& BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-12-21 Tu: First: Omicron is here. Time to hunker down until it becomes clear that this is a lower-mortality virus. Or, if not, we are going to lose 20% of our unhunkered unvaccinated over 80s, 10% of our unhunkered unvaccinated over 70-80s, and 4% of our unhunkered unvaccinated 60-70s in the next two months: Nsikan Akpan: ’Welp, that escalated quickly. Omicron now makes up 92% of sequenced cases in the New York and New Jersey region, based on the latest data from the CDC. That’s up from the 13% reported last week. Nationally, omicron is 73%, up from 12% reported last week...
The distribution of Omicron by age, region and ethnicity currently differs markedly from Delta, with 18–29-year-olds, residents in the London region, and those of African ethnicity having significantly higher rates of infection with Omicron relative to Delta.
Important to note that the much-amplified "mild" isn't actual facts, it's the impression of one (1) South African doctor, talking about a young (media age ~27) population who have mostly had Delta in the last four months.
Also important to note that there's more than one Omicron. Still getting untangled.
Other thing is that vaccine effectiveness against Omicron is not well-understood; protection against infection drops fast. We don't know that severe disease protection doesn't drop, we haven't got the stats. (we will, in a couple months, but today we don't.) One thing I'm assuming is that the vulnerable age has moved a couple decades younger; that's what we're seeing with infection of 18-29 as an uptick and greater infection of children.
So I'm going to assume that the sudden-bend-in-the-mortality-curve is around 50 now. If I'm wrong, well, an even more cautious couple of months won't hurt me.
Oh, and burn your cloth masks. Might as well not be there versus Omicron. N95 or better. (I have been very pleased to note that the industrial safety folks are making half-face respirators specifically for covid -- no exhaust valve and a speaking diaphragm -- and P100 cartridges beat the besnackers out of disposables on cost over time. If we could get absolutely everyone into these, COVID is dead in three months.)
There's not much expectation that Omicron is lower mortality.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-49-omicron/
Different infection profile, though:
The distribution of Omicron by age, region and ethnicity currently differs markedly from Delta, with 18–29-year-olds, residents in the London region, and those of African ethnicity having significantly higher rates of infection with Omicron relative to Delta.
Important to note that the much-amplified "mild" isn't actual facts, it's the impression of one (1) South African doctor, talking about a young (media age ~27) population who have mostly had Delta in the last four months.
Also important to note that there's more than one Omicron. Still getting untangled.
Other thing is that vaccine effectiveness against Omicron is not well-understood; protection against infection drops fast. We don't know that severe disease protection doesn't drop, we haven't got the stats. (we will, in a couple months, but today we don't.) One thing I'm assuming is that the vulnerable age has moved a couple decades younger; that's what we're seeing with infection of 18-29 as an uptick and greater infection of children.
So I'm going to assume that the sudden-bend-in-the-mortality-curve is around 50 now. If I'm wrong, well, an even more cautious couple of months won't hurt me.
Oh, and burn your cloth masks. Might as well not be there versus Omicron. N95 or better. (I have been very pleased to note that the industrial safety folks are making half-face respirators specifically for covid -- no exhaust valve and a speaking diaphragm -- and P100 cartridges beat the besnackers out of disposables on cost over time. If we could get absolutely everyone into these, COVID is dead in three months.)
80? Rank choice 80 topics? Where's that forehead slapping emoji???
Hunker it is. In the 85+ bucket. 370x!!! Shit!!!