There's a pretty easy way to assess the credibility of the competing narratives: the body count. Since the Omicron headlines began, I've been checking South Africa Covid deaths. I understand it's a lagging indicator, but enough time has now passed that we would see rising deaths at the omicron epicenter if this were something to worry about. We're not seeing that.
The current 7-day average for death (with/of) Covid in South Africa is 33. Since mid-October, South Africa has seen and continues to see its lowest body counts since the beginning of their pandemic. I see no reason at this point to think that omicron is any worse than a seasonal flu. Unlike the public health authorities, I'm always open to changing my view when new evidence comes in. But this is where I'm at now.
I believe almost all of the universal policies (as opposed to policies targeted specifically at protecting high risk populations) have caused considerably more societal harm than good to date, even in the face of the prior deadlier variants. With omicron, the cost-benefit analysis becomes that much more skewed against these policies.
My first crossing the Rubicon moment was when every adult who wanted a vaccine got one. I felt at that point we should have been done with these draconian "public health" policies, and I began vocally opposing basically all of it from that point forward. Omicron marks a new threshold. If the authorities continue to use omicron as a justification for doubling down instead of loosening up, that will be a clear indicator we are descending deeper into a very dark abyss from which we will not escape without a fight. This is not about public health anymore, to the extent it ever was. This is about social control. This is about soulless bureaucrats and their corporate handlers making a dramatic power grab. This is evil.
My best guess is that while Omnicron is not overall a serious health risk to people who are under 70, in good health, and/or vaccinated, it won’t be an off-ramp regardless. There are too many people who are in the more empowered class in society who won’t accept it as such. Living in a very “progressive” neighborhood in a Blue State urban area, with plenty of highly educated PMC-ers who consider NPR and the NYTs to be gospel, I am convinced that some sort of deep psychological attachment to Covid protocols and hyper-cautiousness has developed that will be very hard for those have internalized it to let go of.
Everyday, I see a majority of people doing things like walking their dog alone, through the park, with no one within hundreds of feet, wearing a mask. Riding a bicycle down an urban street with cars whizzing by - wearing a mask. It’s mandated to wear masks in stores, on buses, etc., and almost everyone complies all the time.
The only exception in public spaces is bars and restaurants, where somehow it’s OK to only wear your mask from the entry way to your table, and then take it off the rest of the time - unless you need to get up to use the restroom, in which case you are supposed to put your mask back on, and most people do.
Obviously, much of this makes zero logical sense, but it doesn’t matter. The people who are the most zealous about mask wearing as described above are the same who 100% believe that they are the rational people “following the science,” and those who disagree are infected by the wave of irrational disinformation, Trumpism, etc. that’s threatening the Republic.
Most people may not be quite that zealous, but it doesn’t bother them to go along with it all; better safe than sorry, etc. Not to mention, cultural and peer pressure. My periodic rants about how problematic this all is are generally met either with quizzical bemusement or upset pushback. It is very rare for me to encounter anyone who seems to be bothered by living like this.
Therefore, I think that until the sources that the represent the center of cultural gravity in my neighborhood insist that it’s over (the NYTs, NPR, Fauci, the CDC, the Democratic Party leadership, etc.), it will never be over, irregardless of what’s happening with variants, hospitalizations, or anything else. And, given that the sort of people who run those institutions seem to share the mindset of the people I’m describing, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I am ignorant about science etc, but hopefully I can provide a little light on the political aspect from my little corner of the world:
My wife is on one of those women writers group lists/chats (mostly journalists, many of whom are well known, and some other novelists and screenwriters, all of them living in NYC/LA/SF) and the level of COVID terror is both bizarre and hilarious/disturbing. If you just woke up from a 2-yr coma you would think they were describing the Black Plague. And listening to them discuss Omicron, you would think that Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker was just spotted climbing through a window.
They get every shot and booster, get them for their small children no questions asked, wear masks everywhere, and the whole Omicron thing has only raised the level of panic (just about everyone in brownstone Brooklyn is having another nervous breakdown and cancelling all their plans). We know one family (all young and healthy) that is quarantining the week BEFORE and the week AFTER Christmas "just to be safe."
It seems that they're addicted to fear, enjoy being addicted to fear, their fear makes them feel righteous and a much better person than the non-fearful, and their entire lives are about neurotically signalling all the proper beliefs.
My point is: I think one of the hardest hurdles to any kind of return to normalcy will be trying to talk some sanity into the liberal professionals of the major cities (esp those in media, academia, Hollywood, etc). They are absolute pandemic fundamentalists and the fever shows no sign of breaking. It wouldn't be such a big deal if these also weren't the same people who set so much of the national agenda.
I am thinking we are near the end, not simply because Omicron seems to be a milder strain, but because people are finally saying “enough”. I live in CA and after Newsom instituted the new mask mandates I have only seen one business in my town require masks - my credit union. I teach at a state university and the political response to the pandemic has decimated our enrollments - students are sick and tired of being forced to vaccinate and to mask 24/7. Because I teach bioethics and I have spoken to my students about pandemic response I know many of them will leave if forced to take a booster. The university cannot survive without butts in seats. Meanwhile our staff is quitting in droves for the same reasons; they are sick and tired of the intrusion in their private lives and will happily go work for private business where they get paid more and no one cares about your vaccination status. When people quit department have a really hard time filling positions also. I was telling my husband that if Newsom decides to do a new lockdown, very few in town will comply…
In spring of 2020 I was already experiencing COVID fatigue, as my Google News feed was nothing but All COVID, ALL the Time. I switched to Bing so I could stay abreast of carjackings and political scandals, but after a few months even my Bing feed was All COVID, ALL the Time. I'm pretty sick of it, particularly since I live in Flyover, which gives me a vastly different perspective on COVID than you see in the bi-coastal media (more on that in a moment).
Anyway, after not really being all that interested in COVID for most of the pandemic, I recently discovered Dr John Campbell's daily COVID updates on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Campbellteaching I'm careful to watch his talks every day and I recommend him to all my friends. Dr John is not a medical doctor, he's a nurse with a PhD, who has been posting educational videos on YouTube for 14 years. His COVID briefings are like a breath of fresh air, just facts and data from all over the world, with a bare minimum of editorializing. Again, I recommend his channel to anyone reading this.
Anyway, I first heard about Omicron from Dr John, and even in the earliest days he was suggesting two things: 1) This variant is highly contagious and will spread around the world rapidly and it's likely we ALL will get it within a few months; and 2) from what we know so far, this could be very good news as Omicron is far less virulent, so through its rapid spread we might attain something like global herd immunity at a relatively low cost in illness and death.
Within a day or two the mass media had heard about Omicron, and of course their coverage was predictably hysterical.
So to answer your first question, I am optimistic this is indeed the beginning of the end, that Omicron will spread rapidly through the human population and become endemic, like the flu. COVID is never going away (thanks Peter Daszak and Dr Fauci!), but neither is the flu and we seem to live with it just fine.
As for the political question, well, COVID policy left the rails a long time ago, and has long ceased to be connected to public health. For one example, vaccine passports and their equivalents: since we know vaccination does not prevent or even significantly slow down the spread of COVID (it just helps the infected fight off serious illness or hospitalization), how in the world does it matter whether the people in public venue are vaccinated or not? It doesn't matter. Yet governments everywhere, including in LA County, are enthusiastically implementing vaccine certification schemes. I'm vaccinated, but I am not visiting my sister in LA for Christmas because I refuse to show a medical card to a clerk to buy a Coke, or whatever.
We have a very different view or this pandemic here in Flyover. Almost two years in and I can count on one had the people I know personally who have had COVID. I know three people who have died, one of whom was my aged ex-mother-in-law who spent her last three years in bed praying to god to take her. I'm not suggesting COVID is some kind of hoax, we all know it's real enough, but we have no reason to share the fear and hysteria that blares from the national media. We just don't see it. And the more ridiculous the national media are about COVID (including lying about Oklahoma (Flyover) hospitals turning away gun shot victims because of horse paste overdoses), the less we believe what they are saying about COVID. If you want to know what's going on you just open your eyes and look around, and what we see is nothing like what has been reported in the national media for the last 18 months.
I am not sure what the mask mandate situation is in Nevada. Of course, people who work for national retail chains are masked throughout their shifts ("Because the safety of our customers is our first priority; and as for the comfort and well-being of our employees, well, don't make me laugh"), but there are some smaller retail businesses in Reno, including restaurants, where no one is masked at all. Personally, I carry a mask around and slip it on whenever I entered a shop, out of consideration for the employees, but more and more I see patrons walking around maskless. No one seems to care (drive down to Sacramento and you see people wearing masks while jogging or bicycling, or driving alone in their cars. WTF?).
In October I enjoyed a long weekend leaf-peeping in northeast Nevada, around Elko: you don't see any masks east of Winnemucca, and I was told it has been like that since the middle of 2020.
I wanted to discuss my experiences because the more divergent bi-coastal media messaging on COVID gets from actual Flyover experience, the more suspicious Flyover people become of that messaging, and I think it contributes to the widening gulf in Flyover trust in media and other national institutions. I absolutely recognize the COVID experience is different for someone who lives in a big urban area than it is for me and mine. Sadly, media writers and talking heads can't come to a similar understanding about how different our experiences are from their own.
I think it is literally impossible, at least for a layman, to know what it means just yet. By the time science has a true consensus that's stood the test of time, contrary hypotheses, and good research, omicron will either be over, or so far along that there's not much we can do about it.
Some things I've read suggest that even if it's *much* milder, we may overwhelm hospitals if it's spreading at a rate much faster than delta. I don't even know if we know *that's* true.
I think we are running up against the limitations of both science and media in terms of both gathering, understanding, and disseminating good information upon which decisions can be made.
I also think that many of the mandates on masking and distancing, while not useless, pretend that we have some control over something over which we have precious little control. We *want* to feel as if we have some control when we have very little.
The thing we have much more control over is the state of readiness of our medical care system. We could have been expediting graduation from nursing programs and medical schools, expanding hospitals, increasing pay and safety for front line medical and administrative staff, and generally undoing decades of "efficiencies" that have made us so vulnerable to spikes, that have made our society's resilience to such events brittle. If disaster is coming, that won't be enough to stave it off, but it will stand us in better stead for future disasters which will inevitably come.
Looking at the CDC numbers, deaths and hospitalizations, the virus has been taking the normal path; initial spike in cases, followed by a tapering. All the actions taken by Fauci et al have either been futile, such as distancing, or regressive, such as masking. The vax will help you to a limited degree, not unlike the yearly, optional, flu vax. But it won't stop transmission, it won't stop you from getting the virus. In other words, it is no panacea.
Politically, well, if you give a mouse a cookie... The bottom line is, gov't exists to do something, fighting the virus is something, so it does these things. Most of which it doesn't have the power to do, but there is only one way to fight that; lawsuits and elections. And this is international.
So, to answer your question, epidemiologically we are getting better. Politically, it depends on the population. I am of the opinion that we are going to need to fight this in the same way that we fought Jim Crow, mass Irish Democracy. Also known as Civil Disobediance.
I am optimistic about the direction of the virus. Reports from South Africa suggest it’s mutating in a direction where it becomes more infectious and less severe, which is a good thing. Globally, greater exposure to a less intense virus will mean increased immunity without as many deaths—unfortunately, I couldn’t see a situation where deaths don’t rise in the short-term.
I’m more bearish on our political response. Instead of thinking strategically about how to decrease hospitalization and death, at least the US media and institutional apparatus is cruelly and unnecessarily demonizing the unvaccinated (countries with high vaccinated population, such as Ireland and Singapore, still have had major outbreaks from Oct to Dec 2021), making one-size-fits-all health recommendations for the population (pressing to vaccinate children when we know their risk of hospitalization and death are very low and telling everyone over 18 to get a booster without considering major differences in risk between a 25 year old and a 60 year old), and imposing impulsive mandates that will frustrate people and overwhelm bureaucracies rather than solve any problems (e.g., the NYC vax mandate and booster mandates for students on college campuses). The distrust sowed by these heavy-handed and often arbitrary decisions will last much longer than the pandemic unfortunately.
If people are still worried that the behavior of others affects their chances of catching a respiratory virus we will continue w restrictions for a long time. Omicron is one of about 12,000 variants. The media works in concert w other powerful forces (companies like Pfizer) to spread fear. Weird timing in this case: the Omicron was announced the day after Thanksgiving even though it had been in circulation in So. Africa a while. Delta variant was similar: it had been in India for some time before it became 'of concern' elsewhere. None of this augurs good. We are living in a new paradigm, which is outlined by my first sentence: humans have accepted, from on high, that others are responsible if they catch a respiratory virus when the fact is that maintaining your own health is pretty much the one thing one can do to be sure they do not get sick and die of a respiratory virus, no matter how nasty it might be. That's my short rant. The response by many to Omicron does not augur well for the citizens of the empire.
Although I agree with David that the easiest way to assess the credibility of competing narratives is by the body count, that only works well in retrospect.
I want to emphasize _how much we don’t yet know_ about how this variant of the virus will behave (although it doesn’t look good— if I had to place bets, I’d bet we’re entering another massive wave of deaths in the West). This is based on models from people I trust. Sometimes models are wrong. I’m saying “if I had to place bets” because if anyone tells you we have the basis to predict this winter yet, they are either foolish or lying.
One thing we don’t know yet is how or why some groups fare much worse with this virus and its variants than others. We don’t know why, for example, Africa overall seems to have done better throughout the pandemic than Europe or North America, but in projecting what Europe’s or North America’s experience will be like, it makes little sense to look directly at what is happening in Africa (and vice versa). It could be a million factors — timing, geography, even genetics. (There was some indication early in the pandemic that Europeans who had certain genes associated with ancient western hunter-gatherer tribes were more likely to have a poor outcome from covid. These things are a roll of the dice. Certain people with genes more commonly found in South Asians also do poorly.)
Anyway the point is: you can’t judge one population’s outcome from another’s. Just as people with African ancestry tend to do better with malaria but pay the price in sickle cell disease, there could be things about populations’ responses to SARS-2 we don’t understand yet.
So for the West: There is some modeling to suggest that if omicron were only twice as transmissible as delta (we believe it’s more so) and 90% less severe (we believe it’s more severe than that) we will see the biggest wave of deaths yet (not the highest rates but the largest numbers of deaths). In other words, if this particular very small-c conservative model is to be believed, we’re in for a terrible winter in the States.
Models can be wrong. They are efforts to make our best educated guesses. But they are _educated_ guesses.
However, that story “worst wave yet!” does not play well politically, and so none of our politicians is saying so. (We seem not to have “public servants” looking out for our well-being, at least at the higher levels of government; we have politicians wanting to tell us things we want to hear, so we’ll be pleased with them. No one wants to hear “worst wave yet” after two years.)
That story “worst wave yet” does not play psychologically well, either, in the average human’s mind. I’ve seen even very “science and facts” driven people slip into speaking as if this won’t be so bad after all, based on what they really want to be true, and not necessarily on what the limited available data and their common sense tell them.
So, between the government not wanting to tell us something disappointing and all of us really wanting to believe “it’s mild, it’s inevitable, we’re all going to get it!” it’s full speed ahead for Christmas.
What really put the first wave out of control, if we’ll recall, is the Chinese government minimizing the gravity of the situation, keeping the dangers to themselves, and everyone proceeding with their Lunar New Year celebrations. We seeded this virus throughout the world two years ago and have been paying the price ever since.
I think when people say it’s likely we’re all going to get it, that’s probably true, the way things are going. Even so, I would rather continue to avoid getting it until treatments and outcomes are a lot better. I know people whose “mild” cases led to (for example) permanent serious neurological damage. Would you rather have been infected with HIV in 1988 or 2000?
I’m personally motivated to keep dodging it as much as possible for now. For me that includes masking in public indoors, limiting unnecessary gatherings, and having gatherings that are important to me and my family as safely as possible (for example, planning a child’s birthday outside— if I had a kid born in winter in a cold climate, I’d host an outdoor “half-birthday party” in the summer). Do the things that are important to you, but find ways to do them that are lower risk.
It’s very similar to managing a budget. If you are lucky enough to have an adequate-but-not-excessive amount of money for your basic needs, you are able to make a lot of small changes in ways that don’t matter to you (buying the brand of frozen spinach that’s on sale), and then over time you have more discretionary money available, and you haven’t really had to change the enjoyment in your life or change the important things. You’ve merely decided to _attend_ to certain things you didn’t before, and make certain small efforts on things you didn’t before.
During the pandemic, you can maximize your safety and the public health in ways that are equivalent to “buying the brand of spinach on sale.” You can wear a well-fitting mask in grocery stores. You can get the available vaccines. You can limit some activities so as to avoid getting sick ahead of your vacation—but then you go ahead and visit your (vaccinated) family for Christmas.
Everyone needs to consider the trade-offs and choose what works for them and their families.
Over time, with such an approach, you’re going to do better then someone who just can’t psychologically handle the concept that there’s a real danger to be avoided, and who just says “Eff it, I’m gonna live my life.” Well, good luck to that person but they and their families are more likely to have worse outcomes over time. You can still live your life and exercise some caution.
I no longer work directly in front-line health care, but I’m “health care adjacent” and I see a lot from the health care workers’ perspective. It’s very bad. In my region (an urban area in the US West where we don’t have a lot of people vaccinated) the HCWs and the systems are beyond strained. The people are beyond burnt out and exhausted. To see many of them anticipating “the biggest wave yet” is heartbreaking on many levels, especially when so much of the conversation around this virus and what to do about it seems to be driven by political agendas and motivated reasoning, rather than the best minds getting together and trying very earnestly to achieve “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
So I want to emphasize: “We don’t know about omicron” and we’re two years into this event that has disrupted the lives of every person on the planet. We’re all tired. We’ve all got to continue to do our best, not just for ourselves and our families but for the people around us — the health care workers, grocery workers, Uber drivers, teachers. Our kids— but also all the kids.
To me it makes the best sense to be cautious, to control the things we can control. It’s hard to even know what helps and what’s out-of-date, if you’re not following this stuff closely, because the messaging has been so bad. Really really bad — ineffective and politically driven on all sides. But that’s a conversation for another day.
I think we are close to the end of lockdowns, masking, school closures etc, in the sense that it is becoming understood that these actions have had little impact on the course of the pandemic and they have been costly and negative in many ways.
Excess deaths from all causes in the United States, from CDC data, have been 17.2% over the course of the pandemic. This is a serious increase as typically excess deaths vary between -2 and +2 percent for a year. Lots of people lost some of their life due to COVID. Excess deaths are a good number because while causes of deaths can be debated and manipulated, actual dead bodies are pretty accurate.
California is considered a "locked down" state and had an excess death rate of 20.1%.
Florida is considered an "open" state and had an excess death rate of 18.8%
The conclusion that aside from vaccination, the mitigation actions taken in this country had little impact on the deaths from COVID seems obvious and I think people are starting to believe this.
The at risk population in the country is pretty well vaccinated so further gains in death/hospitalization by pushing this action are going to be pretty limited.
People will resist restrictions that they do not believe help. It seems to me that the policy makers, very much including Trump, were following popular demand for mitigation of risk, not really pushing these restrictions on the majority of the people.
From stats I've seen cases are way up, but deaths have remained constant. The clinics here in NYC have long, winding lines for tests, and at-home tests are unavailable everywhere. The New York Times seems to be doing heavy fear-mongering, so it's no wonder clinics and hospitals are overrun.
I was reading a couple of people (on Twitter, mind you) throwing stats around about having way less hospital beds over the last twenty or so years in the west in general (certainly true in NYC), but no more than, and sometimes less than at the start of the pandemic (which is wild if true). They also stated that ERs are backed up and overrun during the winter in the States, in general, not just now.
I listened to Max Blumenthal (who has been great on this) on Trish Wood's podcast yesterday, and he's firmly in the "this is happening for more control" camp, although he doesn't seem much of conspiratorial fear-mongerer on this. They discussed the stats published in Bloomberg and elsewhere that showed that hospitalizations in largely unvaccinated South Africa went way down with the coming of Omicron. Blumenthal brought up an "expert" who's been an alarmist. Said expert is debunking the "Omicron is less deadly" thing as a myth, by saying that South Africa being less vaccinated, and therefore have greater natural immunity, is why hospitalizations went down there. Which is just wild in a bunch of different ways.
On a more anecdotal note, I'm an NBA fan, and I've been kind of looking at the NBA as the real litmus test about this situation. I'm of the opinion that the NBA quickly cancelling their season at the beginning of the pandemic is one of the primary things that lead to mass freak-out. The league always wants to make sure their "rich person progressive" bona fides are always on full display which lead to quickly shutting down, followed by a very, very annoyingly politicized shortened bubble season. If Neil Strauss, in his appearance on Fifth Column is to be believed (and why not), the ratings for that were such an atrocity and they league had to make an about-face.
Last night, my poor suffering Knicks were short 6 exciting young players, all out to "health and safety protocols," which doesn't even necessarily mean a positive test, but maybe an inconclusive test or a close contact with someone positive. (The Celtics, who won, were down 5 players to the same protocol.) One of my favorite old Knicks blogs/fan communities, which has gone laughably "woke," ran a story about the game being a "farcical death culture ritual." Lots of fans of similar mindsets are besides themselves on Twitter calling for the league to call off the season. Famously unvaccinated Kyrie Irving, the Nets announced, was going to be allowed to play away games since their stars went out on safety protocols, only to be added to the protocols himself a few hours later. The same "death culture" people are vocally pissed about Kyrie even being allowed to come back.
I'm kind of watching the NBA to see where this goes. Right now, it appears that they're sticking firm with continuing the season, which I think has to be the right call. The 6 Knicks players out on protocols, have been on Instagram joking to be "freed" from their predicament. These are all fully-vaccinated men from 21-23 in peak physical form. I highly doubt any of them are in any danger. And if fully-vaccinated people are running constant positives, it doesn't make sense anymore to preclude Kyrie's playing (it also seems like the basis of a lawsuit).
If a league is (almost) fully vaccinated , with rapid home testing, and plenty of new pills that are theoretically effective in the wings, why would the league cancel now due to a new variant where there isn't even conclusive evidence of it being especially deadly? That would seem to send the message that basketball (as well as concerts, theatrical performances, restaurants, dinner with family, the grocery store, movie theaters, public transportation, or work) will never be safe.
I'm closely watching the league, with my fingers firmly crossed, hoping that they keep playing.
The theory that Omicron is mild seems to be based on careful study of the data. It seems to be careful about adjusting by age and by previous vaccination status.
The theory the Omicron is dangerous seems to be based on a hypothesis that Ommie only *seems* mild because we haven't properly gotten through enough 14-day periods to properly assess death rate, and the exponential growth is masking the severity. Also, this seems to be the "abundance of caution" option, with a "even a smaller percentage of deaths of a large population of infected is enough to overwhelm the hospitals"
Personally, I'm still on the fence... the evidence of mildness is strong. It's only got 1/3rd the potency of Delta. That could still result in hundreds of thousands of additional deaths. The vast majority of those would be the unvaccinated and the immunocompromised.
My off ramp started after I was initially vaccinated. No amount of social distancing and masking is going to stop C-19. Eventually everyone is going to catch it and it's likely over 50% of us already have. The best we can do is get vaccinated in order to mute the disease if/when we get it. So I got boosted, will get boosted again if offered, but other than that I'm past C-19 and will live my life as normally as I can.
My thinking is that we are finally at the end, Omicron will be closer to the seasonal flu - still there, still overwhelming hospitals, as happens every year in the UK but for the most part not affecting peoples lives. To quote Matt Gurney (Substack The Line) The good news is that in both of these scenarios, with Omicron being so insanely transmissible, whatever is coming will not last long. It can’t.
While the pandemic may be coming to a close fear mongering won't, not for quick a few years t especially on twitter. Secondly and more importantly like 9-11 it's highly likely that the new pandemic infrastructure will still stay in place. It's highly likely we'll wearing masks for quite a few years.
There's a pretty easy way to assess the credibility of the competing narratives: the body count. Since the Omicron headlines began, I've been checking South Africa Covid deaths. I understand it's a lagging indicator, but enough time has now passed that we would see rising deaths at the omicron epicenter if this were something to worry about. We're not seeing that.
The current 7-day average for death (with/of) Covid in South Africa is 33. Since mid-October, South Africa has seen and continues to see its lowest body counts since the beginning of their pandemic. I see no reason at this point to think that omicron is any worse than a seasonal flu. Unlike the public health authorities, I'm always open to changing my view when new evidence comes in. But this is where I'm at now.
I believe almost all of the universal policies (as opposed to policies targeted specifically at protecting high risk populations) have caused considerably more societal harm than good to date, even in the face of the prior deadlier variants. With omicron, the cost-benefit analysis becomes that much more skewed against these policies.
My first crossing the Rubicon moment was when every adult who wanted a vaccine got one. I felt at that point we should have been done with these draconian "public health" policies, and I began vocally opposing basically all of it from that point forward. Omicron marks a new threshold. If the authorities continue to use omicron as a justification for doubling down instead of loosening up, that will be a clear indicator we are descending deeper into a very dark abyss from which we will not escape without a fight. This is not about public health anymore, to the extent it ever was. This is about social control. This is about soulless bureaucrats and their corporate handlers making a dramatic power grab. This is evil.
My best guess is that while Omnicron is not overall a serious health risk to people who are under 70, in good health, and/or vaccinated, it won’t be an off-ramp regardless. There are too many people who are in the more empowered class in society who won’t accept it as such. Living in a very “progressive” neighborhood in a Blue State urban area, with plenty of highly educated PMC-ers who consider NPR and the NYTs to be gospel, I am convinced that some sort of deep psychological attachment to Covid protocols and hyper-cautiousness has developed that will be very hard for those have internalized it to let go of.
Everyday, I see a majority of people doing things like walking their dog alone, through the park, with no one within hundreds of feet, wearing a mask. Riding a bicycle down an urban street with cars whizzing by - wearing a mask. It’s mandated to wear masks in stores, on buses, etc., and almost everyone complies all the time.
The only exception in public spaces is bars and restaurants, where somehow it’s OK to only wear your mask from the entry way to your table, and then take it off the rest of the time - unless you need to get up to use the restroom, in which case you are supposed to put your mask back on, and most people do.
Obviously, much of this makes zero logical sense, but it doesn’t matter. The people who are the most zealous about mask wearing as described above are the same who 100% believe that they are the rational people “following the science,” and those who disagree are infected by the wave of irrational disinformation, Trumpism, etc. that’s threatening the Republic.
Most people may not be quite that zealous, but it doesn’t bother them to go along with it all; better safe than sorry, etc. Not to mention, cultural and peer pressure. My periodic rants about how problematic this all is are generally met either with quizzical bemusement or upset pushback. It is very rare for me to encounter anyone who seems to be bothered by living like this.
Therefore, I think that until the sources that the represent the center of cultural gravity in my neighborhood insist that it’s over (the NYTs, NPR, Fauci, the CDC, the Democratic Party leadership, etc.), it will never be over, irregardless of what’s happening with variants, hospitalizations, or anything else. And, given that the sort of people who run those institutions seem to share the mindset of the people I’m describing, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I am ignorant about science etc, but hopefully I can provide a little light on the political aspect from my little corner of the world:
My wife is on one of those women writers group lists/chats (mostly journalists, many of whom are well known, and some other novelists and screenwriters, all of them living in NYC/LA/SF) and the level of COVID terror is both bizarre and hilarious/disturbing. If you just woke up from a 2-yr coma you would think they were describing the Black Plague. And listening to them discuss Omicron, you would think that Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker was just spotted climbing through a window.
They get every shot and booster, get them for their small children no questions asked, wear masks everywhere, and the whole Omicron thing has only raised the level of panic (just about everyone in brownstone Brooklyn is having another nervous breakdown and cancelling all their plans). We know one family (all young and healthy) that is quarantining the week BEFORE and the week AFTER Christmas "just to be safe."
It seems that they're addicted to fear, enjoy being addicted to fear, their fear makes them feel righteous and a much better person than the non-fearful, and their entire lives are about neurotically signalling all the proper beliefs.
My point is: I think one of the hardest hurdles to any kind of return to normalcy will be trying to talk some sanity into the liberal professionals of the major cities (esp those in media, academia, Hollywood, etc). They are absolute pandemic fundamentalists and the fever shows no sign of breaking. It wouldn't be such a big deal if these also weren't the same people who set so much of the national agenda.
I am thinking we are near the end, not simply because Omicron seems to be a milder strain, but because people are finally saying “enough”. I live in CA and after Newsom instituted the new mask mandates I have only seen one business in my town require masks - my credit union. I teach at a state university and the political response to the pandemic has decimated our enrollments - students are sick and tired of being forced to vaccinate and to mask 24/7. Because I teach bioethics and I have spoken to my students about pandemic response I know many of them will leave if forced to take a booster. The university cannot survive without butts in seats. Meanwhile our staff is quitting in droves for the same reasons; they are sick and tired of the intrusion in their private lives and will happily go work for private business where they get paid more and no one cares about your vaccination status. When people quit department have a really hard time filling positions also. I was telling my husband that if Newsom decides to do a new lockdown, very few in town will comply…
In spring of 2020 I was already experiencing COVID fatigue, as my Google News feed was nothing but All COVID, ALL the Time. I switched to Bing so I could stay abreast of carjackings and political scandals, but after a few months even my Bing feed was All COVID, ALL the Time. I'm pretty sick of it, particularly since I live in Flyover, which gives me a vastly different perspective on COVID than you see in the bi-coastal media (more on that in a moment).
Anyway, after not really being all that interested in COVID for most of the pandemic, I recently discovered Dr John Campbell's daily COVID updates on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Campbellteaching I'm careful to watch his talks every day and I recommend him to all my friends. Dr John is not a medical doctor, he's a nurse with a PhD, who has been posting educational videos on YouTube for 14 years. His COVID briefings are like a breath of fresh air, just facts and data from all over the world, with a bare minimum of editorializing. Again, I recommend his channel to anyone reading this.
Anyway, I first heard about Omicron from Dr John, and even in the earliest days he was suggesting two things: 1) This variant is highly contagious and will spread around the world rapidly and it's likely we ALL will get it within a few months; and 2) from what we know so far, this could be very good news as Omicron is far less virulent, so through its rapid spread we might attain something like global herd immunity at a relatively low cost in illness and death.
Within a day or two the mass media had heard about Omicron, and of course their coverage was predictably hysterical.
So to answer your first question, I am optimistic this is indeed the beginning of the end, that Omicron will spread rapidly through the human population and become endemic, like the flu. COVID is never going away (thanks Peter Daszak and Dr Fauci!), but neither is the flu and we seem to live with it just fine.
As for the political question, well, COVID policy left the rails a long time ago, and has long ceased to be connected to public health. For one example, vaccine passports and their equivalents: since we know vaccination does not prevent or even significantly slow down the spread of COVID (it just helps the infected fight off serious illness or hospitalization), how in the world does it matter whether the people in public venue are vaccinated or not? It doesn't matter. Yet governments everywhere, including in LA County, are enthusiastically implementing vaccine certification schemes. I'm vaccinated, but I am not visiting my sister in LA for Christmas because I refuse to show a medical card to a clerk to buy a Coke, or whatever.
We have a very different view or this pandemic here in Flyover. Almost two years in and I can count on one had the people I know personally who have had COVID. I know three people who have died, one of whom was my aged ex-mother-in-law who spent her last three years in bed praying to god to take her. I'm not suggesting COVID is some kind of hoax, we all know it's real enough, but we have no reason to share the fear and hysteria that blares from the national media. We just don't see it. And the more ridiculous the national media are about COVID (including lying about Oklahoma (Flyover) hospitals turning away gun shot victims because of horse paste overdoses), the less we believe what they are saying about COVID. If you want to know what's going on you just open your eyes and look around, and what we see is nothing like what has been reported in the national media for the last 18 months.
I am not sure what the mask mandate situation is in Nevada. Of course, people who work for national retail chains are masked throughout their shifts ("Because the safety of our customers is our first priority; and as for the comfort and well-being of our employees, well, don't make me laugh"), but there are some smaller retail businesses in Reno, including restaurants, where no one is masked at all. Personally, I carry a mask around and slip it on whenever I entered a shop, out of consideration for the employees, but more and more I see patrons walking around maskless. No one seems to care (drive down to Sacramento and you see people wearing masks while jogging or bicycling, or driving alone in their cars. WTF?).
In October I enjoyed a long weekend leaf-peeping in northeast Nevada, around Elko: you don't see any masks east of Winnemucca, and I was told it has been like that since the middle of 2020.
I wanted to discuss my experiences because the more divergent bi-coastal media messaging on COVID gets from actual Flyover experience, the more suspicious Flyover people become of that messaging, and I think it contributes to the widening gulf in Flyover trust in media and other national institutions. I absolutely recognize the COVID experience is different for someone who lives in a big urban area than it is for me and mine. Sadly, media writers and talking heads can't come to a similar understanding about how different our experiences are from their own.
I think it is literally impossible, at least for a layman, to know what it means just yet. By the time science has a true consensus that's stood the test of time, contrary hypotheses, and good research, omicron will either be over, or so far along that there's not much we can do about it.
Some things I've read suggest that even if it's *much* milder, we may overwhelm hospitals if it's spreading at a rate much faster than delta. I don't even know if we know *that's* true.
I think we are running up against the limitations of both science and media in terms of both gathering, understanding, and disseminating good information upon which decisions can be made.
I also think that many of the mandates on masking and distancing, while not useless, pretend that we have some control over something over which we have precious little control. We *want* to feel as if we have some control when we have very little.
The thing we have much more control over is the state of readiness of our medical care system. We could have been expediting graduation from nursing programs and medical schools, expanding hospitals, increasing pay and safety for front line medical and administrative staff, and generally undoing decades of "efficiencies" that have made us so vulnerable to spikes, that have made our society's resilience to such events brittle. If disaster is coming, that won't be enough to stave it off, but it will stand us in better stead for future disasters which will inevitably come.
Looking at the CDC numbers, deaths and hospitalizations, the virus has been taking the normal path; initial spike in cases, followed by a tapering. All the actions taken by Fauci et al have either been futile, such as distancing, or regressive, such as masking. The vax will help you to a limited degree, not unlike the yearly, optional, flu vax. But it won't stop transmission, it won't stop you from getting the virus. In other words, it is no panacea.
Politically, well, if you give a mouse a cookie... The bottom line is, gov't exists to do something, fighting the virus is something, so it does these things. Most of which it doesn't have the power to do, but there is only one way to fight that; lawsuits and elections. And this is international.
So, to answer your question, epidemiologically we are getting better. Politically, it depends on the population. I am of the opinion that we are going to need to fight this in the same way that we fought Jim Crow, mass Irish Democracy. Also known as Civil Disobediance.
I am optimistic about the direction of the virus. Reports from South Africa suggest it’s mutating in a direction where it becomes more infectious and less severe, which is a good thing. Globally, greater exposure to a less intense virus will mean increased immunity without as many deaths—unfortunately, I couldn’t see a situation where deaths don’t rise in the short-term.
I’m more bearish on our political response. Instead of thinking strategically about how to decrease hospitalization and death, at least the US media and institutional apparatus is cruelly and unnecessarily demonizing the unvaccinated (countries with high vaccinated population, such as Ireland and Singapore, still have had major outbreaks from Oct to Dec 2021), making one-size-fits-all health recommendations for the population (pressing to vaccinate children when we know their risk of hospitalization and death are very low and telling everyone over 18 to get a booster without considering major differences in risk between a 25 year old and a 60 year old), and imposing impulsive mandates that will frustrate people and overwhelm bureaucracies rather than solve any problems (e.g., the NYC vax mandate and booster mandates for students on college campuses). The distrust sowed by these heavy-handed and often arbitrary decisions will last much longer than the pandemic unfortunately.
If people are still worried that the behavior of others affects their chances of catching a respiratory virus we will continue w restrictions for a long time. Omicron is one of about 12,000 variants. The media works in concert w other powerful forces (companies like Pfizer) to spread fear. Weird timing in this case: the Omicron was announced the day after Thanksgiving even though it had been in circulation in So. Africa a while. Delta variant was similar: it had been in India for some time before it became 'of concern' elsewhere. None of this augurs good. We are living in a new paradigm, which is outlined by my first sentence: humans have accepted, from on high, that others are responsible if they catch a respiratory virus when the fact is that maintaining your own health is pretty much the one thing one can do to be sure they do not get sick and die of a respiratory virus, no matter how nasty it might be. That's my short rant. The response by many to Omicron does not augur well for the citizens of the empire.
Well, the question before this question is: who has benefited from these last 24 months, and who would lose out the most if the status quo changes?
All the faux concern masking the totalitarian impulses of governments and Karen’s worldwide gives you the answer.
It’s the beginning of the end, if enough of the covidian cultists realize they’ll never get off the booster carousel at this rate.
Although I agree with David that the easiest way to assess the credibility of competing narratives is by the body count, that only works well in retrospect.
I want to emphasize _how much we don’t yet know_ about how this variant of the virus will behave (although it doesn’t look good— if I had to place bets, I’d bet we’re entering another massive wave of deaths in the West). This is based on models from people I trust. Sometimes models are wrong. I’m saying “if I had to place bets” because if anyone tells you we have the basis to predict this winter yet, they are either foolish or lying.
One thing we don’t know yet is how or why some groups fare much worse with this virus and its variants than others. We don’t know why, for example, Africa overall seems to have done better throughout the pandemic than Europe or North America, but in projecting what Europe’s or North America’s experience will be like, it makes little sense to look directly at what is happening in Africa (and vice versa). It could be a million factors — timing, geography, even genetics. (There was some indication early in the pandemic that Europeans who had certain genes associated with ancient western hunter-gatherer tribes were more likely to have a poor outcome from covid. These things are a roll of the dice. Certain people with genes more commonly found in South Asians also do poorly.)
Anyway the point is: you can’t judge one population’s outcome from another’s. Just as people with African ancestry tend to do better with malaria but pay the price in sickle cell disease, there could be things about populations’ responses to SARS-2 we don’t understand yet.
So for the West: There is some modeling to suggest that if omicron were only twice as transmissible as delta (we believe it’s more so) and 90% less severe (we believe it’s more severe than that) we will see the biggest wave of deaths yet (not the highest rates but the largest numbers of deaths). In other words, if this particular very small-c conservative model is to be believed, we’re in for a terrible winter in the States.
Models can be wrong. They are efforts to make our best educated guesses. But they are _educated_ guesses.
However, that story “worst wave yet!” does not play well politically, and so none of our politicians is saying so. (We seem not to have “public servants” looking out for our well-being, at least at the higher levels of government; we have politicians wanting to tell us things we want to hear, so we’ll be pleased with them. No one wants to hear “worst wave yet” after two years.)
That story “worst wave yet” does not play psychologically well, either, in the average human’s mind. I’ve seen even very “science and facts” driven people slip into speaking as if this won’t be so bad after all, based on what they really want to be true, and not necessarily on what the limited available data and their common sense tell them.
So, between the government not wanting to tell us something disappointing and all of us really wanting to believe “it’s mild, it’s inevitable, we’re all going to get it!” it’s full speed ahead for Christmas.
What really put the first wave out of control, if we’ll recall, is the Chinese government minimizing the gravity of the situation, keeping the dangers to themselves, and everyone proceeding with their Lunar New Year celebrations. We seeded this virus throughout the world two years ago and have been paying the price ever since.
I think when people say it’s likely we’re all going to get it, that’s probably true, the way things are going. Even so, I would rather continue to avoid getting it until treatments and outcomes are a lot better. I know people whose “mild” cases led to (for example) permanent serious neurological damage. Would you rather have been infected with HIV in 1988 or 2000?
I’m personally motivated to keep dodging it as much as possible for now. For me that includes masking in public indoors, limiting unnecessary gatherings, and having gatherings that are important to me and my family as safely as possible (for example, planning a child’s birthday outside— if I had a kid born in winter in a cold climate, I’d host an outdoor “half-birthday party” in the summer). Do the things that are important to you, but find ways to do them that are lower risk.
It’s very similar to managing a budget. If you are lucky enough to have an adequate-but-not-excessive amount of money for your basic needs, you are able to make a lot of small changes in ways that don’t matter to you (buying the brand of frozen spinach that’s on sale), and then over time you have more discretionary money available, and you haven’t really had to change the enjoyment in your life or change the important things. You’ve merely decided to _attend_ to certain things you didn’t before, and make certain small efforts on things you didn’t before.
During the pandemic, you can maximize your safety and the public health in ways that are equivalent to “buying the brand of spinach on sale.” You can wear a well-fitting mask in grocery stores. You can get the available vaccines. You can limit some activities so as to avoid getting sick ahead of your vacation—but then you go ahead and visit your (vaccinated) family for Christmas.
Everyone needs to consider the trade-offs and choose what works for them and their families.
Over time, with such an approach, you’re going to do better then someone who just can’t psychologically handle the concept that there’s a real danger to be avoided, and who just says “Eff it, I’m gonna live my life.” Well, good luck to that person but they and their families are more likely to have worse outcomes over time. You can still live your life and exercise some caution.
I no longer work directly in front-line health care, but I’m “health care adjacent” and I see a lot from the health care workers’ perspective. It’s very bad. In my region (an urban area in the US West where we don’t have a lot of people vaccinated) the HCWs and the systems are beyond strained. The people are beyond burnt out and exhausted. To see many of them anticipating “the biggest wave yet” is heartbreaking on many levels, especially when so much of the conversation around this virus and what to do about it seems to be driven by political agendas and motivated reasoning, rather than the best minds getting together and trying very earnestly to achieve “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
So I want to emphasize: “We don’t know about omicron” and we’re two years into this event that has disrupted the lives of every person on the planet. We’re all tired. We’ve all got to continue to do our best, not just for ourselves and our families but for the people around us — the health care workers, grocery workers, Uber drivers, teachers. Our kids— but also all the kids.
To me it makes the best sense to be cautious, to control the things we can control. It’s hard to even know what helps and what’s out-of-date, if you’re not following this stuff closely, because the messaging has been so bad. Really really bad — ineffective and politically driven on all sides. But that’s a conversation for another day.
This winter will be bad. Be cautious.
I think we are close to the end of lockdowns, masking, school closures etc, in the sense that it is becoming understood that these actions have had little impact on the course of the pandemic and they have been costly and negative in many ways.
Excess deaths from all causes in the United States, from CDC data, have been 17.2% over the course of the pandemic. This is a serious increase as typically excess deaths vary between -2 and +2 percent for a year. Lots of people lost some of their life due to COVID. Excess deaths are a good number because while causes of deaths can be debated and manipulated, actual dead bodies are pretty accurate.
California is considered a "locked down" state and had an excess death rate of 20.1%.
Florida is considered an "open" state and had an excess death rate of 18.8%
The conclusion that aside from vaccination, the mitigation actions taken in this country had little impact on the deaths from COVID seems obvious and I think people are starting to believe this.
The at risk population in the country is pretty well vaccinated so further gains in death/hospitalization by pushing this action are going to be pretty limited.
People will resist restrictions that they do not believe help. It seems to me that the policy makers, very much including Trump, were following popular demand for mitigation of risk, not really pushing these restrictions on the majority of the people.
From stats I've seen cases are way up, but deaths have remained constant. The clinics here in NYC have long, winding lines for tests, and at-home tests are unavailable everywhere. The New York Times seems to be doing heavy fear-mongering, so it's no wonder clinics and hospitals are overrun.
I was reading a couple of people (on Twitter, mind you) throwing stats around about having way less hospital beds over the last twenty or so years in the west in general (certainly true in NYC), but no more than, and sometimes less than at the start of the pandemic (which is wild if true). They also stated that ERs are backed up and overrun during the winter in the States, in general, not just now.
I listened to Max Blumenthal (who has been great on this) on Trish Wood's podcast yesterday, and he's firmly in the "this is happening for more control" camp, although he doesn't seem much of conspiratorial fear-mongerer on this. They discussed the stats published in Bloomberg and elsewhere that showed that hospitalizations in largely unvaccinated South Africa went way down with the coming of Omicron. Blumenthal brought up an "expert" who's been an alarmist. Said expert is debunking the "Omicron is less deadly" thing as a myth, by saying that South Africa being less vaccinated, and therefore have greater natural immunity, is why hospitalizations went down there. Which is just wild in a bunch of different ways.
On a more anecdotal note, I'm an NBA fan, and I've been kind of looking at the NBA as the real litmus test about this situation. I'm of the opinion that the NBA quickly cancelling their season at the beginning of the pandemic is one of the primary things that lead to mass freak-out. The league always wants to make sure their "rich person progressive" bona fides are always on full display which lead to quickly shutting down, followed by a very, very annoyingly politicized shortened bubble season. If Neil Strauss, in his appearance on Fifth Column is to be believed (and why not), the ratings for that were such an atrocity and they league had to make an about-face.
Last night, my poor suffering Knicks were short 6 exciting young players, all out to "health and safety protocols," which doesn't even necessarily mean a positive test, but maybe an inconclusive test or a close contact with someone positive. (The Celtics, who won, were down 5 players to the same protocol.) One of my favorite old Knicks blogs/fan communities, which has gone laughably "woke," ran a story about the game being a "farcical death culture ritual." Lots of fans of similar mindsets are besides themselves on Twitter calling for the league to call off the season. Famously unvaccinated Kyrie Irving, the Nets announced, was going to be allowed to play away games since their stars went out on safety protocols, only to be added to the protocols himself a few hours later. The same "death culture" people are vocally pissed about Kyrie even being allowed to come back.
I'm kind of watching the NBA to see where this goes. Right now, it appears that they're sticking firm with continuing the season, which I think has to be the right call. The 6 Knicks players out on protocols, have been on Instagram joking to be "freed" from their predicament. These are all fully-vaccinated men from 21-23 in peak physical form. I highly doubt any of them are in any danger. And if fully-vaccinated people are running constant positives, it doesn't make sense anymore to preclude Kyrie's playing (it also seems like the basis of a lawsuit).
If a league is (almost) fully vaccinated , with rapid home testing, and plenty of new pills that are theoretically effective in the wings, why would the league cancel now due to a new variant where there isn't even conclusive evidence of it being especially deadly? That would seem to send the message that basketball (as well as concerts, theatrical performances, restaurants, dinner with family, the grocery store, movie theaters, public transportation, or work) will never be safe.
I'm closely watching the league, with my fingers firmly crossed, hoping that they keep playing.
The theory that Omicron is mild seems to be based on careful study of the data. It seems to be careful about adjusting by age and by previous vaccination status.
The theory the Omicron is dangerous seems to be based on a hypothesis that Ommie only *seems* mild because we haven't properly gotten through enough 14-day periods to properly assess death rate, and the exponential growth is masking the severity. Also, this seems to be the "abundance of caution" option, with a "even a smaller percentage of deaths of a large population of infected is enough to overwhelm the hospitals"
Personally, I'm still on the fence... the evidence of mildness is strong. It's only got 1/3rd the potency of Delta. That could still result in hundreds of thousands of additional deaths. The vast majority of those would be the unvaccinated and the immunocompromised.
My off ramp started after I was initially vaccinated. No amount of social distancing and masking is going to stop C-19. Eventually everyone is going to catch it and it's likely over 50% of us already have. The best we can do is get vaccinated in order to mute the disease if/when we get it. So I got boosted, will get boosted again if offered, but other than that I'm past C-19 and will live my life as normally as I can.
My thinking is that we are finally at the end, Omicron will be closer to the seasonal flu - still there, still overwhelming hospitals, as happens every year in the UK but for the most part not affecting peoples lives. To quote Matt Gurney (Substack The Line) The good news is that in both of these scenarios, with Omicron being so insanely transmissible, whatever is coming will not last long. It can’t.
While the pandemic may be coming to a close fear mongering won't, not for quick a few years t especially on twitter. Secondly and more importantly like 9-11 it's highly likely that the new pandemic infrastructure will still stay in place. It's highly likely we'll wearing masks for quite a few years.