early data are based largely on reports from South Africa—a country with a relatively young population and high level of prior infection—and on reports involving international travelers, who tend to be younger and healthier.
If Omicron does cause less severe disease than previous variants, the sheer number of infections could still result in a similar or greater number of severe cases.
The cynical side of me thinks that the danger of omicron is being downplayed so we can keep getting back to normal(tm) and get back to making line go up
They desperately want to get through the holiday season with people spending money on treats. Like the death of the Queen of TERF Island - gotta get to January before admitting anything.
They gotta get through January before we see the devastating effects on people and hospitals. Regular covid had a six week lag. We are looking at End of Year and January absolutely being a disaster.
Well I know the situation in the ground is serious - but you still have fucking NPR running stories about how it's no big deal. I think they'll continue that media narrative as far as they can to get through to January.
Just going to point out again, it took me THIRTEEN HOURS to get a "rapid" test. That involved going to the clinic at 7 in the morning, waiting over an hour on line outside in below freezing weather just to get a number, then spending another hour and a half waiting at the clinic when my number got called 10 hours later. If anything, the cases are being massively under-recorded. I watched a continuous stream of people come into the clinic while I was waiting for my test get turned around and told to try again tomorrow. It happened nearly once per minute.
Oh wow, and I thought we had it bad when I hat to wait for 40 minutes at the test center. :doomjak:
Yeah, that was going to be my first move but the place put "SOLD OUT" signs up because so many people would look around the store and not be able to find them. Then I looked into some pharmacies which do testing but their electronic booking systems were booked for days.
We went into lockdown over it here in the Netherlands even, actually the first time they even did it as a pre-emptive measure instead of a reaction.
If even our shitty gov is going into lockdown over it, its some serious shit.
In Denmark they are doing a limited lockdown. Children were sent home from school a week earlier than planned, cultural institutions were closed down and they made it mandatory to have a valid "covid passport" on public transit.
Restaurants and bars are still open though, although with limited hours.
Fauchi is suck an unmitigated fuckup. It is unbelievable how much praise liberals heap on this man
One third the lethality doesn't help when there are three times as many cases.
I'd imagine it's too soon to know whether or not people infected with the omicron variant would eventually display the symptoms of long COVID, but still. Why take the chance? Why keep on talking about "milder symptoms"?
South Africa also had two days now with 99+ COVID deaths a day
