How many people are currently infected with COVID-19? As near as I can tell, the official answer is about 4 million or so. If you double that to account for both asymptomatic cases and mild cases that never get reported, it's 8 million. Then add some more just because, and it seems like 10 million is probably close to the mark. That's 3% of the US population.
I don't have an axe to grind here. Honest. I'm just confused. If, say, 3% of your teachers or your flight attendants or your truck drivers are out sick, that's... not a big deal. I imagine that something like 3-5% of US workers are routinely out sick, especially during winter.
Obviously the percentage of COVID cases is higher in places like New York City, that have seen a big spike. And hospitals are a whole different story. Generally speaking, though, it seems like 3% is a plausible number and that doesn't track at all with reports on the ground about massive chaos due to the virus.
What am I getting wrong here? Am I overreacting to a few isolated news reports in specific places and specific industries? Is most of the country humming along fairly normally? I can't figure out what's really going on here.
one person with positive test often means the people who were in contact with that person are also asked to quarantine. One pilot who tested positive could ground the entire flight crew of recent flight
Exactly right aschankel.
If for every one person sick, you have ten people quarantine (easy enough),
One sick, five exposed to that person directly, and a couple more exposed to the five.
I mean, the economy really feels it if 10% of the workforce is out, and keep in mind, in a pandemic, its not as if you can replace the 10% out with a temp or whatever.
We should change our quarantine rules, so if vaccinated, you quarantine only if symptomatic. Otherwise, a short spike where much more of the workforce is sick than usual just something we have to deal with, and will correct itself in a few weeks.
That’s how it is at my kids’ schools. The parents get notified if the kid was exposed but it’s up to them if they want to quarantine if they’re symptom free. Otherwise half the school would be quarantined.
This: if you have to quarantine for 2 weeks if you've been in the same space as someone who has tested positive, one sick person at school can have half your teachers out for 2 weeks. And then all the students staying home means parents end up needing to take time off to watch them.
Since we did remote schooling last year, why can't we do mixed-format this year? No kids with symptoms or positive test physically go to class. No teachers with symptoms or positive test go to class. But class still happens, physically for most and virtually for some. A screen can even be put in class for teachers who are not actually sick just quarantined, so can still be in front of class teaching (or audio-only, you make do).
Obviously, any teacher who is actually sick and unable to virtually teach can be replaced with a sub, and then worst-case scenario you can cancel some classes, but that's what lesson plans are for.
We haven’t been remote since May of 2020 when that school year ended.
Your point being? Schools should have been prepared for mixed-mode coming into this school year, nothing about this current situation is all the new or unique (and instead very predictable).
There are no subs. Heard third hand about one teacher supervising 400 kids in a auditorium study hall half the day.
lol, well then some places are just going to have a slow January
You might be able to swing that in high school, but no way it works in elementary school.
One wonders if you realize just how difficult this would be to implement.
I can think of a few possible explanations:
1. The case undercount is greater than you guesstimate: 3x or 4x rather that 2x.
2. The case numbers are skewing more towards prime working-age persons with this wave. That would suggest that, using your numbers, the percent of the employed who are out could be greater than 3%.
3. In this past couple generations, the workforce has been “right-sized” to such an extent that there is no longer enough slack in the system to handle even 3% out at the same time. In the context of school: class sizes too large, not enough teachers, substitute teachers, crossing guards, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, etc.
I don’t know if any of these things are actually happening, but they are examples of reasons that 3% is still too many people out sick.
The other possibility is that:
1) His count is correct, but he severely underestimates the impact. 10,000,000 out sick is about 1/3 of the cases in a typical flu season, which is October to May.
2) He's not accounting for the fact that these are disproportionately in customer facing jobs: teachers, airline crews, medical personnel.
3) He's not, as others have pointed out the knock-on effects of people who are close contacts of an infected person.
My vote is for #1, #2 and #3.
THe occupations you mention are generally more exposed to the public so it could reasonably be assumed they'd have a higher incidence of infection. Whereas people like me -- and, probably, you -- work at home and don't have a lot of contact with the pubic, so our incidence in lower.
So if you assume, say, a 5% COVID infection rate among flight attendants, plus the normal employee absentee rate, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs at 2.8%, you're looking at a fairly disruptive call-it-7% absentee rate. Plug that into something like the airline industry, which is rigidly scheduled and hardware intensive, and the problem of having the right crews and the right planes in the right places at the right times gets really complicated.
Also, public-facing jobs are those where services are produced and consumed at the same time - there’s no stockpile. So the impact is immediate, and in plain sight, if you are one of the public waiting on line.
Airlines definitely a tough one, considering associated hassles with getting to the airport, other related reservations, and so on. People should probably change their travel plans, which usually aren't huge after the holidays anyway (once people get home from holidays).
You are likely correct that 3-5% out sick would not be a big deal... *IF* they were evenly distributed across the population. But that isn't how COVID works. That 3-5% is clumped into clusters and local surges.
And then, as aschankel points out, you have the knock-on effect of everyone who was in contact with the sick person having to stay home as well until they can get tested.
I think the problem is that if 3-5% of your workforce is out sick with Covid at a time when you were struggling to hire enough people and cover shifts to begin with, that can be a problem. There's simply no slack in the system. So we need to think about the infection rate/absenteeism *on top of* the ongoing labor shortage in a lot of industries.
The normal "out sick" rate is probably a bit less than usual, but the covid "out sick and out quarantined" rate adds to this. Which probably puts more strain on the system.
We're getting decent at knowing how to cope with all of this, so it seems less like news. I have a regular Weds night boardgaming session which spent a year online and went back to in person when everyone got vaxxed.
However, one of them had a daughter who just tested positive, so he's staying away for a couple weeks. This is not the "exciting" kind of thing of two years ago, just the mundane reality of what we have to do to keep this thing from getting really out of hand.
As a few other people have implied the cases are not evenly distributed nor is the impact thereof. As someone who works from home for a large corporation and who has had my booster, my productivity would not be significantly affected by covid nor am I likely to be exposed to it. If somehow I caught it at the grocery store or something it would likely be mild and I likely would not even take an official sick day. If I did there are plenty of other people who could cover for me on the few things that could not be deferred. For those in more direct people facing roles, at smaller companies and/or who have not been vaxed, the impact would be much higher.
If only we could get that 3% who are normally sick on any given day to quarantine themselves and stay home, maybe we'd have an average of 0.5% sick on any given day.
But no, that's not how people treat colds and the flu. They go to work.
That's what separates the 3% who would normally be sick from the 3% who have COVID-19 and thus are quarantined and unavailable to work.
Others make good points, it is likely much more than 3-5% out at any given time....but is it normal to even have 5% of people out with sudden, unplanned illness all the time?
Memories can be faulty and anecdotal....but that sure doesn't seem to happen regularly in my office. I think it would be really difficult if my team of roughly 50 was always short an additional 2 to 3 people unexpectedly.
I resigned a few months ago, so I have no idea how this phase of covid is going in the workplace.
I see others have beaten me to most of what I was going to say. But it's worth emphasizing that it's the combination of all the factors that causes so much hassle.
The COVID numbers don't replace but are added to the (probably slightly reduced) usual number of other illnesses, since people are still twisting ankles and needing appendectomies.
The positive cases are disproportionately among those with public-facing positions. At this point they're probably concentrated in the working-age population too, though I'm just guessing.
And for some industries -- travel above all -- we have to factor in the same situations around the world. If the flight crew in Lagos or the maintenance crew in Helsinki can't work, your flight from Newark to Dallas is canceled.
And not all the absences are owing to illness. When the middle school teacher tests positive and the school switches to remote instruction for a week, several hundred parents have to scramble, likely missing work. And whatever the real story behind the "Great Resignation," some kinds of jobs are seriously understaffed even without call-outs.
Add to it that we've spent decades building an economy with no room for error, all in the name of efficiency. I don't think it's the case that "If, say, 3% of your teachers or your flight attendants or your truck drivers are out sick, that's... not a big deal" -- in a lot of places that's a real problem. Even one person calling out sick for a few days in 2019 would cause some understaffed offices to screech to a halt. Treble the number of people out in the COVID era, add in all the other concerns, and the disruptions aren't surprising.
The covid rules are changing, but an example from a while ago now...
A nephew tested positive, so 10 days in isolation. His roommate didn't, so 20 days in quarantine.
Also, in places, e.g. those with reported new daily cases at .2+% of the population, it's probably closer to 10% of the people having active cases (including asymptomatic). After two to three weeks, close to 20% of the population would have been infected, then the lack of vulnerable people will start to slow infection rates.
We are not doing random population sampling for testing, so positivity rates do not apply to the overall population. (Alaska is only state below 10% positivity at 9,8%; median value, 22%).
And why are we not doing random sample testing of the population to actually have an idea of the true number of infections? And why have we not done that all through the pandemic ? Or maybe we have and they just do not want public to know the results ?
This has frustrated me from the start. And the necessary sample size to get a decently good estimate is not that high- a drop in the bucket re expense and use of testing capacity.
We tried that. My neighbor was in just that kind of random sampling early in the pandemic. Then about a week later the people who had to knock on doors to get volunteers started having guns pulled on them. That was the end of that.
At least we learned something from that exercise, forward these findings to the Census folks.
tomsayingthings cites the BLS absentee figure as 2.8%. Assuming colds, flu and Covid are mostly orthogonal, then most of the 3% or so with symptomatic Covid would be additional to the normal, so 5 - 6% absentees, nearly double the ‘usual’ rate. And other commenters have noted the reasons why case rates are higher in certain jurisdictions and occupations.
On average, people with PTO took 5.2 days off per year; without PTO, 3 days (so 1.5 to 2%?):
https://www.reference.com/business-finance/national-average-sick-days-taken
In 2020, the number of sick days taken doubled:
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/workers-took-four-sick-days-in-2020/
Methinks the reason we pay attention to 3% Covid and not 3% other causes of sickness, is because we decided to.
Why we decided to, is probably part newness, part politics, part hope Covid can be beaten (if a fading one) which we don't have for other causes of sick leave, and part absence of wars and such stuff to occupy the media with.
There's also the matter than 3+3=6 and 6>3.
UCSF has been testing everyone admitted to the hospital for causes other than covid. Just before Christmas, they were getting 7.7%, which suggests that your 3-5% figure could be low. Add that to all the other comments here, and there could be some serious personnel shortages in a lot of industries.
I’m in NY and man are a lot of people getting it. Testing is very good here, pretty easy on LI were I am. My wife tested positive yesterday. Fully boosted 2 months ago. Was feeling pretty crappy. I get tested tomorrow. Just been feeling like a slight cold and a tad more tired then just feeling tired.
If was suffering "typical" omicron symptoms yesterday (NPR story this morning, light to moderate cough, sore throat, runny nose -- but those are typical of a lot of respiratory infections), bad enough so that in the middle of the night I decided I should get a test today. First I went to the drive through testing center at the local hospital and got there about 11:50AM. Unfortunately they decided that they were going to close a noon and so they kicked everyone who was not very close to getting checked in out of line.
I had to drive to the clinic in another town and then waited in line for 2.5 hours before I finally got tested. Lots of people around here are getting sick and want a test. You can't get any home tests at CVS or Price-Rite, so everyone goes to the drive through's. All in all I sat on my ass for four fucking hours today before I got a stick rammed up my nose. Fun time!
No one would ever be able to convince me to do that, instead I'd just go over to Whole Foods and grab the usual stuff for respiratory disease season (chicken soup, Vitamin C packs, medicinal mushroom extract, and actually at Whole Foods they usually have Maitake and Oyster fresh mushrooms with which you can make a great broth with whole onions (including the skin), garlic (also with skin on), carrots, miso, etc.)).
A few other points .
1) kevin is first estimating the percentage currently infected as about 3 % by doubling official numbers and then adding another 50% for a 2.5 factor.
Way too low imo and seems most agree . With omicron less virulent and fewer symptoms, and lack of testing, plus school testing on hold right now due to break, we are picking up a much smaller % age of cases . 2.5 times was a good estimate 2 months ago . Not now.
2) but kevin is then just assuming that the infected % age is the same as the % age out sick. Huh? Those that are asymptomatic or very mild symptoms and never get tested, will still be going to work as they do not know they are infected.
3) the above two errors may largely cancel out and maybe 3% is a fair estimate of those actually out because they are sick with covid .
4) but that would be avg across usa . In the worst hit places like ny, higher. In professions with a lot of contact with possible infectious people, higher . If in a job where they routinely test and therefore do find almost all of the asymptomatic cases and they stay home, higher ( I think airlines do this , don't they ? ) . And then you add in all those not infected but staying home as exposed..
For airlines, ALL of the above factors apply. Airline staff tend to be based more in places which are having bigger outbreaks. They are exposed more to possible infected, well maybe not pilots. Etc. So add in all those factors, and that 3% can really balloon up.
5) and kevin is wrong that 3-5% are normally " out sick ". That is more like total absecentee , including vacations, etc. Out sick is around 2% I think .
6) the just enough staff issue applies more to large industries than small. And those operating on tight profit margins..Because a small company has to consider random chance causing a high % age of staff out at one time, a pandemic level is within the range of normal . A large company has smaller random fluctuations and so any baseline change is outside of normal range . If now 10% are out and your company is size 10, that is one person, which can always be possible.
7) and , if an industry can cope with a short term absence by delaying work a bit and make it up later, maybe by putting off things like maintenence, they can cope . Airlines cannot do that , or I hope not.
Jesus Kevin are you that population density adverse?
rural Wyoming has almost zero cases I'd bet
But anywhere the density is larger? Anyone working facing the public?
And you would lose that bet.
Rural Wyoming now has plenty of cases along with all of the rockie mountain and great plains area. Their numbers just seem low as compared to the huge numbers we are seeing in places like ny now . At other times, Wyoming case numbers would look high and scary . Still not at prior peak for infections but their numbers are only on the start of a wave while signs that ny , etc . Might be close to a peak. Wyoming will get there soon enough just a little later .
What I have been saying is that delta natural immunity from a delta infection looks pretty good against omicron even for preventing infection, significantly better than vaccinated and booster immunity. But only for a short time - maybe 3 months or a bit more..and then it seems to fall off a cliff at least on a full population basis.
Places that had gone thorough their delta wave peak and were a month or so past it with a lot of recent delta natural immunity ( like the rockies) did not have the start of the huge omicron wave at beginning of month . But Florida, whose delta wave ended earlier and where most of that natural immunity was 3+ months old at start of December, was hit quite quick . States where omicron hit before the delta wave had peaked ( and thus did not get to max delta natural immunity ) were hit first too. And see same pattern across nations where German cases look to be accelerating again soon.
Looks to me that omicron is able to simply beat vaccine antibodies a good amount of the time - enough to spread there to a significant though reduced extent, which is why there are decent numbers of those boosted in last 3 months getting infected.
With delta natural immunity antibodies, seems omicron has a harder time beating them , which makes sense given where mutations were . But those antibodies wane fast in many and that population herd immunity disappears after 3 months. All omicron needs to do is wait it out three months after the end of the delta wave and then it has you. So superiority of natural antibodies is in the end not that useful as does not last.
Once either delta natural or vaccine immunity is at long term without current antibodies, omicron infects easy enough but still good protection from severe sickness.
Omicron natural immunity on top of vaccine or delta natural should be expected to be much stronger. How much we do not know yet.
I got boosted 10/25. So my omicron infection is scheduled for some day soon.
May I ask — honest question, not a challenge — if you have sources on “natural” delta immunity waning after a few months? — and maybe some (necessarily preliminary) data on whether omicron immunity might be longer lasting?
I was double-Pfizered in the spring, and had the rotten luck to get a breakthrough case in August, presumably with delta. (It was thoroughly unpleasant but not at all clinically serious.)
I got boosted in early December, but tonight I’m trying to line up a test for tomorrow since I’m dealing with congestion and a teensy-weensy fever. I’d normally ignore that sort of thing, but I fear I may be looking at breakthrough case number two. Sigh.
Feel free to ignore it, unless you're symptoms worsen.
As Dr. Paul Offit puts it best, a "breakthrough" should mean actual disease, not asymptomatic or mild symptomatic. The vaccines are primarily designed to prevent serious disease and death, not infection, so the standard for a breakthrough should be the same, regardless of what the current media obsession is (and honestly scientists and doctors themselves have contributed to this obsession about infections and antibodies).
Also, just because you test positive doesn't mean even any mild symptoms you may have are from that, especially in the middle of the seasonal respiratory disease season (when we expect a certain number of colds and minor flu cases).
And have been rethinking yesterday's post re the lack of testing and the administration responsibility for making a poor decision and not preparing for much more testing months ago when many of the " experts scientific advisors " were pushing for it and the idea was rejected as " wasteful " , which was the reason given for not doing it.
Yesterday , I was going to post my thoughts there, which were that it was a mistake by the biden administration, yes . But really not a clear inarguable one based on the facts at the time . Only became a clear bad error in retrospect and I hate the idea of judging decisions that way i.e. in hindsight.
So I was at a place where the administration made a mistake but not an outrageous one. A judgement call within the range of reasonable argument given facts at the time, even if I still think it was wrong on that basis. So only mild criticism is warranted .
But I held off as I started rethinking. And am leaning toward the possibility that the decision to not prepare for mass testing was the right decision, and even in hindsight given all we know now.
The argument is not that mass testing is too expensive and wasteful, but that the result itself is worse.
Consider if we did have mass testing and found 100% of infections..and all of those stayed home from work . And those exposed to those confirmed infections. What if then 20% are out sick at one time, and more in some crucial industries. What would happen. Maybe social disruptions or even collapse
And would mass testing and identifying of cases really have changed the course of this wave enough, with omicon this contagious and able to spread before a test can even find an infection? Would surely have flattened the curve somewhat which should reduce covid deaths a bit, but enough to be worth the cost of such massive social disruption ?
Maybe right now , the old tired trumpian idea that testing causes cases so better not to test is true . Because we cannot afford to have the asymptomatic infected who can work stay home , even if they are somewhat infectious.
And probably easier and better ( definitely politically) to just never test the asymptomatic and never know they are infected, than test them and have to ask them to work even when infected.
Not sure I really agree but a real good argument can be made ..and does sort of sound like " wasteful " was an excuse reason and not the real reason..
Because we cannot afford to have the asymptomatic infected who can work stay home , even if they are somewhat infectious.
I don't know how that works. We're just back from a family get-together over New Year's. 18 total, all vaxed, no symptoms until 1 person near end of our stay. Turns out she was with other family on Christmas and they later tested positive. In the last two days, 6 of the 18 have gotten sick.
1. Omicron is VERY contagious, and many of the asymptomatic are spreading the disease.
2. If you want to pretend the asymptomatic are OK to be at work and at school, you are making the pandemic worse.
Where we go from here is hard to say, but I think there's a good shot we're headed for more closures of schools and workplaces because too many teachers, students, workers are testing positive and getting sick.
Your reaction, which seems mostly emotional and not actually logically considering what I said, is exactly why , if the administration did make the decision to not prepare for mass testing on this basis , they could not publicly say so and would need to make up an excuse reason . Because, if that was the truth , as Jack Nicholson says you can't handle the truth .
I am still sceptical of whether this does make sense - would not a lot more info and modeling ability to see. But it clearly is conceivable that it is and it might have been the real reason.
And your response simply misses the point of the argument.
Consider your two facts stated .
1) omicron ( for this talking about omicron not any old covid ) is very very contagious. And that plays a role in WHY this might have been the right decision in two respects.
First , it might be so damn contagious that the mass testing identifying asymptomatic cases just might not have been able to change the trajectory of the wave enough to make a big difference. Of course it would still flatten the curve to some extent but less than with a less contagious virus.
And what many seem to miss is that , with omicron now , preventing an infection in that manner does NOT mean one less infection in the end. This wave cannot end until enough people get infected with omicron and get omicron natural immunity that we reach a population herd immunity level. And vaccination and boosters and prior variant natural immunity changes that very little, because the rate of transmission for omicron is little reduced by that at least once a few months old .
So total number of infections in the omicron wave is going to end up around the same number whatever you do . Masking, social distancing, vaccination, not changing it that much. The fact that vaccine and natural immunity still prevents sickness pretty good means nothing in lowering number of infections.
In fact, preventing one infection today just means that likely someone else will be infected to be able to get to the same herd immunity level. And, if you prevent an infection in someone who is young and healthy and vaccinated, might INCREASE expected covid deaths.
However, by changing the shape of the curve, flattening it, you do lower total wave infections some , because that reduces the amount the tail overshoots herd immunity, I think. Maybe a net reduction of .2 infections? And lowering the peak is very useful in preventing deaths if the peak overwhelms health care and increases ifr.
But second point if super contagious meaning more cases at one time means that the COST of that testing identifying asymptomatic so they miss work is much more significant. If talking about flattening a delta peak where maybe 2% are infected at one time , identifying asymptomatic might increase %age out of work from 1% to 2%, which economy can handle. If today it increases it from 5% to 10%, that is way more than 5 times worse a problem as do not have enough slack to adjust for that.
2) yes, absolutely this makes the pandemic " worse " in terms of number of covid deaths, by slightly increasing the number of total infections and raising the ifr at the peak through health system strain. That is accepted in what I said .
But the point is that the cost of avoiding that , by testing, in having asymptomatic stay home, might be higher than the benefit in reducing the pandemic. If the benefit is limited and the cost high as in real major social disruption, you have to consider that.
There is 0 chance in hell I would have made the decision Biden did so no. Not a hindsight thing.
And yes it is worth it because then people can make more informed decisions about risk. If you blunt the wave enough to avoid the level of societal disruption we have now to a manageable level that is the better outcome (Think of it as system runs at 85% for 10 weeks rather than 50% for 5.) because it reduces overall collateral damage.
You are also consigning the old and young to luck and since my son is too young you vaccinated you can fuck right off.
Just directly say what you want to communicate and save us the meta and history of your thought progression, I don't want to be mean but no one cares.
"And have been rethinking yesterday's post re the lack of testing and the administration responsibility for making a poor decision and not preparing for much more testing months ago when many of the " experts scientific advisors " were pushing for it and the idea was rejected as " wasteful " , which was the reason given for not doing it.
Yesterday , I was going to post my thoughts there, which were that it was a mistake by the biden administration, yes . But really not a clear inarguable one based on the facts at the time . Only became a clear bad error in retrospect and I hate the idea of judging decisions that way i.e. in hindsight."
I mention this because I largely skip over your posts now, because they are routinely too lengthy and meandering (not because there isn't some good insight somewhere in there).
Even in the best of times, the rule of thumb for an airline dispatcher is that the day starts a few planes and a dozen or so crews shy of an airline. Even a slight increase in absenteeism means the ordinary scramble turns serious. Airlines routinely schedule flights that they expect to cancel. (Joe Brancatelli, an industry expert, says that hub->minor city->hub flights are the first to go.) If you've ever looked at the scheduling constraints with crews and planes winding up in the wrong location and in need of rest and repair, it's a wonder the system works as well as it does.
And my end conclusion is that , unless I can really conclude that this shortage of testing did not, in the end, turn out to be a good thing, I cannot criticize the administration for it. Because possible they really knew what they were doing.
One thing I have not understood is why asymptomatic infected hospital workers should stay home.
Why are they not asked to come in and work in the covid wing, so the unifected hospital workers do not have to do so and risk infection.
Why are they not a valuable resource to be used ?
Love the concise post, and I agree!
Just got an email telling us to start planning for no school buses. They are hitting critical shortages of drivers.
Weirdly, school is humming along better than it was in late November/early December. I think the vaccination rate is pretty high for the kids now, which may be helping keep both kids and teachers in school.
So I was looking into CDC flu plans back oh, mid 2000s and then realized the top level severity of their flu pandemic was 2%, because societal disruptions begin to escalate so dramatically after 2% it does not matter to count because everything is so fubar.
Or maybe move on and stop the testing. We are reaching the point where Omicron will decline. Stop trying to drive the fear train.
It's not even clear whether Ron DeSantis has COVID -- how are we supposed to know how many of 300 million people have COVID if we can't even get a straight answer about one of them -- ?
Yup.
A national healthcare system would END the confusion about numbers.
This is where I have a problem with home testing - especially with THIS VARIANT. You could test this morning and be negative
Test this evening and be positive and then quarantine for 5 days or so. NO ONE IN THE GOVERNMENT KNOWS ABOUT THIS CASE until the person gets tested somewhere else.
But this is the game plan. Don't test don't report and then question everything using nonsensical 70 year old theories, using terms like I think, I suspect, or I know better and the couch this in glowing terms and long articles and blog posts.
The word salad has gone bad..........
Stick with the experts - even they will disagree from time to time. Edison believed in direct current electrification and was later upstage by Faraday and Westinghouse. He admitted later in his life he had been wrong.
THATs science for you
People who are asymptomatic can still spread the disease
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2022/01/omicron-variant-what-does-asymptomatic-mean-can-asymptomatic-people-transmit-covid.html
{snip}
According to the CDC, anyone with an omicron infection of COVID can spread the virus to others, even if they don’t have symptoms or are vaccinated.
This is in line with what the WHO said about COVID originally in 2020: People who are asymptomatic can still transmit the virus even if they do not have symptoms.
{snip}
THAT's why asymptomatic front line workers shouldn't work
Suppose you are a nurse and you KNOW you tested positive and your hospital system knows you tested positive and you INFECT someone else who god forbid gets a serious case and/or dies. In today's litigious happy society that could be even MORE costly to hospitals.
One thing that has bothered me about the numbers is that twice now we have adjusted the Omicron numbers down meaning Delta is surging at least as much as Omicron. This means Delta has been around in the U.S. since June and is still going strong.
If Omicron dies out in two weeks will it have been here long enough to eliminate delta? This is NOT over - even though we are all pandemic exhausted at this point. I voluntarily wear a mask (most times 2) and I still social distance. I avoid going to stores unless its early morning BEFORE the crowds show up.
But I talked to may daughter in MASS just awhile ago. It is out of control up there. Nursing homes are showing signs of outbreaks which is not a good thing.
Our school committee here in New Hanover County re-imposed a mask policy in schools. There was dissent but not much given our numbers are horrendous. They should have gone online at least for a month.
Norwegian cruise lines has pulled 8 ships back out of service due to COVID. countries that are normally ports of call are REFUSING these ships entry
ANYONE who is not vaccinated for reasons OTHER than health reasons should be interned in camps like the Japanese were in WWII. I no longer have sympathy for any of them. In fact I feel my anger is growing.
I'm going to go with a "no" on that one, your frustration (not anger) is understandable but not actionable.
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin . . . surely you know the answer. Under normal conditions, 4% of people being out sick is no big deal, as you say, but 4% of people being sick with a specific virus IN SPITE OF most people wearing masks when around other people, and staying 6 feet away from strangers, and talking to cashiers behind Plexiglas, and pretty much avoiding doing most of the things they like to do . . . THAT is another kettle of fish. What percentage of people would be sick if no one was doing any of those things?
That's not to mention that people who are "out sick" under normal circumstances have a cold, or a sore back, or ate some bad food, or decided to take a sick day to go fishing, none of which are going to land them in the ICU on a ventilator.
There are somewhere around 30,000 flights in the US every day. Maybe more. Maybe less. But let’s go with 30,000. Now let, consider the staff needed for each of those flights and assume that 3% are out of commission every day due to COVID and then consider how many more have been quarantined due to close contact … and then consider the difficulty in matching healthy staff with available equipment t in the right places and you don’t think 3% is a big deal?
You can basically apply this to most industries. One of the aspects of our modern economy is that many businesses operate at the minimum staffing levels needed to function because … you know … the bottom line. A steady reduction of the workforce of 3% is not a small deal.
Something tells me that Kevin, after being essentially a self-employed blogger separated from the modern working world has no clue what is going on out there.
Something tells me there was no reason to add that last sentence, except because you wanted to be an a-hole. Congratulations.
No … actually, it’s based on years of reading Kevin and the occasional post where he demonstrates he has no connection with what the real working world is like. Congratulations.
I'm a person in "real working world" and don't know what's going on outside of my industry, or really outside of my immediate purview in my industry, and have no idea what the minimal capacity for operation is, because in most businesses (especially white-collar) there really is no such measure.
So maybe you can share what you do for a living and explain how you know all of this.
How about we do this a different way? Look at Kevin’s post. Review and discuss just how many statements and conclusions he makes based on speculation and his imagination. And then decide whether this post was worth anything more than generating the comments he got … which are almost universally contrary to his imagination.
Kevin imagines having 3-5% out sick each day isn’t that unusual. Particularly in winter. And cited nothing to support his imagination. Kind of amazing, given how frequently he has stats at the ready. Yet … in many sectors, particularly in the service industries, sick people have generally been expected to come to work. With COVID that has changed. Suddenly, sick people who used to come to work are not doing so. Add to that the number of people who have just quit and …
The US labor force is approximately 160 million. 3% of that is over 4.5 million. I googled “how many workers call in sick”. One of the first pieces which is as not readily accessible so I can provide the link indicated that in December 2020, somewhere around the 1.8 to 2 million workers were calling sick and that was unusually high. Do the math and you’ll figure out that 3% is, therefore, not normal.
Here’s a piece I can link https://www.businessinsider.com/census-data-shows-record-number-americans-out-sick-this-april-2020-7?amp. Kevin’s imagination is clearly not reality-based.
The worker shortages are very real and very likely under-estimated. My 91 year-old mother broke her hip on December 15th. When she moved to a rehab hospital on December 21st, she was well-supported with nurses, aides, therapists, and good meals. One week later, there were no meals because there was no one to cook them. There was one nurse. The aides were over-stretched. She then moved back to her assisted living facility which, we soon discovered, was experiencing acute staff shortages. From January 1 through January 5th, every day had a completely new floor nurse substitute - because the regular nursing staff was all out sick. Today, one nurse and one med-tech were serving all three floors (each one of which are normally staffed with their own nurse and multiple aides). And when we had a tele-health call with the Nurse Practitioner from my mother's primary physician's office, she was zooming in from home because.......she has covid. All of these folks are doing fantastic work - this is not a complaint. But it is a rejoinder to your suggestion that this is a bunch of nonsense. This is definitely like nothing I've experienced in this pandemic so far. Hopefully it will pass through quickly.