Coronavirus

[Jocephus]

in february we joked it was caused from drinking a certain beer. oh the good ol days

[Leroy]

I kinda feel sorry for Delta. It got, what, less than a year as champ before having to defend the title against Omicron?

Sic transit gloria.

Delta's gone, no more bull s@@@ goin' on,
You must be a variant from days gone by,
And did I hear you say, you'd be striking back someday,
To take me to that mansion in the sky---y.

[thrill]

You guys know anybody who still calls it the "the rona" and expects to get laughs? I do. I cringe every time.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Yeah, I miss the China virus.

[GeddyWrox]

AKA the Wuhan Flu

[heyzeus]

Wu Tang Clan ain't nothin to [expletive] with

[G. Keenan]

Got my Pfizer booster today. Hopefully don't feel too crummy tomorrow because I need to do some Christmas shopping.

[mikechamp]

Latest update from two other countries:

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that while initial cases of Omicron were linked to international travel, the variant is now spreading in "multiple regions of England". He says there appears to be a shorter period with the new variant between being infected and becoming infectious.

Omicron could become the UK's dominant variant within weeks, says infectious diseases expert Prof Paul Hunter. He estimates it's likely that there are already more than than 1,000 cases - three times more than the 336 confirmed on Monday.

South Africa is preparing its hospitals for more admissions amid a fourth wave driven by the new variant, its president says.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-59545557

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Seen from a few different places that omicron is likely less severe but more transmissible. As such, the risk to the healthcare infrastructure is through the sheer number of cases that are anticipated.

For example, if 100K people are going to be infected and 5% are going to be hospitalized and 2% will require ICU, that's actually less stress on the system than 1M people being infected in the same timeframe with 1% requiring hospitalization and 0.2% requiring ICU even if the second scenario is a less severe form of the virus.

Also, incredible that the next variant didn't come from the Delta lineage, from what I can tell, which had what appeared to have a stranglehold on the covid world.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Looks like there is quite a bit of spread throughout northern missouri as missouri, in general, is seeing quite a bit of circulation of the virus now. Daily new cases are approaching the delta wave peak a few months ago and hospitazliations are on a sharp increase. Stay safe, yinz.