One of the easiest bosses in the game!
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With these numbers, universal exposure is basically inevitable. 75% VE and R0 of 7-10 (conservatively!) means that the virus will spread quickly even in a fully boosted population, which we donāt have and will never have. In light of that, drastic measures like remote school likely donāt pass a cost-benefit test. Thereās no real difference between doubling every week and increasing by 60% every week.
Itās been obvious for a while that thereās absolutely no containing Omicron. All we can reasonably do is pray that severity is low and/or R0 is lower than it appears due to short generation times.
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Even if that is true, probably going to be hard to staff schools in January. So maybe not remote, maybe just a brief shutdown for lack of personnel.
Btw the other key question is durability of immunity. Gonna be a huge problem if this omicron wave happens every six months.
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We just got an email yesterday in Columbus City schools basically saying this. Plan is to go back. Continue to require masking everywhere. Potentially going remote in specific schools if staffing makes it necessary.
I think weāre going to see a lot of this in every sector. My poker room has a large number of dealers and supervisors currently out with COVID. I wouldnāt be at all surprised if we canāt fully staff the room in another week. Obviously weāre not essential so itās not a big deal, but Iāve got to imagine the same thing is happening in hospitals, grocery stores, schools, and all the other industries where lack of personnel is a major issue.
Yes, the CDC recs make more sense in light of all of this. They are trying to avoid partial societal collapse.
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We need 15 days to slow the spread.
Agreed.
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Right. The two main issues are:
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These things are only true in a world where vaccines have been available for over a year and available to the full adult population for 8 months.
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Just to get to this point cost around 1 million American lives and thatās with lockdowns and other measures to control the spread.
Conservatives are going to wilfully ignore data like NYCās where unvaccinated people appear 28x more likely to get sick than fully vaccinated people and claim that vaccines donāt work because there are breakthrough cases.
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The garbage can I put at the end of the driveway yesterday is still there this morning, untouched. The garbage service company was apparently already having personnel shortages and a bunch of sick collectors is going to make for a trashy situation.
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Yeah, my daughters school is closed for students Monday, when theyāll be testing all the teachers, then they will do student surveillance testing Tuesday morning. I would want odds to take a bet that sheāll be in a classroom Tuesday afternoon.
I donāt feel too worried about immunity duration. Two shots didnāt hold up because they were spaced too close together. The mix of vaccines + boosters + exposures + Omicron boosters that people will get over the next 6 months will hopefully create more durable immunity.
A fun parlor game is to estimate the true number of COVID infections contracted in the next 24 hours. I would put the over-under at 8 million.
Iām probably not guessing that high, but there is so much COVID right now.
Boston wastewater data is incredible. Just swamping prior waves.
Yeah our schools went from do a rapid test to going remote for two days and PCR for all with we will see if we will open from the results.
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Pretty good summary of the state of play in Africa.
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The vaccines are literally saving hundreds of thousand of lives, if not millions worldwide.
If a billion get Omicron and the true death rate is 0.5%, thatās five million. If the vaccine knocks that down even 10 fold (likely higher?), thatās 4.5M saved.
Thatās ignoring spread is probably even faster in unvaxxed. So just imagine what delta and now Omicron should do worldwide without any vaccine. Staggering.
Being much more contagious and only an order of magnitude more deadly than seasonal influenza is a hell of a sweet spot. More deadly (especially to kids and younger adults) and people stay the fuck home in a true black plague environment.
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If this had evolved this way without vaccines the gun nuts and preppers would be about to take power. Weād be at complete societal breakdown when this wave takes off over the next month.
This is all playing out in a way that is eerily similar to a winning game of Plague, Inc.
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Still fucking positive.
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You could test positive for weeks. Doesnāt necessarily mean you are contagious though.
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