Omicron: risk goes way down, panic goes way up.

Omni ripping thru the populace here on the East Coast. Very mild. Natural immunity and herd immunity in the near future.

Some other thing going around too. Much worse. I had a dry cough, runny nose, and generally felt like crap for a good week and a half and know some others who have had the same thing. Tested negative for Covid twice. Have avoided the jab and had been totally healthy for 26 months until that thing hit (flu?).

I’m in the Midwest, major surge happening here right now. Typo in my post, meant to say ‘our city’ rather than ‘your city’.

I’ve made no claim that all patients go straight to the ICU although many people do show up to the ER in extremis and promptly get tubed or sent to the ICU. I am just describing wheat I am seeing at this time. Things may change but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we still have mostly unvaccinated in the ICU.

As it stands today, we have 150 in our hospital total w COVID (presumably mostly Omicron based on epi). 40 something in ICU, 20 something on vents.

My take is, at this point that vaccination may not protect much against transmission, but appears to protect against severe disease. We’ll see how the next month goes.

Btw the intubation yesterday went well. But the odds are against him. You skinny types on here are going to be fine.

Midwest physician as well. Ditto

New York is going to start differentiating between people admitted to the hospital "with" COVID vs "because" of COVID..

Now that Dems are in power and COVID is still a thing, we're seeing a big heel turn on a number of their policies that have been questioned by many of us for the past 2 years. (we were told we were "science deniers!")

Just in the past week we've learned:

- CNN reported that obesity is a huge factor for those that suffer the worst from covid. Losing some weight could really help!

-Joe Biden, after promising to "shut down the virus" suddenly stated that really this has to be handled at the state level. Then he turned his back on the cameras, got on a helicopter and headed off to vacation.

-on Face the Nation Dr. Gottlieb admitted that cloth masks are useless and a waste of time. Really the only masks that help are fitted, N95s.

- the CDC admitted that the 10 day quarantine was completely made up and arbitrary.

- the CDC admitted that the 6 ft social distancing rule was also arbitrary and made up.

-NYT did a story on the devastating effects of closing schools have on children, not only academically, but there are big social ramifications and mental health issues relating to the lack of structure.

I am all for getting vaxxed, it's the best way to make sure you do not have serious health issues associated with C19, but the rest of this stuff needs to be tossed in the trash. Move on with life, this endemic.

Now that vaccinated are hitting the hospitals in large numbers, they are starting to do the due to, not with COVID two step. They could have been doing that before, but didn't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg because they were collecting more money from the medicare and medicaid systems that way. Now, their liberal governance is more concerned with the political fallout than the cash, as when the truth comes out that vaccinated individuals are contracting COVID from Omicron and being hospitalized at as high of rates as unvaccinated individuals (maybe even higher rates going forward if you believe that ADE is in play), they will be facing a political S*** storm for their vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and encouragement of booster vaccinations, which may not just be not preventing illness, but may be making it worse.

One other significant back track they have made was recommending that previously infected individuals wait at least a month after their symptoms have gone away to get a booster / vaccination (this is due to adverse reactions). European nations were making three-month long exceptions in their legislations long before, and our own government was advising such for people who had undergone antibody therapy. The adverse events have been there from the start, it is only now that they are acting on science.

This is what political dogma does to people. Just a desperate attempt to shoehorn any facts into ones fanatical ideology. Yes, the doctors were scamming Medicare with COVID cases and the 900k excess deaths are therefore fakes? It's hard not to laugh.

Before Omicron, the vast, vast, vast majority of hospital admissions 'with' COVID were 'of' COVID. Look at the tight coupling between cases, percent positivity, hospitalizations, and death for all waves BEFORE Omicron.

The Omicron wave has changed this for several reasons

1) It is very transmissible and immune evasive. We are seeing by FAR the highest case loads ever in most places. This means that 'incidental' hospital admissions 'with' COVID are much higher than ever. More people are coming to the hospital for a reason besides COVID yet also testing positive for COVID.

2) It is intrinsically milder. Many more people are getting very mild cases of COVID that don't require hospital attention.

3) There is a ton of pre-existing immunity from vaccines and (to some extent) infection that makes the average case more mild.

Lastly, there is zero evidence that vaccines are not effective against severe disease with Omicron.

Here's the lastest data on UK ICU admissions. The ratio of unvaccinated:vaccinated got HIGHER in December despite massive vaccine uptake.

People will try to post long-winded analyses of dashboard data from random jurisdictions, claiming that (this time) it definitively proves vaccines are not working. They will conveniently forget to follow up in a few weeks when their pet theory falls completely flat.

A final look at the situation with Omicron in the UK:

These posters are smart enough to know that MANY variables have changed with the Omicron wave: severity, immune coverage of the population, treatments, transmissibility, etc. Yet they act like changing policies in response to the changing pandemic is evidence of some political conspiracy? Just plain ignorance.

Harambe doing Simone Biles style mental gymnastics to wrap his tiny brain around the fact that his heroes have been lying to him all this time.

But hey.. Glad you guys are at least landing in the same place, even though it took you 2 years to get here.

YersiniaPestis wrote:

Harambe doing Simone Biles style mental gymnastics to wrap his tiny brain around the fact that his heroes have been lying to him all this time.

But hey.. Glad you guys are at least landing in the same place, even though it took you 2 years to get here.

That guy is unbelievable.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Talked to my friend working in a MD hospital. He backed up what people are broadly saying about Omicron. There are a lot of COVID admissions, however they aren't needing to go the ICU at nearly as high a rate and they, by and large, don't have as serious issues.

Anecdotally on the people who don't test positive thing...I had a friend who's partner he lives with it got it. A wedding they went to had a groom who had COVID. My friend was sick for a couple weeks too. Never tested positive despite feeling like crap and obviously being unable to distance from his partner. So who really knows?

I have Omicron as I type this. Ask your friend why the covid positive people are being admitted. I'd like to know. Are they having trouble breathing? Is it messing with their hearts? Is it messing with their comorbidities? Is it so they can get IV antibiotics? Or maybe they are just dehydrated and need IV fluids? Based on my response so far (Day 4), it's similar to a bad flu.

YersiniaPestis wrote:

Harambe doing Simone Biles style mental gymnastics to wrap his tiny brain around the fact that his heroes have been lying to him all this time.

But hey.. Glad you guys are at least landing in the same place, even though it took you 2 years to get here.

Only the truly brain dead could deny COVID for months, fearmonger vaccines for months, and still think they are correct.

I've been right about everything regarding COVID and vaccines because I am not beholden to some insane political team-sport like you are. Tragic.

Although to their "credit," the 'casedemic' and 'with COVID' and 'just the flu' people might finally be correct. It only took almost 1 million excess deaths and another 1 million lives saved from the vaccine and significant viral mutation to get there!

Quite the cost for the broken clock to finally show the time. Congrats? Psychopathic.

carmine9 wrote:

YersiniaPestis wrote:

Harambe doing Simone Biles style mental gymnastics to wrap his tiny brain around the fact that his heroes have been lying to him all this time.

But hey.. Glad you guys are at least landing in the same place, even though it took you 2 years to get here.

That guy is unbelievable.

He likely has COVID, but hasn't tested positive for it, even though he has the symptoms. This still hasn't stopped him from putting up misinformation from old studies from the CDC, Chicago and New York that say how well vaccines are working at preventing infection (New York's study claims that vaccinated individuals are more than 6 times less likely to test positive for COVID than unvaccinated individuals). Meanwhile, in highly vaccinated Ontario, COVID hospitalizations sit at 88% of their pandemic peak from April and show no signs of slowing (as cases continue to shoot up so much that they have started to ration PCR tests).

This misinformation campaign is giving vaccinated individuals a false sense of security and encourages them to engage in high-risk behavior thinking they are protected (like the pro-vax anti mask poster). The only preventative measures at this point that will curb infection (and the hospitalizations and deaths that can accompany them) are masking and distancing, as the vaccines are not working.

There is no evidence vaccines are failing against severe disease. Every post you make boils down to the same 2 errors: base-rate and Simpson's paradox.

You refuse to acknowledge this either because you do not understand the relatively simple math involved or are embarrassed that it refutes your poor arguments.

Anyway, I surprisingly don't have COVID given the Omicron surge. Negative PCR test and several negative antigen tests. Plenty of other viruses out there!

I don't understand why it is so deeply upsetting you that vaccines work, but I hope you can come to terms with it soon enough. Cheers.

joed|rttt wrote:

Harambe wrote:

I'm getting clobbered with some non-COVID illness this week. Tested multiple times including a PCR test -- all negative. I figure after all my breathless COVID-posting over the last 2 years I've manifested some ultra-immunity.

You've probably got COVID. The tests are not always accurate. My father and my wife's aunt had symptoms for days and had multiple negative tests before finally testing positive (they, like you are triple vaxxed). If you are early in your symptoms, you may need to wait a couple of days. Or you might have the flu or some other URI.

Astute, I either have COVID or another URI. Very helpful.

idgaf about personal risk

I do care about getting care at a hospital if, god forbid, I have an emergency

that's reason enough for me to put on an n95 and refrain from all the whining

You do know this is worldwide pandemic...not just in the U.S.