It's pretty remarkable as we enter into Covid's "junior year" that we still have sizable numbers of people who refuse to take it seriously. Still, we have millions of Americans who refuse to get vaccinated and see health mandates of any kind as tyranny. That latter bit just pisses me off. You think a vaccine is tyranny? This is why we need more history education in schools. Screw STEM, we have people who have literally no idea what life is like outside the US or what it was like 50 years ago in the US.
Anyway, vaccines.
This thread is where I'm hoping we are. For the vaccinated, Omicron will land like a shitty cold. But because it's so contagious, it will hit the unvaccinated hard, even though Omicron is milder than Delta. You will simply have a larger number of people getting infected, and even if a smaller percentage die, it will still be a large absolute number.
What I also like about the thread is it points out how we are close to a new wave of therapeutics that should dramatically improve outcomes.
If we have a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" I do worry a great deal about the strain on our health care system. I was struck by Connecticut's numbers, where 75% of the population is fully vaccinated, but hospitalizations are approaching levels we saw last January, and ICUs are fuller that they ever were. Deaths, however, remain low - though that could be a two week lag.
I have lost most sympathy with those who eschew a simple vaccine, stress our hospitals to the breaking point and then act like they are standing up for "freedumb." My son and the rest of his wrestling team stand on the brink of losing another season to this illness, because a bunch of dumb SOBs would rather listen to Joe Rogan, Aaron Rodgers and Marjorie Traitor Greene than Anthony Fauci.
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