Thanks a million cutworm,

Great raw data to show us a trend that suggests whats likely going on........and we can use CRITICAL THINKING to be AHEAD OF THE NARRATIVES that are still telling us what was happening in the past and are slow to update and giving us advice based on OLD information.

So here is the analysis:

1. There is an incredible surge of COVID right now that far exceeds any time in the past. It's mostly from the incredibly contagious Omicron. Everybody knows this.

2.  What's not being told is that the vaccinated are getting infected with Omicron at a higher and higher rate(it makes sense though)  This is a result of 3 things related to each other.

3. Omicron is incredibly contagious............being vaccinated has MUCH less protection from Omicron infection than previous strains. It still helps you to have a mild case! 

Addition: Omicron is likely the most contagious disease in human history. Even more contagious than the measles. More contagious than the official numbers show because of false negatives, people not reporting positives on home tests and many people infected that don't even know they have/had it.

4. The vaccinations were produced to  maximize an immune response to COVID strains BEFORE they mutated to the Omicron. The antibodies that we make from being vaccinated that our bodies use to attack a COVID invasion still help beat Omicron but they were a better match to attack Delta.

5. People that had their last vaccine shot more than 6 months ago are still considered vaccinated BUT THEY'VE LOST 50% OF THEIR PROTECTION(depending on how long its been). Getting boosted still helps but the writing is on the wall for most people right now. 

6.  The ratio of the REALLY sick. This is still much higher for those unvaccinated. This suggests being vaccinated still has some decent, but waning  protection against severe sickness and death. It's likely that those who recently got a booster, if they had that as a new category would have the best numbers of all. Getting vaccinated, as before still gives the most protection from severe sickness and death, even with Omicron. 

7. They need to administer an Omicron vaccine to maximize protection. Pfizer says that one is coming out in a month. However, by the time it comes out in a month.........IT WILL BE TOO LATE. Almost everybody will have had Omicron before they can get vaccinated for it!!..... and will have acquired natural immunity. It will take many months to produce millions of doses and distribute the Omicron vaccine...........long after we've already established our peak that's happening RIGHT NOW. 

8. I believe the tests for COVID are greatly failing to detect it in millions of cases.  Early on, when Omicron first hit, it resulted in false negatives for tests designed to detect Delta. So they changed the tests to detect Omicron...........but Omicron has something like 30 different mutations from the Delta and is mutating constantly. There are numerous people that I know, that have had exact Omicron symptoms that don't match up to the flu or cold(there is an overlap in symptoms) that test negative for COVID. People getting false negatives could be many millions. They are all simply assuming the test is accurate and they have something else..........and go on with their life.............spreading Omicron with the same strain that can't be detected to other people. Only when they get REALLY sick then go to the hospital, for instance and have a reason to retest........ is it discovered......which is in a small fraction of people. The rest think that the test(s) were right and they must have had something else...and become spreaders of COVID.

9. In addition to #8, potentially millions of people taking the home(antigen) test and getting positives are not reporting the results. This number can never be accurately known. No telling what these unreported positives are doing with behavior. 

Addition: The symptoms of Omicron are so mild in some people that they don't even know that they have/had it. These people can likely spread it and they also likely have natural immunity after getting it.

10. So almost everybody  has already had  or is going to get Omicron within a month or so. There is no time to do a dang thing about it. Getting vaccinated can still help to prevent more severe disease in a small fraction of those that do that right now but otherwise...........the COVID script is already written and will play out no matter what we/they do the next couple of months!

11. The good news is that Omicron is much less deadly by 91% vs Delta and enough people will get Omicron so that we get a form of natural herd immunity quickly. After this happens, cases  will PLUNGE quickly after the spike higher ends.........which could come at any time in the next month or so.  There is always a lag of a couple weeks for hospitalizations and longer than that with  deaths but by the end of Spring, those should also be at record lows for the pandemic. At that point, we could be in a place to consider the pandemic over? 

12. Mandated vaccinations no longer make as much sense  with the current dynamic described above. Enforced mandates A YEAR AGO, saved or would have saved many lives from Delta. They make less sense with Omicron and if everybody already obtains natural immunity from getting Omicron......they make no sense. 

13. This is based on information on January 23, 2022. In 4 months, a new strain or change in the dynamic is possible so we can't rule that out.

14. Getting vaccinated is still a SMART idea, especially if not vaccinated in the last 6 months and not had COVID in that time frame. When the Omicron vaccines come out in a month or so, we will have to weigh whether we had Omicron or not in considering taking that vaccine. I can guess that this could be like the flu.........where it DOES make sense to get vaccinated again each year or sooner but NOT right after you just had the flu/COVID. So maybe early next Fall, ahead of the next COVID season we push hard for renewed vaccinations? Again, things can change quickly between then and now and I'm considering getting vaccinated BEFORE early fall but just got a booster 2 months ago, so am in great shape.

14. The government  is finally passing out the masks that actually work.......N95. After telling us for almost 2 years to NOT use them and that the cloth masks work to protect you(despite stats in the real world showing that people wearing cloth masks getting COVID at the same rate or even higher than people living in areas without cloth mask requirements-before vaccinations skewed that stat). Wear an N95 mask if you are wearing a mask! It filters out 95% of Omicron, Delta, flu, bacteria and other pathogens.

15. Anybody that has been to this site the past 2 years, knows  that I've been the strongest COVID vaccine advocate on the planet, including very strong support for mandates the entire time. Omicron has greatly changed the dynamics of COVID/vaccines. Good scientists adjust their positions when the science changes. My adjusted position is clearly stated above.

16. Finally, cutworms data from this last week...........is just 1 weeks worth of data. We need to see several weeks of this trend to confirm it(from this source). Regardless of confirmed or not from this data source, the reasoning above remains solid based on information outside of this data source looking at the BIG/OVERALL picture.

 COVID 1-23-22 Headed to a peak, then herd immunity and huge drop                        

                Started by metmike - Jan. 1, 2022, 4:26 p.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/79750/

 Why N95, KN95 masks are so much more effective than cloth            

                            Started by metmike - Jan. 10, 2022, 9:44 p.m.         

   https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/80194/

                Ivermectin/COVID treatments                      

                           Started by metmike - Jan. 22, 2022, 3:09 a.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/80692/

                Omicron =91% reduction in risk of death vs Delta            

                            Started by metmike - Jan. 12, 2022, 6:41 p.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/80273/

  90,000 US COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented             

                          Started by metmike - Jan. 9, 2022, 4:23 p.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/80126/

Two stealth omicron COVID variant BA.2 cases reported in Washington state

It's unclear if the new omicron COVID subvariant is more or less transmissible and lethal than the original

https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-state-reports-two-cases-of-omicron-subvariant-ba-2

metmike: This is what I've been saying for a week!

I know of tons of people getting this mysterious illness that does not fit with just the flu or just a cold and matches up perfectly with Omicron...........that test negative for COVID......including my wife and I.

If people knew that there's a new variant widely circulating that we can't even test them for accurately, some might panic.

Things are constantly evolving, so don't hold me to any predictions for where we might be several months from now.

Most monoclonal antibodies not working            

                       Started by metmike - Jan. 25, 2022, 1:44 p.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/80801/

Updated data From St E

Now 63% of inpatients vaccinated. Approximately the same as vaccinated in general population.

ICU total numbers look to be going down, thankfully, but the vaccinated % seem to be going up but not yet = general population vaccinated remember that a person could be in ICU for weeks. This number is probably lagging.

Ventilator numbers are down, thankfully, but the % unvaccinated is still high. This number is probably lagging due to the length of time a person can be on a ventilator.

Thanks VERY much cutworm.

Great data again!

What this suggests to me is a confirmation even more of some of the things listed previously and you agree with much of it.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/80737/#80738

Getting vaccinated is not helping as much for Omicron in PREVENTING COVID. It still appears to be helping to prevent severe disease, though there is a lag as you suggested. Even so, we don't know how many on ventilators have Delta and how many Omicron.

It's extremely likely to still be helping vaccinated people to live after getting Omicron but the question is........how great are those great benefits? (how much have they diminished vs Delta-which was almost 10 times more deadly for those that got it compared to Omicron)

Also, vaccinated means 2 shots still. If those 2 shots were almost a year ago, with no booster........you are actually more like unvaccinated but go down as vaccinated.

After as little as 4 months, the peak protection from being vaccinated begins to wane.

https://www.stelizabeth.com/images/default-source/covid-19/ste-covid-hospitalizations_1920x1080.jpg

This was a study I linked for Wayne 2 days ago, because he was wondering why vaccines weren't stopping COVID. But this was for Delta.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/81076/#81154

By the time we have widespread Omicron data, we might have a new variant. And we are getting close to the time frame where some people will be getting their 4th shot..............possibly including me in several months. 

This is going to make interpreting data measuring the effectiveness of vaccinations much less clear than it was when we had mostly the deadly Delta variant and only  people fresh from getting their  1 or 2 shots to compare with people that had 0 shots.

In the future, we will have an extreme range.......up to 4 shots and time frames greater than a year (for some people) since the first shots. And potentially different weaker variants that also cause the potential difference between vaccinated and not vaccinated to to be less.

What do you think cutworm? Others?

Getting vaccinated likely saved at least many hundreds of thousands of lives in 2021.

So if getting vaccinated is down to saving....let's say  just 50,000-100,000 lives, how should policies be adjusted?

Again, there are some very small risks but the benefits are greater by an extremely wide margin. 

What if COVID becomes similar to the flu?

Even though Omicron may be closer to the flu than to Delta, there's been no flu nearly as contagious as Omicron......the most contagious disease in human history.

Even a small number can become a big number if you multiply it by a big enough number.