Update on virus in real time and opinion
It is good news and bad news. We should hit an all time high with Covid cases tomorrow or the next day, and I would not be surprised if we passed 400,000 or 500,000 cases for one day on December 30 or so. In terms of cases, that would be the worst ever. In terms of severity, it is nothing. Only two unvaxxed out of a 100 or so Covids I saw were sick, and they had co-morbidities and were unvaxxed. Most of the people with Covid were unvaxxed, but a lot were not.
Now comes the political part. The NFL had so many players testing + and who were without symptoms, they took the amazing step of saying if you have no symptoms and are vaccinated, you do not need to be tested and can play.
In the mean time, Fauci went bonkers about testing at Christmas and Biden ordered 500 million tests. Thousands and thousands of flights were cancelled due to airlines having staffing issues due to Covid and I have to wonder how many of those people were Covid + but not sick. The quarantine period for health care workers was cut but not for other workers, and I am not sure I get the logic with that.
So the easy prediction is the quarantine period will shorten. That to me is a 100% deal. Businesses will be screaming if that is not the case. We should see 7 day quarantine and even shorter if asymptomatic. Without that, the worker shortage will be a huge problem.
What I care about though is the testing for Covid prior to coming back to the USA. It never made sense to test for air travelers and not those traveling by land, but that discrepancy is going to be multiplied even more with omicron. Given how weak this strain is and how contagious it is, you have less justification than ever to do testing. A smarter screening would be testing for fever, but Omicron is so ubiquitous the notion that you have a plane Covid free at this point just boggles the mind. I think all flights will have someone with Covid on them. So why screen international and not domestic especially when countries like Colombia have so much less Covid (for now anyway)? It makes no sense.
Prediction: the Biden people will not do a thing about stopping testing even as dumb as it is. Between this and making expedited passports a huge pain in the ass, the Biden administration does not want people travelling and will continue to hassle them. The testing requirement never made sense, and it makes even less sense now.
If you have been keeping up, I just wanted to confirm what was in the news. Yes, Omicron is crazy contagious but its potency is close to nothing. I used to be able to look at someone and say they had Covid. Not now. Most do not look sick at all.
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