Heeding Omicron Alerts
Terry H. Schwadron
Dec. 20, 2021
Either we’re about to face a blizzard of new covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, particularly among the unvaccinated, or this is some overhyped government excuse to torture us with mandates and mask orders.
It depends on whom you want to believe.
Joe Biden, the CDC, federal administrators of covid programs and public health doctors all say we have a period of trouble rumbling our way as winter, holiday gatherings, ascending Delta and oncoming Omicron will target those with less than full vaccine protection. The variant is expected to become the “dominant strain” in the coming weeks, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, and Biden thinks a public warning is warranted through an Oval Office address tomorrow.
On the other hand, Breitbart News mockingly headlines “Doom” in reporting Biden’s push for vaccines, and Fox News contributor Dr. Marty Makary warned against a new “wave of fear” taking hold over the omicron variant, warning it could fuel a “pandemic of lunacy in the post covid-19 era.” He calls the worst medical predictions of covid problems “omi-cold.”
So, for the anti-vax crowd, the renewed call for precaution is overkill and hype — all because we’re worn out and tired by pandemic means.
Why can’t we be tired of masks and be facing actual contagion that can prove serious for many?
Is this now just supposed to be a case of clapping if you want Tinkerbell to live? Was that shark in “Jaws” just a fictional myth just because the local business community didn’t want to deal with an image problem?
In the meantime, performances, sports, and gatherings are shutting down by themselves, and other nations, like The Netherlands, are ordering complete shutdowns.
Contagion, Cases vs Hospitalization, Deaths
The coronavirus will hit millions of Americans in a “viral blizzard” within a few weeks as infections from the Omicron variant pile on top of Delta, warned Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota on CNN.
Of course, there is an argument here over whether to count cases, outbreaks, serious outbreaks, hospitalizations, or deaths. But they all are on the rise. Even as the debate continues about the virulence of the mutation, what’s likely is that the disease will spread rapidly across the US and overwhelm hospitals.
By contrast, officials in only nine states have started to move on masking policies in public places. Part of it is that for the vaccinated, at least, Omicron cases seem to result in relatively short, less than serious illness. It’s offering high contagion, but less than deadly results.
And that combination is causing yet a new level of confusion — over whether the building wave of Omicron is something to fear and face or to ignore.
The anti-vax movement has been successful at making it somewhere between mostly unpopular and unenforceable for states, cities, or the federal government to impose mandates.
The federal government is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appeals court ruling to stop mandates for private businesses, including health outlets and hospitals, for vaccines or testing protocols under the laws that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
The covid data say the covid Delta mutation remains on the rise in most metropolitan areas of the country, prompting hospital overcrowding and shortages, and the Omicron virus as a mutation with high transmissibility that is multiplying much faster than previous variations.
Requiring Personal Evidence
Nevertheless, in a lot of the country and particularly in definably politically red states, the stance seems to be to let it all happen. If needed, the states will respond when they see it.
Of course, if you don’t look, you don’t see that shark eating a swimmer’s leg or blood in the water just offshore.
The release this week of an extensive report by a Congressional investigation of the early days of covid should serve as a reminder of what goes wrong when we ignore the data. That report shows that Donald Trump and team made “critical failures” in the name of keeping a positive national and personal image, “deliberate efforts to undermine the nation’s coronavirus response for political purposes.”
What we do see are schools all over the country calling off class for the day, the week, the month as individual cases threaten full class contagions, we see Broadway closing shows even with people already in their too-small seats. At my own orchestra concert this week, we were taking bets in the back row on whether the scheduled rehearsals in January will even proceed.
Weren’t we just here a year ago, two years ago? We had a then-president stand up and say about covid that there was nothing to worry about. And then, two blinks later, the country shut down, we had refrigerated mobile morgues outside overrun hospitals, and we were sending the military to set up portable, quarantined treatment centers.
Then came the magic of vaccination — and the endless number of objections for health, religious citations, political opposition, and a general wariness about people named Fauci calling for mandatory behavior about our health, the same kind of mandate that many of the same people back when it involves contraception and abortion.
Yes, it is all tedious. Yes, the whole idea of mandates is made necessary only because we have a political movement abounding to tell people that none of it matters.
Masks and vaccines may be tiring and intrusive. So is illness.
At least we should be able to recognize the same threat.
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