I'm starting to think it's over

[George.]

The news trickling out about the omicron wave are encouraging.

In South Africa cases are plummeting. It's now over a month since their omicron wave started, and hospitalizations did not rise. Data from Europe and the US seems to confirm that. By now things should be looking ugly if they were going to get uglier.

This variant appears to be:

- very fast spreading
- a lot milder
- unlikely to cause serious disease in fully vaccinated people.

Limited evidence indicates that the wave lasts for about 4 weeks, and that when it is over most people will have been exposed to it. What it will leave behind is a landscape with very few naive immune systems left. The Covid-19 virus will join the other endemic four coronaviruses, and cause colds. Life will quickly go back to normal.

Sure, there will probably be one final fat-tailed spike in deaths, overwhelmingly among covidiots. But for the rest of us, it's practically over!

Happy 2022!

[isla]

I admire your optimism, but it's still rising here in the UK with new records being set every day.

UK daily Covid cases reached another record high of 189,213 on Thursday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59835545

Also, with such a high number of cases there is a greater chance of yet another variant emerging. I'm not counting my chickens yet,

[skuthorp]

And here, spikung up, but influenced by ideological decisions in our largest state.

[George.]

Yes, cases will spike everywhere. Then they'll plunge.

A somewhat more contagious variant could emerge. But one causing more severe disease is unlikely. Natural selection points the other way.

[carioca1232001]

The news trickling out about the omicron wave are encouraging.

In South Africa cases are plummeting. It's now over a month since their omicron wave started, and hospitalizations did not rise. Data from Europe and the US seems to confirm that. By now things should be looking ugly if they were going to get uglier.

This variant appears to be:

- very fast spreading
- a lot milder
- unlikely to cause serious disease in fully vaccinated people.

Limited evidence indicates that the wave lasts for about 4 weeks, and that when it is over most people will have been exposed to it. What it will leave behind is a landscape with very few naive immune systems left. The Covid-19 virus will join the other endemic four coronaviruses, and cause colds. Life will quickly go back to normal.

Sure, there will probably be one final fat-tailed spike in deaths, overwhelmingly among covidiots. But for the rest of us, it's practically over!

Happy 2022!

I´ll keep my fingers crossed that your appraisal of the situation may indeed be spot on....BUT

Subsequent to XMas-day lunch at our place : a niece who was present reported from SP that she has been diagnosed with Covid ( the "same" as omicron ? ? ), ditto a nephew in Rio and both his daughters (the pair of us, vaccinated and 'boostered', are until the present moment OK).

Several scores of tourists bringing in the New Year on board liners off Santos and Salvador have also been diagnosed with Covid, no sooner than my neighbours upstairs boarded a liner yesterday in Rio for the same purpose (we did not manage to get a place on board, thank heavens !)

[George.]

Yes, our omicron surge is full blown in Brazil, though people won't realize it for another week. Reporting pretty much collapses over Christmas and New Year's. When the backlog of cases pours in, along with the exponentially higher cases we'll be having by then, I predict a lot of freaking out.

[John Smith]

I'm disinclined to predict, as we may have another variant any day.

[George.]

Yes, but for a variant to compete with omicron it would have to be even more transmissible, which almost always means less severe, just like omicron. Upper respiratory tract rather than lungs, and milder symptoms/more asymptomatic cases so that people keep circulating.

[Jim Mahan]

So, yeah, hurray, finally, everyone get a cruise on!



It'll be over in the warm wx coming up. Sure it will. Tell me it's over when it's over: When new case numbers are back into only single or double digits and it quits being the lead on the evening news every frigging day, with cases and hospitalizations and deaths rising in near vertical curves.

[Keith Wilson]

I sincerely hope you're right, but it's not looking good here right now, for the same old bad reasons. Omicron may be less deadly, but the hospitals are full to bulging again, overwhelmingly with the unvaccinated. All too Darwinian.

[Jim Mahan]

"If you can read the hand-writing on the wall—

you're in the restroom."

[CWSmith]

"If you can read the hand-writing on the wall—

you're in the restroom."

That is memorable! That's great!

[George.]

Omicron may be less deadly, but the hospitals are full to bulging again, overwhelmingly with the unvaccinated.

Frankly, my darling...

[Reynard38]

Frankly, my darling...

Yep. You pays your $$, you takes your chances.

[Keith Wilson]

Frankly, my darling...

Yeah, yeah, I know. But again, every one of those folks has a wife or husband or kids or parents or friends or someone else who loves them, and the suffering isn't diminished by the fact that they at least partially brought it on themselves.

And your daily quibble: Rhett Butler's famous line in Gone With The Wind (a loathsome piece of glorification of the Confederacy) was 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn', rather shocking language for a movie in 1939.

[AndyG]

I've just finished a horrendously busy shift at work. It's Hogmanay and all that. Customers masked? Easily 99%. And 99% of the unmasked wear a badge saying they're exempt. Scotland's got this part absolutely right, at least.

However, a number of customers were quite clearly coughing, sneezing and wheezing their way around the store today. "Do they have Omicron?", I wondered. Almost certainly 'yes', in many cases: the statistics seem to suggest it. And as I'm in closeish contact with hundreds everyday, I suppose I'm at risk.

Do I feel worried?

...No, not any more.

I've taken both doses and the booster. I'm fanatical with my mask and my hand-hygiene (I'm touching their goods and their cash every single moment). My 'bubble' is my wife, and my daughter's family a few hundred metres away, who are equally cautious. I LFT every couple of days: a string of negatives.

Covid, I think, will be in the rear-view mirror in a few months. Of course, people will die of it in the future - like the vulnerable die of the yearly flu - but this thing is just weeks away from being 'mostly survivable' for most.

It's been a long haul, for sure. My two-and-a-half year-old granddaughter has no memory of being taken shopping where adults' faces are visible. I'm two months into a job where I only know what my colleagues' eyes look like. (Indeed, the odd glimpse of a colleague scratching their nose or re-adjusting their mask makes me often think 'but you don't look like that'. It's a bit like seeing a picture of a radio actor, or seeing an actor portraying a character 'I know' from a book on TV or film.)

My Mum died early in the pandemic in 2020 (released from a hospital to free up beds, I suspect, only to be placed in a Petrie dish of a care home.) i hope, by this Spring, to finally be able to inter her ashes with my Dad, as she wanted. And then we can move on.

Andy

[George.]

every one of those folks has a wife or husband or kids or parents or friends

And I feel truly sorry for them. I really do. Even if their covidiot loved one survives. Or perhaps especially so.

[David G]

You, then, are a far better Oracle than I. I do hope you are correct, and I see the evidence you point to. But I worry how much of your hope springs from the Covid-weariness we all share to some degree.

[George.]

No one is more covid-weary than I am. Remember, I was one of the first to bring it up here and say how bad it was going to be. We have been stressing about it since January 2020, when we had a trip to Asia in the works. I lost my mother, cousin, and two uncles to covid.

I was called a pessimist a lot in 2020. Now I am being called an optimist. But in both cases I just tried to follow the science. Usually it works.

[TomF]

It's turned bad here in previously mostly OK New Brunswick. Schools delaying opening by a couple of weeks, in part to try to increase the % of schoolkids vaxxed - It's only been pretty recently that elementary age kids could get their jabs.

In a population of about 750k, we may be seeing 1k cases every day by a week from now. 2 jabs will protect folks from serious life threatening illness, but they'll still get sick. Boosted is better of course, but not all are eligible yet, or have got their appointments. In my household, boosters will be next week.

I wouldn't be surprised though if this next 8-12 weeks is the pivot. Our hospitals will be crunched, mostly by the 10% of the population which refuses the vaxx at all. But by 12 weeks from now, I anticipate that most everyone will either be vaxxed, or have been sick, or both. And we'll be left in the wreckage.

[George Jung]

I do believe everybody posting here is correct.

[carioca1232001]

....... I lost my mother, cousin, and two uncles to covid........

My sincere condolences, it must have felt devastating to experience multiple COVID casualties in the extended family.

I recall meeting you and your mother at the Yacht Club dock around 2015, a delicate, petite lady, but selling off Dahlia and supposedly the membership too, we were never to meet again.

I suspect that the uncles were your father´s siblings, who accompanied him to Brasil during the construction of Brasilia ?? The deceased cousin a son of one of them ? Really sad.

[Decourcy]

I am hopeful. Our numbers are spiking, but hospitalizations are stable and 90% unvaccinated.

[webishop14]

I do believe everybody posting here is correct.

One of my favorite assessments.

[carioca1232001]

I am hopeful. Our numbers are spiking, but hospitalizations are stable and 90% unvaccinated.

Think you are confirming that 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated ? ?

Surely Canada has vaccinated the vast majority of it´s citizens !

[Decourcy]

Think you are confirming that 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated ? ?

Surely Canada has vaccinated the vast majority of it´s citizens !

BC has vaccinated 84% of all citizens above 5 years of age. Other provinces vary. But yes, of the hospitalized, 90% are the unvaccinated.


Ill let you do the math on how much greater risk hospitalizations are for unvaccinated. The unvaccinated here can’t seem to do it.


To clarify, of the above 12 age group we are at 88% double vaccinated. Below 12 was opened for vaccinating more recently and has been a bit slower.

[Tom Montgomery]

.
A close friend with MS has been miserably ill with COVID-19 since Sunday despite being vaccinated and boosted. She works in HR for Pepperidge Farms with office co-workers sho refuse to wear masks in the office. The company allowed this despite being aware of my friend's medical condition.

So I have low tolerance for the suggestion that this crap is almost over. Almost over until the next mutation. Only 52% of Ohioans are fully vaccinated. Very few people here bother to wear masks in indoor public spaces. All evidence indicates that having been infected with COVID-19 confers less immunity than vaccination.

[carioca1232001]

Most populations have witnessed the stark reality of the mortality rate of the unvaccinated.

Nah, let the unvaccinated get on with their stubborness.....but do present eventual survivors with a hospitalization bill.

[Gerarddm]

Wishful thinking, sure. But, perhaps.

Meanwhile I still insist that the unvaxxed who get Covid be denied medical care that more properly would go to genuinely sick people with other ailments. No hospital beds for you! Soup, maybe. Try chicken noodle.

[Bobcat]

We just found out that the BC care home where my 94 year old mother in law lives has banned all visitors until 18 January. I am not sure she will understand why no one is coming to see her, what with her dementia. It's tough on everyone.

I hope the pandemic is peaking. In the past, pandemics have generally gone away eventuallly

[George.]

My sincere condolences, it must have felt devastating to experience multiple COVID casualties in the extended family.

I recall meeting you and your mother at the Yacht Club dock around 2015, a delicate, petite lady, but selling off Dahlia and supposedly the membership too, we were never to meet again.

I suspect that the uncles were your father´s siblings, who accompanied him to Brasil during the construction of Brasilia ?? The deceased cousin a son of one of them ? Really sad.

Thank you, Cedric. The uncles were one on my mother's side and one on Silvana's side.

I haven't been in Rio since about 2015. I think I wouldn't recognize the place...

[carioca1232001]

Must be painful experiencing close family members succumb in a pandemic due to governamental ineptness/callousness. Anyway your new environment should keep you on your toes and this helps taking your mind off it.

Don´t believe Rio has changed much since 2015 but should you be coming this way, gime me a buzz.

[George.]

Well, we are all past the peak of omicron, and it does look like now it's over!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022...d-cdc-reports/

I believe Sil and I had it a couple of weeks ago. I felt really tired for a day and a half, with headache and body aches - not enough to keep me from working, but noticeable. All our NGO staff have now had it. Everyone was vaccinated, but the younger ones had the equivalent of a bad flu for about 3 days.

With the data now in, it turns out that vaccines work (duh!), and the only spike in deaths and hospitalizations is among the unvaccinated (good riddance, and hope the survivors learn a lesson). A month from now just about everyone in the world will have been exposed, and then the pandemic will be over. France and the UK are planning to lift all restrictions soon. I expect the rest of the world to follow suit.

[Jim Mahan]

I'm thinking it can really be over if the timing works out right. It's like a pig going through a python. If the last folks to get antibodies through innoculation or infection and survival do it before the antibodies built up in the first ones to get sick phase out, we can be done. If it takes too long the immunity wears out and the cycle of reinfection will continue, especially if everyone starts celebrating the end before the fat lady is done with the aria. One of the reasons the pandemic has been so devastating was the impatience of those wanting their normal back and giving up the precautions too soon.

We may be past a peak, but the damn numbers, the numbers of the damned, are still in record territory daily. New epicenters back in places that were epicenters two years ago. We have thousands and thousands of people dead of complacency and impatience. Listen to the daily reports of healthcare workers dead on their feet shift after shift.

To repeat, it'll be over when the daily new cases numbers are in only double or single digits. And until then we should all continue to wear masks and limit travel and et fcking cetera. Remember how it all started—a case of an outbreak was announced, and then another case was reported in New York. That was one case in country. Then we heard of a new case in Washington state. And now we know that people were already infected without symptoms in places around the country, and the thing was spreading like wildfire in a hurricane. That was when it was three or four cases daily. Say that last line out loud. We blew up a world-wide devastating, economy-crashing pandemic overnight from three cases and we're now trying to convince ourselves that with a hundred and seventy thousand new cases daily we're past a peak, and it's nearly over. It's going to take a long, long time for the pig to go through three hundred million units of python.

It ain't over. Don't think it is. And don't leave home without your mask. And don't think it can't get worse. And don't think you got it so it isn't that bad and only the deserving are dying.

[ERGR]

George,
Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, seems to agree with you that the covid-19 pandemic could be over when the omicron wave fades. He expects a calm period in Europe until next winter when covid-19 is likely to return again, but not as a pandemic any longer.
/Erik