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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Is Not Ready for Omicron
IMO The Atlantic is one of the best sources of journalism left.
America Is Not Ready for Omicron
The new variant poses a far graver threat at the collective level than the individual onethe kind of test that the U.S. has repeatedly failed.
By Ed Yong
Updated at 12:00 p.m. on December 16, 2021
America was not prepared for COVID-19 when it arrived. It was not prepared for last winters surge. It was not prepared for Deltas arrival in the summer or its current winter assault. More than 1,000 Americans are still dying of COVID every day, and more have died this year than last. Hospitalizations are rising in 42 states. The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which entered the pandemic as arguably the best-prepared hospital in the country, recently went from 70 COVID patients to 110 in four days, leaving its staff grasping for resolve, the virologist John Lowe told me. And now comes Omicron.
Will the new and rapidly spreading variant overwhelm the U.S. health-care system? The question is moot because the system is already overwhelmed, in a way that is affecting all patients, COVID or otherwise. The level of care that weve come to expect in our hospitals no longer exists, Lowe said.
The real unknown is what an Omicron cross will do when it follows a Delta hook. Given what scientists have learned in the three weeks since Omicrons discovery, some of the absolute worst-case scenarios that were possible when we saw its genome are off the table, but so are some of the most hopeful scenarios, Dylan Morris, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, told me. In any case, America is not prepared for Omicron. The variants threat is far greater at the societal level than at the personal one, and policy makers have already cut themselves off from the tools needed to protect the populations they serve. Like the variants that preceded it, Omicron requires individuals to think and act for the collective goodwhich is to say, it poses a heightened version of the same challenge that the U.S. has failed for two straight years, in bipartisan fashion.
The coronavirus is a microscopic ball studded with specially shaped spikes that it uses to recognize and infect our cells. Antibodies can thwart such infections by glomming onto the spikes, like gum messing up a key. But Omicron has a crucial advantage: 30-plus mutations that change the shape of its spike and disable many antibodies that would have stuck to other variants. One early study suggests that antibodies in vaccinated people are about 40 times worse at neutralizing Omicron than the original virus, and the experts I talked with expect that, as more data arrive, that number will stay in the same range. The implications of that decline are still uncertain, but three simple principles should likely hold.
article at : https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/america-omicron-variant-surge-booster/621027/
whathehell
(29,100 posts)Certainly not China, its apparent point of origin.. China even arrested the.first physician -- who later died of Covid -- for reporting it. Just a thought.
mikeysnot
(4,757 posts)The trump misadmin failed miserably to lead
ignored the President Obama pandemic handbook and ignored all intelligence reports in 2019
PufPuf23
(8,845 posts)Blame for the sorry situation we are in is obviously not "bi-partisan".
The fact that the pandemic has been weaponized into a political issue is unfortunate. The GOP is far more to blame here too.
NH Ethylene
(30,820 posts)littlemissmartypants
(22,841 posts)Is this some kind of sports analogy?
"an Omicron cross will do when it follows a Delta hook"
TIA
❤
LisaL
(44,980 posts)NT
littlemissmartypants
(22,841 posts)vanlassie
(5,693 posts)two weeks. Its good news bad news. It will create lots of antibody protection, but, a percentage will be very ill or die, and institutions cant handle the load. Yep- were 2-3 weeks behind them. And .Christmas.
LisaL
(44,980 posts)Everybody getting infected at once is a nightmare.
Delphinus
(11,845 posts)ties in so well with this one:
[link:https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=16145591|