Tell that to all the children born with birth defects you fucking moron.
Before I do that please just remind me...what is the acceptable opinion on COVID to be allowed to post in this prestigious thread?
Quite common around here
They aren't truckers. They are rightwing anti-vaxxer, anti-government radicals using the truckers and the mandates as a cover for their actions.
Trends are clearly looking really good- if the data from "Our World in Data" is accurate, the US is down to 65k hospitalized from a peak of 150k a month ago.
Hopefully this goes down to the level pre-Delta back last July when it was down to 12k.
The more delayed deaths is still pretty close to the Delta peak as it declines.
Can't really declare this is over until it's far more predictable- as these surges mean we have no real clue what the future brings. But it's also interesting how impatient people are- since we are still having numbers in the Delta range and we are lifting masking and whatnot. Hope that works out
Good for our plans- if the trends follow 12 months ago, our travel plans for May will be very safe.
BTW, what in the world are the truckers protesting about? The only real national mandate is masking in airports and on flights. That's it. There are very few states that have more restrictions to prevent any significant movement of people. Talk about people who want to get into cancel culture- since they are literally protesting nothing. Any vaccine requirements are from individual companies- who should be allowed to do what they think is safe for them and their company.
Calling people impatient after two years...hysterical.
Right but you can't predict COVID. It's not seasonal and unless it devolves into something a lot less contagious, it never will be.
Predictability lies solely in genetic monitoring which will never be good enough or fast enough to head anything off.
Calling people impatient after two years...hysterical.
Well, it's seasonal in that it follows seasonal behavior. As people go inside (due to heat or cold), it goes up.
Here in MA, we're about where we were early-ish in the Delta wave from last August in terms of cases and hospitalizations and positivity rate. The only difference is the trending direction at the moment.
BA.2 is showing to be a big more infectious than BA.1, but it seems to be so similar structurally that BA.1 infection is still providing substantial immunity to it, so that's good. It isn't getting its own name, which is another telltale sign that while it's something for the nerds to track, most of us don't need to worry about it further.
The variant-led waves would be totally separate from seasonality anyway. I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong overall, but that's not a great way to measure it.
I've read a bunch lately about the seasonality and the consensus seems to be ... lacking. about coronaviruses in general. Which is why I'd argue that seasonal-led behavior is a big driver.