New Variant, New Fear
Be prepared for small holiday gatherings
The pandemic caused by the Delta variant is continuing its devastating course. A higher vaccination coverage plus more restraint during summer and autumn would have prevented the worse. But this is a moot point now.
The Omicron variant could bring a huge setback, not only because it seems to be more proliferative but mostly because current vaccines might provide less protection. The good news: this new variant is not meeting an immunologically naïve population like the first variants did in early 2020 and thus there will certainly be no repeat of 2020.
Some countries are ramping up their vaccination effort. Notably Germany, which is currently one of the worst-hit countries in the world. Germany is again trying to negotiate with the virus by having a lockdown "light" before the holidays instead of a real one, which would have killed the Christmas economy. But it would have saved what I estimate to be 5000 deaths between now and late January.
An interesting tidbit: Spain and Washington State have both similar incidences (around 18 per 100K) but Spain's death rate is half of that of Washington (0.063 vs 0.128 per 100K). The possible reason: Spain has fully vaccinated over 80% of its population, while in Washington it is just over 60%. Another factor: Spain's vaccination coverage is uniform while Washington sees a steep gradient between 72% full vaccination in the affluent Northwest, especially around Seattle, and as little as 35% in some of the poorer South and East. These poorly vaccinated counties are presumably responsible for most of the current ICU cases.
| Daily Incidence | Daily ICU | Daily Deaths | Daily Pos. Rate | Average Excess Death | Death Projection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 35.4 → | 4.0 ↗︎ | 0.489 ↗︎ | 09.3 % ↑ | 15.7 % | → |
| WA State | 18.4 ↘︎ | 1.9 ↘︎ | 0.128 ↘︎ | 10.6 % | ↗︎ | |
| Britain | 65.8 ↗︎ | 1.4 → | 0.176 ↘︎ | 04.5 % ↘︎ | 13.4 % | ↗︎ |
| France | 58.2 ↑ | 2.3 ↗︎ | 0.132 ↑ | 06.2 % ↑ | 12.5 % | ↗︎ |
| Germany | 68.5 ↗︎ | 5.4 ↑ | 0.373 ↑ | 21.3 % ↑ | 07.0 % | ↗︎↘︎ |
| Tunisia | 01.3 ↗︎ | 0.4 ↘︎ | 0.034 ↘︎ | 04.0 % → | 19.8 % | ↘︎ |
It has been said that in Western democracies, an individual's body is sacrosanct and thus one cannot force-vaccinate. Instead, a plethora of gently nudging measures were invented to entice the unwilling. But they were not much effective.
Then, in Germany and Austria, came the fines and the exclusions from public life for the unvaccinated. This might persuade some but it comes at a very high price. And it remains to be seen if these measures will have the desired effect, which, for Delta, seems to start at 80% full vaccination rate but might need to get as high as 95%, especially with Omicron and the new variants.
Can we repeat this effort for the current boosters, and then the Omicron vaccines, and then the Omicron booster vaccines? In most likelihood, we need to vaccinate for years to come. How long can we exclude the unvaccinated from public life? Will we throw them in prisons if they cannot pay the fines?
I am very doubtful that "nice" will work. We night have to become nasty.