This was likely Delta:
And those who deliberately try to get sick don’t know which one they’ll get or if they’ll spawn yet another variant.
And there are incidents like these:
The good news is that the number of states setting new record highs in Daily Reported COVID Cases (7-day average) as of January 3, according to the Johns Hopkins site, is down
Delaware – 3130
Michigan – 13689
Pennsylvania – 21413
Virginia – 14466
Kentucky – 5728
Texas – 42540
Utah – 3688
Nevada – 3111
Washington (state) – 8267
The Bad News is there are a lot of new states in the list, away from the East Coast, where it had been concentrated. And its still very high in many of the other states, with record highs reported within the last few days. It seems to still be declining in the country as a whole, slightly down from its peak just above 500,000 daily cases a couple of days ago.
“Why bother trying to escape” <> “Have a Covid party.”
Get vaccinated, get boosted. Covid parties are ridiculous, as ridiculous as a flu party would be. We know getting Covid isn’t going to provide lifelong protection. We know getting vaccinated isn’t going to provide lifelong protection against ever getting infected. There are gradations between having a Covid party and sheltering in place forever.
VACCINATED people will ALWAYS be at SOME RISK of MILD OR ASYMPTOMATIC Covid infection. I do not see that changing. You do you as far as what you want to do about that. There will never be an “all clear” or zero risk.
As far as variants go, good luck. Covid is worldwide, it is not going to be eradicated. Variants are a fact of life.
Yeah, it’s kind of paradoxical – we were touted as “safe” and “doing the right thing” because we were not being like Florida in official denial and letting it all hang loose; so people decided we should celebrate and reward that good job… by letting it all hang loose 
…
(TBF the government before and even now after the surge is getting just bloody bombarded by the restaurants association, hotels association, events promoters association, tour guides association, etc. who are themselves looking at the end of all the previously approved subsidies and compensations and saying “we’re not gonna make it at a fraction of capacity when those federal dollars stop coming”)
Anyone know why the “Daily New Cases” graph on Worldometers doesn’t match the 933k number? You can mouse over the right-most lines of the graph to see what the graph shows for US cases yesterday (less than 500k).
For me, “Why bother trying to escape?” implies “Go get sick!” YMOV
Obligatory xkcd comic:
Yeah, I see that too. Weird. The 1 million-ish number does seem real though:
I’m not sure what you think these charts show.
- Omicron hasn’t been dominant in the US long enough for us to see the effects of it in death rates.
- Your chart starts in October when case rates were already pretty high.
- The case rate chart is so skewed by the current spike that it entirely obscures the fact that case rates were falling from mid-October through mid-November
- Cases flattened out between mid-November and Mid-December
- Death rates fell throughout November as expected
- Death rates flattened out through most of December as expected
- A massive surge of cases began mid December, presumably driven by Omicron
- If historic trends are followed, we can predict a surge in death rates beginning two weeks later.
- Two weeks from the middle of December is…today
In other words, it’s just too soon to say that the death rate hasn’t followed the cases. Cases have risen 7 fold in the last 14 days. I would expect to see deaths rise 7 fold in the next 14 days. If we see substantially less than that, THEN we can celebrate the lower rates. Not before.
The Facebook University dingbats don’t bother to look at the complete disconnect between cases and hospitalizations/deaths in PR. They are doing better than any state in the US. Nevertheless, hospitalizations are rising and 25% are children who have not been vaccinated. That, once again, emphasizes the success of vaccination.
New Variant in France.
Israel started to roll out its fourth shot (second booster) for the over-60 and immunocompromised. My dad (73 years old) got his today.
Just.
Cancel.
Them.
Ah, but that would make the CCP lose face.
We’re already up to 920,787 US cases today and it’s only 5pm. I don’t think this is entirely reporting delays, this is the continuation of a huge surge.
Isn’t that the leopards’ job?
Omicron Covid is everywhere. It’s not like you’re going to spread it somewhere else. This isn’t 2020.
So basically “fuck it then” is the best way forward?
Do you think all of the people involved are going to avoid Omicron if they cancel? Or even many? Or even any?