It had already been starting to appear in many other countries, and now it's shown up in Texas, where it's called "stealth omicron," because
You cannot identify the type of variant through a PCR test like you can with omicron. Genomic sequencing has to be conducted in a specialized lab to identify the variant, which takes longer.So more reason to stay home, if you needed one.
In Denmark, where stealth omicron cases are rapidly increasing, it went from 20% of cases in December, to 45% of cases two weeks ago, and now it’s about 65% of cases. “It’s moving fast, it’s taking over the landscape,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco.
And with our usual perfect timing the UK has just eased up on social interaction and mask wearing!
ReplyDeleteI think Denmark was about to do the same, on Feb 1.
ReplyDeleteI hope we do the same in Ontario. We're vaccinated. If we catch Omicron we'll be sick, but we'll survive.
ReplyDeleteLet's get on with our lives. We can't hide forever.
I hope we do the same in Ontario. We're vaccinated. If we catch Omicron we'll be sick, but we'll survive.
ReplyDeleteMost people will. Some won't. In the US the 7-day average for deaths is 2,430/day (WaPo). Up 28% in a week. Not too far below 2021's max.
I'm OK with waiting until spring, at least. I don't necessarily fear dying, I more fear the possible effects of long COVID -- brain fog, ED, lost of taste & smell, etc.
You're younger than me and no doubt thinner so you have less to fear. But I worry.
I understand. I have a number of colleagues who are sick right now. My sister just went through it. Even without a high risk of death, it's still miserable.
ReplyDeleteThey are talking about lifting mask mandates in May here in Ontario. I expect many people will choose to wear masks well beyond. It may be a while before many of us are comfortable in a crowd.
At some point, we need to let people take ownership over their personal risk.
At some point, we need to let people take ownership over their personal risk.
ReplyDeleteBut isn't the problem precisely that it's not just a matter of personal risk -- that everyone, the vaccinated and unvaccinated, poses a risk to everyone else when they are out in public, and wearing a mask helps to reduce that risk?
Maybe not so much if you're using cloth masks:
ReplyDelete"The study linked surgical masks with an 11% drop in risk, compared with a 5% drop for cloth. That finding was reinforced by laboratory experiments whose results are summarized in the same preprint. The data show that even after 10 washes, surgical masks filter out 76% of small particles capable of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, says Mushfiq Mobarak, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a co-author of the study. By contrast, the team found that 3-layered cloth masks had a filtration efficiency of only 37% before washing or use."
But there's good news: "One-way masking is fine. Let’s dispense with the notion that masks are only protective if everyone is wearing them. Here’s a way to think about it: If everyone wears surgical masks, which have a 70 percent filtration rate, the combined protection is 91 percent because the virus must pass through masks twice. But N95 masks — now widely available — offer better protection than universal surgical mask use, which is the approach used in hospitals. For anyone who fears moving away from universal masking, the great news is that they can continue to wear an N95 mask — along with being vaccinated and boosted — and live a low-risk life regardless of what others around them are doing.
I heard a while back that masking is asymmetric - it is more effective if the infected person wears the mask. Has this been debunked and is there a link to the debunking that someone could post?
ReplyDeleteHi Pete. Is there evidence to support that? Do you have a source?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can find, initially, the masks that provide wearer protection (N95 and surgical masks) were in short supply. So they recommended cloth masks as a method of source control, knowing that they would provide little in the way of wearer protection:
ReplyDelete"Due to limited supplies, respiratory protection should be reserved for workers who rely on it to perform their work safely. The masks that we all should wear are primarily intended for source control."
As it turns out though, there is "no statistically significant effect for cloth masks."
It's been little (if anything) more than theatre.
So go get some N95s. They're readily available now. They will protect you. Add vaccination and you will be well protected.
If you think the virus will just get less dangerous in future mutations it makes sense to avoid omicron at all costs. If you worry about future, more dangerous, mutations, getting an immunity boost through the least lethal version so far seems more reasonable. Only not just now when hospitals are overloaded.
ReplyDeleteI just read about how the pandemic of 1889 might have been an earlier corona virus. The symptoms were similar to today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic
That pandemic killed 1 million people out of a world population of about 1.5 billion = 0.00066666666
ReplyDeleteOurs killed (so far) 5.66 million out of a world population of about 7.9 billion = 0.00071645569
We're doing worse this time in spite of it all :(