Disagree. In regions where Omicron had not yet established a foothold, Delta could have surged. I don’t think that’s the explanation, and I’m certainly not defending the CDC’s lack of clarity and candor, but it could have happened.
No, Delta could not possibly have surged enough to gain ground against Omicron as the CDC claimed (without providing details of the putative underlying data or methodology so that competent analysts could explain where they went wrong).
This will be moot by the end of the month and forgotten by the end of February.
Which is nearly impossible from an evolutionary point
Except as another item on the list of CDC failures.
One thing in this article that struck a chord was this comment:
With many districts failing to invest enough in ventilation and HEPA air filtration to lower airborne transmission, there will be outbreaks in schools.
It’s hard to believe that, two years later, this is still an ongoing problem. One that has seemingly dropped out of public view and is almost never in the news.
Long after this pandemic finally subsides, improved ventilation and HEPA filtration would help prevent colds, flu, and other airborne diseases in schools. Yet no one is even talking about these things in the context of covid-19 anymore. Expensive, yes, but invaluable steps to reduce exposure in schools.
I would think that an infrastructure measure to improve ventilation and install HEPA filtration is schools would be one thing that “both sides of the aisle” would enthusiastically support. If that had happened in 2020, it would be completed by now. Just opening windows and doors and letting in flies in the summer and cold air in the winter doesn’t cut it.
Very doubtful if you read news about masks in school etc. and how divided the political parties are on these “obvious” issues.
And as a site note based on own experience with a daughter in school - there are limitations what you can do with ventilation in a school setting so that it doesn’t completely interfere with the daily school work. A lot of stuff look easy on paper but is hard to actually implement (and not just because of costs)
Our projections depict a rapid surge of cases nationally that peaks at record high numbers during the first one to three weeks of January. … New York City is projected to peak during the first week of January; other locations peak later.
Some interesting graphs from John Burn-Murdoch who has done great work over the last two years to track covid data across the world. Early data indicates that the decoupling of cases and hospitalization as it happened in England for omicron might be weaker in the US which would be quite bad
One explanation is the quite different vaccination rate
In NYC, the ICU decoupling is pretty clear:
I don’t think we’re going to ever see a level of vaccination like that in England because there’s a strongly fixated mindset among so many people in the US who oppose getting even one shot. The bar charts you posted show that boosting among those with two mRNA shots hasn’t been going well here either, even among people over 65. (At least a near majority in that age group have had at least one shot, and many two.)
It seems that some people have thrown up their hands with the appearance of omicron. They’re sick of shots, sick of masks, sick of social distancing. They’d rather just get sick, period. I read an article today that there’s been a revival of “covid parties” for children, deliberately hoping they’ll get it and get on with things with the lasting immunity they believe it provides, like the chickenpox parties for children way back when.
Most people don’t realize that shingles is a disease that people who’ve had chickenpox can get many decades later. And so, of course, not liking vaccinations, many people don’t get the shingles shot(s). There’s a new two-shot vaccine (Shingrix) that is much better than the old one and will probably last for life. Also, people who didn’t get the old one due to having an allergic reaction to eggs can get Shingrix. So, as with the covid vaccine, there’s almost no real reason not to get vaccinated.
As for omicron parties for kids, what makes people think that, like chickenpox, that having had the disease will give them immunity for life? That thinking is akin to believing that if you’ve had one flu shot, you don’t need any more later. It would be great if a vaccine were to be developed that protects against every future variant of covid, or that having covid once protects you against any future infection, but I don’t think that’s in the cards.
The LA Times article that you posted is where I read about the resurgence of covid parties.
NYC is a very localized case and I am not sure really representative for the overall trend. If you look across all states there seems to be an early trend that where you see a dramatic increase in infections hospitalization and ICU occupations are also start to increase (and we know that these are normally lagging)
We don’t really know yet whether or by how much Omicron results in fewer hospitalizations. See the second half of the article I linked to the other day.
So far, the data on hospitalization rates aren’t clear. … flip to New York, for example, where omicron has already spread quickly. If you compare the rise in hospitalizations relative to new cases now, it does appear to be slower than during the last surges. But it’s still rising, quickly. It’s hard to tell if the blue/hospitalization lines will end up significantly lower than the orange/case ones.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/05/omicron-hospitalizations-context/
We have at least data from London and South Africa (obviously with different vaccination rates and age average) which were for the last several weeks why media in the US pretty much said omicron isn’t as dangerous as delta (and which IMO is one of the reasons the US population isn’t taking any longer omicron as serious as they should). We will soon find out if it is indeed true or a miscalculation. My guess is that it won’t be as bad as delta but significantly worse than originally hoped.
I don’t see that we can judge much from London yet as regards whether Omicron is milder than Delta.
https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--cases
I got shingles in August— a truly a horrible experience. I was planning on getting the vaccine, then covid happened and I wasn’t going to the doc on a regular basis to take care of these things.
anybody over 50 who has had chickenpox should really get the vaccine… you don’t want to go through the extreme pain of shingles. The scars/marks are still healing on my arm (I had shingles on my entire right arm from shoulder to fingertips, including the palm of my hand. … and I’m right handed and had to work through it to finish up a big project) and the nerve pain lasted for months.