Omicron Protection

Status
Not open for further replies.

windeguy

Platinum
Jul 10, 2004
42,211
5,969
113

COVID-19​

Long lines snake around entire city blocks as Americans scramble to get tested for COVID-19. At-home testing kits fly off the shelves at pharmacies and drug stores. Demand that surged before the holidays has yet to subside in the new year. As the Omicron variant pushes infections to record levels people across the country have voiced frustration with the paucity of tests.

The Chinese port city of Tianjin reported an increase in COVID-19 infections as it stepped up efforts to rein in an outbreak that has spread the Omicron variant to another city.

AstraZeneca said that preliminary data from a trial showed that its COVID-19 shot, Vaxzevria, generated an increase in antibodies against the Omicron and other variants when given as a third booster dose.

Omicron causes milder illness compared with previous versions of the coronavirus. But here's why you should still try to avoid catching it.

A coronavirus pandemic which lasts five years, another pandemic in a decade, and ever more transmissible variants are among the scenarios life insurers are predicting after COVID-19 claims jumped more than expected in 2021.

----------------

So 5 years of a coronavirus pandemic and another pandemic in a decade is what we have to look forward to. Sweet.
 

windeguy

Platinum
Jul 10, 2004
42,211
5,969
113
The Dominican strongholds of Neuva York and Boston appear to have peaked:

‘A familiar pattern’​

The number of new Covid-19 cases in New York City rose more than twentyfold in December. In the past few days, it has flattened.​
In both New Jersey and Maryland, the number of new cases has fallen slightly this week. In several major cities, the number is also showing signs of leveling off.​
mail
Charts show 7-day averages for New York City’s five boroughs, Suffolk County, Cook County and Los Angeles County. | Source: New York Times database​
In Boston, the amount of the Covid virus detected in wastewater, which has been a leading indicator of case trends in the past, has plunged by about 40 percent since its peak just after Jan. 1.​
“We really try not to ever make any predictions about this virus, because it always throws us for a loop,” Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, told GBH News. “But at least the wastewater is suggesting a steep decline, and so we hope that means cases will decline steeply as well, and then hospitalizations and deaths will follow.”​
As Doron suggested, it’s too early to be confident that the Omicron wave has peaked even in areas with encouraging data — which tend to be the places where Omicron first arrived in the U.S. But there is good reason to consider that the most likely scenario. “Looks like we may be cresting over that peak,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said this week.​
A huge surge in cases that lasts for about one month, followed by a rapid decline, would be consistent with the experience in some places where Omicron arrived earlier than in the U.S. In South Africa, new daily cases have fallen by about 70 percent from the mid-December peak. The chart showing South Africa’s recent trend looks like a skinny, upside-down letter V.​
In Britain, where pandemic trends have frequently been a few weeks ahead of those in the U.S., cases peaked just after New Year’s and have since fallen somewhat:​
mail
Chart shows a 7-day average. | Source: Johns Hopkins University​
With previous versions of Covid, like the Delta variant, the up-and-down cycles tended to last longer. Once an outbreak began, cases often rose for about two months before falling.​
Scientists don’t fully understand Covid’s cycles, but the explanation probably involves some combination of the virus’s biological qualities and the size of a typical human social network. After about two months, an outbreak of earlier variants began to burn out, much as a forest fire would.​
Omicron is so contagious that it spreads more quickly. This rapid spread may also mean that it more quickly reaches most of the people who happen to be vulnerable to being infected by it. Omicron’s brief boom-and-bust cycle is now “a familiar pattern,” Joseph Allen of Harvard’s School of Public Health says.​
Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the The Associated Press that he believed the true number of U.S. cases — including those not included in any official tally — has already peaked, probably last week. “It’s going to come down as fast as it went up,” he predicted.​

A bumpy descent​

To be clear, the current emergency is not on the verge of ending. Cases appear to be peaking only in places where Omicron arrived early, mostly in the Northeast. In much of the country, cases are still soaring.​
Already, some hospitals are swamped, and hospitalization trends often trail caseload trends by about a week. Deaths trends tend to lag by another couple of weeks. “It’s going to be a tough two or three weeks,” Mokdad said. The U.S. seems on course for a horrific amount of severe illness in coming weeks, overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated.​
mail
Source: New York Times database​
(Related: The C.E.O. of United Airlines, Scott Kirby, said that while 3,000 employees recently tested positive for the virus, zero vaccinated employees were hospitalized. That’s a big change. Before the company enacted a vaccine mandate, an average of more than one United employee each week was dying from Covid.)​
Still, the beginning of the end of the Omicron wave — if it turns out to be real — would be very good news.​
It would mean that a milder variant had become the dominant form of Covid but was no longer causing a surge in cases and overwhelming hospitals. It would mean that tens of millions of Americans had built up additional immunity, as a result of an Omicron infection. It would mean that the country would have taken a big step toward a future in which Covid is an endemic disease like the flu, rather than a pandemic that dominates life.​
Lauren Ancel Meyers, who runs a Covid analysis project at the University of Texas, said that people might soon look back on Omicron as a turning point. “At some point, we’ll be able to draw a line — and Omicron may be that point — where we transition from what is a catastrophic global threat to something that’s a much more manageable disease,” she told The A.P.​
Of course, as we all should have learned by now, Covid could also surprise again. Another possibility, Meyers said, is that a dangerous new variant could emerge this spring. That outcome is both unlikely and plausible, which is always a tricky combination to understand.​
 

El Hijo de Manolo

It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous!
Dec 10, 2021
3,937
2,586
113
Dominican Republic

chico bill

Dogs Better than People
May 6, 2016
12,578
6,335
113
All countries should follow the lead of Mexico.
Learn to live with this bug and stop the nonsense.

For once Latin America is in front of the curve ahead of the paranoid & hypochondriac Western '1st world".
The 1st world is rapidly becoming less each day
 

william webster

Platinum
Jan 16, 2009
30,247
4,329
113
Can't speak for the rest of you -
But I am tired of the whole thing.... not you people -- the situation in general

I feel quite safe here.... where I am.........my surroundings and my vax status
I am a 'T' cell proponent
 

chico bill

Dogs Better than People
May 6, 2016
12,578
6,335
113
Can't speak for the rest of you -
But I am tired of the whole thing.... not you people -- the situation in general

I feel quite safe here.... where I am.........my surroundings and my vax status
I am a 'T' cell proponent
You are safe. Likley you have antibodies by now and you can go about living a maskless life
 

CristoRey

Welcome To Wonderland
Apr 1, 2014
11,719
7,978
113
For once Latin America is in front of the curve ahead of the paranoid & hypochondriac Western '1st world".
The 1st world is rapidly becoming less each day
Agreed.
Idiots cut off their noses to spite their faces.
 

SKY

Gold
Apr 11, 2004
13,470
3,604
113
Bob I am sure you are good at math. If 75 percent of the population is vaccinated and 25 percent not vaccinated then there are 3 times more vaccinated people than not vaccinated. So for you to be right there has to be more than 3 times vaccinated people in the hospital than not vaccinated............I know this will go over yours and the rest of the clowns head..............
 

bob saunders

Platinum
Jan 1, 2002
32,504
5,932
113
dr1.com
Bob I am sure you are good at math. If 75 percent of the population is vaccinated and 25 percent not vaccinated then there are 3 times more vaccinated people than not vaccinated. So for you to be right there has to be more than 3 times vaccinated people in the hospital than not vaccinated............I know this will go over yours and the rest of the clowns head..............
So calling me and other people clowns....hmmm, kind of lowbrow of you. It isn't me being right or wrong. I just pasted on an article that bring up the point that many fully vaccinated people in Australia ( NSW) an area where I actually have friends and family are hospitalized with covid.
 

chico bill

Dogs Better than People
May 6, 2016
12,578
6,335
113
Bob I am sure you are good at math. If 75 percent of the population is vaccinated and 25 percent not vaccinated then there are 3 times more vaccinated people than not vaccinated. So for you to be right there has to be more than 3 times vaccinated people in the hospital than not vaccinated............I know this will go over yours and the rest of the clowns head..............
What happened to this is a "pandemic of the unvaccinated ". You can try to put lipstick on any pig you chose but you won't improve the ineffectiveness of the current vaccines.
Too bad the "scientists" conspired to ridicule and blackball doctors using Ivermectin - how many people with comormidities could have walked out of hospitals?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.