Thread by @SethAbramson

The worst day of the pandemic in the US was January 8—48 hours after Trump’s attempted coup. 300,000 Americans were infected by the virus. No other day approaches that number. The outgoing CDC director says the CDC fears a *million* Americans a day could be infected with Omicron.

The fear here isn’t simply that the unvaccinated will be hospitalized and die in record numbers—which Dr. Fauci said yesterday on CNN he believes *will* happen—but also that Omicron will cause a historic number of breakthrough infections... and *those people* will infect others.

There are many otherwise smart and responsible people who’ve acted stupidly, selfishly, arrogantly and recklessly with respect to this pandemic because they feel they have a justification for it or because they think vaccination status is the beginning and ending of the question.

The question isn’t simply whether you are vaccinated and boosted—though of course everyone should be vaccinated and boosted—the question is also if you get a breakthrough infection, as if you do you may infect others along with the distant chance you could get very sick yourself.

We also don’t know the long-term effects of infection, even one that doesn’t bring with it significant symptoms. Beyond this, the *reason* we continue to get new variants and risk a future variant that wipes out tens of millions is that we haven’t mitigated—deaths aside—*spread*.

There was a point in this past year at which nations across the world began to see a dramatic reduction in infections. It was when the largest number of people were masking, social distancing, staying away from crowds when possible, and getting vaccinated. Then everyone eased up.

Now we’re bombarded with endless reasons why everything and everyone must get back to normal—even as a million Americans are being infected each week and more than 10,000 of us are *dying* each week.

If we don’t take dramatic measures, this pandemic will be a *permanent* blight.

My wife and I are watching Station Eleven now. Maybe many of you are as well. If you are or if you do, remember that the virus in that story—that kills 99% of humans—isn’t the initial flu virus. It’s a *mutation* of the virus caused by the world failing to combat the initial one.

Anyone who is infected by COVID-19 can infect others—and those others can infect others.

Anyone who is infected can have unexpected complications or experience the horrors of Long Covid.

Anyone who gets infected increases the odds of a more deadly, devastating variant emerging.

Now is a time when we should ask ourselves—before we go on a trip, meet in a large group, or go out to that hot new restaurant downtown—whether there’s a safer, more intimate option that wouldn’t, multiplied by tens of millions of people making the same bad call, endanger us all.

I’m only speaking of the next 4 to 8 weeks, during which we’ll learn just how transmissible, deadly, and vaccine-evasive Omicron is.

This isn’t the moment for vainly focusing on returning to a forever-lost “normal,” but rather, as one MSNBC medical expert said, “hunkering down.”

Anyone with a large audience on Twitter or any social media platform gets accused dozens of times a day of being cynical, rankly acquisitive, attention-starved, and self-important. The overwhelming majority of us just want to be helpful and advance causes we’re passionate about.

I’m speaking with urgency about Omicron because I feel an obligation to use this platform responsibly. I began my research into the pandemic as part of a 2020 book, and have continued it since then. Everything I read makes me fearful for us if we don’t get our act together ASAP.

(CORRECTION) I meant the outgoing NIH director, and I accidentally wrote the outgoing CDC director. That was my mistake—and I correct my mistakes. It changes nothing about this thread.