Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser, clarified his comments made Tuesday — that the Omicron variant will “ultimately find just about everybody” — during a COVID-19 response press briefing on Wednesday.
As long as it gets the morons…
Social Darwinism may take out the Social Darwinists.
Fauci pointed out there there is an “extraordinary effect and dichotomy” between vaccinated and boosted people who get infected with the Omicron and their protection against hospitalization and death.
He shouldn’t have to reiterate this, at this point of the pandemic, but I’m glad he is because some fairly prominent people are falsely equating vaccinations with total immunity from Covid infection.
Well, look, I’ve been doing some research on my own, and it appears that the vaccine will not make anyone immortal, so I’m not at all sure why anyone thinks the vaccine makes sense.
I mean, even if COVID-19 doesn’t get us… WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!
By the way, on a related point, I haven’t seen Fauci’s financial disclosures, but you know who does have stock in various vaccine producing companies? MTG, and I’d be willing to bet many other congressional Republicans. Morons, heal thyselves.
Seems like only a week or two ago I was argueing with folks that said the numbers would go back down again just like in South Africa, because South Africa is just like the US and folks behave the same way here as they do there.
I think the bigger problem has been prominent people who should know better forgetting that vaccines work and acting like we’re back in April 2020.
The vaccines were never designed to generate total immunity. They were designed to slash hospitalizations at a significant clip. Which they have done expertly. The number of asymptomatic and mild infections among the vaxxed and boosted is a testament to them doing exactly what they’re supposed to. But you’d never know it from headlines.
The hidden reality behind Dr. Fauci’s comments is that just like the Flu, you’re still more likely to have a bad result with Omicron if you’re in an older age group. Even if you’re vaccinated, “getting sick” means something different for a 20 year old than someone pushing into their 70’s with other conditions that compromise health.
My wife and I are in our very late 60’s, both a bit heavier than we ideally should be, and my wife has asthma. We’re triple vaxxed, but the fact that we’re probably going to get infected with Omicron isn’t making me feel any better about the next few years.
We really need an off-ramp here, otherwise November is going to be ugly.
The first thing that needs to be said is that a vaccine that does not necessarily prevent you from getting an illness but does greatly reduce the likelihood of you from getting really sick or dying from the illness, I hope we can all agree is still a really good and important vaccine.
But my question to Dr. Fauci is, will the virus continue to evolve?
That is COVID-19 has already evolved to a point that it is beating the vaccine as far as getting the COVID-19. Will it evolve so that the vaccine will no longer stop serious illness and death?
Or to put another way, what must we do to stop the God damned thing from evolving?
And so if Omicron will always be with us, must we get boosters perpetually every so often for it and its inevitable arising variants?
I guess someone finally took us at our word about thinning the herd. 
What’s needed is a vaccine that’s “further up the evolutionary chain” of the virus so it covers all possible variants, and doesn’t just target each specific variety’s method of attaching to cells. That’s what the current vaccines do. There are organizations working on this, like the US Army for one, but I haven’t heard of anything going into trials yet.
We’re more likely to see an Omicron-specific vaccine in the very near future, like maybe 4-5 months from now? Pfizer has announced it has one, and is already going into production ahead of approval.
Seems to be a distinct possibility. Like the yearly flu shot now.
I’ll just keep taking the shot couple times a year. Along with the flu shot its three shots a year.
FWIW, some data from my neck of the woods:
My college has a branch campus that’s attached to the high school in Rose Hill, an ex-urb town southeast of Wichita. This morning, a staffer from the HS happened to mention that 113 students–a full 25% of the student body–are at home today due either to COVID or having been in close contact with someone with COVID.
That’s actually down from yesterday’s number of 120.
This is a pretty-conservative community, even by Kansas standards, so I have no idea what vaccination rates are here; mask-wearing is optional in the schools in this town, and the vast majority of students (and, alas, their faculty) appear to opt out.
Meanwhile, state and local officials are saying we probably won’t see a peak infection rate till around the end of this month.
I’m in my early 70s and feel the same. Age is a significant comorbidity.
Two years ago, I wouldn’t have guessed that Covid would up our average IQ, but things are looking up.
Go into an Australia or New Zealand style total lockdown, then impose real Canada style virus border control. You enter this country, you go into 14 day quarantine at gunpoint, no exceptions. Those countries can do it, why can’t we?