He/she didn't deny that the vaccine kept him out of ICU.
But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? I mean sure, let's maybe avoid coughing into each other's open mouths. But apart from that, Omicron seems to be so contagious, we're all bound to get it eventually unless we literally lock ourselves at home for the next 3 years.
The big question right now is if we should push button#3. Many of us hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button.
Lockdowns are themselves staged. We can lockdown schools (already happening in many colleges effectively. I have cousins who are off of college because they've extended their winter break, to minimize COVID19 spread).
---------
There's also lesser actions: I work in technology. All in-person meetings have been canceled. Schools are "sometimes online" in my area, depending on local conditions. Testing has gone up significantly, we try to catch the disease and encourage people to stay home asap to minimize spread. Etc. etc.
There's plenty of actions we can do, even if we decide against lockdowns.
I put myself firmly in the camp of “vaxxed, boosted, and done”, and I’d say that’s the attitude of more people than we all might think.
I think you have the theoretical game plan right, but I’d say that #3 is no longer within the realm of possibility in the US. There’s just no public support for it amongst anyone but the tiny percentage of the most cautious among us.
On #2, I’d even say that yes, masks still make sense in crowded indoor non-optional settings - meaning places we all have to go like public transit, grocery stores, and hospitals. But I’m already past the point of ever wearing a mask outdoors, and I’d also argue that it shouldn’t be a requirement for vaccinated individuals in optional spaces like gyms, bars, restaurants.
Plus of course in bars and restaurants they are pointless theater- wearing a mask to walk to your table, then taking it off to eat, drink and talk loudly for several hours, does precisely nothing.
Agreed on the masks in bars/restaurants just being theater, but the alternative was never going to be masks not being required, it would be that indoor dining wouldn't be permitted.
Agreed. At least where I live (a major American city) there’s already no expectation or enforcement once you enter a bar, despite us having an indoor mask mandate that people are relatively good about following everywhere else. I’d be willing to guess that the city knows and has chosen not to enforce it in certain settings.
Except at a restaurant, the unmasked time is closer to 95%-99%, depending on how long it takes to get a table, and then how long you're there.
My wife an I recently went out for breakfast. There was no wait for a table, so the masked time was basically less than a minute, but let's call it a full minute. Then, we were there for about 40 minutes unmasked.
That's a 97.5% time unmasked, talking or eating. You cannot possibly convince me that the 1 minute I had my mask on made ANY difference.
That said, the alternative to the "mask until you're seated" policy was never going to be "no masks", it would end up being "no indoor dining".
So what? Why is Covid the single only thing that matters. Covid is endemic. Mandating masks says “Covid is literally the most important thing for you”.
No. I’m boosted. I’ve got plenty of other problems that are far higher in priority than Covid or the spread of Covid. Nobody should be required by law to wear a mask indoors at this point.
Until when? Until covid goes away (which Biden implied earlier this year, that the reason we still have covid is because of the unvaccinated)? Vaccines seem to do nothing to infections, it only reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death. In the UK the % of positive cases that are vaccinated is pretty much the same than the % of people vaccinated in the population. Covid isn't going away.
So are you suggesting vaccines, masks and lockdowns forever? I don't think many will agree to that. I certain don't.
If this is our new reality then this is our new reality.
Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.
A cloth mask is something like 30% effective. That's better than nothing, and certainly can slow down the spread if used universally. Booster-vaccines are something like 70% vs Omicron.
I don't know the situation in the US, but here in the UK, the only reason there is a strain on hospitals is not because of high hospital admissions, they aren't particularly high. It is because of mandatory self-quarantine requirement for hospital staff who test positive, which result in staff shortage. We wouldn't do that with a cold, and this variant, at least to the vaccinated, is little more than a cold.
If you are sick, stay home. Don't infect your colleagues, don't infect your patients. Its not that hard.
---
The fact that you're arguing for the opposite is incredibly callous and reckless of you. Its like the pandemic has removed you of common sense.
That's literally why we have paid sick leave. Having 5% of your workforce stuck at home is better than those people coming in and infecting _EVERONE ELSE AT THE OFFICE_.
The strain on your hospitals and morgues could be much higher, if only those COVID-positive healthcare workers were at work, infecting their colleagues and patients.
>Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.
Our hospitals have been pushed to the breaking point for a long time. Maybe we should focus on extending our ICU capability to meet the demand better, given that this may be the new normal for who knows how many years yet. I think we need to come to terms with this and expand accordingly on a more permanent basis.
"It's possible the deer in northeast Ohio contracted it from contaminated water, since the novel coronavirus is shed in human waste. But alternative sources — such as trash, backyard feeders, bait stations and wildlife hospitals — have to be considered, Bowman said."
What does this have to do with masks again? Perhaps you can organize a scientific experiment equipping half the deer with masks, and report back to us with the results.
OP's exact words were "COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside". Read the "effectively" - he's clearly not saying that it doesn't transmit at all (obviously it does if you go outdoors and then cough right into someone else's face from two inches away), just that it doesn't do so effectively.
Deer don't do social distancing. They sleep together, and move around in herds for most of their day. COVID can both spread terribly outdoors (which it does) and lots of deer can get it exclusively outdoors.
Let's be clear on this: The majority of humanity is not okay with the idea of wearing masks full-time in all public places, and shutting down densely populated activities forever.
Masks make sense locally, temporarily, and as circumstances warrant. Such as a hospital or pharmacy during a flu outbreak, or when someone thinks they may be sick (cough or sneeze fits).
There doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop this in the near term. The idea of stamping out COVID quickly like we thought we could do in the spring of 2020 is gone.
It is time now to understand we live with it, to be cautious when we feel ill and isolate ourselves, and to get the preventative measures that help best (vaccines).
Where the hell are you that this is your reality? Here in Texas it is absolutely not the case that "but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button".
Texas has much lower per capita cases and deaths than a state like New York. But I also suspect that Texas values freedom relative to safety much higher than states like New York.
Texas leadership is focused on performing for their constituents. That relegates the contemplation to progressive city/county leadership who are willing to push back on statewide policy when the numbers get bad.
A lot of this gets left to the choice of business owners and school administrators who have to balance their choices with fiscal concerns and public perception. There is no political leadership position for them to fall back on. Basically everyone's hands are tied, and some group is going to be upset whether buttons get pressed or not.
There are several ways this could end, but the scenarios that could realistically keep most people from encountering the virus have proven implausible. So while you can use maska and lockdowns indefinitely, it's not much of a plan.
Arguably boosting the entire population and waiting for the last wave to pass is a more realistic plan, even though nobody so far seems willing to admit they're planning to do this, they just are doing it.
Except there are so many options in between Nos. 2 and 3. Reduced capacity. Outdoor dining. Testing requirements. As well as the wide, wide gulf between total lockdowns and selective ones.
I think my overall point is that we're well into discussing options between 2 and 3 now. This Omicron surge is truly ferocious, and far worse than people predicted (or really, hoped for).
There's also the evidence that Omicron subsides rather quickly (at least, in South Africa it did). So any such emergency measures would truly be temporary, more so than the original strain or Delta-surges of the past. Under these statistics / calculations, it makes more sense to perform bigger actions.
I'm still pissed that in California we handled the possible in-between steps so clumsily.
My 2020 Roger Waters concert was canceled. Sure, that made sense -- 15,000 people all packed inside the venue. But at the same time, my hairdresser was shut down, not even a single customer at a time allowed. Made no sense to me.
> The big question right now is if we should push button#3 [lockdowns].
I think a more salient question is if we can push button #3. Nobody wants more lockdowns. The vaccinated are tired of the unvaccinated fucking everything up for us, and the unvaccinated have never been open to the idea.
This is another thing pointed out by the article: there just isn't the will to do it, even if it was necessary.
This isn't being made as a medical decision, it's being made as a political decision.
You either do an orderly shutdown, or you get de-facto shutdown.
In the case of this high-school, they only needed ~10% of students / teachers to get COVID19 before chaos reigned supreme. Students are now skipping classes out of fear of their own safety, teachers are collecting students into auditoriums (because too many teachers are sick, not enough substitute teachers to watch the students 30-at-a-time anymore, gotta collect all the students together to more efficiently watch over them).
At this point, the high-school in this Reddit discussion should have just an orderly shutdown, rather than pretending everything is fine.
If people aren't getting COVID and are staying at home because of a shutdown, then this exact same situation happens again just later in time... (After the school shutdown)
An orderly shutdown is better, because all the students remain at the same point of their lessons. If you're a calculus teacher currently teaching basic integrals this week... you won't be able to teach "integration by parts" (or other advanced integrals) 1 month from now, because 10% of your students were missing.
----------
In contrast, a formal shutdown means that _EVERYBODY_ gets held off at this lesson. You cut your losses, formally shutdown school, and start everybody up when times are safer.
You can plan around a formal shutdown. You can't plan around a de-facto shutdown. All the students are going to have bits and pieces of knowledge and are unable to catchup, because they all randomly lost bits of information due to randomly missing class.
In many countries in Asia it was already considered polite to wear a mask if you got sick. Got a cold and coughing everywhere? Wear a mask so your not spewing droplets all over your coworkers and people at the store.
I am hoping that trend continues in the western world but who really knows
TBH, I consider wearing a mask to be so low-effort, I take it for granted. I know for many other people in this country that's not the case at all, and wearing a mask to the grocery store for them is somehow akin to wearing a 20-pound iron ball chained to their ankle. But to me (and my family), a mask isn't a big deal.
By "what more realistically can we do" I'm really talking about shutdowns, lockdowns, and capacity reductions. I'm ok with continuing WFH for people who can... so I suppose my stance is inconsistent: I want to get back to "normal" but I'm ok with WFH and masks.
Overall, I'm frankly at a point where, double-vaxx'd and boosted, I really want to go back to not having to second-guess my decision to go out for a bowl of ramen.
Stay away from people who don't take the pandemic seriously, and take every precaution you know you would take if this virus was any more serious. We all knew what to expect. Sure it sucks, but would you rather catch the virus?
at this point I want better public health evidence from CDC etc that "the vaccine may have kept you out of the ICU". I need better quantification of the various risks before continuing to live an extremely inconvenient lifestyle to ostensibly save other's lives.
There's a clear difference in hospitalization and death between the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. You don't have to take the CDC's word for it - other countries can see the same thing in their numbers.
Calling getting the vaccine "an extremely inconvenient lifestyle" is silly.
yes, exactly. I am getitng tired of people citing CDC facts that don't answer (quantitatively) which of any of actions are actually useful.
Note that many people who end up the hospital either didn't know they were infected, or got infected there. And probably many of the people with COVID who go to the hospital don't actually need hospital levels of treatment. We have a tendency to overtreat with technology.
At this point I don't really think that pointing at CDC public health releases is going to convince a scientist like me. Also, the data you pointed at doesn't directly answer what I said (nearly all data is ambiguous, there are a ton of confounders, etc).
Getting a vaccine isnt inconvenient, except that it was: I spent an entire week unable to use my left arm and feeling very sick (and my doctor didn't care). But also there's a ton of other issues, like my kids not being able to go to school, stores closed, having to greatly limit travel, etc.
I don't disagree with the directionality you describe but look at the case rates and hospitizalization numbers- even the most highly vaccinated areas of the country are still heavily impacted. Omicron changed everything and our reporting hasn't caught up.
The best way to think about CDC press releases is that they not intended to be read by scientists. They are intended to guide good behavior and may not be 100% accurate in terms of medical/scientific knowledge.
Thus far, every indication we have is that there's a successful decoupling of cases and hospitalization/death. Omicron's been in South Africa long enough for the lagging indicators of hospitalization/death. They remain low.
Here is where the details of COVID matter. Is it just a respiratory disease where once you are past the acute phase you are fine, or is it a multisystem disease where the long term consequences (kidney, heart, brain, blood clotting issues) we be on the rise for years and decades to come? The long term consequences (WHICH NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE) are frightening.
It's not a new phenomena [1]. I do not think "hospitals are incapable of keeping people safe from Covid" is the best expression. I think "encountering any humans bears increased risk in Covid times", regardless if those humans work in a hospital (although, arguably lower risk) versus a shoe store.
It calls into question the effectiveness of all the Covid countermeasures. A triple vaxxed person, following all masking and distancing requirements, in a highly controlled environment still gets Covid. It makes you feel a bit like... What's the point? Do we realistically have any tools that slow the spread of Omicron?
The standard response is "Just imagine how bad it would be without all the restrictions!". Which is exactly the problem, perhaps. You're using imagination and not a quantitative approach. You can say that about literally anything. "Just imagine how much worse we would have lost that game if I wasn't wearing my lucky socks!"
A) Covid is probably airborne and refusal to admit as such and this upgrade hvac is potentially an ignored reality
B) why aren’t we testing and segregated people in hospitals? If society is expected to segregate unvaccinated people why can’t hospitals test and segregate healthy patients from anyone with Covid?
C) what expression is appropriate for a hospital that was incapable of preventing a patient free of Covid from contracting Covid in the hospital? Unwilling perhaps? Uninterested?
You can't reasonably maintain social-distance at the hospital. Pretty much by definition, you're in contact with several nurses and doctors per day, plus orderlies and various other staff. And that's the baseline. Add guests, other patients, and over-crowding (in some locations).
Of course hospitals are incapable of keeping you safe from an airbourne respiratory virus. Nothing can, short of a respirator.
The follow-up question is - if we can't stop infection in hospital buildings, where the most vulnerable are literally cooped up together for days and weeks at a time, what's the point of the rest of the restrictions? If you follow the logic used to set guidance and law where I live (ie, closures of various categories of business at various times, and ongoing), then logically we should also have shut down the hospitals...
In mid 2020 in the UK, The National Health Service (NHS) began introducing "green" and "ultra-green" pathways, and designating zones or entire hospitals as 'green' (CoVid-19 free) sites. 'Green' and 'ultra-green' refer to CoViD-19 prevention measures in the 14 days preceding non-emergency admissions and the status of zones (or entire sites) at the hospital during and after treatment.
This was to ensure non-emergency admissions could continue without risking infection.
I am not sure if your assertion is true. I am completely unvaccinated and at times also ran a heart rate above 120 (involuntarily) and a fever above 102.
However the difference for me was that I was at home and all I needed to do was take my inhaler if I felt short of breath and take advil quite religiously for the fever.
So I don't feel there is any difference between their symptoms and mine, and I am an asthmatic and also a bit overweight.
Different people have different reactions to Covid. That's true of both unvaccinated and vaccinated. But the data has been pretty clear that vaccinated has resulted in a lot less hospitalizations and death for those that take it.
I'm glad you made it through okay, but statistically your risk was higher by being unvaccinated when you caught it.
Also if I was short of breath, a heart rate above 120 randomly, and had a fever of 102 (at the same tmie) during this pandemic, as an overweight asthmatic myself, I wouldn't have risked staying home and would have headed straight to the emergency room. Especially if I checked my Oximeter and it was in the lower 90s.
You can never know if the vaccine made it less bad. If you don't like anecdotes about how tame covid was w/o vaccines, don't say things like "it would have been worse w/o the vaccine".
But statistically it is. Unvaccinated people die more. Vaccinated people die less. You can't _know_ in a meaningful sense in your specific instance, but your risk is what it is no matter what. I'm not sure what's hard about this.
I'm not going to prove to you that vaccines work, sorry. Do your own homework, but remember that you're (probably) not an immunologist. Do what thou wilt.
Had you gone to the emergency room in lower areas of New York, you would have been accepted through triage (but not "admitted overnight"), given an EKG, given an albuterol nebulizer treatment, told to continue these treatments every 2 hours at home until feeling better. If the nebulizer fails to help your breathing at that interval, you would be told to return. And if you developed pneumonia, you'd be given an antibiotic.
How do I know? This is exactly what happened to my wife.
That sucks for sure, and I'm sorry that happened to your wife, although at least you got a little information from that and hopefully if your wife was in worse shape they would have identified that at that time and admitted her.
I would have also used the nebulizer before going in, most likely (I have one at home), so I would know ahead of time how well it was working out. Also I did say I'd check the oximeter I have first, and if my blood oxygen level was low then according to that I probably need to be in the hospital and they'd hopefully take that measurement and react appropriately (Hopefully. I know hospitals have been overwhelmed at times, especially New York's)
I am a bit lucky in that the hospital closest to me, so far, hasn't run out of hospital beds this entire pandemic (currently has 80 regular beds and a dozen ICU beds available), and my state has, with a little luck and some decent policy decisions, has mostly kept things under control.
Risk after-the-fact doesn't work like that. Probabilities cease to be probabilities after the event happened. Plus, don't forget about all of the dead people who are unable to write posts like this. I'm glad you're okay, but as the sibling comment said, your risk was higher, especially being overweight and asthmatic. If you win a slot machine one time, it doesn't mean everyone else will also win the slot machine. Getting lucky doesn't mean there was never any risk, it just means you got lucky this time.
Just a note for anyone reading this but if you want to take a pain reliever for covid infection, apparently aspirin is an ideal one because the feature of preventing blood clots is very useful in preventing the fairly rare but serious covid complications caused by microclots.
But maybe not if you're young. Aspirin is associated with Reye Syndrome in children with viral infections. Not sure I've seen whether this has been shown to be the case or not with COVID, but basically nobody gives their kids aspirin anymore so I'm not sure if it's been an issue.
When I caught Alpha variant in February, I took advil/ibuprofen as well on the advice of my doctor. Didn't really have a headache more than a day though. I didn't know about aspirin's side-effect blood-thinning benefit pertaining to micro-clots.
But as stated elsewhere in the thread, I should have qualified my statement with "don't give aspirin to kids" due to Reyes syndrome. Totally spaced that detail.
But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? I mean sure, let's maybe avoid coughing into each other's open mouths. But apart from that, Omicron seems to be so contagious, we're all bound to get it eventually unless we literally lock ourselves at home for the next 3 years.