Dr. Robin’s Covid-19 Updates
Omicron This Week
A Little Good News; Some Lousy News
I’m a Boston-based cancer doctor and I’ve been writing weekly fact-based-no-blame-no-rumors-all-science-all-the-time essays about Covid-19 since March 2020.
You can read my views on why to get your cold symptoms tested here — or about boosters here — or you can read about vaccines/anti-vaxxers throughout history here
It’s been a little good news/some lousy news kind of week.
Or, to be a little more succinct: there’s been good news/bad news.
The bad news about Covid in general:
Our post-Thanksgiving, windows-closed, inside-living-and-Covid-giving surge is in full swing.
Our lowest-ever case rate was 10,000/day
The worst pre-vaccine case rate was 250K
The worst this summer was 150K
The best we got after that was 70K
And now we’re above 120K cases per day
The hospitalization and death rates continue to climb in a similar pattern, just a couple or few weeks later.
The good news about Omicron is simply that the data collection continues. The bad news about this process is it takes time.
We have known about the Omicron variant for a few weeks, This week we accumulated a little more “real life” data and a little more “lab science” data to help us. We don’t have enough to accurately PREDICT for sure what’s coming next with Omicron, but it is enough information to help us THINK sensibly about it.
So here’s the good news and the bad:
Good news: We know a lot more than we did in March 2020 about how to keep ourselves SafeR: vaccinating, boosting, testing, increased ventilation, wearing masks, and interacting outside as much as possible.
Bad news: Omicron is spreading very very fast in South Africa and Britain and wherever there’s good testing being done This bug is CONTAGIOUS with a capital C and that rhymes with T and that stands for Trouble.
We now have some studies showing when someone in your home has Omicron, family members are much more…
