3 ms·

I'm happy it's not a battle for you, but it is for my wife.

spurgu 5y ago
I'm sorry about your wife, hope she gets through it fine. It's mainly that you provided a personal anecdote in one direction and I found it prudent to provide one in the other direction - one that echoes everything we've seen so far, cases skyrocketing, hospitalization rates barely nudging.
- hedgehog 5y ago
  Motivated anecdotes aren't prudent or useful. We know from the 2ish years of this we've had so far that the dynamics are tricky to pick apart. For example when young low-risk people are out at bars (very high exposure) and older or higher risk people stay home what happens is the hospitalizations lag because it takes some time for the first group to get sick, infect the second, and then some of those people to go on to the hospital. On the other hand older people are much more vaccinated so the relative risk between the groups will likely be different from previous waves. That aside, hospitalizations are going up faster than they have at any point prior so not sure where your "barely nudging" comes from.
JPKab 5y ago
I hope your wife is ok. Unfortunately, infection with Omicron is inevitable and not preventable, without living in a bubble. It's too infectious, and the vaccine, unlike with previous variants, does basically nothing to stop transmission. Combine that with an R0 equivalent to measles, and avoiding infection was never possible. She probably took every precaution she could reasonably take, and still got infected. That was my experience as well. Statistically, people who are healthy and vaxxed developing severe symptoms from Omicron are outliers. That is no comfort to you, and I can assure you I know how you feel on that front when people like me tell you the stats. My mother-in-law suffered a very rare (statistically) adverse event from her second Pfizer shot in May, which killed her. She was in her early 60s, and healthy, but suffered cardiac arrest 3 hours after her second shot, in the midst of a fever. It was an exceedingly rare event, but it was no comfort to us to be told that.

I'm sorry about your wife, hope she gets through it fine. It's mainly that you provided a personal anecdote in one direction and I found it prudent to provide one in the other direction - one that echoes everything we've seen so far, cases skyrocketing, hospitalization rates barely nudging.

hedgehog 5y ago
Motivated anecdotes aren't prudent or useful. We know from the 2ish years of this we've had so far that the dynamics are tricky to pick apart. For example when young low-risk people are out at bars (very high exposure) and older or higher risk people stay home what happens is the hospitalizations lag because it takes some time for the first group to get sick, infect the second, and then some of those people to go on to the hospital. On the other hand older people are much more vaccinated so the relative risk between the groups will likely be different from previous waves. That aside, hospitalizations are going up faster than they have at any point prior so not sure where your "barely nudging" comes from.

JPKab 5y ago

I hope your wife is ok. Unfortunately, infection with Omicron is inevitable and not preventable, without living in a bubble. It's too infectious, and the vaccine, unlike with previous variants, does basically nothing to stop transmission. Combine that with an R0 equivalent to measles, and avoiding infection was never possible. She probably took every precaution she could reasonably take, and still got infected. That was my experience as well. Statistically, people who are healthy and vaxxed developing severe symptoms from Omicron are outliers. That is no comfort to you, and I can assure you I know how you feel on that front when people like me tell you the stats. My mother-in-law suffered a very rare (statistically) adverse event from her second Pfizer shot in May, which killed her. She was in her early 60s, and healthy, but suffered cardiac arrest 3 hours after her second shot, in the midst of a fever. It was an exceedingly rare event, but it was no comfort to us to be told that.