A brief note on epidemiology

Mark Sumner at DK has a roundup of news from overwhelmed health care systems around the country. This seems to be getting very little attention from national media, for some reason -- this is a list of local stories, which don't seem to have gotten the attention of editors at CNN or the New York Times.

This is definitely bad news in the present, but it's better news in the long run. The Covid-19 variant that's causing this is extremely contagious -- as contagious a measles, apparently. That means you can become infected just by briefly being in the vicinity of an infectious person. One thing that's really unpleasant about this virus is that people without symptoms can be infectious. It also appears that people who were previously infected with another variant do not have much immunity to this one. The surge in cases that's overwhelming hospitals consists overwhelmingly of unvaccinated people, however, because the vaccines -- if you're boosted -- are highly effective at keeping you out of the hospital. 

So yes, the blame for this falls entirely on the irresponsible or deluded people who refuse to get vaccinated, and the psychopathic politicians and professio=nal TV liars who tell them not to. And they aren't just killing themselves -- overloaded hospitals can't properly deal with other diseases and injuries. So this is just pure evil.

However, because CV-19 omicron is so contagious, it's going to rip through the population quickly. Other countries have seen the wave subside in a couple of months and that's going to happen here as well. Presumably, once you've been infected with omicron, you do have immunity to it, though we don't know for how long. And, on the whole, it is less likely to cause pneumonia and lung damage, which is how Covid kills. We don't know about other long term effects, but regardless, this may be our way out of the worst of the Covid-19 disaster. 

 

Having a second virus comparable to influenza, and probably requiring annual shots to deal with continual mutation is a drag, but it's manageable if people can bring themselves to care about their neighbors, and do what's right. Then we can get back to a more normal way of life. Only then.