Quote:
Originally Posted by destroycreate
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.
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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.