As I type this, I'm infected with Covid. I have a wife and three kids, all tested positive.
The oldest complained of a sore throat for one day, the others were "a bit tired" for two days.
I've had it the worst. I had intestinal issues for 3 says and now have a mild sore throat and fatigue. Overall, I skipped about 2 half days of work because I felt tired. (I work from home)
Omicron has swept through pretty much every family we interact with.
1. We and most people we interact with are very responsible wrt stopping the spread. Vaccines, Masks, social distancing. Both my wife and I work from home.
We got infected anyway.
2. For people under 65 with no comorbidities, Covid, in general, is nothing to be afraid of. My in-laws (both over 70) got it just before us. They basically had nasty head cold symptoms for 3 days.
3. Omicron is far more mild than prior strains.
4. For people with comorbidities, even the flu is something to be afraid of. Before covid, the flu was the cause of most cardiac and pnemonia related mortality. Prior strains of Covid are worse, for sure, but deaths due to influenza should be enough to make people panic. We just never assigned flu as the underlying cause of death. *[0]
5. I think the last data I saw on the Pfizer vaccine said it was 24% effective against omicron. I don't know what this means exactly. But current evidence says that was too optimistic.
*[1]
3 shots of it wasn't enough to stop the contagion, though maybe it made my symptoms milder. Who knows.
5. Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against covid than the vaccines which all now appear to be outdated. *[2]
My takeaway from all of this:
Vaccines aren't helping.
Masks and social distancing aren't helping.
Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have.
It's time to work to stop the hysteria, and also update our covid policies, because they're no longer relevant.
Your conclusion may be broadly correct (of course some of these things help a non-zero amount, but maybe are futile long-term). However, if you want to convince people that a different solution to the shared problem is better, it doesn't sound honest to call them "hysterical", as the favorite insult goes right now.
> My takeaway from all of this: Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't helping. Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have.
Vaccines, masks and social distancing helped lessen the impact of the previous variants, in particular with Delta. They got us to Omicron.
However, hospitalizations are the highest they've been of the pandemic in some places and cases are still rising fast. Taking measures to prevent an overwhelmed health system is not hysteria. My uneducated guess is that after this wave burns out we'll be in a place where such measures won't be necessary.
> Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against covid than the vaccines
That is my supposition too, based more on hope than facts.
> Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have.
I have come to that conclusion as well.
> Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't helping.
This I don't agree with. Vaccines reduce the severity of an infection, and so the risk of hospitalisation, whether you are vulnerable or not. I'm confident that wearing a mask reduces the risk of transmitting the virus. And keeping your distance really can't hurt - the closer you get to someone who's transmitting, the more likely you are to catch it. That seems obvious. Maskless wonders going into supermarkets with clear signage on the door saying "MASKS MUST BE WORN" piss me off.
I agree about the vaccines. I misstated. I should have said "vaccines don't stop (or apparently slow) the spread of the omicron strain".
Vaccines do help reduce the severity of symptoms, though.
I guess my issue is that a lot of public policy was created when we thought we could eliminate the virus. Then it switched to "everyone is going to get it (once?) We just need to slow the spread."
Barring some technological breakthrough, we're going to get it. Then get it again, and again. It is a new influenza. That's our reality. Let's base our public policy on that.
The oldest complained of a sore throat for one day, the others were "a bit tired" for two days. I've had it the worst. I had intestinal issues for 3 says and now have a mild sore throat and fatigue. Overall, I skipped about 2 half days of work because I felt tired. (I work from home)
Omicron has swept through pretty much every family we interact with.
1. We and most people we interact with are very responsible wrt stopping the spread. Vaccines, Masks, social distancing. Both my wife and I work from home.
We got infected anyway.
2. For people under 65 with no comorbidities, Covid, in general, is nothing to be afraid of. My in-laws (both over 70) got it just before us. They basically had nasty head cold symptoms for 3 days.
3. Omicron is far more mild than prior strains.
4. For people with comorbidities, even the flu is something to be afraid of. Before covid, the flu was the cause of most cardiac and pnemonia related mortality. Prior strains of Covid are worse, for sure, but deaths due to influenza should be enough to make people panic. We just never assigned flu as the underlying cause of death. *[0]
5. I think the last data I saw on the Pfizer vaccine said it was 24% effective against omicron. I don't know what this means exactly. But current evidence says that was too optimistic. *[1] 3 shots of it wasn't enough to stop the contagion, though maybe it made my symptoms milder. Who knows.
5. Omicron is likely a much more effective inoculation against covid than the vaccines which all now appear to be outdated. *[2]
My takeaway from all of this: Vaccines aren't helping. Masks and social distancing aren't helping. Omicron itself might be the biggest help we have. It's time to work to stop the hysteria, and also update our covid policies, because they're no longer relevant.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC5158013/
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jcim.1c01451#
[2] https://www.ahri.org/omicron-infection-enhances-neutralising...