Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, December 5, 2021

Good News, Bad News, Good News, Bad News

 Potential "good news" on Omicron: while it looks much more contagious and able to evade acquired immunity, it has done so by becoming less deadly.  This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, as the virus wants more hosts and killing the host is ineffectice.

Bad news is that social distancing - which we have used in our dining rooms and athletic practices - really doesn't seem to work much at all.

Good news is that if you add a mask, you significantly reduce the spread of the virus.

Bad news is that the mask has to fit well. Just anecdotally, we have a decent mask policy here on paper, but the number of noses that I see every day is depressingly reminding me about the risk tolerance of adolescents. 

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