Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Unvaccinated Being Slammed by Omicron

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by

Steve Haner
in

VDH data breaking down the last year’s diagnosed cases by vaccination status. Note the recent radical change in the ratios. Click for larger view.

by Steve Haner

In just four weeks ending January 8, more than 12% of unvaccinated Virginians have been diagnosed with COVID-19. In the most recent week reported, the unvaccinated were almost 60 times more likely to come down with the disease than those current on their shots. This is new.

This Omicron version is clearly a different animal. Breakthrough cases among the vaccinated are also jumping, but in four weeks just over one-half of one percent of that group was diagnosed with the disease, 624 cases per 100,000 people. Compare that to 12,368 cases per 100,000 among the unvaccinated.

This all comes from the data posted today at the Virginia Department of Health’s dashboard, the tab for data by vaccination status. You can see on the chart reproduced at the top how the case count among the unvaccinated exploded in those weeks. The slope since the arrival of Omicron is undeniable.

I’d seen the data for the week ending January 1 (226 vaccinated versus 4,468 unvaccinated) but wanted to see a second week before writing. The January 8 weekly count published today was 89 versus 5,222. There is every reason to believe that pattern will hold through the Omicron wave.

In the same four weeks, only 9 vaccinated persons per 100,000 ended up in the hospital, compared to 223 per 100,000 among the unvaccinated. It is too soon to speak about deaths, but so far they are not spiking. Again, Omicron is proving less severe for people in all categories than earlier versions, overall, but as they say, “individual results may vary.”

As some of you may have gleaned from comments on earlier stories, I am now coming down off one of those breakthrough cases. I think I know which restaurant in San Antonio brought me the virus with my Guy Fieri-endorsed pancakes, as I could see the place was packed and the staff totally mask-less. I fully credit my three Pfizer shots for making this nothing but a typical (yet very real) cold. Only a positive test at my doc’s office convinced me it was COVID.

With my age and history it could have been serious, shots notwithstanding, and my physician really wanted me to get a course of the new Pfizer antiviral pills. He’s seen remarkable results with others, basically a 24-hour end of symptoms. But the pills are not available through retail pharmacies in the region, perhaps due to demand and perhaps due to intentional rationing for whatever purposes.

Bottom line, folks: get the shots. Unless you just want to believe the government is outright lying, the data is overpowering now: your chances of getting sick, and if sick of facing a severe case, drop to almost nothing. If the lottery had these odds, we’d all be buying tickets.

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47 responses to “Unvaccinated Being Slammed by Omicron”

  1. dick dyas Avatar
    dick dyas

    There needs to be another article on the failure to manufacture and distribute the antiviral pills. They, like Tamiflu, should be in ever medicine cabinet. What is with that?

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      Apparently it is a slow process, and they must not have started building a real supply until they got the EUA. Plus of course the idea of a more transmissible variant never occurred to Sleepy Joe, still keeping his promise to end this situation outright.

      Preparing to live with COVID is not their game. Pretending we can defeat it remains the Big Lie.

      We were overall pretty careful in Texas about avoiding crowded spaces, but I do love that Magnolia Pancake Haus…Based on the timing, that’s the best bet.

    2. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      Apparently it is a slow process, and they must not have started building a real supply until they got the EUA. Plus of course the idea of a more transmissible variant never occurred to Sleepy Joe, still keeping his promise to end this situation outright.

      Preparing to live with COVID is not their game. Pretending we can defeat it remains the Big Lie.

      We were overall pretty careful in Texas about avoiding crowded spaces, but I do love that Magnolia Pancake Haus…Based on the timing, that’s the best bet.

      1. Cranky Avatar
        Cranky

        Steve,
        I think you mean “is NOW the game.”

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          To clarify: “Preparing to live with COVID is not THEIR game…” That’s my point, they don’t want to accept yet that government and a beaten-into-c0mpliance population is not the answer.

          Actually a pretty sloppy post that got up before I wrote a headline. Perhaps a bit of brain fog….

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Whereas preparing to die with Covid is the GOP plan. Even Trump can’t get your party leaders to fess up.

            Brain fog?? Can you smell coconut?

      2. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        One other thing to note, many of these “Plan B Covid pills” are unsuitable for persons with comorbid conditions.

        The primary reason we have to “live” with Covid is because we have to live with the anti-vaxxers.

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    there seems to be a theme emerging… Under the prior occupant of the WH, you give credit for what you did and ignore his failures. In this administration, it’s the other way around. 😉

    And so much for the yahoos who have relentlessly posted here in BR that they’re _not_ vaccines and they _don’t_ work and they got that on good authority from “smart people” who reject the CDC and most mainstream science.

    Sleepy Joe has tried his damnest to get as many folks vaccinated and for his efforts, he’s condemned for that and he didn’t see the variant coming so he “failed’ to get enough testing in place (consider the prior occupant attitude towards testing.

    Oh and NOW, that several breakthrough treatments and pills have been discovered under his watch, it’s his fault he didn’t ramp it up as quickly as needed.

    The Yammer-birds blather unrequited.

  3. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    America turning Blue… literally. And given party affiliated vaccine rates, maybe figuratively too.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      The least vaccinated demographic group remains something other than Europeans, Asians or Hispanics. Again, unless you think VDH is lying.

      https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/see-the-numbers/covid-19-in-virginia/covid-19-vaccine-summary/covid-19-vaccine-demographics/

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        It’s a game of percentages. 50% of 15% is way less than 45% of 40%. It’s way more ideological than racial.

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          Oh, I agree, ideological all around. Absent a real medical issue, no rational reason to refuse. Given the widespread notion (false, but widespread) that the disease is more deadly for those of African descent, the numbers make even less sense. The political education COVID has provided has exceeded the medical education….

  4. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I did not realize that you had contracted COVID. I am happy that your bout was not more serious than it was.

    Good, common-sense post.

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    What kind of symptoms did/do you have? I went to the barbershop today – yes many of have the shots, wear the masks, but still take chances… and she said I did not have to wear the mask but I decided to wear. The guy before me wore one and I suspect she and thus her customers are at higher risk. Someone at the local Church Pantry tested positive, many others in the area.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      My first sign was a low fever, which was 100.3 when I checked after feeling warm. By the next day — when I could schedule a test — routine cold symptoms began to appear, first focused on the throat. Fever lasted only 48 hours.

      No question the masks help, some. Nothing, nothing is 100% except hiding inside your house, which I refuse to do (well, I am now for a few more days.) As I said, during the Texas trip we tried to stay out of crowded indoor spaces but broke the pattern with a couple of popular restaurants (and a Shiner brewery tour!). It wasn’t the flight home itself, unless the fever appeared in just 24 hours after exposure. This O-version is just as easy to spread as any other cold/flu.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        Thanks for the info. Did you go through any doors/entrances/check-points where they took your temperature? Everytime I visit various medical facilities, – they all have a temperature kiosk you have to check-in.

        So the crying baby in the airport was not the source? 😉

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          He still may have been, but if so it hit fast. No temp checks anywhere in the eleven days of the trip. No requests to see any vax cards. In Texas, even the store owners cannot mandate masks for their employees or customers. 🙂 Yee hah.

          Spent all day last Saturday (48 hours pre symptoms) with my son and family, and they remain free of any signs. My wife was everywhere I was, and around me all this week (some efforts at distance), and remains free of any symptoms. ‘Tis a crap shoot.

  6. energyNOW_Fan Avatar
    energyNOW_Fan

    Haner is SuperMan now…watch out!

  7. Blue Machine Avatar
    Blue Machine

    I don’t think that VDOH or anybody for that matter is actually testing sufficiently to provide hard data that Omicron is responsible for the surge in cases among unvaccinated persons. That’s inferred, but it’s still an assumption. Personally, my wife and I, with backgrounds in bio research and epidemiological statistics, are uncomfortable making that jump.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      Luckily for both you idiots this is now just a cold…..

  8. RebelYell Avatar
    RebelYell

    I think things might be a little more complicated than you suggest.

    Stepping back it’s worth making four high level points.

    1. The conclusions here contradict almost all the recent data from much of the rest of the world, including recent very large studies from Denmark and the UK amongst others which suggest that the vaccinated are now becoming infected at higher rates than the unvaccinated.

    2. You have not considered any of the confounding factors, which are absolutely key to interpreting these types of statistics. I will go into more detail below.

    3. The statistics you are discussing, even if you made adjustments for confounding factors, are not really valid for judging the vaccine or any other medical treatement in any case. One should not focus only on whether or not a treatment reduces cases, or even hospitalizations or deaths for the condition it is intended to treat. It is necessary to look at whether the treatment results in a better outcome period. This was very clearly established decades ago when many cancer treatements were initially described as successful because they did indeed cure the cancer, but the problem was that they also killed the patient – just not from cancer. Therefore the only way to evaluate a medical treatment is to compare all outcomes for patients receiving the treatment against all outcomes for those that do not receive the treatment. In other words we need to rigorously follow up and measure all injuries, hospitalizations and deaths for both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups and compare them instead of just examining covid case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths. The vaccine companies, ably assisted by our governments, appear to be studiously avoiding tracking this data. The best analysis I have yet seen of all cause mortality is this one from Professor Fenton in the UK: https://www.researchgate.net/public…mparisons_between_vaccinated_and_unvaccinated
    (further discussion and interview video here https://thinkingslow1.wordpress.com/statistics/)
    which concludes that the fatality rate from all causes is slightly higher amongst the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.

    Following up on my promise to provide more info on the confounding data, we need to consider three factors in particular:

    (i) The vaccines’ effectiveness wanes after a few months. This will not be fully captured in the data from VDH yet.

    (ii) Testing protocols. There are two parts to this:

    (a) The unvaccinated are in general required to take far more tests than the vaccinated. In many cases, they must test every week and this has increased with schools continuing to require unvaccinated students to test weekly while relaxing the requirement for vaccinated students starting in the fall, and then increased dramatically in the last few weeks as many larger employers implemented similar requirements in anticipation of Biden’s vaccine mandate and prior to the Supreme Court ruling. This inevitably results in more positive results (both true and especially false positives) and therefore higher case counts for the unvaccinated as opposed to the vaccinated. The recent change in behavior of large employers also also explains the spike in the ratio in the last few weeks which is not seen in other countries who did not implement, or attempt to implement, a mandate at the same time we did. I can give you a very specific example of how this problem manifests from my ow esperience. My daughter returned to university last fall and at the beginning of the semester a huge number of kids came down with mild flu-like symptoms. The handful who had some kind of exemption all had to test every week and came back with positive tests and were therefore recorded as covid cases. The vaccinated kids just lay in their beds in their dorm rooms for a few days – identically as sick as the unvaccinated kids (i.e. not very) – but with no recorded covid case.

    (b) Once the vaccines were deployed, the CDC issued guidance recommending that lower cycle thresholds were used for PCR tests for vaccinated people than for the unvaccinated. e.g. see here: https://sentinelksmo.org/cdc-maximum-28-ct-for-post-vaccine-covid-pcr-tests/. This obviously distorts any comparison.

    It’s also worth noting that the VA web-site shows that the the relative rate falls from 4.4 for cases to 4.2 for hospitalizations and 4.0 for deaths. This would imply that vaccinated who do become infected are slightly more likely to be hospitalized, and slightly more likely still to die from an infection than the unvaccinated. The alternative explanation, per points (a) and (b) above that testing protocols are causing significant relative over-counting, at slightly different levels, of all of cases, hospitalizations and deaths amongst the unvaccinated is much more likely.

    (iii) Uncertainty over the size of the unvaccinated population. VDH does not share its methodology on the web-site, but is is almost certainly estimating the unvaccinated population (that’s what most places seem to do) by subtracting the number of vaccinated from the total population. The problem is that the total population itself is just an estimate, and when the ~90% of adults are purportedly vaccinated, even a small underestimate of the total population is enough to dramatically affect the rate calculation for the unvaccinated. For example an increase of even 5% in the total population (say 350,000 people that the government is not aware of) would halve the rates of infection for the unvaccinated. This has been a problem elsewhere, and a number of governments have been caught using population numbers which are mathematically impossible in
    order to exaggerate the case rate amongst the unvaccinated. Obviously I cannot be certain that Virginia has done this, but it seems more likely than that the virus is behaving radically differently in Virginia than everywhere else in the world.

    Finally it is worth pointing out that there are many scientists speaking out and expressing concerns about potential longer term dangers of this vaccine including the potential for OAS, ADE, auto-immune deficiency, and neuro-degenerative (prion-like) diseases. As far as I am aware none of these risks are proven, but nor are they disproven. It is perfectly reasonable for anyone to take a look at their own risk of a serious outcome from covid (which is minuscule for a large proportion of the population) and conclude that the game is not worth the candle.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      From the beginning it was clear age and pre-existing conditions enhanced risk, and those were the folks who flocked first to get the shots, and are most likely to stay current. You think that might explain some of the things you cite? I just think the data is clear that being unvaccinated means you are near certain to get the Omicron bug, which was not the case with previous waves. Which of course is why viruses mutate — to enhance their success.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        MWH dashboard Jan 15. It seems to contradict some of what RebelYell is saying. Note the stats for the fully vaccinated/boosted:

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5066cf27945dfb994b07d68f56db727a5dbbcee19434d51a2b4e3bc332ce122d.jpg

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          Remember there are about five times as many fully vaccinated as there are totally unvaccinated. That’s why I look at the per 100K comparison.

          And that still includes people who went in for other things and had no idea they’d test positive. They could be in cardiac ICU after all. I was on a ventilator there post surgery once.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            so if there are 5 times more vaccinated than unvaccinated – when you look at that dashboard – the vaccinated number should be adjusted to 1/5 to show a more precise apples to apples or have I got that wrong?

        2. RebelYell Avatar
          RebelYell

          It does indeed appear to contradict some of what I am saying. However it is worth reiterating that this contradicts the data from almost everywhere else in the world.

          There are of course multiple possible explanations for this, one of which is that I am just wrong :-).

          Another possible explanation however, is that here in the US hospitals do not have accurate information about who is vaccinated and who is not. This is obviously speculation on my part with respect to this specific hospital, but I do know from a personal friend that this is the case in the hospital where she works in North Carolina. She has observed that the vaccination status reported for patients corresponds only to what is in the hopsital’s own records. and therefore if the patient had not been vaccinated by that hospital, or a doctor/vaccination station associated with the hospital, (I didn’t inquire about this in detail, but got the impression that most local records were available to the hospital) then they were recorded as unvaccinated. In my friend’s view, and in some cases her direct knowledge, at least some of these patients were actually vaccinated.

          In general the UK data is much better than the US data because the national health service, while in general delivering appalling healthcare, does result in the more uniform and accurate bureaucratic record keeping.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            good records on life expectancy also, looks like their healthcare might be better if they live longer than us?

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb4395f8210c8a9f58beb7eb02095c3c8bc0332eb15d190bbe1fdc3f1866ffe7.jpg

            so ALL US hospitals are keeping wrong stats on Covid?

          2. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            I don’t know what ALL hospitals are doing, but it does appear that Virginia hospitals are relying on a state database (VIIS). You can see the data source described here: https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/see-the-numbers/about-the-data/

            The relevant text is as follows:

            “Vaccine administered data: Healthcare providers who are a part of the COVID-19 Vaccination Program are required to enter data into VIIS daily. Vaccines administered are reported to VIIS, which requires First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, Vaccine Administered, and Date of Administration for each vaccine dose administered. Providing additional demographic information to distinguish people from each other such as Middle Name, Sex, Address,
            Phone, Race, and Ethnicity is encouraged.”

            This sounds similar to the system my friend described in North Carolina, and it seems like it could potentially undercount vaccinated patients.

            For example – you can see on the FAQ page that they provide information about how doctors can start to use the system and/or switch over from a different system: https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/immunization/viis/faq/ – so perhaps not all doctors are using it yet. And presumably it wouldn’t catch anyone who got vaccinated outside the state.

            Obviously this is not proof of anything – but it is a possible explanation of why the data in Virginia may be different from elsewhere in the world.

          3. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            PS I haven’t compared life expectancies. I have lived in a number of different countries including both the US and the UK
            and both countries’ healthcare systems are truly appalling for different reasons.

            FWIW – of the ones I have experienced, Singapore’s was the best by a country mile.

          4. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            UK often dinged but satisfaction levels in UK are very high. They like their national health care and the stats for life expectancy are not as good as the top countries but better than the US.

            The stats on the virus that were provided are not consistent with other stats there and the world – the unvaccinated by far have the higher infection and hospitalization rates.

          5. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            Did you read the paper, and watch the video I attached above? The unvaccinated now appear to have lower infection rates, similar hospitalization rates, higher ICU rates, and similar fatality rates to the vaccinated across 60+ countries who issue sufficient data to draw a clear conclusion.

          6. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            I did, but it’s not a credible report and it is in disagreement with virtually all US and other world hospitals.

            The simple fact is that it’s the unvaccinated that are overwhelming the hospitals.

            Give me a credible link that supports your claim. Give me more than one – show me that this is actually true and not just some misinformation propagated by sites with sketchy reputations.

            https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-britain/fact-check-vaccinated-people-in-britain-are-not-dying-at-a-higher-rate-than-the-unvaccinated-idUSL1N2RP28I

          7. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            So far I’ve provided links to peer-reviewed, published studies and videos/articles which review UK government data. You, on the other hand, have provided none. In addition you claim my source is “sketchy” but have made no attempt to address the arguments or dispute any of the data.

            I’m not going to attach studies from 60+ countries, but here are a couple for you:

            1. Denmark https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1.full.pdf

            “increased transmission for vaccinated individuals”

            2. Article on the data from Canada by https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/covid-infections-and-deaths-soar

            “Infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from Covid all soar in the days and weeks after people receive their first vaccine dose”.

            Raw data here: https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes

            3. I’ve already provided info on the UK. All the raw data which supports the conclusions is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveillance-reports

            The same is true in 60+ other countries – but no I’m not going to provide links to all of them for you. If you are truly interested, you can find them easily enough yourself (and if you find any data from outside the US which supports your position I would certainly be interested in reviewing it).

            Against that, Virginia is the first set of data I have seen which supports the opposite position. I have provided some possible reasons why that might be the case, but agreed that I might be incorrect.

            You on the other hand
            (a) have totally ignored my most important argument about the necessity to focus on all outcomes rather than just covid itself.
            (b) continue to assert a proveable falsehood – that all data from world hospitals supports your position when it clearly does not.

          8. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            stike one:

            Discussion and ConclusionOur results show that the Omicron VOC is generally 2.7-3.7 times more infectious thanthe Delta VOC among vaccinated individuals (Table 3). This observation is in line withdata from (18), which estimated that 19% of Omicron VOC primary cases in householdsin the UK resulted in at least one other infection within the household, compared to only8.3% of those associated with the Delta VOC.

            Furthermore, we show that fully vaccinatedand booster-vaccinated individuals are generally less susceptible to infection compared to unvaccinated individuals (Table 2). We also show that booster-vaccinated individuals generally had a reduced transmissibility (OR: 0.72, CI: 0.56-0.92), and that unvaccinated12 . CC-BY 4.0 International licenseIt is made available under a perpetuity. is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in(which was not certified by peer review)preprint The copyright holder for thisthis version posted December 27, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278doi: medRxiv preprint

          9. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            Your link doesn’t work.

            Also worth noting that from the description in your message “medRxiv preprint” (i.e. not peer reviewed), I think you would have to put it in the category of “sketchy”. Just tweaking your tail a little there :-).

            I’m happy to take a look at it, if you provide a working link.

            And I concede that recently boosted people do indeed fare better than the unvaccinated, although the effectiveness of boosters wanes just as quickly as the initial doses, but not that that implies that getting boosted is a good idea.

          10. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            not my link, embedded in the report and excerpt that clearly indicates the reverse of what you are claiming.

            you’re citing studies here. Are you looking at actually data collected ?

            The data is the opposite of your claims, no?
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/309871c9aac2cc40ccedf920d137d3c500805c0d03503df3c88bd7da4f02be6b.jpg

          11. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            Did you read the paper, and watch the video I attached above? The unvaccinated now appear to have lower infection rates, similar hospitalization rates, higher ICU rates, and similar fatality rates to the vaccinated across 60+ countries who issue sufficient data to draw a clear conclusion.

          12. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            PS I haven’t compared life expectancies. I have lived in a number of different countries including both the US and the UK
            and both countries’ healthcare systems are truly appalling for different reasons.

            FWIW – of the ones I have experienced, Singapore’s was the best by a country mile.

      2. RebelYell Avatar
        RebelYell

        The demographic effect is indeed a confounding factor which may push in the opposite direction to the effects I note.

        However
        (a) my most important point was the necessity to judge a medical treatment’s effectiveness by looking at all outcomes, not just its effectiveness in reducing one specific condition. I point you again at Professor Fenton’s work in this regard which shows that age-adjusted, all-cause mortality (which obviously includes deaths resulting from vaccine side effects) is slightly higher amongst the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. In other words the vaccine appears to be killing more people than it saves.

        (b) I do not believe that the effect you point to is especially strong for three reasons

        (i) Most importantly, we have a lot of data from elsewhere in the world and it all shows the same thing. Rather than quote all the data and links here, I will just point to this video:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBhqYWpOKAk

        and this tweet https://twitter.com/ThinkingSlow1/status/1481610210871545860?t=IYDOzpHF2FRxpA76Wv57xA&s=09

        2. I do not believe that age and co-morbidity affects the chance of infection (and therefore case numbers) to a great degree; rather it affects the severity of the disease. I must admit that I have not independently investigated this specific question, so it is possible my understanding is incorrect.

        3. The vaccination rate has reached 90% of adults over 18. Therefore almost everyone has now had the vaccination and while any such effect might have been significant early in 2021, it will now have mostly faded from the data and should continue to do so over time.

  9. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/006a906e2402ee72287002dec691de3a76e265708d89b137618e68096be6d3ff.jpg

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      Yeah, same headline appeared in Times of London following the Black Death…”Sun Will Rise Tomorrow” is as easy to predict. The viruses and bacteria ain’t going away. Learn to live with it. The next one probably will actually really be deadly (this thing is a pussycat compared to pox, Ebola.)

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        see that phrase “learn to live with it” has a whole lot of “how” to it that varies all over the map depending on who you are…. from hoax/common cold to who-knows-what!

        I watched the inauguration yesterday and saw the list of EOs and EDs that Youngkin has signed including the one about masks in schools and I do wonder what effect that order will have in terms of school bus drivers and others who are concerned about the lack of masks. Will we see even more of them quit/refuse to work? Will we see even more parents keep their kids out of school?

        1. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          No. I expect most school systems will continue exactly what they did last week.

        2. Stephen Haner Avatar
          Stephen Haner

          No. I expect most school systems will continue exactly what they did last week.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            even if infections go up?

            Youngkins EO is counter to the science and caters to the politics, no?

          2. Stephen Haner Avatar
            Stephen Haner

            Face it, Larry, the game is up. America is moving on.

          3. RebelYell Avatar
            RebelYell

            There are over twenty randomized controlled trials studying the effect of masks on the spread of respiratory viruses over the last two or three decades. They all show the same thing – cloth masks make no measurable difference.

            It’s also worth noting that the UK recently reviewed data from a number of secondary schools in the UK, some of which require masks and some of which do not. Obviously this falls short of a truly randomized controlled trial, but nevertheless, by its nature, is more likely to provide sound conclusions than many observational studies – and is probably the best data we have on this subject. The UK found that mask usage produced only a small reduction in cases which was not large enough to be statistcially significant. See article:
            https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/masks-in-schools-how-convincing-is-the-government-s-evidence-

            and full report here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044767/Evidence_summary_-_face_coverings.pdf

            It is also clear that children are at almost zero risk of serious consequences from covid, and that mask usage significantly interferes with education.

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