A likely deluge of new COVID cases is on the horizon for the Bay Area, due to the Omicron variant and despite widespread vaccination. [...] San Francisco health officials announced Friday that they've confirmed 31 cases of the Omicron variant in the city, but there are likely many going undetected by official testing channels. [...]

UCSF's Dr. Bob Wachter says that people with three shots of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine should consider themselves "very immune," and those who are boosted and who were also previously infected are now "super-immune." [...]

And Wachter said he'd spoken with a friend in New York City who had COVID in 2020, and had three mRNA vaccine shots, but after attending holiday parties last week where proof of vaccination was required, the friend is once again COVID-positive.

That is a head-spinning definition of "super immune", right there. How does he hold on to that cognitive dissonance?

Also, keep in mind that confirmation of cases lags behind infection by like 3 weeks. Someone gets infected; it takes a week for them to show symptoms; a few more days for it to be bad enough that they go to the hospital; 3+ days to sequence their strain; then the hospital reports to CDC (but only on Fridays!) and more days before the report comes out.

So let's generously call that 2 weeks. Omicron reportedly has a doubling rate of 2.5 days. So if there are 31 reported cases, that means that there are probably 31 × 2 ^ (14 / 2.5) = 1,503 actual cases. And in two weeks, when the official report says 1,503, there will be 72,928. You hit a million in 37 days.

Also, because I have spoken to a number of people who have said "but they say Omicron is less dangerous", let me point out that a less deadly but more infectious disease is still WAY WORSE. Even if it is less deadly -- which it probably isn't -- you are multiplying a slightly smaller number (chance of death when infected) against a much larger number (chance of infection) resulting in your actual, much larger, chance of death.

I keep seeing anecdotes of people with extremely mild or asymptomatic infections developing debilitating long-COVID symptoms months later, but I haven't seen any estimates of what your odds are. Probably that means they have no idea.

babyrelentless:

I really think most people's conception of Long Covid is "I'll get a little winded walking up stairs" and not "I'll get an incurable neurological disease worthy of an Oliver Sacks book" and that's a communication problem.

Previously, previously, previously.