South Korea continues to be the role model. I hope they can sustain their science driven strategy which so far has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
It's Korean American Day. 👏🎉
Even if Omicron causes a problem in South Korea, they have already won. At this point 93% of adults are fully vaccinated. Over 40% have been boosted. So their deaths and hospitalizations will stay much lower than here.
It's a good day to remind people that the "Great" Barrington Declaration actually said this.... and that too in Oct 2020 when we didn't have vaccines.
We know what happened since to places that followed this philosophy.
Yes. I did say this was a terrible idea then. It was reckless in my opinion.
"Society as a whole enjoys the protection..."
Right. We had 10 million cases then in the US. 60 million now.
225,000 deaths then, over 825,000 deaths now. So much for "protection offered to the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity".
Looks like communication is a problem area for health care agencies. So I have made a list of talking points for them.
1. Omicron is a serious threat because it is highly transmissible, more than any previous variant, and too many people will get it too fast.
2. Omicron appears "mild" mainly because a lot of people have some prior immunity from prior Covid or vaccines or both. But it is quite capable of severe disease. Don't be complacent.
3. There are some who are particularly vulnerable to omicron:
a) Unvaccinated and inadequtely vaccinated. Unvaccinated includes those for whom vaccines not available to them (eg., young children; people in low income countries)
The next month is going to be very difficult everyone.
We are lucky that vaccines were developed in time. They have helped reduce severity.
We are unlucky in that 40% of the country is not yet fully vaccinated. And 80% have not yet received the booster dose.
Cases occurring so incredibly fast in such a short time leads to 2 problems. 1) even if proportion who need hospitals is small, it is big in absolute terms: overwhelms hospitals. 2) staff shortages due to illness or quarantine causes problems for care for all other illnesses.