1464759823765958662

https://twitter.com/scottjbecker/status/1464759826345463813

https://twitter.com/scottjbecker/status/1464759827381428227

1 Like

Interesting take. Do science. Get your whole country/region banned from intl travel.

1 Like

Only if youā€™re Black, though. The UK is asking people not to ban them for having omicron after banning African countries with it.

https://twitter.com/Tuliodna/status/1465299942281523201

2 Likes

My stepbrother was able to travel to the US from Singapore for the first time in 2 years for the holidays this year (getting back into Singapore after leaving has been the problem).

Heā€™s pretty sanguine about his return flight on Dec 27th. I guess he can work remotely and heā€™s ok with being trapped for a while if it comes to that. Seems like a decent likelihood Omicron shows up in the US and Singapore shuts us down.

At least they will be rewarded by being near the end of the line for the reformulated vaccines if they are needed

2 Likes

international travel is of course a concern for pandemics, but i think it can be mitigated by self-isolation and testing both before and after the flight, whenever it makes sense.

Remember way back in like May 2020 when we all were fantasizing about sweet instant covid tests where you just breathe in a tube and red light green light or something. I wonder if we have some cool tech brewing that we just havenā€™t heard about yet.

Some reusable way to breathalyze yourself every morning seems like itā€™d be pretty sweet.

Thank you for correcting the misinformation. The US will probably lag behind Europe in omicron exploding the same way it did with Delta, just based on international travel patterns. Delta didnā€™t really get going in the US until mid July despite being oversees aprilish.

Edit: Iā€™m sure weā€™ll detect our first case soon enough, but it takes time to go from a handful of cases to exploding everywhere, even with exponential growth.

If I was trapped in America with you Iā€™d still be happy. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

2 Likes