If you’re not worried about your health, then just refuse any health care offered.
Imagine you’re on a remote South Pacific island with no decent medical care available.
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Have you tried actually calling those travel insurance agencies i linked to earlier? There is not such thing as an insurance company who won’t insure what you want insured for the right price.
That’s fine until you’re unconscious and put into an ambulance without your knowledge. I mean, that’s low probability, but these very consequential low-probability events are exactly what clovis is worried about.
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Yep we are good. My dad has purchased one of the supplemental plans and my corporate coverage still covers us.
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Yeah, I understand all of this. But bolded is the issue here. “Low”, while accurate, doesn’t really do it justice. It’s minuscule. I think if someone made some reasonable assumptions and did some calcs we would find that Clovis almost certainly does riskier things in terms of his overall well-being on the regular.
Also if whatever affliction causes him to be “unconscious and put into an ambulance” happens on our remote South Pacific island, he is almost certainly even more fucked. I guess if he says that kind of trip is also out of the question for him, then his decision-making process would make more sense to me.
Dr Osterholm thinks we have to rewrite the rules to allow asymptomatic positive COVID people to work at essential jobs to keep health care and other critical infrastructure functional through January. Otherwise sees at least 1/3 of healthcare systems as well as additional infrastructure failing. Hes involved heavily in the NFL program, so Id opine to look at those changes for guidelines, likely ending of quarantine periods for the asymptomatic as soon as they test negative if vaxxed, perhaps workers ok to work if positive as long as they are wearing an N95 (he mentioned this). Case numbers are basically about to be meaningless, no chance we have the testing to keep up.
Says he is resigned to very likely getting infected over the next month despite being incredibly careful to date, thinks vast majority of us get infected in this wave.
Thinks January at least will be back to zoom world at least temporarily for most work and school with lots of postponed in person events. Doesnt see a lot of closures coming otherwise. Notes Minnesota Republicans have notified the Mayo Clinic they will cut off funding if they continue to mandate vaxxes for employees.
Actually relatively bullish for him otherwise.
Says evidence is that vaccinated are going to be very well protected from Omicron, at least from initially bad outcomes.
Still worried about future variants being much worse for immune evasion and says we really need a pan-coronavirus vax to get back to relative normal with reasonable safety (although he notes that with endemic COVID we need to rethink how we get through winters in healthcare, although he acknowledges the public is basically done with this, especially if Omicron just keeps causing 1500 deaths a day indefinitely or w/e and doesnt totally end hospitals).
If it wasnt for future variants hed have more “optimism” that Omicron might end the pandemic just because everyone is going to get infected so quickly. Doesnt see evidence that this is more severe in kids (or the unvaxxed, the issue if just in infecting all of them in such a short period of time) Looks a lot like RSV for kids, which isnt great but isnt doomsday.
Thinks Pfizer can be a game changer, although has the roadblocks we have discussed in here and public health is already seeing evidence of these being viewed as “Biden poison pills” and expects patients will still demand ivermectin. Hopes it works for immunocompromised because otherwise, and he says this with more empathy, they are perma fucked, transplants are going to be a massive challenge going forward in COVID world with potentially limited life expectancy (and also potential variant factories)
He also opines Omicron is the end for COVID-zero strategy, even in places like China. To continue it is going to require full, hard lockdowns of the entire country for an extended period in a way that is likely not going to be economically tenable.
One tidbit on vaxxes that I hadnt heard before…says get any shot to boost you can, but opines that it might be better to actually have an adenovirus/J&J type shot as one of your shots in the regime as the protection may be weaker but may actually be more durable.
Vaxxes for younger kids and boosters for younger than 16 are going to take some more time. FDA took a lot of heat and some VRBPAC members were very upset that 16-17 boosters was done outside the formal process. Hopefully an early next year event for kids under 5, but going to have to go through normal process channels (and, if his other views are correct, will be post first infection for most at that point anyways)
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https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/modelling-suggests-rapid-spread-omicron-england/
The new report (Report 49) from the Imperial College London COVID-19 response team estimates that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant. This implies that the protection against reinfection by Omicron afforded by past infection may be as low as 19%.
Researchers estimate the growth and immune escape of the Omicron variant in England. They used data from the UKHSA and NHS for all PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases in England who had taken a COVID test between November 29th and December 11th 2021.
Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London said: “This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infection or vaccination. This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health.”
Prof Azra Ghani from Imperial College London said: “Quantifying reinfection risk and vaccine effectiveness against Omicron is essential for modelling the likely future trajectory of the Omicron wave and the potential impact of vaccination and other public health interventions.”
The work, which is not yet peer-reviewed, is presented in the latest report from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Jameel Institute, Imperial College London.
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Wondering if vax will ever be approved for under 5. My recollection of the 5-11 approval was the cost-benefit was starting to even out.
Also wondering if these “Omicron evades 2 doses” stories are because 2nd doses were largely complete during the summer in Europe but boosters are quite recent.
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Yes, but hte delay at this point seems down to Pfizer who keeps promising data but keeps not delivering. First it was “a few weeks after the data for 5-11 year olds is released,” then it was “before the end of the year.” Well it’s December 17th and we haven’t heard jack shit, so it’s pretty annoying. Lot of ski vacations for pfizer executives right now, so I get it. No rush.
I’m not aware of any health care system that does surveillance testing for covid. You get tested only if you have symptoms or some high risk exposure (last one I’ve see was a doctor who had both of their kids sick at home)
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I’m not sure I follow the statement that Omicron is not “more severe” in the unvaxxed? My understanding is that it generates more bad outcomes (hospitalizations and deaths) in unvaxxed than vaxxed. Just like Delta - is that the point? That is is equally bad for unvaxxed people compared to other variants, and unvaxxed people are much more likely to catch it?
Do you test if you have a close contact at work?
To clarify, that Omicron is not more severe in the unvaxxed than Delta.
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Nope.
He’ll keep getting them because he thinks vax passports will become more prevalent. He’s not anti-vax/hesitant. I’ll give a nudge if need be, he respects my Covid opinions and is pleased I’m appreciative of him doing it(thanks to this thread!).
This guy represents a subset of the unvaxed. Not clued in, think they’ll be okay, not thinking about how his being unvaxed can be a burden on others. He has no agenda, although as a regular radio talk show listener, quite sure it hinders his thinking a bit.
Supposed to go to a wedding in Florida on NYE.
What are the chances the wedding still happens? What is the percentage of people that will be there that will be positive with Covid?
My family of four is tested weekly by my children’s school. My wife teaches there, I volunteer.
When she tested positive in October it meant that she was out 10 days, me and the kids out 20 days.
It certainty felt excessive given she was entirely asymptomatic and tested negative within 2 days. No other positives resulted.
While surveillance testing may not be ubiquitous, it still includes a massive number of people. And the implications of changing guidance for isolation of asymptomatic positives is notable.
In our hospital, all corresponding surgeries and practices of other medical professons everyone gets tested based on exposure(do you work directly with patients and so on). If you arent vaxxed or recovered you need an AG test every day before you are allowed to work. If you are vaxxed you need to get two AG tests per week. If you work in the hospital you most likely get a PCR as well. If you have been away from work for more than 5 days you need to get an AG test before starting work again.