CDC issues new guidance on mask use

Most of the country is in categories where face mask use isn't recommended.

Read the whole story

 

[jdale]

I don’t know what to make of these revisions, but regardless, it is rather strange to me that policies generally don’t work on some kind of automatic snapback basis based on real-world conditions. Does it work that way anywhere in the country? I guess the lack of regular and widespread testing will hamper something like that, but it seems like none of the state regulators have been thinking about it along such lines to begin with, and just respond to public pressure piecemeal, muddling through...

Originally it was based on the number of cases. But the threshold was such that 97% of the country was still considered "high" levels, even though the number of hospitalizations and deaths had fallen somewhat. (I mean, we're still averaging about 1700 deaths per day, but it's trending down and its a lagging indicator.)

So we could have stuck it out waiting for cases to drop to the levels that we originally thought were ok, but the reality is that the country would not have gone along with that -- whether you think they should or not, it just wasn't going to happen.

 

[whquaint]

Woo-hoo. My county is finally "low". But I still double mask even though the state receded the statewide mask order last week.

boo, my county is still high. I'd like to say it's time lag, but I don't know that.

 

[jdale]

I'm curious how the CDC is determining the prevalence levels given the surge in availability of at-home tests. My guess is that a lot of people are not following up on reporting positive or negative, especially since omicron seems to be less severe than the common cold (to a lot of people who are getting over it in 4 days with mild symptoms vs the typical 7-9 day cold).

Cases aren't an accurate measure anymore, especially because of at-home tests. I think that's one of the reasons for changing metrics to measures that are still accurate (hospital admissions and patients). Cases are only minimally a factor now.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... evels.html
The COVID-19 community level is determined by the higher of the new admissions and inpatient beds metrics, based on the current level of new cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days

To find out the COVID-19 community level:

* First determine whether a county, state, or territory has fewer than 200 new cases per 100,000 people in the past 7 days or 200 new cases or more per 100,000 people in the past 7 days.
* Then, determine the level (low, medium, or high) for the new admissions and inpatient beds and indicators using the scale for the area’s number for new cases.
* The COVID-19 Community Level is based on the higher of the new admissions and inpatient beds metrics.

 

[foxyshadis]

Count me in the "quite annoyed that I had to Google and come to the comments to find the actual data" camp.

Based on what I've seen, living in a nearly mask-free county still shaded red and with high infection/hospitalization/death rates based on the CDC graphs, it seems like the CDC has resigned themselves to just saying "I told you so" when the inevitable comes to pass.

Edit: The links have been added.

 

[Rick C.]

They removed some of the mask requirements here in my area. I can guarantee you the ones who ripped off their masks immediately are also the same people who never socially distanced and continued to be social with large groups, tried to get away with no mask wearing when it was required and are likely not vaccinated. I'd like to stay as far from these people as possible for a few more weeks, until a more long term trend comes out of the numbers.

I would too. Who knows what other diseases they carry.

 

[SraCet]

Count me in the "quite annoyed that I had to Google and come to the comments to find the actual data" camp.

Based on what I've seen, living in a nearly mask-free county still shaded red and with high infection/hospitalization/death rates based on the CDC graphs, it seems like the CDC has resigned themselves to just saying "I told you so" when the inevitable comes to pass.

What else did you want them to do? AFAIK they never had any legislative authority.

 

[Astro-CCD]

"It's probably safe to say that the CDC's previous guidance was not widely followed."

No kidding, Captain Obvious! Our entire area of the state is still red but the redneck morons that are 70% of the population (not coincidentally, the % that voted for Trump) have been wandering out of their pickups and into the stores and bars w/o masks for some time despite a state mandate.

 

[SixDegrees]

They removed some of the mask requirements here in my area. I can guarantee you the ones who ripped off their masks immediately are also the same people who never socially distanced and continued to be social with large groups, tried to get away with no mask wearing when it was required and are likely not vaccinated. I'd like to stay as far from these people as possible for a few more weeks, until a more long term trend comes out of the numbers.

I would too. Who knows what other diseases they carry.

Cooties. A lot of them have cooties.

Not that a mask will help much. But I definitely recommend not sharing hats.

 

[SraCet]

...
That only matters if they were ever good at determining prevalence in the first place. I recall Fauci saying the vast majority of infections around late 2020 were due to asymptomatic carriers.

Don't remember that but he probably meant pre-symptomatic instead of asymptomatic.

Since people can be contagious 1-3 days before they start showing symptoms, that's probably the most common scenario for transmission. Since once a person starts showing symptoms, they're more likely to get tested, self-isolate, etc.

The upshot is we've probably undercounted infections (prevalence) to a large degree since the onset if most of them have been asymptomatic.

I think a few studies showed that 10-30% of cases were asymptomatic in 2020, i.e., before vaccines.

Not trivial, but also not the 90% (or whatever) that some proponents of naturally-acquired herd immunity were claiming.

Now that so many people are vaccinated, I suspect the number of asymptomatic cases is enormous. I know several people who have had asymptomatic cases.

 

[mmiller7]

I have to say I'm skeptical of this. Supposedly its "getting better" but over the last ~3 weeks I've had on average 1-2 people I was supposed to be interacting with in person (either coming to me or going to them) cancelling due to getting COVID, and most of the time only finding out a few hours in advance. Until January I had only had 1 case where I was going to be meeting with someone and they tested positive.

Then we have stuff like at work being told that people may have to go back to 90% in person, but some facilities may now require still hard to find N95 masks instead of cloth and re-usable ones. So somehow simultaneously this pandemic is now so benign that we can go back to normal in public without masks, go back to work, but have to have *EVEN HIGHER QUALITY* disposable-only masks for office jobs?

This smells like its a "big boss man" greed driven return to normal, not a "health safety scientific" driven return.

 

[letsief]

I don’t know what to make of these revisions, but regardless, it is rather strange to me that policies generally don’t work on some kind of automatic snapback basis based on real-world conditions. Does it work that way anywhere in the country? I guess the lack of regular and widespread testing will hamper something like that, but it seems like none of the state regulators have been thinking about it along such lines to begin with, and just respond to public pressure piecemeal, muddling through...

Originally it was based on the number of cases. But the threshold was such that 97% of the country was still considered "high" levels, even though the number of hospitalizations and deaths had fallen somewhat. (I mean, we're still averaging about 1700 deaths per day, but it's trending down and its a lagging indicator.)

So we could have stuck it out waiting for cases to drop to the levels that we originally thought were ok, but the reality is that the country would not have gone along with that -- whether you think they should or not, it just wasn't going to happen.

Certainly the decreasing severity of cases, due in large part to acquired immunity through vaccination and/or infection, should play a significant role in how we view the risk from covid. And ability to withstand the huge case rates during Omicron without the health care system collapsing also should have given us confidence that we can handle covid in the future.

 

[letsief]

...
That only matters if they were ever good at determining prevalence in the first place. I recall Fauci saying the vast majority of infections around late 2020 were due to asymptomatic carriers.

Don't remember that but he probably meant pre-symptomatic instead of asymptomatic.

Since people can be contagious 1-3 days before they start showing symptoms, that's probably the most common scenario for transmission. Since once a person starts showing symptoms, they're more likely to get tested, self-isolate, etc.

The upshot is we've probably undercounted infections (prevalence) to a large degree since the onset if most of them have been asymptomatic.

I think a few studies showed that 10-30% of cases were asymptomatic in 2020, i.e., before vaccines.

Not trivial, but also not the 90% (or whatever) that some proponents of naturally-acquired herd immunity were claiming.

Now that so many people are vaccinated, I suspect the number of asymptomatic cases is enormous. I know several people who have had asymptomatic cases.

In addition, the symptoms from covid are pretty generic. Just because you might technically fit the definition of symptomatic doesn't mean you're going to get tested. I'm sure case counts have been significantly undercounted throughout the pandemic.

 

[Sarty]

Now that so many people are vaccinated, I suspect the number of asymptomatic cases is enormous. I know several people who have had asymptomatic cases.

Or minimally symptomatic. With my post-booster infection, I had a cough for two days and felt fairly poopy for one. I went and got tested because it was the civic thing to do, but presented with that fact pattern in 2018, I would not have interpreted it as personally finally falling victim to a globe-shaking pandemic. I certainly wouldn't have bothered interfacing with the health care system at any level.

 

[mikeschr]

Community Level:
Low
% of counties - 23.0
% of population - 29.5

High
% of counties - 37.3
% of population - 28.2

Not too surprising, but ironic that the areas least dense in population have the most transmission.

 

[HiggsForce]

Meanwhile Iceland's Ministry of Health issued this remarkable directive:

"Widespread societal resistance to COVID-19 is the main route out of the epidemic. To achieve this, as many people as possible need to be infected with the virus as the vaccines are not enough…"

I'm not sure what to make of it.

 

[NinjaNerd56]

Good to hear that things are improving.

I'm sticking with a mask, social distancing, and wfh nonetheless. None of it is particularly bothersome, and all do some good.

Indeed, same policy at our house.

Curbside for food and medicine.

We live in the land of goobers, so our ‘map’ is still red as Hell.

 

[Eurynom0s]

I don't mind wearing a mask around indoor crowds and when flying. The thing that needs to change though, is the requirement for a negative COVID test to return to the US from another country, yet allow people to fly anywhere domestically without testing. That policy hasn't made any sense after the pandemic became a worldwide phenomenon, with the infection rate in the US among the worst.

Another major lol is the federal travel warnings telling Americans not to travel to a whole raft of countries due to high COVID rates...with the rates that prompt that travel warning often being well below the incidence rate in most/all of the US.

 

[jdale]

Meanwhile Iceland's Ministry of Health issued this remarkable directive:

"Widespread societal resistance to COVID-19 is the main route out of the epidemic. To achieve this, as many people as possible need to be infected with the virus as the vaccines are not enough…"

I'm not sure what to make of it.

Doesn't make much sense. In order to prevent people from getting covid-19, we need to ensure they get covid-19. But if they're going to get it anyway, why not wait until it happens on its own?

 

[H. Pylori]

Omicron says "hold my beer"...

 

[glutto]

It's a true shame that it took a worldwide pandemic with nearly 6 million dead to reinforce the simple idea of basic hygiene and infection control.

Handwashing and covering your sneezes should be pretty easy to understand, yet there are those who still cannot grasp this.

 

[jdale]

I have to say I'm skeptical of this. Supposedly its "getting better" but over the last ~3 weeks I've had on average 1-2 people I was supposed to be interacting with in person (either coming to me or going to them) cancelling due to getting COVID, and most of the time only finding out a few hours in advance. Until January I had only had 1 case where I was going to be meeting with someone and they tested positive.

Then we have stuff like at work being told that people may have to go back to 90% in person, but some facilities may now require still hard to find N95 masks instead of cloth and re-usable ones. So somehow simultaneously this pandemic is now so benign that we can go back to normal in public without masks, go back to work, but have to have *EVEN HIGHER QUALITY* disposable-only masks for office jobs?

This smells like its a "big boss man" greed driven return to normal, not a "health safety scientific" driven return.

You don't say where you are, but considering the US as a whole, the number of cases has plummeted from a high of about 820,000 per day (7-day average) to a current value around 77,000 per day. That's a pretty significant improvement.

However the current value is an underestimate because of rapid testing, and 77,000 per day is still well above anything the US encountered until October 2020 -- that is, it's higher than our first two waves. So, better is relative.

The number of deaths, however, has dropped below that first wave. That's due to the effects of vaccination, previous exposure, better treatment, and somewhat less lethal omicron. Those things have to be part of your thinking as well.

 

[hexbus]

Immunocompromised person here. I do still plan on following mask wearing and social distancing until we get an "all clear" - a low doesn't give me the comfort level I need, especially if there's a lot of people in a location that I have to traverse. Getting sick would hospitalize me, even though I'm vaccinated and boosted.

I live in an area where the population really didn't want to mask to begin with, and wearing a mask has been akin to being judged like I am by some people for my invisible disability. The longer I wear the mask while others are taking it off, the more stares I seem to get. Just like the "you don't look disabled" looks. It really does put a damper on my day when people act like that. Kind of brings up a whole concern about disabled people being judged in general.

I try to keep distance, stay away from crowds, and stay at home as much as possible. I can control me as much as possible, and I really do hope we're on a good downward trend here.

About the article's quote here:

>> Walensky didn't shy away from talking about what might be the biggest hurdle: a seemingly inevitable rise in cases that will put more of the country in the high-risk category. "We recognize that we need to be flexible," she said. "We need to be able to dial [restrictions] back up again should we have a new variant or new surge."

I really do believe in my area that it's going to be neigh impossible to get people to put masks back on should be have another wave/outbreak. The population here only put masks on because they were forced to in order to go into certain businesses, ride transit, go to school, etc. Once it becomes optional and they all have masks off, it's going to be *very* hard to require it again.

Our local news had an articleabout our county's school system - they ran a surveythat really had some interesting answers to it that reflected just how anti-mask our county was.

 

[pavon]

Good to hear that things are improving.

I'm sticking with a mask, social distancing, and wfh nonetheless. None of it is particularly bothersome, and all do some good.

The 7-day average deaths are only decreasing slightly. And this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

That's simply not true. The 7-day deaths have dropped by a third since they peaked three weeks ago, and the 7-day new hospitalizations have dropped by more than seventy percent since the peak 5 weeks ago. The absolute levels of hospitalizations and deaths are still too high to lift restrictions in many parts of the country in my (and CDC's) opinion, but they have dropped significantly, and continue to drop quickly.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracke ... admissions

 

[jgee43]

It would have been nice to think that one of the positives to come out of COVID was a more Asia-esque appreciation for the benefits of wearing a mask in public when you're not feeling well, and not somehow get twisted into a political tool.

But I'm a hopeless optimist, and used to disappointment.

Despite the general anti-mask sentiment in my area, this has already happened to some extent where I live. We're at low risk (with low case counts and very rare hospitalizations), but I've seen more people over the last month wear a mask because they said they felt like they were coming down with something than ever before.

It's actually a pretty refreshing change.

 

[jgee43]

Community Level:
Low
% of counties - 23.0
% of population - 29.5

High
% of counties - 37.3
% of population - 28.2

Not too surprising, but ironic that the areas least dense in population have the most transmission.

It's actually a feature (bug? marker?) of the omicron wave--omicron hit the largest cities fast and hard first, but took a longer period of time to spread to and then spread within more rural areas. Where omicron looked like a sharp peak in case numbers in most urban areas, in more rural communities it had a relatively sharp peak with a slower drop-off.

It's a pretty consistent trend--especially if you look at it on a county level and not just a state level (since most states have a mix of urban and rural).

 

[jgee43]

Here is an interesting memo that was released yesterday by Impact Research, a Democratic Party polling firm:

https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1 ... 4790872065

“ Twice as many voters are now more concerned about COVID’s effect on the economy (49%) than about someone in their family or someone they know becoming infected with the coronavirus (24%)”

“Six in ten Americans describe themselves as ‘worn out’ by the pandemic. The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities.”

“Science” indeed.

I know you're not viewing this as science, but I think the data about people's willingness to follow protective measures is extremely important science. How many of us could have guessed in 2019 that 25% of the country would refuse a vaccine that greatly mitigates a deadly, fast-spreading disease? (A number that could be higher if mandates didn't exist.) I would have guessed somewhere in the range of 5-10%.

Or who would have guessed in 2019 that something as minor as putting on a mask to limit the spread of a major disease would have been such a major point of conflict?

There's some extremely important science that is happening, and I think those polls help us get there even if their stated purpose isn't to advance science. Maybe I'm just too much in the department of looking for silver linings, but I feel like the CDC is actually doing a decent job of starting to figure out what kind of protective measures people are willing to take and for how long.

 

[Todd Knarr]

Here in King County, WA, we're at 827 new cases/day. We're just about down to what it was at the peak of the surge in the fall of 2021. IMO lifting mask mandates shouldn't even be up for consideration until the new case rate drops below 100/day and _stays_ there for at least 4 weeks (for King County, adjust the rate as needed to match the population of the area under consideration).

All lifting the mask mandates now will do is give the BA.2 strain a solid start towards the next surge. If they start lifting the mandates this weekend, I expect the next surge to start about the middle of March.

 

[Sarty]

Or who would have guessed in 2019 that something as minor as putting on a mask to limit the spread of a major disease would have been such a major point of conflict?

There's some extremely important science that is happening, and I think those polls help us get there even if their stated purpose isn't to advance science. Maybe I'm just too much in the department of looking for silver linings, but I feel like the CDC is actually doing a decent job of starting to figure out what kind of protective measures people are willing to take and for how long.

We may have very different framings of the question, and I'm sure the answer will vary based on where you live, but I have been stunned that my local peeps have essentially put up with whatever the county declared for essentially two years.

Please spare me the mask-hurt-facey nonsense--all of this has been at least annoying, and yet in many communities and regions, it's been accepted.

 

[Merciful]

Restrictions have been being slowly reduced where I am; cases have been going down. Mask requirements are likely to be dropped in less than a month. I’ll keep wearing a mask to the store and such, but there is going to be maskless/up-close-and-personal dance partying with the crew I haven’t run with for two years on day one. Could be WW3 any day—fucked if I’m not gonna have some fun in the meantime.

 

[jgee43]

Or who would have guessed in 2019 that something as minor as putting on a mask to limit the spread of a major disease would have been such a major point of conflict?

There's some extremely important science that is happening, and I think those polls help us get there even if their stated purpose isn't to advance science. Maybe I'm just too much in the department of looking for silver linings, but I feel like the CDC is actually doing a decent job of starting to figure out what kind of protective measures people are willing to take and for how long.

We may have very different framings of the question, and I'm sure the answer will vary based on where you live, but I have been stunned that my local peeps have essentially put up with whatever the county declared for essentially two years.

Please spare me the mask-hurt-facey nonsense--all of this has been at least annoying, and yet in many communities and regions, it's been accepted.

That's why I think the studies that look at all this data will be interesting, and hopefully will lead to policies with better acceptance. My county started off very supportive of pretty much any guidance that came down, but it waned pretty quickly. By the end of 2020 the only institutions still following guidance were large businesses (the Wal-Marts, et al), religious institutions, and medical facilities. Pretty much everyone else had said, "Welp, screw that. I'm not doing that anymore."

I think we were particularly hampered by extremely low case counts for almost all of 2020, which led people into a false sense of security that ended up causing issues when transmission and community spread really hit mid-to-late 2021 in my area.

 

[RoninX]

Here is an interesting memo that was released yesterday by Impact Research, a Democratic Party polling firm:

https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1 ... 4790872065

“ Twice as many voters are now more concerned about COVID’s effect on the economy (49%) than about someone in their family or someone they know becoming infected with the coronavirus (24%)”

“Six in ten Americans describe themselves as ‘worn out’ by the pandemic. The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities.”

“Science” indeed.

I know you're not viewing this as science, but I think the data about people's willingness to follow protective measures is extremely important science. How many of us could have guessed in 2019 that 25% of the country would refuse a vaccine that greatly mitigates a deadly, fast-spreading disease? (A number that could be higher if mandates didn't exist.) I would have guessed somewhere in the range of 5-10%.

Or who would have guessed in 2019 that something as minor as putting on a mask to limit the spread of a major disease would have been such a major point of conflict?

There's some extremely important science that is happening, and I think those polls help us get there even if their stated purpose isn't to advance science. Maybe I'm just too much in the department of looking for silver linings, but I feel like the CDC is actually doing a decent job of starting to figure out what kind of protective measures people are willing to take and for how long.

The CDC's decision was probably a mix of science and politics.

From a scientific viewpoint, more people have immunity (vaccine-based or natural) than ever before; Omicron produces milder symptoms in most people; and the case rate has plunged since the Omicron surge, so it makes sense to end the mask mandate in areas of the country where the hospitals aren't being overwhelmed.

From a political viewpoint, as the report in Apparition's post indicates, the Democrats are starting to realize how badly their reaction to COVID is harming them among voters, even in blue states.

For months now, it has seemed to me that the most COVID-cautious progressives have underestimated the proportion of fully-vaccinated blue state Democrats who are tired of wearing masks (especially if that means wearing them 8 hours a day at work) and thinking about COVID all the time. That doesn't mean that they're going to turn into Trumpian Republicans, but it may mean that they don't bother to show up to vote in November.

Both the Biden adminstration and the blue state governors are starting to realize this, and the rollback of mask mandates is clearly an attempt to keep expected losses in November within the normal range of midterm losses for the party in power, as opposed to a GOP tsunami.

 

[HoosierEngineer]

I'm happy that in NM (where I am) the rolling 7 day average of cases has now fallen to where it was at the beginning of August 2021 (about 570 new cases per week), as opposed to the omicron peak of 7600 cases per week at this same time in January. And seems to be still trending down.

We dropped mask mandates last week, but we're still in this weird phase where people don't know what they are meant to be doing. Eg I was in my local bike shop on Monday and Thursday. On Monday I walked in without a mask, but the people behind the counter were all wearing masks. So Ok I thought, they're still wearing masks. So when I went back on Thursday I wore a mask out of politeness. Annnnnd the people behind the counter weren't wearing masks.

Just trying not to chase away customers. Cyclists are probably not too vulnerable (young and healthy). They make nice carriers, though.

 

[HoosierEngineer]

Woo-hoo. My county is finally "low". But I still double mask even though the state receded the statewide mask order last week.

boo, my county is still high. I'd like to say it's time lag, but I don't know that.

Be interesting to check vaccination rates.

 

[HoosierEngineer]

I don’t know what to make of these revisions, but regardless, it is rather strange to me that policies generally don’t work on some kind of automatic snapback basis based on real-world conditions. Does it work that way anywhere in the country? I guess the lack of regular and widespread testing will hamper something like that, but it seems like none of the state regulators have been thinking about it along such lines to begin with, and just respond to public pressure piecemeal, muddling through...

Originally it was based on the number of cases. But the threshold was such that 97% of the country was still considered "high" levels, even though the number of hospitalizations and deaths had fallen somewhat. (I mean, we're still averaging about 1700 deaths per day, but it's trending down and its a lagging indicator.)

So we could have stuck it out waiting for cases to drop to the levels that we originally thought were ok, but the reality is that the country would not have gone along with that -- whether you think they should or not, it just wasn't going to happen.

Certainly the decreasing severity of cases, due in large part to acquired immunity through vaccination and/or infection, should play a significant role in how we view the risk from covid. And ability to withstand the huge case rates during Omicron without the health care system collapsing also should have given us confidence that we can handle covid in the future.

We are fortunate that Omicron was less lethal/severe than Delta. We can hope Omicron provides a durable enough herd immunity to get us through a future mutation.

 

[Fatesrider]

I don’t know what to make of these revisions, but regardless, it is rather strange to me that policies generally don’t work on some kind of automatic snapback basis based on real-world conditions. Does it work that way anywhere in the country? I guess the lack of regular and widespread testing will hamper something like that, but it seems like none of the state regulators have been thinking about it along such lines to begin with, and just respond to public pressure piecemeal, muddling through...

The pitfalls of public health orders have been revealed by COVID when the authorities are no longer responsible, or trusted, depending on which side of the political aisle you are.

The anti-vaxxers and anti-mask-wearers will continue to plague the country (literally) when those are required or necessary, and ordered by public health departments. For the record, no court in the country has yet sided with anti-vaxxers that wasn't overruled by a higher court. The same goes for mask mandates.

So the law remains on the side of the public health agencies, which offers some solace, but the governments under which these public health agencies have actively worked to undermine those efforts.

With that kind of mixed messaging, the future looks to be nothing less than a public health clusterfuck of biblical proportions.

While far from my personal preference, I expect that everyone will get COVID at some point, and that it will continue to circulate in the population. We will probably kill a million more Americans over the length of this pandemic - even as it transitions to endemic status. Vaccination rates will increase as those who don't have immunity repeatedly get it (and I've seen that happen in very short order to family members who still refuse to get vaccinated), and those who get it will acquire some levels of temporary immunity that MAY at some point several years from now finally achieve herd immunity.

Of course, that will be long after the rest of the world with sane leaders and mostly responsible citizens have basically returned to normal, and are banning Americans (and those from other countries with the same shitty compliance issues) from entering their countries each time an outbreak happens.

There is not going to be a happy ending here. We'll just realize some day that we're living with it not because we have to, but because not enough people here want to prevent it.

 

[Sarty]

While far from my personal preference, I expect that everyone will get COVID at some point, and that it will continue to circulate in the population. We will probably kill a million more Americans over the length of this pandemic - even as it transitions to endemic status. Vaccination rates will increase as those who don't have immunity repeatedly get it (and I've seen that happen in very short order to family members who still refuse to get vaccinated), and those who get it will acquire some levels of temporary immunity that MAY at some point several years from now finally achieve herd immunity.

Of course, that will be long after the rest of the world with sane leaders and mostly responsible citizens have basically returned to normal, and are banning Americans (and those from other countries with the same shitty compliance issues) from entering their countries each time an outbreak happens.

There is not going to be a happy ending here. We'll just realize some day that we're living with it not because we have to, but because not enough people here want to prevent it.

I got covid. You'll likely get it. Kind of a bummer. But there's not much reason to think that this little bugger will kill a shit-ton more people now that nearly everyone is vaccinated, exposed, or both.

The current day being what it is, you'll please forgive me the war-like mental framing of the difference between
* "Ha, ha, that was nothing! We wiped that turd from the map at little cost to ourselves"
and
* "That fucking sucked, a lot of people died, we must remember and consecrate this event"
But at the end of both of those, we won and we move on. You can quibble about whether we move on this week, or this month, but if you think the vast majority of people will care in a year, I don't know what to tell you.

Enjoy nihilism if you want to, but it's already out of fashion.

 

[SraCet]

...
As there often is, there's an XKCD for that.

https://xkcd.com/2557/

It's funny, but if you consider a population of people instead of an individual, it makes some sense.

We're seeing a strong effect from herd immunity now. Herd immunity is good for all of us, but especially the people who are most vulnerable to the virus--unvaccinated small children, the immunocompromised, older people with comorbidities, etc.

The stronger the herd immunity effect, the better it is for those people.

So if you're healthy, you've had all your shots, and you're likely to be exposed (and maybe catch) the virus sometime in the next few months, you might as well just do it sooner rather than later. The sooner it happens, the more beneficial it is for other people.

I would never think it's a good idea for people to go and get sick on purpose, but now might be as good a time as any to stop taking extra precautions to avoid getting sick.

 

[TMilligan]

I’m fully vaccinated and my county hit 6 cases per day. It feels good to not be as worried. I hope we get a season or so before another wave.

 

[Git-stompa]

Here is an interesting memo that was released yesterday by Impact Research, a Democratic Party polling firm:

https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1 ... 4790872065

“ Twice as many voters are now more concerned about COVID’s effect on the economy (49%) than about someone in their family or someone they know becoming infected with the coronavirus (24%)”

“Six in ten Americans describe themselves as ‘worn out’ by the pandemic. The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities.”

“Science” indeed.

I know you're not viewing this as science, but I think the data about people's willingness to follow protective measures is extremely important science. How many of us could have guessed in 2019 that 25% of the country would refuse a vaccine that greatly mitigates a deadly, fast-spreading disease? (A number that could be higher if mandates didn't exist.) I would have guessed somewhere in the range of 5-10%.

Or who would have guessed in 2019 that something as minor as putting on a mask to limit the spread of a major disease would have been such a major point of conflict?

There's some extremely important science that is happening, and I think those polls help us get there even if their stated purpose isn't to advance science. Maybe I'm just too much in the department of looking for silver linings, but I feel like the CDC is actually doing a decent job of starting to figure out what kind of protective measures people are willing to take and for how long.

The CDC's decision was probably a mix of science and politics.

From a scientific viewpoint, more people have immunity (vaccine-based or natural) than ever before; Omicron produces milder symptoms in most people; and the case rate has plunged since the Omicron surge, so it makes sense to end the mask mandate in areas of the country where the hospitals aren't being overwhelmed.

From a political viewpoint, as the report in Apparition's post indicates, the Democrats are starting to realize how badly their reaction to COVID is harming them among voters, even in blue states.

For months now, it has seemed to me that the most COVID-cautious progressives have underestimated the proportion of fully-vaccinated blue state Democrats who are tired of wearing masks (especially if that means wearing them 8 hours a day at work) and thinking about COVID all the time. That doesn't mean that they're going to turn into Trumpian Republicans, but it may mean that they don't bother to show up to vote in November.

Both the Biden adminstration and the blue state governors are starting to realize this, and the rollback of mask mandates is clearly an attempt to keep expected losses in November within the normal range of midterm losses for the party in power, as opposed to a GOP tsunami.

Also most vulnerable people will continue taking precautions because this demographic understands it’s real. The government just needs to continue (or begin) to provide testing, paid sick leave (guaranteed time off to deal with it), hand sanitizer, vaccines, and n95 masks for people who ask for them.

Unfortunately the only way to push any harder means we have to use force, and most of us don’t want to do that because it undermines the point.

In the mean time we need to work on science literacy, and science communication. We need to hold new media accountable for spreading bullshit, and media platforms as well. There should be continued protests against misinformation.