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Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of this depends on the typical severity of Omicron (and future variants).

I'm vaccinated and boosted. I wear a mask in public. I don't go out much. I do travel fairly regularly (fly maybe 1-2x per month). I finally got Covid last week, likely on a flight. I had ~3 days of mild cold-like symptoms (sore throat, runny nose, congestion, very low grade fever that approached 101F). It was far less severe than any flu I've ever had. I extended my trip by a week to meet how I read the CDC guidelines (which are clear as mud for mildy symptomatic cases).

If the severity for everyone was that mild, then I'd say we're done. However, I worry about the unvaccinated and the unboosted. I wish there was better data on the severity of Omicron for different categories of people.

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This is anecdotal, but I'm the only one in my family who is vaccinated (which took me catching swine flu years ago to convince me), but my elderly mom and younger brother and sister had omicron and all had the same symptoms while be unvaccinated.

I was in the house but didn't catch omicron due to the vaccine (I guess?).

Did you take a test? The person I'm staying with also tested positive, but she had no symptoms at all..

Yup, I took a test every other day until 5 days after. This was in GA where there is plenty of vaccine and tests to go around due to non-compliance (I guess?)

If Omicron is as mild as it initially appeared, we're back to normal by summer 2022. My wild assed guess is that if death rates don't spike by February it will be increasingly difficult for the government and health officials to justify a continuation of current recommendations.

I am triple vaxxed and will happily wear a mask for the rest of my life, but we are in the midst of a slow moving train of economic turmoil brought about by COVID and the resulting decisions(which I'm not arguing with. some were stupid but hindsight is 20/20). We will soon need to get the world back to as normal of a state as we can because we will need the economic benefits. We will need to get our kids back in school and socializing. I know many people are scarred and will not want to emerge from their caves but without compelling justification(such as a new variant which is actually dangerous) we will return to normal soon.

I personally worry about the availability of medical services due to attrition among medical staff and ICU load due to the unvaccinated. I also have taken precautions, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t get into a car crash or suffer a random medical incident requiring urgent care.

Yes, attrition of hospital staff is terrible. I was hospitalized last fall for a non-covid issue, and a volunteer came into the room who was a retired nurse. She told me that the current patient loads for nurses are about 2x what they were pre-covid. I checked on the nurses salaries (via job ads), and they honestly did not seem terrible competitive.

Exactly - Delta had a reputation for being both prolific and extremely virulent. Long COVID, loss of smell & taste, heart and lung problems, etc. A terrible illness.

Omicron seems to carry far fewer of those risks from what data we have, especially if you are vaccinated.

My hope is that we're approaching a similar point the Spanish Flu did after this amount of time: Spanish Flu eventually lost its lethality and became symptomatically indistinguishable from your run of the mill flu, and hopefully COVID will eventually do the same and be symptomatically indistinguishable from your run of the mill cold. Obviously we ain't there quite yet, but with Omicron being both wider-spreading and more mild, hopefully we'll get there soon.

Iirc the Spanish flue lasted 5 years so we still have some time to go.

Started February 1918, ended April 1920; after that point it was indistinguishable from seasonal flu in terms of lethality.

I think the increase in travel sufficiently "stirs the pot" to accelerate this one. Hopefully anyway.

Interesting. Here in the UK, Delta wasn't too much of a concern. I suspect because the public messaging was much more focused on getting everyone vaccinated.

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