Yes, Omicron is not as deadly as earlier versions of Covid if you are vaccinated and boosted. That’s little comfort to burned-out emergency room staffs filled to overflowing. Hospitals are putting patients outside in tents or storing them in hallways.
Dr. Bradley Dreifuss in Tucson has seen patients wait over 200 hours for a hospital bed. He tells NPR, “Our hospitals are totally full. We are not able to admit patients. We do not even have admitting teams currently … Our system is literally collapsing.”
The highly infectious Omicron variant moves so fast that the volume of patients visiting the ER is “staggering,” although the number who need to be hospitalized is actually smaller than with prior waves. Resistance built up from prior vacccines is helping. But staffing shortages stemming from infected caregivers is compounding the impacts of the Omicron wave.
Some of the numbers are symptomless people who visited the ER for other reasons, but show up positive because testing is protocol. Others wrongly seek out the ER to get tested. Nonetheless, numbers are staggering.
CNN:
“Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Those who have been vaccinated … and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death.”
In contrast, those who are not vaccinated are “going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this,” he added.
The wave is expected to crest in the next few days.
We cope. Holding classes is a joke.
Speaking of jokes, Peter Weber at The Week recounts a few from late-night shows:
The never-ending COVID-19 pandemic is so bad right now, “the United States reported 1.5 million new infections yesterday,” Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday’s Late Show. “You want to know how sick of this pandemic we all are? Check out this headline that CNN thought we all needed to hear: ‘5 reasons you should not deliberately catch Omicron “to get it over with.”‘ Well, obviously you shouldn’t deliberately catch Omicron and — should I? I mean, all the other late-night hosts are doing it. I’m starting to think they had a secret sleepover and I wasn’t invited!”
And Jimmy Kimmel:
“The new bad idea floating around is people who — and I flirted with this idea, I realize now it’s stupid — but people who want to get the virus just to get it over with,” Jimmy Kimmel admitted on Kimmel Live. “Here’s the thing: There’s only so many doctors and there’s only so many nurses and there are only so many hospital beds. When everyone tries to get something all at the same time, it’s a disaster. Did we learn nothing from the great toilet paper crisis of 2020?”
Covid denial is so mock-worthy that it showed up in a commercial for the travel site, KAYAK:
But please don’t mock, writes Brian Broome at the Washington Post. It’s not helpful:
This is not a good place for a country to be. That sense of false security that comes from being sure we are always right keeps us divided enough for outside forces to manipulate and perhaps conquer. Because a fight between grasshoppers is a joy to the crow.
None of us is innocent in this situation. I admit to getting high off being right and wishing ill upon those who are so nakedly wrong that it warrants mockery. Like those who believe the “big lie.” Listening to them spout nonsense in the face of verifiable fact is maddening. I know they feel the same about me.
[…]
I have read the stories of covid deniers who have died of the disease and have felt nothing other than the schadenfreude that goes along with “I told you so.” I am not proud of that fact.
They say tragedy plus time equals comedy. I look forward to that time.