As of yesterday, 16 states have detected #Covid cases caused by the #Omicron variant. https://t.co/pbtOlOIDXl pic.twitter.com/TWsvDuFFic
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) December 6, 2021
Given the data we're all waiting on with Omicron, I want to spend a minute talking about antibodies and the possible worst-case scenario of Omicron showing complete escape from neutralization by vaccine- or infection-derived antibodies. ??
— Edward Nirenberg (@ENirenberg) December 2, 2021
In the meantime: get vaccinated if you aren't, get boosted if you're eligible, wear a mask, keep to well-ventilated areas, humidify, and use testing widely. And don't forget about Delta.
— Edward Nirenberg (@ENirenberg) December 2, 2021
If you stopped using masks indoors after getting vaccinated, now is a good time to mask up again. If you've been wearing cloth masks, consider upgrading to more-protective N95/KN95 masks.
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) December 6, 2021
The timing of Omicron’s arrival in Europe and America, at the start of the festive (and flu) season, could not be worse https://t.co/t7cK0dzm8d
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 6, 2021
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As omicron spreads in southern Africa and around the world, some scientists poring over data from South Africa and the United Kingdom suggest it could soon replace delta as the dominant coronavirus variant. https://t.co/enqS0Nxk7x
— AP Africa (@AP_Africa) December 7, 2021
Omicron! What Omicron? https://t.co/kvBTrsWEaA pic.twitter.com/D5KDIIpfFQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2021
That broadly seems to be the tone in global markets on Tuesday as investors ramped up bets that the new Omicron variant may not prove to be as deadly as previously feared. World stocks are on track for their biggest daily rise in nearly two months, money markets are back to pricing the U.S. rate hike by June 2022 and the dollar has clawed back half of its losses against the perceived safe-haven Japanese yen since the variant first hit the headlines.
Even policymakers are optimistic. Australia’s central bank indicated the Omicron variant outbreak was unlikely to derail the current financial recovery while top U.S. infectious disease official Anthony Fauci told CNN, “it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity” so far…
China reports 94 new COVID-19 cases on Dec 6 vs 61 a day earlier https://t.co/5qsuHTMULz pic.twitter.com/j45D4bYraW
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2021
Thailand reports its 1st case of #OmicronVariant in a U.S. citizen visiting from Spain. The 35-year-old American had been living in Spain for a year was inoculated in June with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine https://t.co/nHdYDIGpaK
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) December 6, 2021
Russia on Tuesday confirmed 31,096 Covid-19 infections and 1,182 deaths https://t.co/qJ4SjJoxQh
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) December 7, 2021
The incoming German government plans to make #COVID19 vaccination compulsory for some jobs, such as people working in hospitals & nursing homeshttps://t.co/4CdLan1eEH
— MicrobesInfect (@MicrobesInfect) December 6, 2021
Omicron-cases are up with 43 % in Denmark from yesterday to today (https://t.co/PpS4ZgxeR9)
183 cases yesterday, 261 today
Remember: This is happening everywhere. There is nothing special about Denmark, except that the country is testing a lot & therefore are not in the dark pic.twitter.com/MqG6oHlFAf
— Michael Bang Petersen (@M_B_Petersen) December 6, 2021
Spain’s prime minister has urged people to “remain prudent” about COVID-19 over the holidays, as Christmas festivities are suspected of infecting dozens of staff at one hospital. https://t.co/fmf6MtzBRV
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) December 6, 2021
We don't think COVID Plan B is required – UK's Raab https://t.co/Fgo4YTNWUI pic.twitter.com/929PPxQyOD
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2021
As Nigeria tries to meet an ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million people in the next two months, health care workers in some parts of the country risk their lives to reach the rural population. https://t.co/CVLgMRY5Gz
— AP Africa (@AP_Africa) December 7, 2021
"The way we can protect ourselves against Omicron is to vaccinate and vaccinate."
As the Omicron variant fuels a surge of cases in South Africa, a virologist says more people are registering for jabshttps://t.co/nywlr08mGR
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) December 7, 2021
It will also be important in figuring out how much apparent rapid growth there was down to increased testing, which would tilt us in the direction of less severe infections, although far from enough to be relaxed about this. Like I said we need to watch this closely
— Bill Hanage (@BillHanage) December 6, 2021
The first day of the Omicron wave in South Africa was Nov 23. It is now dominant – 75% of cases. If it was more dangerous, we should have already started to see an increase in deaths. But we haven't. They're still falling. It's mostly producing mild symptoms. This is GOOD NEWS.
— Dr Nigel Kellow (@NigelKellow) December 5, 2021
This is from the President of #SouthAfrica ?? arguing, I believe correctly, that his country has done everything properly, alerted the world to #OmicronVariant , & been penalized for doing so.@POTUS #JoeBiden should lift travel restrictions on African nations NOW.@RonaldKlain https://t.co/uguI0KYM6U
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) December 6, 2021
Mexico's capital rolls out first COVID-19 booster shots https://t.co/EIu4MBtDdw pic.twitter.com/yuWjrh9JId
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2021
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People who are vaccinated are contagious for a shorter period of time after SARSCoV2 exposure compared w/ people who are unvaccinated, according to a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine by a team from Yale, Harvard, Duke, Columbia & elsewhere https://t.co/4NfxSysmQi pic.twitter.com/leze5bL6kC
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) December 7, 2021
A British study has found that switching up vaccines for the second dose can lead to a strong immune response, especially a shot of AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech followed by Moderna https://t.co/H5FQKV89B3 pic.twitter.com/BhvAofnyXa
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 7, 2021
From a thread:
Did you know at least 4 #Omicron samples were collected in USA before it was named & designated a Variant of Concern? MO, MN & NY 11/22 – 11/24 #OmicronVariant was already here before we banned travel⛔️✈️to/from 8 African countries. Thx?Authors & Submitters for rapid sharing! pic.twitter.com/uYNAWKr0Zn
— Jeremy Kamil (@macroliter) December 6, 2021
And now for some good news! Beautiful work by @Lab_Harrington showing tet+ Spike-specific T cells directly ex vivo in breastmilk- and they increase in number with boost!!? https://t.co/cYMf8TOJqT
— Dr. Marion Pepper (@PepperMarion) December 6, 2021
I was just thinking that we need to do this everywhere. Our local newspaper reports cases and deaths, but they should be reported by unvaccinated and vaccinated. https://t.co/3ed3PdHOWd
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) December 6, 2021
======
persuasion and mandates have gradually pushed up vaccinations among those initially hesistant, including Blacks and Hispanics
they haven't melted hard-core resistance among Republicans, who now make up 60% of unvaccinated Americans, according to @KFF https://t.co/vX2r7TcRXO
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) December 6, 2021
New York City will implement a sweeping vaccine mandate for all private employers that will take effect Dec. 27, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, calling it the first mandate of its kind in the U.S.https://t.co/JtIEFLEFg7 pic.twitter.com/4ihCNclIov
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 6, 2021
A lot of how Covid has played out in policy discourse is understandable when you learn that only 4200 college educated white people under 65 died in 2020.
— Nathan Tankus (@NathanTankus) December 5, 2021
Of covid, and here's one way to think about it https://t.co/FUTnByoHtX
— Justin Feldman (@jfeldman_epi) December 5, 2021
sab
Is omicron even a problem? Rumor has it that it is highly contagious but mild. Delta is still out here and highly contagious and not mild.
NeenerNeener
Monroe County NY:
The Monroe County website publishes stats for the previous week on Monday afternoons:
3835 new cases last week with an average of 548 per day.
362 new cases reported on 12/6.
14 more deaths last week. We’re now at 1506 total deaths since last year.
499 people are hospitalized now, with 122 in the ICU.
66.3% of Monroe County residents are fully vaccinated.
gkoutnik
@sab: If it leads to long covid, it’s a problem. At least, that’s how I’m looking at it.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reports 4,965 new Covid-19 cases today in its media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 2,667,999 cases. It also reports 38 deaths as of midnight, for an adjusted cumulative total of 30,652 deaths – 1.15% of the cumulative reported total, 1.18% of resolved cases.
Based on cases reported yesterday, Malaysia’s nationwide Rt is at 0.99.
375 confirmed cases are in ICU, 167 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 4,817 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 2,576,870 patients recovered – 96.6% of the cumulative reported total.
Nine new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 5,992 clusters. 235 clusters are currently active; 5,757 clusters are now inactive.
4,936 new cases today are local infections. 29 new cases today are imported.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 97,725 doses of vaccine on 6th December: 4,722 first doses, 5,929 second doses, and 87,074 booster doses. As of midnight, the cumulative total is 54,197,452 doses administered: 25,886,590 first doses, 25,453,314 second doses, and 3,048,396 booster doses. 79.2% of the population have received their first dose, while 77.9% are now fully vaccinated.
YY_Sima Qian
On 12/6 China reported 60 new domestic confirmed (2 previously asymptomatic) & 4 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
Inner Mongolia “Autonomous” Region reported 55 new domestic confirmed (2 previously asymptomatic) & 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases. There currently are 415 active domestic confirmed & 1 active asymptomatic cases in the region.
Heilongjiang Province reported 2 new domestic confirmed cases. There currently are 36 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
At Xianyang in Shaanxi Province there currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city.
At Shanghai Municipality there currently are 5 active domestic confirmed & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining. 4 residential compounds are currently at Medium Risk.
At Xuzhou in Jiangsu Province there currently is 1 active domestic asymptomatic case remaining.
Zhejiang Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed & 2 new domestic asymptomatic cases. There currently are 1 active domestic confirmed & 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
At Guangzhou in Guangdong Province there currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city. 1 quarantine hotel is currently at Medium Risk.
At Dalian in Liaoning Province 17 domestic confirmed cases recovered & 3 domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation. There currently are 70 active domestic confirmed & 5 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining.
At Hebei Province 4 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 15 active confirmed cases in the province.
At Rizhao in Shandong Province 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 5 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining.
At Chongqing Municipality there currently are 3 active domestic confirmed & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining.
At Henan Province 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 62 active domestic confirmed cases remaining (46 at Zhengzhou & 16 at Zhoukou).
Dehong Prefecture in Yunnan Province reported 2 new domestic confirmed & 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases, 2 at Ruili (1 each via screening of residents in restricted movement zones & screening of persons under centralized quarantine) & 1 at Longchuan County (from screening of persons under centralized quarantine). 4 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 49 active domestic confirmed & 44 active domestic asymptomatic cases at the prefecture. 1 zone at Longchuan County is currently at High Risk. 1 village at Ruili has been elevated to Medium Risk.
Imported Cases
On 12/6, China reported 34 new imported confirmed cases (7 previously asymptomatic), 10 imported asymptomatic cases, 2 imported suspect cases:
Overall in China, 47 confirmed cases recovered (17 imported), 21 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (18 imported) & 9 were reclassified as confirmed cases (7 imported), & 1,595 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 1,107 active confirmed cases in the country (442 imported), 16 in serious condition (1 imported), 471 active asymptomatic cases (404 imported), 3 suspect cases (all imported). 36,973 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 12/6, 2,560.117M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 7.088M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 12/7, Hong Kong reported 5 new positive cases, all imported (from Nepal, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland & the US, all have been fully vaccinated, including 1 boosted w/ Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine).
Robert Sneddon
@sab:
Rumour is not a plan. Rumour is Ivermectin and microchips in vaccines and world depopulation and a thousand other detached-from-reality beliefs. Data and science is a plan and we don’t have sufficient clear data on the Omicron variant yet for people who know what they’re talking about to make clear statements. Don’t worry, they’re working on it but you’ll have to be patient.
We don’t know for sure yet what the Omicron variant is really like compared to previous variants. Taking the risk that it’s less problematic than, say, the Delta variant and allowing it to spread widely as fast as it can is not a winning proposition.
As for the numbnuts whining about the effects of restrictions on international tourism in the posts linked above…There’s a worldwide pandemic going on with a dangerous disease spreading widely and some people think it’s fine to make it easier for this disease to propagate? The idea of having “Granny die for the Dow” early on in this pandemic was rightly poo-poohed but inconveniencing rich folks flying off to exotic locations for a holiday? This cannot stand!
Patricia Kayden
Related
RinaX
This article came out yesterday from VOA news. I’m not panicking, but it’s a reminder that it’s still too early to make predictions one way or the other. We can only wait and see how the data pans out.
sab
@Robert Sneddon: ” Rumor is not a plan” and ” We professionals don’t know yet because the data isn’t in yet”. I think we are on the same page here. Delta is still out there doing serious damage. As a member of the general public, Delta is my concern. Omicron is possibly in our future. Mitigation efforts should be the same. I am not a doctor or virologist, so I don’t much care. All I care about is responsible mitigation steps.
NotMax
Vaguely topical.
‘Cheugy,’ ‘omicron’ among 2021′s most mispronounced words
R-Jud
My breakthrough case, acquired over a Thanksgiving visit to the US, is already on the wane: sense of smell returning and a negative LFT/rapid test this morning.
And the more I see the Tories insisting there won’t be another lockdown/round of mandates, the more braced I am for another lockdown/round of mandates.
sab
@sab: On the other hand, if you say I am an idiot because I am not a scientist hen I will tune you out altogether, and then go my own way for information.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: The one complication I can see is the worry that giving vaccinated people booster shots might make their response to Omicron or other future variants less good through “original antigenic sin”. If that’s a concern, which nobody knows yet, it creates a tradeoff.
But this seems to be, at the moment, a minority view–most experts are promoting boosters if only because Delta is what we’re still mostly dealing with and boosters are effective there. And there doesn’t seem to be any indication that Omicron is especially dangerous to vaccinated/boosted people, though liars are trying hard to spin news anecdotes that way.
lowtechcyclist
@gkoutnik:
And the long-term effects of even mild cases of the alpha and delta variants are uncertain. This thing’s only been around for two years, so who the hell knows?
Best bet is to do what you can to avoid catching Covid (of any variant) at all.
O. Felix Culpa
@R-Jud: So glad you’re feeling better!
Robert Sneddon
@sab: Rumours are just that, rumours. Reality and hard data and science and testing and analysis are not rumours. Rumours, in the context of an easily transmissable disease like COVID-19 are less than worthless and in many cases actively harmful. They need to be smacked down whenever they appear, whether in the fever-dreams of Facebook or the comments section of an almost-top-10,000 blog like this one.
sab
@Robert Sneddon: As you know, I am not a a scientist. My only use to you is a gage for how well intended idiots think.
New Deal democrat
There are likely still some Thanksgiving-related distortions in the US data. I say this because deaths, which should lag, have continued to rise and fall in tandem with cases. In particular, there were about half a dozen States in the Northeast and Midwest that did big data dumps of deaths last Tuesday through Friday. Those same States also had big jumps in the number of daily cases as well. So it will still be a few more days till 7 day averages are probably free of distortion.
That being said, there has been a slight decrease in the 7 day average of cases in the past few days at roughly 120,000/day. This is primarily due to the Midwest. Although the Midwest did not peak before Thanksgiving like one year ago, it will be interesting to see if last week was the peak.
In good news, the West and Deep South have had no winter wave increases so far, although CA has been increasing somewhat in the past week. Virtually the entire Northeast, Midaltlantic, and Ohio Valley have been the lion’s share of the national increase.
Significantly, there is increasing evidence that the wave in the EU has peaked. If so, that would be like virtually all other Delta waves worldwide, that have gone from trough to peak in about 2 months or so. If we date the onset of the Delta wave in the Northeast and Midwest US to late October, this means about 2 more weeks until those regions peak. Subject to continued Christmas gatherings of course.
rikyrah
Those last two tweets…expose the inequality in everything in this country. All the cracks in our healthcare system and society.
New Deal democrat
@New Deal democrat: ETA: oh, dear. Daily test positivity in the US began to go vertical on November 30. It has risen from 7% to 24% nationwide, equal to the original NYC and last winter’s waves, and unlike Thanksgiving 2020. Is Omicron showing up already?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Greece: the spike may have peaked, with 4,927 cases reported for the 24 hours ending 6pm on December 6. But deaths are still high (116 in the same time span) and intubations are still high (714 ICU patients currently intubated).
Personal note: they finally started the process to add foreign vaccination shots to the Greek healthcare database. I went to try to square my records up, and for my trouble, I got yelled at by a bureaucrat for getting the J&J shot instead of waiting for their system to get up and running. On the one hand, I can understand that my choice would tangle up their record keeping, but on the other hand, was I supposed to sit on my thumbs in the middle of the worst pandemic spike to date, with my spring vaccinations already being called into question?
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I think it also shows the gap in who’s vaccinated and who’s not yet.
I agree with Cheryl, they need to break everything about Covid down by “unvaccinated” and “vaccinated” to make it abundantly clear to everyone who is actually still getting sick and dying. I continue to think they pay too much attention to vaccinated people who get Covid; it is definitely sending the message to those who don’t know much about Covid that the vaccines don’t work that well. People think of vaccines like polio or measles, where getting vaccinated is promoted as full protection from getting the disease, and that’s what they expect, whether that’s a realistic expectation or not. Out here in MAGA-land, the message to mask up again because of Omicron is being received as “Why should I get vaccinated if the vaccines don’t even work, you just want forever masks so you can control me”. And I know all the arguments against that, so you don’t have to repeat them to me – I’m only reporting what the attitude is. If health authorities are going to say this every time a new “variant of concern” is discovered, it’s not going to help their vaccination effort. I understand why they say it, and that it’s prudent, but it’s going to hurt some of their efforts. At this point I think mandates are the only thing that will get more people vaccinated; excepting kids, I think pretty much everyone who wants to be vaccinated is already vaccinated
Oh, and the only side effect I seem to have from my booster is a red mark on my arm and soreness there. I think she wasn’t a very good shot-giver, because my other vaccinations didn’t hurt like that or react like that.
Suzanne
This is interesting. Underscores something that I have been thinking, which is that college education seems to really divide white people in a meaningful way, more than I thought. It seems to serve not just as a class divider, but really a typology divider.
Feathers
@Soprano2: Everyone is seeing this as a messaging problem, when the real issue is that in every previous instance where a vaccine was invented to prevent a deadly disease, it HAS worked. The issue here is sabotage. A political faction working to make the Western world ungovernable, in hopes that democracy will collapse and allow right wing dictators to take control.
Feathers
@Suzanne: The “get a college education so you can get a good job” messaging was incredibly harmful. It allowed so many people to develop the belief that their degree made them an ubermensch, lord (or Lady) of all they surveyed. An underrated driver why service people are being treated so horribly.
Ken
That Reuters market article strikes me as almost Onion-like. I guess the Onion would be pithier — “Markets rally on reports humanity not going extinct this year” perhaps.
Sloane Ranger
I was due to go to the dentists for by 6-monthly check-up this afternoon, but the receptionist phoned, just after 9am to cancel, as my dentist is experiencing COVID symptoms and is awaiting the results of a PCR test. I have had to re-schedule for the New Year. Keeping my fingers crossed for a happy outcome for Dr Rupal, or at least a mild case. In other news, I posted a few days ago wondering how the new pre-entry test could be carried out as my cruise ship will be at sea during the entire 48 hour period during which the test needs to be carried out. Just had an email from the cruise company. They have organised on-board tests with the necessary certificates, at £10 a go. This is actually pretty reasonable, given some of the prices I’ve seen quoted.
Anyway, Monday in the UK we had 51,459 new cases. The rolling 7-day average is up by 9.1%. Some of these cases may, however, be catch-ups from the weekend. New cases by nation,
England – 41,525 (up 4129)
Northern Ireland – 1635 (up 213)
Scotland – 3894 (up 1287)
Wales – 4405 (up 1838. This figure undoubtedly contains cases from the weekend).
Deaths – There were 41 deaths within 28 days of a positive test reported yesterday. The rolling 7-day average is down by 0.2%. This number will be an undercount as they will still be catching up after the weekend office closures. 34 deaths were in England, 1 in Northern Ireland, 6 in Wales and none reported from Scotland.
Testing – 1,137,998 tests took place on Sunday, 5th. The rolling 7-day average was up by 11.1%. The PCR testing capacity reported by labs on this date was 751,624.
Hospitalisations – As of Friday, 3rd December, 7268 people were in hospital and 900 were on ventilators. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions was down by 0.8% as of 30th November.
Vaccinations – As of Sunday, 5th, 51,118,266 people had had 1 shot of a vaccine, 46,557,413 had had 2 and 20,580,644 had had a 3rd shot/booster. In percentage terms, as of this date, 88.9% of all UK residents aged 12+ have had 1 shot, 81% have had 2 and 35.8% have had a 3rd shot/booster.
Another Scott
@Ken: Stock market reporting is insane. At this moment, the S&P500 is up 25.8% this year, but somehow it’s all gloom and doom when there are ups and downs day to day.
PANIC! CLICK OUR LINKS BECAUSE YOU NEED TO PANIC!!11
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Robert Sneddon
It’s more complicated than a single word, “sabotage”. There is an irreducable number of people who hold to weird ideas and concepts regardless of education and tradily available information, Flat Earth and Electric Universe and Creationism being some of many such niche beliefs. Proof and evidence that they’re wrong passes them by because they choose to turn their backs on it to avoid losing their beliefs and, in the end, having to accept that they were wrong.
COVID-19 is not perceived as a serious threat by a large minority of adults, the Young Immortals as I sometimes call them. “It’s like the flu or a bad cold” isn’t true but this is what they truly believe. For many more they have taken to heart the words of others, their spiritual pastors or political leaders or people they look up to like sports personalities who call into question the science and reality of this disease and they align themselves with them rather than the scientists and medical professionals who are desperately trying to convince them that this is a dangerous situation. The increasing efforts to do convince them, indeed, lead to further entrenchment since it’s taken as proof that the vaccines don’t really work since if they did work the Powers That Be wouldn’t have to make so much effort to persuade uncertain people to get vaccinated.
It’s nice to point to some Evull Swarthy Foreigners who are deliberately trying to do us ill, it’s a populist rabblerousing stance that has worked time and time again in human societies (see the Rwanda massacre and the German Dolchstosslegende and the ongoing anti-Muslim genocide in Myanmar for recent worked examples). It’s better in the long run if people step back from that particular precipice though.
Feathers
@Robert Sneddon: The sabotage is that major news and entertainment outlets are amplifying these views not shutting them down. This is a major change from previous vaccination campaigns. There is no way to separate this pro disease public messaging from the anti democracy campaign being waged globally by right wing forces.
Yes, antivaxxers have existed ever since there have been vaccines, but previously they were treated as cranks. There is a reason for that.
Robert Sneddon
@Sloane Ranger: The new COVID-19 case numbers in Scotland are still distorted by catch-up from a test data collection failure from the UK Lighthouse labs during the weekend. Today’s results (published daily in Scotland around 14:00 GMT) report 3,060 new cases with the data distortion expected to age out of the results tomorrow. There were 14 deaths reported today, that would include any deaths over the weekend.
Good news, for what it’s worth, is that the number of hospitalisations and ICU cases in Scotland seems to be on the decline compared to a few weeks ago even though the new case rate continues to remain high. What effect further spread of the Omicron variant will have this winter is still to be determined.
Speculating wildly, the continuing high rate of booster vaccination takeup in older people (ca. 90% of everyone over the age of 60 in Scotland has now received an mRNA booster) seems to be preventing many cases of serious COVID-19 illness in the most vulnerable age-group. Sadly the initial vaccination of those aged 12-39 seems to have stalled out after a promising start despite the Scottish government’s best efforts to encourage vaccination of the holdouts.
Robert Sneddon
@Feathers: A lot of people don’t get their daily news from major news and entertainment sources these days, instead they get it from Facebook and Twitter, from their church leaders and sports personalities and political personalities, bypassing the curated paper press and TV channels. Blaming Murdoch and even Zuckerberg for the mental failings of billions of individuals is, in its own way, a Dolchstosslegende of its own. It’s not a secretive multi-billionaire that makes Facebook a toxic sludgepool, it’s the people who post there. I spent my time in the Usenet shitposting mines in the old days, I knew what I was looking at when I saw Facebook and Twitter hit the streets and noped right out of there.
There’s a mutilated quote often ascribed to Cicero or some other notable from around his time, that everything is going to Hell, children are disobeying their parents and everyone is writing a book. Today, everyone can write a book or at least write Facebook posts. Yay for Progress!
Robert Sneddon
Following up to myself, the Scottish First Minister has just announced that the number of Omicron variant cases in Scotland has now risen to 99. No exact figures were given but she said:
Kent
Half my family is college educated, half is not. We are now in our 50s mostly (my brothers and cousins). The divergence in life experience and health differences are dramatic from having lived a life in blue collar employment around mostly people with unhealthy habits (heavy drinking, fast food, sloth, etc.) vs more upscale suburban white collar lives.
Kent
@Robert Sneddon: In the past, vaccine deniers and other cranks were lonely folk with no audience whatsoever. The more energetic and motivated few might have managed to produce paper newsletters and send them around to a few hundred people. But would generally have no impact. That has all changed with social media.
Robert Sneddon
@Kent: Bulletin boards and Usenet were a forerunner of what was to come in regards to “social media” — “UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.” is a famous epigram-slash-sigfile some of us older folks will recognise.
Facebook and Twitter turbocharged and monetised the human desire to scream and rant into the abyss, that’s all.
Kent
@Robert Sneddon: Yep, I was in grad school during the peak usenet days in the early 90s so remember them well. There was a story I read somewhere about some guy who was a polio vaccine denier in the 1950s and spent his life traveling the country evangelizing against the polio vaccine. Basically few people ever heard him or heard of him despite a lifetime of efforts, diligently printing newsletters, endlessly engaging in public speaking. It is so much harder to make mischief when you have to do it face to face with real people instead of ranting to your audience on social media and have companies like Facebook amplify your message for you through their algorithms.
Jinchi
There definitely are. There was a distinct drop in covid case reports between 12 to 8 days ago (from 29 to 22 per 100,000 – or about 30% over those 4 days). That’s clearly a holiday reporting effect and not a true dropoff. We’re now at about 37 per 100,000 and that probably includes some delayed reports as well as a true increase.
Still that results in reports of a 70% increase over the last week, but only 25% over the last 14 days, which seems counterintuitive unless you understand the timing.
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
Uncle Cosmo
@Robert Sneddon: A couple of comments here. First, since the Michelson-Morley experiment (1887)** it’s become increasingly clear that existence is ruled by entities that operate on scales (of sizes large and small, velocities near lightspeed, times fast and slow, probabilities and large-scale statistical quantities) so far from humanity’s everyday experience we cannot inherently understand them. Increasingly any control over our world has slipped out of our hands and into those with arcane knowledge and immensely complex and specialized training. Increasingly the only way for the average Joe to obtain control is to beseech a Higher Power to put His enormous thumb on the scales for us.
Add to that the pernicious effect of the Internet, which elevates ignorant opinion to the same level as fact – or in fact higher, since all that matters is how many other ignoramii you can get to “like” whatever you post.
Finally, for the ignorant, Communism is not “the God that failed” – science is. They confuse science with technology, the product (after long years of labor) of the application of science. Technological marvels (indistinguishable, per Clarke’s Third Law, from magic) leap into the world fully formed (Minerva from the head of Jupiter, amirite?) and delivering marvels. That’s what they think of as “science” – and they have no patience with how it grinds slowly (if inexorably) with fits and stops and starts, assertions made and then disproved, no absolute answers.*** Scientists must know THE answer IMMEDIATELY – if they’re wrong, they’re LYING, and if they won’t commit themselves, they’re WITHHOLDING THE TRUTH.****
And anyway, why listen to imperfect and fallible scientists when you can get down on your knees & implore the Big Guy (it’s always a guy) Up There to jerk the probabilities around in your favor?
** Hell, go back to Origin of Species (1859) for that matter. Which might be even worse, because it implies that the Big Guy HisOwnSelf might not even have control He can exert in our favor.
*** E.g., science (Einstein’s paper on stimulated emission of radiation, 1917) vs technology (maser, 1953), laser, 1960).
**** And in one sense they have a (very small) point. In 1971-72 I was a grad student in astrophysics, and reflecting on the state of knowledge 50 years on, I can say confidently that at least 2/3 of what we we absolutely sure we knew about the multiverse back then (including the very existence of a “multiverse”) was flat-out wrong.
J R in WV
Wife tells a story from her early youth, early 1950s. Neighbor’s wife was out of town, getting her Masters as a teacher over in Kentucky. Wife’s mother invited him over for dinner frequently, as back then men were barely allowed into kitchens, not expected to be able to feed themselves.
One evening they were having Mac N Cheese with onions, bacon, tomatoes… one of Wife’s favorite meals to this day nearly 70 years later. Neighbor wasn’t feeling well, didn’t eat much, wife asked to finish his Mac n Cheese.
The next day, neighbor missed at work, was found dead of polio. Wife was given multiple injections of gamma globulin in hopes that antibodies in the GG injections would keep her from getting polio. Evidently worked, she appears as normal today as she ever did. But close call~!!~
Everyone wanted, needed polio vaccinations, and it wasn’t one and done, even the Sabin oral you needed at least two doses IIRC. I think it is crazed to not require everyone not actually medically prohibited receive full vaccination w boosters as indicated in order to leave one’s home.
In other words, if you want to be free to move about the area in public, get vaccinated. If you don’t want the vaccine, stay at home forever, get food delivered to your front porch. Or go to jail for potentially spreading the plague, where you will be forcibly vaccinated to protect your roommates.