CDC Updates, Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period | Hacker News Reader

CDC Updates, Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period

cdc.gov

68 pointsinfodocket118 comments

I really hope Omicron is the strain that turns the virus into endemic and we can live with it as we live with the flu.

Eeehhhhh.

Hard to say right now. Hospitals in my state have just activated emergency protocols, because our surge is already exceeding Winter-2020 levels. This means that 20% of surgeries are going to be cancelled, and other such care is going to be officially rationed off. (BTW: We're at 90% adults vaccinated, but "70% to 80%" of the hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals).

EDIT: To be clear: individual hospitals declare emergencies. Its not a state-wide declaration. Hospitals have begun to declare emergencies and activate hospital-specific rationing.

Omicron has been a bitch so far. It seems like it is causing hospitalizations in the unvaccinated population, maybe not at the same "rate" as Delta, but in high enough numbers that we're going to run out of hospital beds in my area.

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Elsewhere in the country... Florida's 300% rise in cases this past week has demonstrated that natural-immunity from Alpha/Delta was completely worthless vs Omicron.

Florida is well on its way to having a worse surge than it ever had before. It doesn't seem like we can natural-immunity our ways out of this.

>"Omicron has been a bitch so far. It seems like it is causing hospitalizations in the unvaccinated population, maybe not at the same "rate" as Delta, but in high enough numbers that we're going to run out of hospital beds in my area. "

One of the problems seems to be that hospital staff are so expensive (because of their regulated monopoly) that we've been running with no spare capacity in normal times. Most other systems have 20% or more extra capacity.

We've literally never run out of hospital space before, including the 2020 winter surge of COVID19/Alpha (which hit us harder than Delta did).

This Omicron is worse than anything we've seen before locally. Crisis levels / Emergency levels of hospitalization have been reached.

Yeah, we've had a nursing crisis and our health care system is shoddier than many people realize. But Omicron is clearly different.

I agree with everything you say here, but most other systems (outside of healthcare and hospitals in particular) run with greater than 20% spare capacity. For example, your local pizza restaurant can probably produce 20% above their expected volume tonight if needed.

I mean, some hospitals in my area are reportedly at 140% stated capacity or something.

We're well above "20%". This is crisis / emergency time. The emergency declaration will reduce surgeries by 20% (going from 140% capacity to 112% capacity).

Like, its obviously not enough, but... its something.

> Most other systems have 20% or more extra capacity.

I think it's been fairly clear in the pandemic that they don't.

I was talking about other systems like HVAC, or computers, or any other system you can think of. I was not comparing one specific healthcare system to another.

So there are 9 times as many vaccinated people and 3 times fewer hospitalizations, that would be 1-1/27 efficacy (96% or so). Sounds like it's no worse, or possibly even better, than what was measured in the trials

> Florida's 300% rise in cases this past week has demonstrated that natural-immunity from Alpha/Delta was completely worthless vs Omicron. Florida is well on its way to having a worse surge than it ever had before. It doesn't seem like we can natural-immunity our ways out of this.

Tangential, but has Florida started accurately reporting their cases, hospitalizations and deaths instead of under-reporting them?

> Tangential, but has Florida started accurately reporting their cases, hospitalizations and deaths instead of under-reporting them?

Doesn't matter IMO. What matters is the change-in-percent. If Florida's "undercount" is 300% higher this week than last week, that's all the evidence we need, as long as the "undercount" remained consistent.

The exact number isn't important. Its the change in numbers we can look at and rely upon. If you don't trust the numbers, you can still trust the change-in-numbers.

Its not important to get exact numbers. Its more important to remain consistent in your reporting through these crisis. We care about apples-to-apples comparisons within the state, not against different states. A 300% rise is a 300% rise.

I agree that you can glean trends from inaccurately reported data, but I'm asking because I want to know if there is a source that is attempting accurate reporting in Florida, or if Florida is counting things differently than they were a while ago.

Any state with more than 5% positive is underreporting cases however.

You need 95% of your cases to be negative if you expect any accuracy in your case%. If you're at 10% positive or 15% positive, then if you double your testing, you double your cases.

10% positive suggests a testing-kit shortage. That's what's going on in my state, we've begun to ration testing-kits. We only give out testing kits to those with symptoms.

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At some point, your hospital systems favor the individual's health over accurate reporting of statistics. Under such circumstances, it becomes important to use alternative measures for how bad the surge is. Focusing on "% change" is one of the most effective ways of factoring in this issue.

I don't really get why the positive test rate is not supposed to have gone up significantly with availability of at home tests. Shortages of at home tests would naturally lower it again, but isn't this a useless number now that we don't know how many people used tests they already had at home to skip being in the negative reported results?

> Tangential, but has Florida started accurately reporting their cases, hospitalizations and deaths instead of under-reporting them?

AFAIK, the only underreporting they are doing is not counting positive tests as cases unless the person is a permanent Florida resident, while everyone else is counting tests conducted in-state. Which is significant, but really only effects the case count.

(They may be doing a bad job of actually doing testing, too, but that’s not underreporting though it has a similar effect. But, again AFAIK, hospitalization and death numbers aren’t impacted.)

They also changed to attributing deaths to the date they occurred, rather than the date they were recorded. Because this gap can be days or even weeks, it raises the death curve mostly in past periods, and therefore gives the impression the rate is always declining.

I think when the dust settles, we'll conclude that Omicron for the vaccinated posed very similar risks as the flu. Keyword of course is for the vaccinated. SF is seeing the highest case counts at any point in the pandemic and yet there is no real change in hospitalizations/deaths.

Anecdotally, I've attended two mega indoor concerts in the past couple of months. It is almost impossible that I haven't been exposed to or contracted COVID.

> Keyword of course is for the vaccinated. SF is seeing the highest case counts at any point in the pandemic and yet there is no real change in hospitalizations/deaths.

It took about a week or two between our Omicron-surge before our hospitals filled up around here. COVID19 is a slow-moving disease, give it some time and prepare.

What's the vaccination rate in your county?

61.8% of total population. Lower than the state's average but still pretty good by American standards.

Ah. SF is at 87% with at least one dose and 80% with at least 2 doses.

I think 62% vs. 80% could be a big enough delta to explain the difference here versus your town.

Thanks for the additional data-point. That 18% difference could very well make the difference.

I'll be keeping an eye on your higher-vaccination rate and how it works out in your city. I've been trying to tell my coworkers / people around me to get vaccinated (and boostered) but not everybody would listen.

EDIT: The state's average is like 80% total population. I live in an area with far below the state's average in regards to vaccinations.

To clarify, there's a lag for hospitalizations, and then there is another lag for deaths. COVID can even take a couple of months to kill from the initial infection if the infected person is being kept alive on a ventilator.

Curious which state you're in.

> This means that 20% of surgeries are going to be cancelled > We're at 90% adults vaccinated, but "70% to 80%" of the hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals > our surge is already exceeding Winter-2020 levels

Can you put any links to the data on any of these? I am really curious to know where you get that from, I can't find any hospitalization data from Omicron and vaccinated rates on those hospitalizations.

The first hospital to declare an emergency in my state was...

https://www.umms.org/uch/news/2021/um-uch-moves-to-crisis-st...

The 70% to 80% quote is from local-TV stations.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/um-upper-chesapeake-hospital-...

> Barrueto said 70% to 80% of the hospitals' patients are unvaccinated. He said the move also sends a message to the community that it's not business as usual.

> Elsewhere in the country... Florida's 300% rise in cases this past week has demonstrated that natural-immunity from Alpha/Delta was completely worthless vs Omicron.

This is simply wrong. A rise in cases is not evidence of much of anything related to immunity, let alone natural immunity. Plenty of vaccinated people are getting infected as well -- they're not dying from it.

> Florida is well on its way to having a worse surge than it ever had before. It doesn't seem like we can natural-immunity our ways out of this.

Please stop speculating. The "surge" in cases is currently lower than what happened in FL over the summer, and hospitalizations are flat:

https://covid-19.direct/state/12

Another take on Florida...

>While COVID-19’s omicron variant pushes Florida to pandemic daily records in cases reported and has drive-thru testing lines snaking through parks and pharmacy parking lots, hospitalizations haven’t risen at the same rate — yet. Sunday’s report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said there were 2,302 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Florida. That’s 39 more people hospitalized than in Saturday’s report and from 245 hospitals, as opposed to the 246 hospitals in Saturday’s report. COVID-19 patients occupy 4.27% of patient beds in those reporting hospitals, compared to 4.18% in the previous day’s reporting hospitals. Of the people hospitalized in Florida, 333 were in intensive care unit beds, a decrease of nine. That represents about 5.41% of the state’s ICU hospital beds, compared to 5.55% the previous day.

I remember when people said that about alpha, and then delta, and now omicron...

When is it going to happen? The UK convinced itself alpha would give them herd immunity and stop future outbreaks. Then the same people came out to say ok now with delta in the UK we'll let it burn all summer and then be protected. And now the same people have the gall to say, ok ok this time omicron will be the one that gives us herd immunity.

It's time to call out this nonsense for the complete horseshit nonsense that it is.

>"It's time to call out this nonsense for the complete horseshit nonsense that it is. "

This is not helpful. I understand that you disagree with the parent, but you could have ended your comment on a more constructive and helpful note.

20 millions people worldwide are estimated to be dead so far in 2 years of this virus pandemic.

It's time to call out the minimizers and downplayers on their horseshit.

>"It's time to call out the minimizers and downplayers on their horseshit. "

Maybe it's time to do that on Reddit or Facebook, but this isn't the point of HackerNews. From the guidelines:

>" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

For what its worth, I took this as an attack on the idea and the parent themselves as a person.

So there were high degrees of heard immunity… but then Omicron came which has pretty high immune escape, and so it spreads all over, whether you were vaccinated or not, had COVID before or not. And then it finds those who were neither vaccinated nor previously had COVID and puts them in the hospital. Spreads so quickly that the hospital system is overloaded even if the Case Hospitalization Rate isn’t that high.

So it’s gonna expose everyone regardless, therefore it is a kind of herd exposure, if not herd immunity. Hopefully, in combination with the previous exposure, the transmissibility will be lowered by this “herd exposure” so in future waves the hospital system won’t be hit as hard.

It’s roughly less than half as lethal as Delta, other things being equal. In combination with boosted+vaccination, the risk is pretty low, comparable to flu or perhaps lower now that we have better treatments.

We need the pan-coronavirus vaccines, though, in addition to these less lethal variants, to really bring this down to background seasonal flu/cold virus levels. (And it wouldn’t hurt if we finally fixed the HIV pandemic so variants don’t mutate so much. And fix vaccine logistics further so we have a prayer to deploy vaccines before literally everyone gets it like Omicron.)

Coronaviruses normally don’t mutate as fast as the typical seasonal flu since they don’t do recombination as efficiently. So we SHOULD be able to keep up with it. But our main vaccine strain is now 2 years old. You can’t expect that to work well forever.

> It's time to call out this nonsense for the complete horseshit nonsense that it is.

Having non-stop sanitary edicts and booster shots every three months is not really a long-term sustainable policy either.

Actually it is, and the boosters came in every 6 months.

Getting to a high (like over 95%) vaccination worldwide would also prevent the creation of more variants. There are quite clearly solutions that will work; what lacks is political will (and disinformation spread by selfish people and politicians).

> Getting to a high (like over 95%) vaccination worldwide would also prevent the creation of more variants.

Maybe if we're getting a vaccine that provides immunity like the Polio one does and that we're vaccinating 100% of people in a few days and we're getting rid of all animal reservoirs of the virus at the same time, which is just near impossible given the cost and the logistics, maybe the virus could be eradicated. Maybe.

Also it is environmental pressures that drive viruses to mutate and create variants. If the virus escapes the vaccines than there is a great deal of change that it is the vaccinated that favored the vaccine resistant strains. In fact one of the first most contagious strains were noticed in India a few weeks after the beginning of their vaccination program.

It is impossible to say what causes a mutation to arise, but to say that it is 100% sure that the non-vaccinated are responsible for the variants is simply based on nothing tangible.

I don’t think you’re making any cogent points or actually refuting what I said.

It's ironic given that you're doing exactly that.

That is not scientifically accurate. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. Vaccines are less effective for those people.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...

If you get enough people vaccinated, it would prevent the various variants from reaching so many immunocompromised individuals.

The reason we get so many variants is because there are enough unvaccinated individuals that the virus is able to rip through billions of individuals.

That is not scientifically accurate. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, that will not prevent the virus from reaching immunocompromised individuals.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Saying something is not scientifically accurate is a bold claim to make and the evidence that you’ve provided are opinion pieces that don’t support that claim, so stop doing that.

If you actually read the articles and then look at the underlying sources you will see that everything I stated is correct. I won't stop correcting your dangerous misinformation.

It’s you who is spreading dangerous misinformation by attempting to validate your claims as scientific without linking to actual scientific research, just opinions in various pop science magazines.

His articles vulgarizes and source their claims. You sourced nothing.

I’m not claiming to be scientifically accurate and then giving horseshit as evidence.

If you look at the data on hospitalizations in the UK, you see that the suffering really was much greater during alpha: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/uk-daily-covid-admissions

And? Where was the herd immunity after it?

The hospitalization rate per case is way down. IMO, we can largely credit that to immunity (from both vaccination and prior infections). Severe cases are much less common on breakthroughs. That’s consistent with the earlier comment that covid-19 will become more like the flu. It’ll become one of the many endemic respiratory viruses. Usually not severe, because everyone’s been exposed before.

That's not at all what herd immunity means. It means there are no more infections because there's a base level of immunity all around you. It's how people that are immunocompromised or unable to be vaccinated/protected (i.e. children) are spared by the virus.

Oh sure, I don’t think complete herd immunity is a reasonable goal for this virus. The immunity isn’t persistent enough to achieve that. The GP’s description of it as an endemic we live with like the flu seems more plausible.

This virus is sufficiently contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. Everyone will eventually be exposed. This is inevitable.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

I… currently am isolating with COVID and don’t know how to feel.

I was fortunate to get both Moderna shots and then get a booster in November. So far symptoms have been overwhelmingly mild (sore throat, allergies, mild cough, no impact to blood oxygen levels).

Started feeling them on Christmas morning, but thought it was my parents’ HVAC and winter drying me out. Went to my in-laws, had a nice Christmas and day after Christmas, and COVID came up in discussion. My in-laws had a test remaining, and I said “I’ll take it - my parents are seeing other family and in the off chance I have it I’d want to let them know”.

So I took it last night, and it was very positive very quickly. Got another test today from another brand - also positive.

Looking at CDC guidance, I’m somewhat confused. 5 days of isolation are fine, but if you look at timelines, respiratory issues seem to start around day 5. So I guess you’re either getting better or taking a turn on day 5. And I’m stuck at my in-laws a few hours from home, just isolating in a room. Everyone else took a test (we were lucky to find them) and tested negative, but we will see if symptoms develop in others in the coming days.

Prior to COVID, this is nothing I would have stayed home for. Nothing I would have even considered could kill 800k+ people in the US. It’s really hard to wrap my head around it, and when I woke up this morning it was a bit of “did that test actually go off?”.

Oura ring also alerted that my body temp was higher than usual and that I should take it easy. But I don’t have a fever using a mouth thermometer.

I didn’t end up getting a PCR test, as the likelihood of two false positives across two different brands is very low, and I’m not totally asymptomatic. Just feel like 85% healthy where normal is 100%. But I won’t know if this is omicron or some other variant.

So I’m not taking any pills, monoclonal antibodies, or other approaches with this other than staying hydrated and mucinex. I figure I’m ok - but it’s really weird to be writing this on day 3 of symptoms knowing that day 5 could mean I’m either fine and can just mask up around people or I may take a turn, ramp a fever, and have breathing problems.

And I’ve been very cautious with protocols. Always mask inside, maintain distance, work from home. Yesterday was the first time since March 2020 I went to a brewery to celebrate someone’s birthday (again, feeling fine enough to drink) and I made sure the group sat outside at a fire pit (where we were alone and cold) instead of going into the brewery.

It’s all very weird.

Bad symptoms and hospitalizations typically happen 4 weeks after symptoms. If you are at higher risk, i.e. older or some comorbidities, do not delay seeking treatment like monoclonal antibodies. There is a short window early in the infection where they can work. And even now the only monoclonals that work against omicron are in very, very short supply. The sooner you at least seek out or find available treatment options and discuss them with healthcare professionals the better. Good luck.

Thanks.

I wrote my doctor about it and he basically said “you’re in as good a position as you can be, we need to save the monoclonal antibodies that work on omnicron for someone who will definitely need them”.

I’m borderline high-risk based on BMI (how I got vaccinated early), but work out 5x a week and really don’t feel any major symptoms. If I was not vaccinated and boosted, immunocompromised, or had more significant symptoms I’d be a lot more concerned.

Coincidentally, I listened to Tim Ferris’ COVID discussion with Kevin Rose while driving Saturday[1]. I feel like I’m in a similar spot as he was, and his doctors were either saying do nothing and isolate, or do monoclonal antibodies and some other pill. He took the approach of the kitchen sink and seemingly a lot of his symptoms (night sweats) might have come from the treatment. We will never know the counterfactual had he not taken the treatment, but it’s interesting anec-data.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QGeEduRTPWg

My wife and I both had COVID while unvaccinated. I actually had it twice.

She started off like a cold with extremely mild symptoms, but eventually developed a fever which was cut short by monoclonal antibodies.

The first go-round for me I had a few days of being tired with poor taste, and then it it full force making me incredibly tired with a fever of 102 for 2 weeks. The second time was largely the same but with less of a lead up - the tiredness hit right away.

What specifically do you think is very weird? Everything you described seems normal and common.

I hope you recover soon.

Feeling almost completely asymptomatic with a positive test, wrecking multiple family holidays and trips (everyone I contacted now has to isolate), and sitting here not knowing if I should use the time I’m feeling OK to revise my will or if this is the extent of my symptoms and it will just go away in a few days.

And the CDC shifting guidelines down to 5 days, when I read multiple places that day 5 is where you hit a bad turning point or get better…

>Looking at CDC guidance, I’m somewhat confused. 5 days of isolation are fine, but if you look at timelines, respiratory issues seem to start around day 5. So I guess you’re either getting better or taking a turn on day 5. And I’m stuck at my in-laws a few hours from home, just isolating in a room. Everyone else took a test (we were lucky to find them) and tested negative, but we will see if symptoms develop in others in the coming days.

It's very strange that no one has yet pointed out that the new reduction to 5 days are for an asymptomatic case. You're clearly symptomatic.

Kind of. I feel like I normally feel when visiting my in-laws because they had a dog and I’m allergic to dogs. It’s hard to tell if these are COVID symptoms or allergies.

I forgot to mention the reason I tested was a known contact. Otherwise I would not have tested because this feels pretty normal for when I’m here.

It seems that the CDC's logic is that reducing the quarantine will encourage people 1) to get tested, since 5 days of quarantine isn't as bad as 10 days and 2) to actually quarantine if they are exposed or positive. But no one is going to wear a mask for those 5 days after quarantine. You're either contagious or you're not. If you and/or others believe you're contagious, you're going to isolate. If you don't believe it, you're not going to wear a mask. No one is going to go around saying "yeah, I might still have COVID so I thought I'll still hang out with you, but I'll just wear a mask". Yeah right.

And sadly, the CDC don't appear to be offering any advice or information about how long one is actually contagious, which is the information people really need to make safe and responsible decisons. Nor do they appear to be encouraging more rapid at home testing, which is really what needs to happen to start managing this virus. I spent the entire day today calling around for any kind of rapid tests anywhere in Ohio after someone from our Christmas Eve gathering fell sick. They're sold out everywhere. Was finally able to get some tests when a shipment came in to the county health department, but they were gone in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, I think Joe Biden is asleep. Why doesn't he issue an executive order and/or activate the Defense Production Act to get rapid tests to Americans now? He's had plenty of time to prepare.

See sentence 2.

> The change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after.

Yes, but they don't show any data.

> If you:

> Completed the primary series of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine over 6 months ago and are not boosted

> OR Completed the primary series of J&J over 2 months ago and are not boosted

> OR Are unvaccinated

So vaccinations received greater than 2-6 months prior are worthless in this context (still keeps you out of the hospital, doesn't reduce transmissibility).

This signals that the provided "immunity" is quite short-lived, moreso than any other vaccine I can recall. How unfortunate.

Yes, and with the continued prevalence of novel strains they fail to hit a moving target.

Flu vaccines have a similar immunity cliff. Some HIV vaccines in trials also had similar rates, where the vaccine would need to be given once to several times a year. Some viruses are adapted, or are able to mutate, to avoid immune responses relatively rapidly compared to other viruses.

Are people who say this unaware of annual flu vaccines?

To compare, we're still by some measures 103 years into the Spanish flu pandemic [1].

[1]: https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended

Pharma companies realized the money is in subscriptions. Like Adobe, why offer Photoshop for a one time sale when they can go the SaaS model and get the juicy recurring revenue.

Vaccine as a service…

It’s really interesting how this pandemic has got formerly cautious people all in on big pharma. You are of course correct that pharma, like all businesses, loves recurring revenue. Statins made billions and billions to just give one example. Meanwhile Gilead made a Hepatitis B cure and while it did well the first couple years, profits dropped like a rock because, well, it was a cure. Goldman Sachs even helpfully pointed out in a research note that cures are economically inferior.

> It’s really interesting how this pandemic has got formerly cautious people all in on big pharma.

I think you might be confusing support for vaccines as support for pharmaceutical companies, when that's actually far from the truth. To use your statin example, suggesting or even pressuring a sick loved one to take statins so they don't die a preventable death isn't implicit support for statin manufacturers, but recognition that in the face of preventable suffering or death, sometimes the pills are one of the least worst options available. Similarly, in the face of an ongoing pandemic, vaccines are one of the least worst options available compared to preventable illness and death.

> I think you might be confusing support for vaccines as support for pharmaceutical companies, when that's actually far from the truth.

I think the OP is still accurate, as people have been very defensive about questioning big pharma now and the media is calling everything “anti-vax” if even questions some details

Yes!

The end is nigh! (in a good way :))

That's not what it says at all.

Wow I didn't imagine the lack of flight attendants was going to hit the government this hard.

Remember when Joe Biden suggested these covid deaths under a president should mean that person shouldn't be president anymore? I wonder if he's gonna listen to his own advice.

I would love to see them provide references and links to studies they are using to make these decisions. As it is this just reads almost like propaganda or a very strong, "trust us, we're the CDC".

We're approaching a megadeath of Americans from COVID-19 and cannot continue on this disastrous path.

While I agree with both sentiments, I find the juxtaposition between the two interesting as it implies a relationship between them but they don't seem to be related at all.

Checkout Dr. campbell on Youtube. He is pretty good. I like how he goes over things and explains them.

I've watched him since the start and his quality of advice has strongly declined since the pro-Ivermectin/Joe Rogan crowd started filling his comments with nonsense. He was great in March 2020 when it was clear governments were too slow to react. Nowadays he seems resigned to fatalism that "we're all just going to get it, nothing can be done".

We are all going to get it. This isn't fatalism. It's just a statement of fact.

It's an endemic respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs, and there is no vaccine that provides sterilizing immunity. Elimination is a pipe dream.

There are plenty of other infectious diseases that aren't eradicated but that most people never get. Why that dichotomy for this one?

Because those diseases have been circulating amongst the human population for thousands of years (or longer), and there is a level of population immunity that keeps large outbreaks from occurring.

Also, you aren't even aware of most of the viruses you're infected with on a regular basis, because you aren't looking for them, and immunity you've built up over a lifetime reduces the severity of symptoms. For all you know, you've been infected asymptomatically / minimally symptomatically with any number of common respiratory viruses in the past year, and written it off completely.

The big difference for SARS-CoV2 was that the entire global population was immunologically naive in 2020 (maybe; there's evidence for some level of immunity due to common-cold coronaviruses). This is rapidly changing.

Vinay Prasad MD wrote a good explanation about why it will be impossible to avoid this virus.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

Kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. With the way case numbers are going, for everyone to strictly adhere to the old recommendations would necessitate pretty huge disruptions to essential services.

Megadeath? That’s a little extreme considering that the death rate has been tapering for some time. On the other hand, the administration and CDC have been running propaganda the entire year, so this is nothing new. Expecting truth out of either of them about this is a lost cause.

Current US deaths is 815k, and increasing steadilly. At this rate it will hit 1Mdeath by the end of April

Excess deaths are over 1m. See https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

There is no way to know if those deaths were because or with Covid-19.

Also correlation doesn't mean causation. Confinement caused a lot of hardships on people. Hell, fentanyl alone kills hundred of thousands each year, that's not even counting alcohol, other drugs, stress and solitude.

The hypocrisy is astounding. I don’t disagree with the numbers above, but at the same time you are absolutely right - yet downvoted and grayed out. Reminds me of Twitter and Reddit.

On Reddit / Twitter I would be shadow banned and downvoted by bots and bought accounts.

HN really is a sanctuary IMO.

You shifted the goal post, you claimed that it's nowhere near one MegaDeath (1 million deaths) despite it being fairly close, then you pivoted to "those aren't really covid deaths".

I remember when people said 240,000 American deaths were "a little extreme" when the IHME predicted it at the start of the pandemic.

Wake up--we are far closer to an actual megadeath of Americans than not.

Who needs a study? We have this!

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/airlines-request-to-reduce-c...

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