So all we wanted for Christmas was some good news. We’ll have to settle for a lot less.
I’d hardly call what scientists are saying as hyperbole. Another variant is on the loose, and while the data about its potency is incomplete, there is plenty of evidence that a lot of people are going to get sick in the next six weeks.
Sick? How sick?
Does it really matter if you get food poisoning and just have diarrhea or if you have vomiting spells on top of the shits? The fact is you’re sick. There’s pain. There’s misery. There’s the possibility that whatever toxin you’ve consumed makes you sick enough to go to the hospital.
The good news here is that with food poisoning your misery is personal, others around you may be inconvenienced but they're not likely to share your experience.
What about all those shots we got? Isn’t that enough?
Let’s take a look at what’s happening in Denmark, a highly vaccinated, wealthy northern European country, with a robust health infrastructure devoted to testing, surveillance and modeling — for warnings about what to expect.
The Danes dumped most coronavirus restrictions back in September, when the fully vaccinated adult population exceeded 80%. Things were going so well that only about one in four people had bothered to get the booster.
Now, they’re about three weeks ahead of the US in terms of Omicron spread. The government has reinstated lockdowns, but there’s an emerging consensus that it was too little, too late.
From the Washington Post:
Denmark’s hospitals have never had more than 1,000 covid 19 patients at any given time, last winter’s peak. But by early January, in a moderate scenario, hospitals could be seeing 500 new covid patients arriving every day. If omicron’s transmissibility winds up on the higher end, and it proves just as severe as the delta variant, with a strong ability to evade vaccines, daily admissions could reach 800.
And then there is the matter of infections. Before this wave, Denmark had never seen more than 5,000 cases in a day. On Friday, it logged more than 11,000 new cases. Within a week, in a moderate scenario, case numbers could hit 27,000. And into January? The institute’s estimates climb higher still, off the Y-axis.
The picture in the United States is grim. According to scientists' most pessimistic projections, the U.S. could reach over a half-million average daily infections by the end of January — more than double last winter's peak.
Dr. Francis Collins, the outgoing Director of the National Institutes for Health told NPR:
“Even if it has a somewhat lower risk of severity, we could be having a million cases a day if we're not really attentive to all of those mitigation strategies," he said.
Even the most optimistic scenarios could mean a strain on hospitals in many regions that are already squeezed by the delta surge.
https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1472029652898041857?s=20
Now, as to the local prognosis, things look bad.
One of the most successful prevention programs in the country has been at UCSD. They’re able to track human waste building by building on the campus, allowing them to get ahead of the game on testing and getting students who test positive into isolation housing.
From the Union-Tribune:
On Saturday, UC San Diego officials warned that samples from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, which processes flushed waste from two out of every three San Diegans, has the highest levels of the coronavirus that the university has seen since February. Both the Delta and Omicron variants of the virus are fueling this rise.
Researchers have consistently found that when viral levels go up in wastewater, cases usually increase within a couple weeks, putting the region on track for a sizeable surge around the start of 2022…
…Their main question: Was Omicron driving the uptick? It would have taken at least a week to come up with an answer via genetic sequencing. So instead, researchers worked late into the night and Saturday morning to run a molecular test specifically designed to distinguish variants. That test revealed that both the Delta and Omicron variants were contributing to the rise.
People promising that omicron will *surely* lead to milder cases in vaccinated people are over-promising. While there is good reason to expect it, the data to know for sure is still being examined. This variant was only detected a month ago. Researchers are racing to keep up and study it in real-time.
The bulk of the pain will be felt by Americans who remain unvaccinated, have had immunity wane from prior vaccines and are yet to get boosted, or are immuno-compromised.
Should a small percentage of the bigger numbers of infected people need hospital care, it will tax a health system already fatigued while treating cases linked to the older delta variant. It's going to be a psychological blow for a nation that’s spent the past two years fighting the pandemic.
Also, reports from South Africa indicate that there are some differences in the initial symptoms with Omicron. Instead of a sore throat, doctors report patients say it started with a "scratchy" throat. Also, the loss of taste and smell happens less frequently.
https://twitter.com/Blake_Allen13/status/1472750932056227841?s=20
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So get boosted, mask up, and strongly consider limiting your visits to indoor environments.
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This week I’ll post Thursday, take the weekend off and then you’ll see me irregularly through the first of the year.
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A damned good response to a COVID denier.
https://twitter.com/HeadlinerClip/status/1472260908671926276?s=20
Hey folks! There’s a change coming to Words & Deeds in 2022. I’ll be moving from Wordpress to Substack, which hopefully will mean just a few changes in formatting. Stay tuned for exciting details.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com