That’s what Dr. Fauci said yesterday, and I just nodded.
After all, it’s finally in my house.
My youngest daughter, who was about to head back to her home in the Caribbean on Monday, had to change her flight to several days later because her COVID test was late coming back.
Then it came back, and she has it. She’s fully vaccinated of course, and her symptoms are mild. But she’s got it. She’s staying in her room — teaching her dance students in Dominica, and her English students in South America, remotely — and the rest of us are wearing masks in the house and being as careful as we can be.
Another daughter, who was with her a lot just before the positive test, isn’t feeling well. She’s awaiting a test result.
I got tested at 9 a.m. today at Lexington Medical’s site near me. I’ll have the results in a couple of days. That was my second test in a week. My wife has an appointment to get one at CVS tomorrow.
My test was at a little off-campus building LMC owns that’s down a side street right across from the turnoff from Sunset to our subdivision. Toward the end of the holidays, the line of cars for that process was maybe a hundred or so vehicles deep, stretching out onto the main road. Last week, I was the 10th or so in line. Today, I arrived 15 minutes early and there was no line at all. For a moment I thought the place was closed, but there were the poor nurses bundled up in the doorway in the 31-degree weather. One came out, did the deed, told me to look the MyChart app in 24 to 48 hours, and I was gone. Less than a minute.
So this is what we do now.
How’s it going for you out there?
At the time of my last appointment — 3:30 p.m. last Friday — I still had some people in front of me. Today, I didn’t have to wait at all…
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Must be super contagious. We’re hermits here because my wife’s mom and aunt are in their late 90’s. We don’t want to infect them. I need a haircut badly but won’t go. Avoiding any unnecessary shopping etc.
Waiting to see if wave subsides mid-February whatever.
My wife’s been cutting my hair for the last year and a half or so.
I like it better this way…
What metric are you going to use to abandon the hermit life? Zero cases? If you want to see your relatives, take a test and if it’s negative, go see them. Or don’t you trust the science?
Do you realize there have been people living their lives with just minor alterations since last year with no problem? Wear a mask indoors around people you don’t know. If you’re vaxxed, you’re risk is extremely low.
Rapid tests are inaccurate. I don’t want a 2 ft swab stuck up my nose just to get results 5 days later. I can have covid without symptoms for 2-3 days? Neighbor wears mask, triple vaxxed and now is infected. Cousin and sister of best friend dead of covid. Shall I keep going?
My mother in law turns 100 in February. Can’t risk spreading to her.
My barber did get COVID. I also avoided going to him for awhile. Before he got sick, I actually went to his house where he cut my hair in his open garage. He was doing that for a few folks he knew personally.
But he got COVID after that. I thought it was a mild infection but found out later he was quite sick but was able to avoid the hospital.
It’s spreading in my family too. I just assume I’ve had it. 3 shots of course so not really sick. In a way this is good news. Pretty soon all this masking and social distancing will be pointless. Why people don’t get vaccinated is one of the great mysteries of our time.
Omicron exposure is pretty much inevitable at this point. Its ability to puncture immunity to provide hosts for replication — if not acute infections — means that everyone will eventually acquire it at some point.
That means most if not all Americans will come out the other side with some immune response regardless of vaccination status, with the vaccinated even stronger.
Bud and Bryan,
I appreciate what each of you is saying, but I think you’re being too sanguine. Or too phlegmatic. Or both. Whatever.
Here’s the math of Omicron, as I understand it: Only half as many of the cases are severe enough to require hospitalization. Yay.
But we have twice as many cases.
So the hospitals are full.
There’s nothing harmless or nonthreatening about this.
Every single mild case out there is an incubator for growing the next variant. This one could be even milder. Or it could just as easily be the worst we’ve seen, more like Delta.
If we get that, AND this kind of transmissibility, we might find ourselves giving the Black Death a run for its money.
Yep, it’s hard to stop. But we have to slow it down as much as we can. Cut back 10 million infections to only nine, so we have a million fewer virus factories out there cranking out the next, unknown threat. It’s something.
Of course, we could also waste energy cursing the murderous jerks who refused to get vaccinated, and provided all those extra virus factories for producing this variant. For what they did to bring us to this point.
But what good would that do?
Only the elderly and immuno compromised should take extreme precautions. For everyone else, this is statistically no worse than a mild flu. We’ve now learned that typically half of those in the hospital who are categorized as COVID patients didn’t enter the hospital for that reason. They tested positive after. Doesn’t mean they are experiencing any COVID issues.
The sad thing is that some people blame Trump or maga people for the latest variant. The unvaxxed cross all demographics. No state, red or blue, has done a great job of controlling it.
2000 Americans a die are dying from Omicron. Much worse than the flu. Most are unvaccinated. Brad has it now. Thankfully he’s vaccinated. The real villains in this tragedy are Republican governors. Trump is their role model.
Looks like Dems doing a better job getting vaxxed.
https://acasignups.net/21/12/13/weekly-update-us-covid19-vaccination-levels-county-partisan-lean
My company sends out an excel spreadsheet of COVID+ cases (no names of course) that our customers (not our employees) report of COVID cases for their employees.
We just got the report for last week- and it showed the most COVID+ cases so far during the pandemic.
For example, the totals were in the 30-50 range per week in early December. The last week of December showed almost 300 COVID + cases.
Last week our customers reported over 500 COVID + cases. That number blew me away.
last week my 2 of my kids were not feeling well with sore throats and slight fevers. Both tested negative with at home tests (twice over 2 days). My 18 year old only felt bad for 1 1/2 days. My daughter still is coughing to this day but we also got her tested at an urgent care and it was negative for COVID. Also neg for flu and strep. All of my children are vaccinated and 1 has received a booster.
Doc thinks it could be something like tonsillitis which is apparently is also going around. She feels much better though and never really got to feeling awful.
We were all wearing masks in the house when we were in the same room and I was constantly spraying Lysol on every hard surface in the house- doorknobs, light switches, cabinets, faucets, toilet handles, sink handles, remotes, lamp switches, computer keyboards, thermostat, backs of chairs, arms of chairs, etc..
My wife and I never felt sick so hopefully it’s passed for now. We still are very careful to wear masks out anywhere we go. I wear a KN95 and am ordering more today.
But yes- I expect we will get it too at some point.
We are also staying home almost exclusively. But my son did finally land a job and so he is working around the public at a grocery store. But they require him to wear a mask and they also require constant spraying of hard surfaces at the store like the registers, keypads, etc…
COVID is airborne. Stop spraying down surfaces. People got sick before COVID and will after it wanes.
It’s flu, cold season and upper respiratory virus season and my COVID – daughter is coughing many times an hour.
I’ll keep spraying hard surfaces. Thanks.
Not phlegmatic at all. Just looking at this as a math problem. Omicron is burning itself out. Sadly this has a cost among the unvaccinated but it can’t be sustained. It’s called herd immunity. Warm weather will further impede the spread. In a couple of weeks deaths will drop sharply. New variants may crop up but they face an uphill battle against a substantially vaccinated population. The only question is whether we’re vaccinated enough.
bud, I agree with you on everything except the unvaccinated. Based on the conflicting and varying reports, the Omicron is just as likely to hit the vaccinated as the unvaccinated. I can only relate a personal experience as an anecdotal reply.
My sister had three shots and so did her daughter, my niece. Both caught the Omicron variant last week, but it only lasted a few days and neither one experienced anything other than mild flu symptoms.
I thought I had it, but my ENT physician told me it was my allergies, not Omicron. The change in the weather from hot to cold to hot to cold wreaks havoc on my allergies along with the allergy shots that are supposed to build up my immune system.
The virus is here to stay, it is not going anywhere. There will be other variants and they will spread through the population in general. I do support and advise anyone with comorbidities or health issues that can be deadly to get the vaccine and boosters to at least minimize Omicron if they contract it. However, I do believe in autonomy of the individual body, and it is up to the individual to either get the shot(s) or not.
“I do believe in autonomy of the individual body, and it is up to the individual to either get the shot(s) or not.”
And all those who refuse to vaccinate should be prohibited from entering most public places (bars, restaurants, theaters, malls). Everyplace except for necessities: grocery stores, drug stores, post offices.
Edit: all indoor public places
Very interesting story here from the world of law. This is the 2nd recent case where a young offender was given a light sentence or not further jail time in the case of sexual assault.
Illinois Judge’s decision to reverse teen’s sexual assault conviction sparks outrage.
Adams County Judge Robert Adrian said the 148 days that 18 year old Drew Clinton spent in jail is “plenty of punishment”
At a party, Clinton put a pillow over the 16 year old victim’s face, climbed on top of her, and penetrated her. The victim testified she told him multiple times to stop and he wouldn’t. She finally was able to get up herself and then the offender started playing video games as if nothing had happened.
Judge Adrian found Clinton guilty of one count of criminal sexual assault at a bench trial in October. The charge carried a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 4 years in prison in the state of Illinois.
In a stunning reversal, Adrian announced on January 3rd that he would not send the teen to jail and would change his verdict.
He then announced that “the People failed to prove their case. The court is going to reconsider and find the Defendant not guilty and the Defendant will be released.”
The decision followed two post trail motions asking the judge to declare the minimum mandatory sentences unconstitutional.
The 16 year old accuser then ran out of the courtroom crying.
Assistant State’s Attorney Anita Rodriguez said she was shocked by the decision and stated she had never seen a decision like this in her 40 year career. “My heart is bleeding for the victim.”
Update regarding the Judge
On Wednesday of this week, Judge Adrian, apparently angered by criticism, told another prosecutor appearing before him in an unrelated case to leave his courtroom because the prosecutor apparently had “LIKED” a comment on Facebook that was critical of the judge.
“I can’t be fair with you” the judge told the prosecutor. “Get out.”
On Thursday, the Judge was reassigned.
The Judge has been reassigned and will no longer be presiding over criminal court cases. An order filed on Thursday by the Chief Judge of the 8th Judicial Circuit reassigned him to small claims and probate dockets.
Maybe people were right and he should have been impeached..or was he impeached
Early on in 2020, a wise doctor said we would all get COVID, and he may well be correct. But that is no excuse for relaxing our concerns and ceasing our precautions. Sad to see “its-just-the-flu” types are still around. May they remain healthy and be considerate of those who are not as fortunate as they are.
Meanwhile…
the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court yesterday issued a ruling that ignores the plain text of statute, instead substituting its own perverse preferences, thereby prohibiting the administrative order that large companies mandate their employees either be vaccinated OR be tested regularly and wear masks. As noted in the majority opinion:
“…the majority does not contest that COVID–19 is a ‘new hazard’ and ‘physically harmful agent’; that it poses a ‘grave danger’ to employees [all statutory language]; or that a testing and masking or vaccination policy is ‘necessary’ to prevent those harms [again, statutory language]. Instead, the majority claims that the Act does not ‘plainly authorize[]’ the Standard because it gives OSHA the power to ‘set workplace safety standards’ and COVID–19 exists both inside and outside the workplace. Ante, at 6. In other words, the Court argues that OSHA cannot keep workplaces safe from COVID–19 because the agency (as it readily acknowledges) has no power to address the disease outside the work setting.”
The majority ignores the fact that the temporary emergency Standard, which, again, is based on statutory language, is directed specifically at protecting workers in the workplace. The fact that Covid also exists outside the workplace has no bearing. It’s as if regulating the use of tools in the workplace should be prohibited simply because those tools are also used outside the workplace. It is patently absurd. Quoting the minority again: “That is what the majority today does—impose a limit found no place in the governing statute.”
The majority stated that their ruling is not about the pandemic. True. It’s about a reactionary campaign to undermine the delegation of authority to administrative agencies and, in doing so, ignores statute and says the public good be damned.
Trump didn’t matter
THIS is the end of team USA
Go ocks!