We just need to rip the bandaid off and let it burn through society once and for all. The more we try to contain, the more we prolong this BS and delay the inevitable - that we're all going to get it.

I've had Covid the last 10 days and it was fortunately a total walk in the park because I was boosted. I had some sniffles and that was literally it. I've had worse colds and definitely worse hangovers. Had it not been for the fact that the CVS I had gone into had some at-home test kits in stock, I honestly would've have known I was infected.

My brother and his family are all boosted with the the exception of one of their two toddlers, who is 2 and not eliglble (but by far the least risky age group). But they are stating how proud they are for not eating at a restaurant or going into stores since Feb 2020. I'm like...ya'll realize if there was ever a time to get Covid it's now right? And trying to outrun this virus is going to just exhaust you. This variant is so much milder the ones of the past and if you're boosted you have such high protection from severe disease. But they live up in Berkeley where people are just crazy paranoid about Covid.

I wonder how much the lockdowns have prolonged the pandemic, maybe causing some reinfections too, or making some people older/fatter/poorer and more vulnerable. I could see this being particularly true in less functional countries that tended to impose more random draconian lockdowns and also didn't manage to give out vaccines. South Africa was a total shit show; they locked down too early and then not many people got vaccinated. Their adult prevalence of HIV is in the 20% range (50% poorly treated or untreated) which is much scarier than covid.

Lots of people argued we had to prevent "healthcare system collapse" (while constantly sounding the alarm about how we are about to see collapse) but in reality if you're going to have a pandemic, having a few weeks where the hospitals are overwhelmed is not guaranteed to be the worst outcome. It may be worse for everybody to keep hospitals mildly over-capacity for months rather than going through an acute period where there are too many unvaccinated-by-choice patients. And "collapse" need not happen. You can fail to treat 1 patient maximally (which may just mean shifting down a bit in the amount of care for a person with low odds of survival; did ventilator use in the early pandemic even help?) without the hospital crumbling to the ground.

Omicron seems potentially like a "good news" story to me, when put into wider perspective, though there is still a lot of uncertainty.

Here's the thing though, with other variants, you very likely wouldn't have gotten sick at all! So it's not obvious that omicron is really milder in that sense (since mild symptoms are worse than no symptoms!). In other words, average symptoms felt can appear milder but this is with a vastly different denominator (since we're not counting people who wouldn't have been considered at all). Now it could very well be somewhat milder than Delta for even unvaccinated people with no prior exposure, but probably not by an order of magnitude to make it really benign.

Anyway, I agree that for most vaccinated people, omicron is not a big deal if they get it. But even ignoring the antivaxxers (who even if are idiots, don't deserve to die), there's a substantial part of the population (I don't know, I'd guess at least 10%?) that even if boosted, still has substantial risk of serious illness or other adverse effects (stillbirth for pregnant women, which can apparently happen even when the woman is asymptomatic, long covid, whatever). Obviously they're better off than if they'd been unvaccinated, but it doesn't make sense to abandon measures to attempt to slow the spread, though of course people are tired of it and would like to pretend like it doesn't matter.

I'm not advocating for shutting things down again, but many people are acting as if it's a good thing that omicron is spreading so fast (and indeed, if they are vaccinated and not at high-risk for other reasons or ever need to go to a hospital it might be personally beneficial for them...). Instead, we need to keep mitigations that allow high-risk people to avoid getting sick, particularly universal masking in public places. With omicron, vaccine mandates in places probably won't slow the spread too much, though it will at least encourage more people to get vaccinated. But another thing to realize is probably half the cases reported in the last few weeks in the US are still Delta, and it probably varies highly by region.

I agree with you completely. And I'm speaking as a parent of an immunocompromised child under 5 who's not vaccinated yet. There's literally no reason for the humans who are fully vaccinated--to not go about their normal business as they would have in 2019. People like me still have to take caution because of a legitimate reason--but that's my responsibility. Every other person without with an immunocompromised young child--literally the only demographic at this point that has legitimate reason to be worried because a vaccine is not yet available to them--can literally just move on with their lives.

It's obvious that COVID hysteria is now a mental affliction, just as the pandemic-deniers and ardent anti-vaxxers are also mentally afflicted. They both have to be called out and addressed.

The truth about this whole pandemic, and the appropriate action to deal with it, has always been the middle ground. We've done literally all we can at this point. We've flattened the curve, we've vaxxed up, we've masked far, far longer than ANYONE would ever admitted to in March 2020, to the extent possible ad nauseum. The next chapter is finally here.

The spread has already happened, or it will happen regardless of mitigation. I think that's what many have been trying to argue--it's really a fool's errand at this point. You're only delaying the inevitable.

And to my above point, if you're also one of the individuals who still are concerned or will apparently never have good enough immunity to be in a normal public setting ever again, that's never going to stop being true, even "after the pandemic." The point is, COVID will never be eradicated.

At some point, people have to be expected to take responsibility for their own immunity, and if that means that they have to lock themselves down for a while, so be it. That's that only logical response at this point after nearly 2 years of a pandemic.

^^
You realize that hardly anyone at all thats vaccinated has died or even gotten seriously ill. So why should we wear masks forever and social distance forever to protect the few elderly morons who didnt get vaccinated? Screw up and screw the media hype over this, that is scaring people like you effectively.

Based on https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...vaccine-status vaccination reduces the death rate by more than an order of magnitude. Which is great, for most people, but for the most vulnerable it's still non-negligible (and if your chances of getting it increase by an order of magnitude due to lack of mitigations, you're not better off).

I couldn't agree more.

I would only differ in that I don't think we need to be testing people left and right. It's causing more harm than good.

I have healthy, vaccinated people with mild symptoms calling me all day to tell me that they have COVID, and it's literally like "Ok.......so?" They are clogging up time and resources of healthcare facilities with all of their communications and questions when people who are more seriously ill or have other medical problems need the attention.

Once again, bad leadership and lack of perspective from the people on top.

Right, I mean, they don't need to contact their providers if they have mild symptoms, just isolate. But, it's understandable that people are scared given how many people have died.

Ugh.... for once I actually envy Canada. Why can't we have common sense like this in the US? :facepalm:

Here in fucktardland, we have the opposite, where the goofballs in the media are giving attention to the few germaphobic doctors who are mad that the CDC lowered their isolation time from 10 to 5 days. Because, after all, everybody should just stay home forever and no other considerations matter....

I don't have strong feelings about masks one way or the other, but I am not sure this argument makes sense. If you are highly vulnerable you will mostly be protected by personally avoiding others or wearing a high-quality mask in public (e.g. N95). You can't rely on the other people wearing cloth masks, or not covering their nose, or taking it off to yell at somebody on their phone, and so on.

If this really is a major problem I wonder why we have not managed to make better provisions for the extremely vulnerable nearly 2 years into the pandemic (give them remote work if needed, their own housing with a door to outside, deliver stuff to them), such that we can allow others to return to normal.

Actually, by the very definition of the word, yes, antivaxxers do deserve to die if they get covid. They have not earned healthy outcomes based on their behaviors nor by the qualities they possess.

Thin the herd.

The Science is different here!

This, times 1,000%. Unfortunately, I think some people would rather relish in hysteria of getting sick for eternity.

I think the difference is here people will be unlikely to isolate if they can pass it off as allergies or the flu or a cold. Of course, they may also be unlikely to isolate if they know it's COVID but hey...

^ You totally fail to acknowledge that people who are high risk can take measures to protect themselves. Why do the ramifications of making EVERYBODY IN SOCIETY comply not matter to you? People are literally pissed, and perhaps you don't run into them very often given your circumstances, but I actually talk to them every day. They are doing the opposite of the measures that you support, which only makes things worse. It's time to start getting practical: back down, and encourage certain behaviors. But stop telling healthy adults what they can and cannot do. It's backfiring miserably.

I agree with almost all of this, but I think it was two weeks ago that omicron became the dominant variant of reported cases in the U.S. The change happened within the span of a week. I agree with all of it.

Policy-wise, based on the level of spread it seems that mask mandates are a good call for public spaces now that we're seeing vaccines be less effective for preventing infection.

Sure, it's not perfect protection, but it helps a lot compared to others not having masks at all (it's amazing how after two years, some people still don't know how to wear a mask properly, but still 90% of people wearing masks properly is still a significant reduction in exposure all things being equal). And yes, fortunately high-quality masks are easily obtainable now for people to wear.
Because, for a while it didn't seem like a major problem, with overall prevalence being quite low (risk of infection is directly proportional to the number of people out and about with COVID). And getting people housing? hah, this is America.

Not... really. Cananda has always had much tougher restrictions and actually enforced lockdowns.

The science is different there, but probably not in the way that you'd like.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/winds...rder-1.5901388

This was revised wasn't it? I think according to the latest figures, Omicron overtook Delta just last week.

This is not true at all. I know plenty of people in Berkeley who have gone out to eat or gone into stores.