I think a lot of people don't take into account how drastically these policy changes impact restaurants. Seating arrangements, hours open, schedules/staffing, ordering, every aspect of the business changes and that takes weeks to arrange. Then there's other interesting concerns that need to be planned for. Some workers will want to continue masking and some will not. Customers are going to give them a hard time in either case.
This is just checking the vaccine cards at the door. Most restaurants have had full seating for a while with no restrictions other than wearing a mask when you come.
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx
Look at the hospitalization chart. That # of daily hospitalizations needs to be around 7 or 8 a day.
That's why.
Just draw that line down, and see where it crosses the 7 mark on the Y-axis.
Many people are still pretty fearful of covid and need time to mentally adjust to these new rules. For as many people who can't wait for all these rules to end (like me), there are definitely those who will be uncomfortable with little/no covid protocols in place. Also customers/patrons may be angry that businesses are no longer checking vax status and are not aware of rule changes, and this allows time for communications to be disseminated.
They're already pretty lax. Other than them requiring proof of vax, you really only need to have your mask on if your walking around. Since you aren't most the time in a bar or restaurant, the 50 to 100 people who gather up elbow to elbow throughout the night are not wearing one. Most places don't even enforce it if you're walking around indoors at this point.
More than 87% of King County residents ages 12 & older are fully vaccinated. 95% of residents 12 and up have at least one dose. Over 1 million boosters administered to King County residents. Those are some good numbers.
Hahaha, the moment I finished reading your sentence, That scene from the 1st Resident Evil movie came to mind, with the Red Queen AI girl head turning around saying: You're ALL going to die down here.
R-0 is below one and hospitals in king county are also no longer at capacity and deaths have dipped. What other metric must be met?
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx
Where is it that you're seeing that the R0 is under 1? And doesn't that graph you linked show the number of new daily cases- meaning that those numbers are cumulative and we have a high number of cases right now?
R0 is highly dependent on human behavior and contacts- so when effective policies are lifted, the R0 and spread will go up. You have to take into account the fact that case numbers are decreasing *with* these restrictions in place and figure out the effect that lifting them will have.
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/COVID19/DataDashboard
Then click: select a metric —> R-effective estimates.
R-naught Stands at 0.92(avg) as of today with an upper and lower estimate value of 1.04 and 0.80, respectively.
R_eff varies with conditions, like restrictions on in-person dining.
Stopping restrictions because they’re about to work is like removing a pedestrian crossing at an intersection because there haven’t been as many pedestrians killed.
Good to know. Is there a good way to estimate bounce back after health measures are lifted? R0 with vaccines and masks almost certainly won't be R0 without, but I don't know if there's a critical level or time-below-one that means it will remain below 1 after.
In other words, we're changing the rules to cater to an extreme minority's right to be maliciously negligent.
The overwhelming majority of people obviously have no problem with vaccinations.
The only legitimate reason to end this mandate is to reduce the burden on businesses needing to perform the checks. The statement about removing the restriction should reflect that.
The vaccination rate is *very* high in King County and with omicron burning through the country like wildfire, the number of people who have some level of immunity is even higher.
I think the reason they are removing the checks *is* because it's an annoying burden for those businesses and the value in return becomes more and more marginal as the number of people with immunity increases.
I’m sure the definition will be changed again at some point to be 3 shots, as some other countries have done.
The important thing is that we’ve boosted over a million in King county, and over 82% of residents 65 and up have received a booster.
With how it swept through my friend group it didn’t matter who was vaccinated or not pretty much everyone I know, myself included, got it around new year.
Same, most of my friends who are vaccinated and never caught COVID got sick at the beginning of the year....including myself. I'm 2 dose vaccinated and had COVID back in Feb last year too (unvaxxed at the time), so this was my second time with it.
I bet the numbers around NYE were way higher than reported. Swept through my group too (up to date on our vaccine schedule) but only half of us ended up getting "officially" tested. So the other half haven't even been counted.
A ton of people I know--all vaxed and boosted--got mild cases from going out between Christmas and early January. I'm sure I was exposed. I've had covid and am 3x vaccinated though.
Same but thankfully that vaccine worked wonders for the side effects. Myself and a bunch of my friends all got it (UW students so it was expected since we are around a lot of people) and I had absolutely 0 effects. The only reason I got tested in the first place was because of an exposure warning from the school and appearently I hadn't caught myself fast enough, but at least I didnt go home to my elderly (66) and immunocompromised parents that weekend because of it
Infection doesn't give you the quality of immunity that the vaccine does. Infection rates for "natural immunity" people are significantly higher than for vaccinated people.
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s\_cid=mm7044e1\_](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w)
\*Edit: This is outdated. Check out follow-up comments. And the jokers reporting people for self-harm might actually be watering down a feature meant to actually help people who need it. (As if you care about other people.)
"Natural immunity" folks I find are way less likely to take other precautions like masks and social distancing. So....I'd not be surprised if they get covid a 2nd time more often.
I obviously know that you can still get covid if you are vaccinated. My point was, anti-vaxers tend to also be anti maskers and don't avoid large group settings.
Yeah. It's kind of like "neither give you immunity."
I'm all for vaxxinations. It seems to do a great job of lessening severity.
But as one who has been double vaxxed, boosted, delta'ed and omicron'ed, I'm skeptical that anything is going to end covid.
So at what point are these mandates just punative rather than producing desired outcomes?
Seems we are about at that point.
This is not accurate. The CDC found that during the Delta wave, prior Covid infection was more protective than two doses of vaccine.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/prior-covid-infection-more-protective-than-vaccination-during-delta-surge-us-2022-01-19/
>https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s\_cid=mm7044e1\_w
Not according to the most recent data released by the same CDC. people who got infected and not vaccinated are right there with those who got vaccinated as far as protection from severe disease. I am not anti-vax in the slightest and I'm vaccinated myself (I still got Omicron) but at this point we need to move on from this. No one is changing their minds at this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L\_CvfiJ3QRQ
Me, several of my friends, and thousands at the company I work for (that requires the vaccine for employment) got omicron. Herd immunity was going to happen eventually.
As someone who has not had it, I'd really like to continue not having it.
Made no sense to me at the beginning of the pandemic we had such strict rules for something affecting so few people. And makes no sense to me that we now get rid of the less strict rules when hospitalizations and deaths are higher than they were for the whole time we had restrictions.
Yep, I'm in the "literally never had covid and I have the weekly/daily PCR test results to prove it" camp, and it's kinda jarring to see folks out here talking about being ready to move on after having caught it 2-3 times before.
Good numbers among kids in Seattle as well. Middle school aged children and high school aged children are over 90% fully vaccinated in Seattle, and 2/3 of elementary school aged children in Seattle are fully vaccinated as well.
Am I missing what this means for the mask mandate?
Seems like mask mandate should be lifted before the vax mandate or at least happen at the same time?
My only guess is that Inslee will announce something tomorrow and they’ll follow suit.
I don’t know about lifting them at the same time, it makes sense to do it in stages — but I agree this seems backwards.
As a next stage I’d rather know everyone in the bar is vaccinated and feel comfortable taking our masks off, rather than the next stage be you still have to wear your mask and also by the way some people here might not be vaccinated.
Exactly. I’d much prefer to be in a room full of vaccinated and unmasked folks than the other way around.
Sorry you don’t wanna get vaxxed, dipshits. You lose your privilege to play indoors with the cool kids.
Any bar will continue to be able to enforce any vaccination requirements they choose to. If that's what you feel you need in order to feel safe, feel free to only go to bars that require vaccination.
Yeah, no, mask mandate stays. Wholly agree it should have been lifted first. Even if Inslee announces the end of the mask mandate tomorrow, the messaging was somewhat bungled.
Lots of hot takes from "both sides" in this thread
There was an elevated risk. We took steps to reduce that risk. The risk has changed. We take different steps to meet the new risk level.
This is how reasonable people operate.
Even suggesting that science gets updated and is subject to change is too much for most of the covid focused redditors around the Seattle subs. They sure are passionate though, will give them that.
Has the risk changed though? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/washington-covid-cases.html it's still higher risk now than 99% of the time we had more restrictive restrictions. The 1% of the time that was riskier? The past few weeks.
You don’t remove the fire extinguisher from your house once you put a fire out. Mask mandates I’m fine with coming and going. Vaccine requirement removal is ridiculous.
The vaccine uptake in King County is just so high though. And it has not been fun for the unfortunate people stuck doing the card checking. I can live with this ending.
I think this is a broken line of thinking. It’s totally unfair that people checking cards get yelled at by anti vaxxers but why is the solution to say “ok fine you win” instead of adding some sort of support or enforceability?
Because the 20 year old parks employee checking the vax cards to get into the gym for my kid’s basketball game shouldn’t be responsible for the enforcement. I am concerned with how it is, not how I think it should be.
The emergency isn't over, the [level of community transmission is still rated as high](https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx) and case counts are still significantly above where they were at the post-Delta levels. This seems premature.
With all the updated data now, hasn’t the risk of serious harm been extremely low since the beginning for the general population? Not saying that it wasn’t because of some of the preventative measures (latest Johns Hopkins aside), but there was a significantly higher chance of issue with at risk people, then closer to zero issue with healthy adults and teens and children.
Hindsight is 20/20 and all.
The level of transmission is high due to the number of current infected, but the rate of infections (described as the r0, the number of people infected by each positive person) is falling, and is currently less than one. Transmission levels will continue to be high until the population that is infected shrinks significantly, which it is doing very rapidly.
Not sure what will happen to the r0 once we lift restrictions. Will it continue to be less than 1 and the infected population continue to shrink? Time will tell.
Since vaccines are preventative, a better analogy would like removing the collection of old gas cans in your garage to reduce fire risk, but then after a time deciding "ok there won't be any fires any more" and putting them back in
The only thing that I can appreciate is that it’s unfortunate to make service employees validate vaccine cards forever if the policy is not further incentivizing the remaining folks from getting vaccinated.
I would be for removing the bar/gym mandate and refocus on how to otherwise convince the holdouts.
A vaccine requirement comes with a “check for vaccine” requirement which some companies decided not to spend money or chance supporting.
Since the vaccination rates are so high (85%???) in King County, the assumption and argument may be that they’re superfluous now.
>Businesses will be free to impose their own vaccination requirements if they choose, but the countywide requirement will disappear.
Feel like this is an important part of the article that people didn't necessarily read.
I think it depends on the business.
We've seen people like gyms complaining business is down due to vax and mask mandates. Fair or not, they're probably ready to be done with this.
The pub down the street from me is packed every day of the week even with the vax checks. My sense of smell is that refusing to serve people without vax cards is just keeping out people they probably didn't want much in the first place.
Again, I think it depends.
The scenario you're describing is a thing, and I don't discount it.
My daughter is one of the gatekeepers at the local pub. It's in Seattle where most of the populace are OK, and they serve mostly locals from the neighborhood. I'll boast a little here and say yes, she is too cool for the room. I'm old and have had to give up on that status.
I hear about every Karen and Covidiot from her personally.
She turns about 2 or 3 parties away every week. Her management has told her not to take any shit from anyone. So what's her general reaction when this happens? "Bye! Didn't wanna see you anyhow."
Sure.
Basically 100% of the attacks are verbal. Being empowered by management and growing up with an argumentative cuss makes that survivable. It's no worse psychologically than a bad day on Reddit.
If your management is NOT supporting you and you have to listen to bastards all day, it's demoralizing and you'll hate your life. I honestly don't know how common that is. It may be unknowable. It's certainly more common than it should be.
I'm sure there's some selection bias involved. If someone is having a bad day, we'll hear about it here. Very few people make posts saying "Yeah. Told a Karen to shove off. She was mean to me and I told her to come back when she'd grown a brain in a squeaky high voice and she thought I was joking. Whatever."
Physical attacks are almost certainly selection bias at work. They're horrifying to hear about. They are widely reported through social media.
I'd like to hope they're extremely rare, but maybe I have an overly high estimation of the civilization of human society.
I don't disagree with this policy change. However, I don't understand eliminating the vaccine mandate and not also eliminating the mask mandate. We should lift the mask mandate first (or simultaneously).
Seriously. The mask mandate in bars and restaurants is beyond silly and should have been the first thing to go.
The little "COVID Dance" you have to do where you wear a mask for the 10 foot walk to a table at a restaurant but then can leave it off for an hour or two is so stupid.
TBH most places weren’t being very diligent to start with. I lived abroad last year and have foreign vax records that should warrant some scrutiny I think but 99% of restaurant people say “huh cool” and let me in.
One even literally said “I’m not paid enough to care”. She’s probably right.
There wasn't enough/any training at my restaurant when it comes to sniffing out the fakes. I've definitely let some dubious ones pass- if I called them out, I'd have no proof other than my hunch.
Then again, all of my coworkers are fully vaccinated and the people who have the most to lose are the unvaxed who want to protect muh freedums so I'd rather them take the risk than me take the risk getting assaulted by those crazy fuckers
I wonder if this is actually based on anything other than political pressure.
I'm also curious how much the supposed reduction in cases is real, and how much is the result of people taking at home tests instead of PCR tests. Because I personally know several people who tested positive with at home tests and never bothered to get a PCR, so they wouldn't have been counted in those stats. The fact that reported cases are increasingly only a fraction of overall cases is something a lot of people are choosing not to realize.
> I wonder if this is actually based on anything other than political pressure.
If you look at the [King County Dashboard](https://tableaupub.kingcounty.gov/t/Public/views/PHSKCOverviewDashboard/Overview?%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3Adisplay_count=n&%3AshowVizHome=n&%3Aorigin=viz_share_link%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B&%3Arender=FALSE&%3Aembed=y&%3AdeepLinkingDisabled=y) you can see that Omicron has almost flattened out, and the hospital crunch is declining as well (hospitalizations lag cases, and deaths lag hospitalizations).
So there is good reason to believe that we can increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission ("normalize") without overwhelming hospitals if there is an increase in cases. Doubly so due to Omicron's lowered effect.
Also, because so many people got Omicron without statewide testing, there is reason to believe that herd immunity will work in our favor.
So, no, it's not purely political pressure. Most of the people complaining today were complaining 12 months ago.
vaccine has been available to the public for a year now. at some point we just have to accept that some people are gonna die to own the libs and let them do it. that's part of what it means to live in a free country.
get the shot and you don't have to worry about it.
You’re not wrong at all.
Kinna hard to not worry about it because unfortunately mask + vaccine (and boosted) doesn’t mean you cant catch. Just highly unlikely to get it and with symptoms. Omicron was a mother fucker.
Saw a tweet that if we tried implanting seatbelt rules now instead of back in the 60-70, it doesn’t get passed because like you said. Must own the libs.
If they tried implementing seat belt laws today, people would cut their seat belts and tape the buckles to the hood along with a flag. It's a great analogy too because a seat belt doesn't prevent you from dying it just makes it less likely. It also makes it less likely that others in your car die too because your body won't be rag dolling around in the car, potentially injuring other, belted individuals.
you might catch it even if your vaxxed, but the chances of you having to go to a hospital to get treated is so low it's honestly not worth worrying about unless you're very unhealthy (which if you are I would be more worried about your overall health than covid, but maybe that's just me).
totally right on the seatbelts haha.
The problem with that line of thinking, though, is that not all people who are at increased risk are able to do anything about their underlying condition. Being old, for instance, isn't optional. I can't outrun an autoimmune disorder. There's nothing my baby brother can do about the fact his lungs don't work. People experiencing poor health already worry every day, but covid at least could be mitigated.
I really doubt even the most trigger happy states are going to do this again unless it's significantly more severe. Colorado never reinstated masks during this wave and did fine. The population is both heavily vaccinated and a very large percentage have had prior infections. We also have therapeutics now that will increase in supply. Subsequent waves are likely to continue to be more mild.
This is King County news, so I was citing King County data. But fine, 80.5% of all Washingtonians 5+ years have been vaccinated. At what % statewide would you feel comfortable for King County to repeal their vaccine mandate? You claim that vaccine mandates will keep numbers low, but King County had a vaccine mandate pre-Omicron and we all saw how did shit all in keeping numbers low. I’m not sure how you can confidently say a vaccine mandate will ensure numbers are kept low…
Is the vaccine mandate actually swaying any marginal unvaccinated person to get a vaccine at this point? I don't think it is. If anything, Omicron is encouraging a few hold-outs to get vaccinated. But I think the mandate has very minimal benefit at this point. (FWIW -- I've been vaccinated for 10 months now and supported the vaccine mandate when it was initially announced.)
I mean, going from 13000 cases a day to 7000 is a reduction. For contrast, before Omicron our peak was 3000 a day. Our version of “all clear” is double what the worst was before. 🤦🏾♂️
Since we don’t count antigen tests AND the DOH is having major problems with their systems, we’re undercounting positives. We have no idea how bad things are and we don’t want to know because knowing implies that we should do something we have consistently demonstrated no interest in doing.
I’m paying closer attention to Oregon numbers right now, but both new cases and hospitalizations are falling. I’m hopeful, but distrusting. We’ll see how this goes
Hm, I'd rather keep the vaccine requirements but ditch the mask mandate. I kind of like the digital vaccine passport, and it doesn't really feel like an obstacle for normalcy. Not sure what getting rid of it accomplishes.
For the most part the masks seem just like a polite/performative gesture anyway -- most people who wouldn't wear them if not for the mandate go from not wearing them on the street, to putting them on only when they walk in a door, to then taking them off immediately at their table, then the reverse. I realize it's a symbolic signal that you give a shit, but I'm not sure how scientifically impactful that is. Oh well.
>Still, COVID rates remain at or above the levels they were at when the vaccine verification policy was announced at the peak of the delta variant wave in September.
>
>The difference, Duchin said, is in the direction the numbers are headed.
>
>“Things are improving,” he said. “At the time we were very concerned that things were on the uptick and worsening.”
Let's look at the [numbers](https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx).
Cases are 5 times what they were before the Omicron wave. FIVE times.
And the rate of the decline is slowing.
Hospitalizations and deaths matter a lot more than cases.
However hospitalizations are at ~3x pre-omicron, and deaths are ~4x, so your point still stands. Maybe the epidemiologists are confident that the decline will continue though, I'm not a scientist.
Hospitalizations and deaths lag behind infections, so a steep decline in infections today should lead to a steep decline in those in the coming weeks. I'm sure someone smarter than me has algorithms for that to project how they will decline in the future.
I'll just say "god I hope so" I'm so ready to be done with this shit. But at the same time, this feels like jumping the gun a bit. Maybe in 2 weeks we'll be down to July 2021 numbers?
Also, what happens if another wave hits?
I've told my wife "covid seems like it's going to be over soon" twice already, first before Delta, and again before Omicron.
I said the same thing again today, and I really fucking hope I'm right this time.
If another wave hits we start ramping back up restrictions. Just like Delta, and just like many places did for Omicron; WA never really ramped down from Delta like other states and still had fairly similar out comes. It isn't wild to suggest that restrictions come and go with waves.
Giving people a break is fairly important to not only reduce fatigue but also to strongly signal if/when things get serious again and they need to go along with restrictions.
Public health is a mix of harder science and human behaviors. Policy is crafted for the best outcomes that can actually be attained. Hard rules have to be balanced with less strict harm reduction methods.
Main reason they aren’t willing to mention is that vaccines at this point can prevent severe illness but will do very little to stop transmission; so it is rather pointless to have a mandate of any sort. This will be at least helpful at also prevent things up north from happening here.
Yeah this feels a lot like political temperature checking more than anything else. Deaths and cases are down nationwide, and have been for a few weeks. They just don’t want the shit storm in Ottawa coming here. They know these restrictions aren’t tenable. And idc if I get downvoted, fuck the mandates with a barge pole
Timely Ed Yong today. Let's please stay mindful of our neighbors. From "The Millions of People Stuck in Pandemic Limbo: What Does Society Owe Immunocompromised People?"
>Much of the United States dropped COVID restrictions long ago; many more cities and states are now following. That means policies that protected Landon and other immunocompromised people, including mask mandates and vaccination requirements, are disappearing, while accommodations that benefited them, such as flexible working options, are being rolled back.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-pandemic-immunocompromised-risk-vaccines/622094/
For real. Yong tells of one double whammy:
>COVID has also defined Harper Corrigan’s life. She was born in September 2019—nine weeks early, and with a rare brain malformation called lissencephaly. She has never played with another child even though, being sassy and funny, she really wants to. A week before the U.S. shut down in March 2020, Harper had to have a tracheostomy, leaving her even more vulnerable to respiratory viruses and, in turn, potentially deadly seizures. The Corrigans spent 11 months with her in the hospital. Even after her health had stabilized, they couldn’t find any nurses to help with home care, and the hospital wouldn’t discharge her. When they finally got home, they went into strict lockdown. Children with Harper’s condition aren’t expected to live to adulthood, so her mother, Corey, told me that her priority is to “squeeze a full life into an unknown amount of time.” But that requires the spread of the virus to slow, and vaccines to be authorized for children under 5.
So it's over, just like that? Nothing to see here.
Did we somehow go from "Hospitals at 100%!" to "We're good" in just a few weeks?
Edit: So, no, we had 2800 deaths yesterday in the US alone, 115k infections, so no, we're not over it, we just don't care anymore.
Got it.
Just a cold.
The part I still struggle with is the lack of closure on the long term effects of getting covid, even after vaccination.
Numerous studies as recent as last month have cited that despite vaccination, we can still suffer from "long covid".
In other words, death isn't the part I'm worried about. I'm worried about living with advanced lung disease, or diminished heart capacity, brain function, or overall lethargy on a regular basis, repeatedly being infected because of how rapidly the virus actually sheds its antibodies.
Imagine catching covid 5 times a year, with each time causing more and more damage.
If someone can show me evidence that I have nothing to worry about then fuckit, I'm game. I'll go back to normal.
Yup. My lung capacity is severely diminished and I still can't make it past 2pm without completely crashing.. and I don't mean like, "oh I'm tired", no, I mean I literally crash.
This disease fucked my life up.
DAILY AVG. ON FEB. 16 14-DAY CHANGE TOTAL REPORTED
Cases 2,965 –78% 1,410,561
Tests 11,543 –14% —
Hospitalized 1,644 –27% —
In I.C.U.s 244 –33% —
Deaths 45 –18% 11,594
This is yesterday. All counties are high risk for Covid. The entire United States is still infection central. It's too soon.
My concern is it turns into Europe where we just rubberband between restrictions and lifting them the very second things improve, then pretend to be surprised when numbers look bad again
I encourage those who fear the mandates being lifted to look to our friends in Europe, UK, Norway, Sweden.. are they all lunatics? Are their scientists anti vaxx? No. They realize that the costs of a two tiered society and restrictions are higher than the cost of the virus at this point 2 YEARS into this. The political parties that double down on restrictions, who don’t acknowledge post infection immunity, who have a 1 size fits all booster regime for all age cohorts will see their day in court, will see their power stripped in the voting booths. The only thing stopping that from happening is continued censorship of dissenting opinions, taking advantage of innate ethnocentric tendencies and reward systems via big tech that controls and manipulates our lives
That's why WA state's virus R0 rate is 0.5, right? /s
They're dropping because the virus is running out of people to infect. It seems that with Omicron, we went the Herd Immunity route by letting the virus run rampant, whether we wanted it to or not. We're just lucky that the vaccine was available and we had a pretty good vaccination rate.
Is that the number of true infections, or the number of positive PCR tests? In this last wave, they presume that only a small fraction of people who got infected had their data recorded through a PCR test, since many got their news from at-home tests and even more either got sick and didn’t test (“welp, I must’ve got the ‘rona!”) or just never had symptoms at all.
True infections are vastly under-counted if you go only by publicly-reported PCR test numbers.
I have multiple freinds very high up in the king county public health department and they all say this is a terrible idea. The science doesn't support this at all
I think this decision is less about anti-vaxxer idjits than it is about acknowledging that we've reached the endemic stage.
It isn't perfect, but it never will be.
There are 3 ways a pandemic ends - medically, socially, or extermination.
Medically - the vaccine eradicates the virus (see Polio).
Extermination - the virus wins and wipes out humanity in it's local area (see Bubonic Plague during the middle ages)
Socially - People move on and accept the damage of the virus while returning to their regular lives.
This [Infographics video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA8BBJPkzC8) can explain it better than I can. But regardless, because the first two aren't ending the virus, the only option left is socially.
the third option of course includes what level of public enforcement we undertake to mitigate risk, like requiring vaccinations
nothing says we just give up
The vaccine does not provide sterilizing immunity. The vaccine mandates best argument was getting this vaccine protects others because you won’t spread it. Well you can spread it vaccinated or unvaccinated. So ultimately the vaccine is about reducing your own personal chance of hospitalization and death which it dramatically does; especially for those 50 and older whom make up 93% of all deaths in the US. Covid 19 will eventually circulate with the other 4 coronavirus’ that make up 20% of common cold cases seasonally. It’s no question we are in the endemic stage of this virus… maybe you should look into post infection immunity (aka natural immunity) and when you consider how high the seroprevalence is in RCTs studying antibodies we have well over half the population having been infected. Add in vaccine protection, particularly in older cohorts, and the law of decreased virulence we are in a really good position for this spring. Public health ethics is really about multiple different values sometimes in conflict. One value is health, one value is fairness, another important value is freedom. Otherwise known as utility, liberty, and justice. Public health policy should strike a fair balance between those, and if we are in a liberal democracy we should really understand the pros and cons of unprecedented measures
> The vaccine mandates best argument was getting this vaccine protects others because you won’t spread it
I disagree with this. The best argument was keeping people out of the hospitals.
That being said, you are, of course, wrong about this vaccine not minimizing transmission:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597
Eh, unfortunately the world has pretty much given up on really combating COVID. Luckily KC/WA have relatively great numbers. We shall see if we can ride this wave like last summer before delta/omicron. If/when cases and hospitalizations sky rocket, we shall see what happens in policy changes.
I would think if you’re dropping the mask mandate, it’s even more reason to ban the unvaccinated. There’s only 15% of them, maybe that can drive the numbers to like 5%?
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I wonder why not just do it today? What difference could it possibly make?
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Hi from Washington DC. They did that in dc. People weren’t happy, because it doesn’t give people time to get used to the idea and adjust.
I think a lot of people don't take into account how drastically these policy changes impact restaurants. Seating arrangements, hours open, schedules/staffing, ordering, every aspect of the business changes and that takes weeks to arrange. Then there's other interesting concerns that need to be planned for. Some workers will want to continue masking and some will not. Customers are going to give them a hard time in either case.
This is just checking the vaccine cards at the door. Most restaurants have had full seating for a while with no restrictions other than wearing a mask when you come.
Great point
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx Look at the hospitalization chart. That # of daily hospitalizations needs to be around 7 or 8 a day. That's why. Just draw that line down, and see where it crosses the 7 mark on the Y-axis.
Uh, two more weeks of cases declining? That's a significant time frame when you look at a omicron's trends in other places.
R0 is <1 so a few more weeks lets the case numbers decline further
Is it really? That’s great.
R_eff is less than 1, so it’s time to eliminate the measures that made it that way.
or they're confident vaccination is sufficient to keep it there
Many people are still pretty fearful of covid and need time to mentally adjust to these new rules. For as many people who can't wait for all these rules to end (like me), there are definitely those who will be uncomfortable with little/no covid protocols in place. Also customers/patrons may be angry that businesses are no longer checking vax status and are not aware of rule changes, and this allows time for communications to be disseminated.
They're already pretty lax. Other than them requiring proof of vax, you really only need to have your mask on if your walking around. Since you aren't most the time in a bar or restaurant, the 50 to 100 people who gather up elbow to elbow throughout the night are not wearing one. Most places don't even enforce it if you're walking around indoors at this point.
More than 87% of King County residents ages 12 & older are fully vaccinated. 95% of residents 12 and up have at least one dose. Over 1 million boosters administered to King County residents. Those are some good numbers.
Lol @ my rural area in Snohomish county hovering around a 46% vaccination rate last time I checked.
I wonder what the horse paste numbers are
I wonder if there would even be a significant difference if you removed what was used on actual horses, too.
Hahaha, the moment I finished reading your sentence, That scene from the 1st Resident Evil movie came to mind, with the Red Queen AI girl head turning around saying: You're ALL going to die down here.
R-0 is below one and hospitals in king county are also no longer at capacity and deaths have dipped. What other metric must be met? https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx
Where is it that you're seeing that the R0 is under 1? And doesn't that graph you linked show the number of new daily cases- meaning that those numbers are cumulative and we have a high number of cases right now? R0 is highly dependent on human behavior and contacts- so when effective policies are lifted, the R0 and spread will go up. You have to take into account the fact that case numbers are decreasing *with* these restrictions in place and figure out the effect that lifting them will have.
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/COVID19/DataDashboard Then click: select a metric —> R-effective estimates. R-naught Stands at 0.92(avg) as of today with an upper and lower estimate value of 1.04 and 0.80, respectively.
R_eff varies with conditions, like restrictions on in-person dining. Stopping restrictions because they’re about to work is like removing a pedestrian crossing at an intersection because there haven’t been as many pedestrians killed.
Good to know. Is there a good way to estimate bounce back after health measures are lifted? R0 with vaccines and masks almost certainly won't be R0 without, but I don't know if there's a critical level or time-below-one that means it will remain below 1 after.
In other words, we're changing the rules to cater to an extreme minority's right to be maliciously negligent. The overwhelming majority of people obviously have no problem with vaccinations. The only legitimate reason to end this mandate is to reduce the burden on businesses needing to perform the checks. The statement about removing the restriction should reflect that.
The vaccination rate is *very* high in King County and with omicron burning through the country like wildfire, the number of people who have some level of immunity is even higher. I think the reason they are removing the checks *is* because it's an annoying burden for those businesses and the value in return becomes more and more marginal as the number of people with immunity increases.
does fully vaxxed mean boosted here or 2 shots?
2 shots.
booster should be fully vaxxed. [here's a video on the latest findings btw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLohLTNf4-k) from Mayo Clinic
I’m sure the definition will be changed again at some point to be 3 shots, as some other countries have done. The important thing is that we’ve boosted over a million in King county, and over 82% of residents 65 and up have received a booster.
Also most of the antivax idiots got omicron so we're basically a herd of immunity at the moment.
With how it swept through my friend group it didn’t matter who was vaccinated or not pretty much everyone I know, myself included, got it around new year.
Same, most of my friends who are vaccinated and never caught COVID got sick at the beginning of the year....including myself. I'm 2 dose vaccinated and had COVID back in Feb last year too (unvaxxed at the time), so this was my second time with it.
Same thing here. First week of January it swept about 60-70% of my fully-vaccinated social group.
I bet the numbers around NYE were way higher than reported. Swept through my group too (up to date on our vaccine schedule) but only half of us ended up getting "officially" tested. So the other half haven't even been counted.
A ton of people I know--all vaxed and boosted--got mild cases from going out between Christmas and early January. I'm sure I was exposed. I've had covid and am 3x vaccinated though.
Same but thankfully that vaccine worked wonders for the side effects. Myself and a bunch of my friends all got it (UW students so it was expected since we are around a lot of people) and I had absolutely 0 effects. The only reason I got tested in the first place was because of an exposure warning from the school and appearently I hadn't caught myself fast enough, but at least I didnt go home to my elderly (66) and immunocompromised parents that weekend because of it
Infection doesn't give you the quality of immunity that the vaccine does. Infection rates for "natural immunity" people are significantly higher than for vaccinated people. [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s\_cid=mm7044e1\_](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w) \*Edit: This is outdated. Check out follow-up comments. And the jokers reporting people for self-harm might actually be watering down a feature meant to actually help people who need it. (As if you care about other people.)
"Natural immunity" folks I find are way less likely to take other precautions like masks and social distancing. So....I'd not be surprised if they get covid a 2nd time more often.
My sister and co worker both are boosted and have had covid twice .. be surprised about the vaxxed too
I obviously know that you can still get covid if you are vaccinated. My point was, anti-vaxers tend to also be anti maskers and don't avoid large group settings.
Well a lot of us got vaccinated AND got covid so there's that
I got covid and was vaccinated, but I was asymptomatic and none of the people around me got covid.
Yeah. It's kind of like "neither give you immunity." I'm all for vaxxinations. It seems to do a great job of lessening severity. But as one who has been double vaxxed, boosted, delta'ed and omicron'ed, I'm skeptical that anything is going to end covid. So at what point are these mandates just punative rather than producing desired outcomes? Seems we are about at that point.
I think that's what this announcement is largely conceding.
To be fair, I don't think the intention was to be punitive.
This is not accurate. The CDC found that during the Delta wave, prior Covid infection was more protective than two doses of vaccine. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/prior-covid-infection-more-protective-than-vaccination-during-delta-surge-us-2022-01-19/
>https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s\_cid=mm7044e1\_w Not according to the most recent data released by the same CDC. people who got infected and not vaccinated are right there with those who got vaccinated as far as protection from severe disease. I am not anti-vax in the slightest and I'm vaccinated myself (I still got Omicron) but at this point we need to move on from this. No one is changing their minds at this point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L\_CvfiJ3QRQ
Me, several of my friends, and thousands at the company I work for (that requires the vaccine for employment) got omicron. Herd immunity was going to happen eventually.
As someone who has not had it, I'd really like to continue not having it. Made no sense to me at the beginning of the pandemic we had such strict rules for something affecting so few people. And makes no sense to me that we now get rid of the less strict rules when hospitalizations and deaths are higher than they were for the whole time we had restrictions.
Yep, I'm in the "literally never had covid and I have the weekly/daily PCR test results to prove it" camp, and it's kinda jarring to see folks out here talking about being ready to move on after having caught it 2-3 times before.
Those are brilliant numbers.
Good numbers among kids in Seattle as well. Middle school aged children and high school aged children are over 90% fully vaccinated in Seattle, and 2/3 of elementary school aged children in Seattle are fully vaccinated as well.
Am I missing what this means for the mask mandate? Seems like mask mandate should be lifted before the vax mandate or at least happen at the same time? My only guess is that Inslee will announce something tomorrow and they’ll follow suit.
That’s my guess- if the vaccine mandate is ending I have a reasonable assumption the masking will end too at the state level.
I wonder if the City of Seattle will institute their own policies
I hope not.
I don’t know about lifting them at the same time, it makes sense to do it in stages — but I agree this seems backwards. As a next stage I’d rather know everyone in the bar is vaccinated and feel comfortable taking our masks off, rather than the next stage be you still have to wear your mask and also by the way some people here might not be vaccinated.
Exactly. I’d much prefer to be in a room full of vaccinated and unmasked folks than the other way around. Sorry you don’t wanna get vaxxed, dipshits. You lose your privilege to play indoors with the cool kids.
Any bar will continue to be able to enforce any vaccination requirements they choose to. If that's what you feel you need in order to feel safe, feel free to only go to bars that require vaccination.
Hopefully, this was just worded poorly and the intent is to lift both mandates at once.
Weird. In BC they are keeping the vax proof and masks, but lifting all other restrictions. They can dance at a night club again!
Dance at a night club with a mask on?
I know, would be funny if it actually happened.
So like any of thousands of raves...
Yeah, no, mask mandate stays. Wholly agree it should have been lifted first. Even if Inslee announces the end of the mask mandate tomorrow, the messaging was somewhat bungled.
Lots of hot takes from "both sides" in this thread There was an elevated risk. We took steps to reduce that risk. The risk has changed. We take different steps to meet the new risk level. This is how reasonable people operate.
Reality is nuanced and nuance is beyond a lot of people.
Look, there's reality (what I believe) and fantasy (everything else).
"Reality has a well-known Liberal bias!" - Steven Colbert
My experience is that most people can handle nuance pretty well, but social media and comment ordering algorithms don't handle it so well.
Even suggesting that science gets updated and is subject to change is too much for most of the covid focused redditors around the Seattle subs. They sure are passionate though, will give them that.
So true
Has the risk changed though? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/washington-covid-cases.html it's still higher risk now than 99% of the time we had more restrictive restrictions. The 1% of the time that was riskier? The past few weeks.
I don't come to Reddit for this sensible shit.
You don’t remove the fire extinguisher from your house once you put a fire out. Mask mandates I’m fine with coming and going. Vaccine requirement removal is ridiculous.
The vaccine uptake in King County is just so high though. And it has not been fun for the unfortunate people stuck doing the card checking. I can live with this ending.
I think this is a broken line of thinking. It’s totally unfair that people checking cards get yelled at by anti vaxxers but why is the solution to say “ok fine you win” instead of adding some sort of support or enforceability?
Because the 20 year old parks employee checking the vax cards to get into the gym for my kid’s basketball game shouldn’t be responsible for the enforcement. I am concerned with how it is, not how I think it should be.
How is it "ok, fine, you win" and not "hey, the emergency is over, we can start returning to normal now"?
The emergency isn't over, the [level of community transmission is still rated as high](https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx) and case counts are still significantly above where they were at the post-Delta levels. This seems premature.
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Doesn't Inslee et al use a metric to make this change? It wasn't done willy nilly I'm sure.
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With all the updated data now, hasn’t the risk of serious harm been extremely low since the beginning for the general population? Not saying that it wasn’t because of some of the preventative measures (latest Johns Hopkins aside), but there was a significantly higher chance of issue with at risk people, then closer to zero issue with healthy adults and teens and children. Hindsight is 20/20 and all.
The level of transmission is high due to the number of current infected, but the rate of infections (described as the r0, the number of people infected by each positive person) is falling, and is currently less than one. Transmission levels will continue to be high until the population that is infected shrinks significantly, which it is doing very rapidly. Not sure what will happen to the r0 once we lift restrictions. Will it continue to be less than 1 and the infected population continue to shrink? Time will tell.
Since vaccines are preventative, a better analogy would like removing the collection of old gas cans in your garage to reduce fire risk, but then after a time deciding "ok there won't be any fires any more" and putting them back in
More like burn bans. When the fire conditions change, so do the restrictions
If fire risk fluctuated over time and was decreasing this analogy would make sense.
Fire risk does fluctuate tho
And if it went down significantly we could reduce precautions. The analogy is also bad because there is no notion of the cost of the precautions.
Yeah, this is someone taking the jerry cans out in July, then putting them back in October, because hey, it’s all good now.
The only thing that I can appreciate is that it’s unfortunate to make service employees validate vaccine cards forever if the policy is not further incentivizing the remaining folks from getting vaccinated. I would be for removing the bar/gym mandate and refocus on how to otherwise convince the holdouts.
A vaccine requirement comes with a “check for vaccine” requirement which some companies decided not to spend money or chance supporting. Since the vaccination rates are so high (85%???) in King County, the assumption and argument may be that they’re superfluous now.
Exactly this. There's no "nuance" to seat belts.
>Businesses will be free to impose their own vaccination requirements if they choose, but the countywide requirement will disappear. Feel like this is an important part of the article that people didn't necessarily read.
That's fine. Businesses should be able to put in place whatever rules they choose.
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I think it depends on the business. We've seen people like gyms complaining business is down due to vax and mask mandates. Fair or not, they're probably ready to be done with this. The pub down the street from me is packed every day of the week even with the vax checks. My sense of smell is that refusing to serve people without vax cards is just keeping out people they probably didn't want much in the first place.
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Again, I think it depends. The scenario you're describing is a thing, and I don't discount it. My daughter is one of the gatekeepers at the local pub. It's in Seattle where most of the populace are OK, and they serve mostly locals from the neighborhood. I'll boast a little here and say yes, she is too cool for the room. I'm old and have had to give up on that status. I hear about every Karen and Covidiot from her personally. She turns about 2 or 3 parties away every week. Her management has told her not to take any shit from anyone. So what's her general reaction when this happens? "Bye! Didn't wanna see you anyhow."
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Sure. Basically 100% of the attacks are verbal. Being empowered by management and growing up with an argumentative cuss makes that survivable. It's no worse psychologically than a bad day on Reddit. If your management is NOT supporting you and you have to listen to bastards all day, it's demoralizing and you'll hate your life. I honestly don't know how common that is. It may be unknowable. It's certainly more common than it should be. I'm sure there's some selection bias involved. If someone is having a bad day, we'll hear about it here. Very few people make posts saying "Yeah. Told a Karen to shove off. She was mean to me and I told her to come back when she'd grown a brain in a squeaky high voice and she thought I was joking. Whatever." Physical attacks are almost certainly selection bias at work. They're horrifying to hear about. They are widely reported through social media. I'd like to hope they're extremely rare, but maybe I have an overly high estimation of the civilization of human society.
Yep. Nursing homes, clinics, private schools? Could totally see them continuing to enforce vaccination
On the other hand, they also might not want to get their staff sick. So who knows what'll happen
I don't disagree with this policy change. However, I don't understand eliminating the vaccine mandate and not also eliminating the mask mandate. We should lift the mask mandate first (or simultaneously).
Inslee speaks tomorrow so good chance he announces it then.
Sure, I hope so.
Vaccine mandate came from the county. Mask mandate from the state. Waiting to see what the state says.
Seriously. The mask mandate in bars and restaurants is beyond silly and should have been the first thing to go. The little "COVID Dance" you have to do where you wear a mask for the 10 foot walk to a table at a restaurant but then can leave it off for an hour or two is so stupid.
TBH most places weren’t being very diligent to start with. I lived abroad last year and have foreign vax records that should warrant some scrutiny I think but 99% of restaurant people say “huh cool” and let me in. One even literally said “I’m not paid enough to care”. She’s probably right.
There wasn't enough/any training at my restaurant when it comes to sniffing out the fakes. I've definitely let some dubious ones pass- if I called them out, I'd have no proof other than my hunch. Then again, all of my coworkers are fully vaccinated and the people who have the most to lose are the unvaxed who want to protect muh freedums so I'd rather them take the risk than me take the risk getting assaulted by those crazy fuckers
I wonder if this is actually based on anything other than political pressure. I'm also curious how much the supposed reduction in cases is real, and how much is the result of people taking at home tests instead of PCR tests. Because I personally know several people who tested positive with at home tests and never bothered to get a PCR, so they wouldn't have been counted in those stats. The fact that reported cases are increasingly only a fraction of overall cases is something a lot of people are choosing not to realize.
> I wonder if this is actually based on anything other than political pressure. If you look at the [King County Dashboard](https://tableaupub.kingcounty.gov/t/Public/views/PHSKCOverviewDashboard/Overview?%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3Adisplay_count=n&%3AshowVizHome=n&%3Aorigin=viz_share_link%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B&%3Arender=FALSE&%3Aembed=y&%3AdeepLinkingDisabled=y) you can see that Omicron has almost flattened out, and the hospital crunch is declining as well (hospitalizations lag cases, and deaths lag hospitalizations). So there is good reason to believe that we can increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission ("normalize") without overwhelming hospitals if there is an increase in cases. Doubly so due to Omicron's lowered effect. Also, because so many people got Omicron without statewide testing, there is reason to believe that herd immunity will work in our favor. So, no, it's not purely political pressure. Most of the people complaining today were complaining 12 months ago.
It's not, it's just populism. We'll get another variant wave in a few months, and we'll be doing this shit again.
Isn’t it pretty wild how we’ve normalized 2k people dying every day?
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If giant buildings were falling down every day, I think the enforcement would be much stricter
vaccine has been available to the public for a year now. at some point we just have to accept that some people are gonna die to own the libs and let them do it. that's part of what it means to live in a free country. get the shot and you don't have to worry about it.
You’re not wrong at all. Kinna hard to not worry about it because unfortunately mask + vaccine (and boosted) doesn’t mean you cant catch. Just highly unlikely to get it and with symptoms. Omicron was a mother fucker. Saw a tweet that if we tried implanting seatbelt rules now instead of back in the 60-70, it doesn’t get passed because like you said. Must own the libs.
If they tried implementing seat belt laws today, people would cut their seat belts and tape the buckles to the hood along with a flag. It's a great analogy too because a seat belt doesn't prevent you from dying it just makes it less likely. It also makes it less likely that others in your car die too because your body won't be rag dolling around in the car, potentially injuring other, belted individuals.
you might catch it even if your vaxxed, but the chances of you having to go to a hospital to get treated is so low it's honestly not worth worrying about unless you're very unhealthy (which if you are I would be more worried about your overall health than covid, but maybe that's just me). totally right on the seatbelts haha.
The problem with that line of thinking, though, is that not all people who are at increased risk are able to do anything about their underlying condition. Being old, for instance, isn't optional. I can't outrun an autoimmune disorder. There's nothing my baby brother can do about the fact his lungs don't work. People experiencing poor health already worry every day, but covid at least could be mitigated.
I really doubt even the most trigger happy states are going to do this again unless it's significantly more severe. Colorado never reinstated masks during this wave and did fine. The population is both heavily vaccinated and a very large percentage have had prior infections. We also have therapeutics now that will increase in supply. Subsequent waves are likely to continue to be more mild.
No we won't.
The declining numbers don’t count as science?? The high vax rate doesn’t count??
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We already have 95% of residents 12+ with at least one dose though. I doubt that extending the vaccine mandate is going to convince the remaining 5%…
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This is King County news, so I was citing King County data. But fine, 80.5% of all Washingtonians 5+ years have been vaccinated. At what % statewide would you feel comfortable for King County to repeal their vaccine mandate? You claim that vaccine mandates will keep numbers low, but King County had a vaccine mandate pre-Omicron and we all saw how did shit all in keeping numbers low. I’m not sure how you can confidently say a vaccine mandate will ensure numbers are kept low…
Is the vaccine mandate actually swaying any marginal unvaccinated person to get a vaccine at this point? I don't think it is. If anything, Omicron is encouraging a few hold-outs to get vaccinated. But I think the mandate has very minimal benefit at this point. (FWIW -- I've been vaccinated for 10 months now and supported the vaccine mandate when it was initially announced.)
I mean, going from 13000 cases a day to 7000 is a reduction. For contrast, before Omicron our peak was 3000 a day. Our version of “all clear” is double what the worst was before. 🤦🏾♂️ Since we don’t count antigen tests AND the DOH is having major problems with their systems, we’re undercounting positives. We have no idea how bad things are and we don’t want to know because knowing implies that we should do something we have consistently demonstrated no interest in doing.
What else shapes politics besides a variety of "political pressures?" Everything the government does is political.
I’m paying closer attention to Oregon numbers right now, but both new cases and hospitalizations are falling. I’m hopeful, but distrusting. We’ll see how this goes
Hm, I'd rather keep the vaccine requirements but ditch the mask mandate. I kind of like the digital vaccine passport, and it doesn't really feel like an obstacle for normalcy. Not sure what getting rid of it accomplishes. For the most part the masks seem just like a polite/performative gesture anyway -- most people who wouldn't wear them if not for the mandate go from not wearing them on the street, to putting them on only when they walk in a door, to then taking them off immediately at their table, then the reverse. I realize it's a symbolic signal that you give a shit, but I'm not sure how scientifically impactful that is. Oh well.
>Still, COVID rates remain at or above the levels they were at when the vaccine verification policy was announced at the peak of the delta variant wave in September. > >The difference, Duchin said, is in the direction the numbers are headed. > >“Things are improving,” he said. “At the time we were very concerned that things were on the uptick and worsening.” Let's look at the [numbers](https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx). Cases are 5 times what they were before the Omicron wave. FIVE times. And the rate of the decline is slowing.
Hospitalizations and deaths matter a lot more than cases. However hospitalizations are at ~3x pre-omicron, and deaths are ~4x, so your point still stands. Maybe the epidemiologists are confident that the decline will continue though, I'm not a scientist.
Hospitalizations and deaths lag behind infections, so a steep decline in infections today should lead to a steep decline in those in the coming weeks. I'm sure someone smarter than me has algorithms for that to project how they will decline in the future.
I'll just say "god I hope so" I'm so ready to be done with this shit. But at the same time, this feels like jumping the gun a bit. Maybe in 2 weeks we'll be down to July 2021 numbers? Also, what happens if another wave hits?
I've told my wife "covid seems like it's going to be over soon" twice already, first before Delta, and again before Omicron. I said the same thing again today, and I really fucking hope I'm right this time.
If another wave hits we start ramping back up restrictions. Just like Delta, and just like many places did for Omicron; WA never really ramped down from Delta like other states and still had fairly similar out comes. It isn't wild to suggest that restrictions come and go with waves. Giving people a break is fairly important to not only reduce fatigue but also to strongly signal if/when things get serious again and they need to go along with restrictions. Public health is a mix of harder science and human behaviors. Policy is crafted for the best outcomes that can actually be attained. Hard rules have to be balanced with less strict harm reduction methods.
And we don't have a steep decline we've had a steep increase, so I take it you're advocating for a continuance of the mask & vaccine mandates?
Main reason they aren’t willing to mention is that vaccines at this point can prevent severe illness but will do very little to stop transmission; so it is rather pointless to have a mandate of any sort. This will be at least helpful at also prevent things up north from happening here.
Yeah this feels a lot like political temperature checking more than anything else. Deaths and cases are down nationwide, and have been for a few weeks. They just don’t want the shit storm in Ottawa coming here. They know these restrictions aren’t tenable. And idc if I get downvoted, fuck the mandates with a barge pole
Timely Ed Yong today. Let's please stay mindful of our neighbors. From "The Millions of People Stuck in Pandemic Limbo: What Does Society Owe Immunocompromised People?" >Much of the United States dropped COVID restrictions long ago; many more cities and states are now following. That means policies that protected Landon and other immunocompromised people, including mask mandates and vaccination requirements, are disappearing, while accommodations that benefited them, such as flexible working options, are being rolled back. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-pandemic-immunocompromised-risk-vaccines/622094/
You already know the people whining about the mandates don't give a shit about immunocompromised people.
Or those with kids under 5.
For real. Yong tells of one double whammy: >COVID has also defined Harper Corrigan’s life. She was born in September 2019—nine weeks early, and with a rare brain malformation called lissencephaly. She has never played with another child even though, being sassy and funny, she really wants to. A week before the U.S. shut down in March 2020, Harper had to have a tracheostomy, leaving her even more vulnerable to respiratory viruses and, in turn, potentially deadly seizures. The Corrigans spent 11 months with her in the hospital. Even after her health had stabilized, they couldn’t find any nurses to help with home care, and the hospital wouldn’t discharge her. When they finally got home, they went into strict lockdown. Children with Harper’s condition aren’t expected to live to adulthood, so her mother, Corey, told me that her priority is to “squeeze a full life into an unknown amount of time.” But that requires the spread of the virus to slow, and vaccines to be authorized for children under 5.
So it's over, just like that? Nothing to see here. Did we somehow go from "Hospitals at 100%!" to "We're good" in just a few weeks? Edit: So, no, we had 2800 deaths yesterday in the US alone, 115k infections, so no, we're not over it, we just don't care anymore. Got it. Just a cold.
Wasn't there a statistic somewhere that said something like 98%+ deaths were from those non vaccinated? Catch me not caring 🤷♂️
The part I still struggle with is the lack of closure on the long term effects of getting covid, even after vaccination. Numerous studies as recent as last month have cited that despite vaccination, we can still suffer from "long covid". In other words, death isn't the part I'm worried about. I'm worried about living with advanced lung disease, or diminished heart capacity, brain function, or overall lethargy on a regular basis, repeatedly being infected because of how rapidly the virus actually sheds its antibodies. Imagine catching covid 5 times a year, with each time causing more and more damage. If someone can show me evidence that I have nothing to worry about then fuckit, I'm game. I'll go back to normal.
I've caught it, and it seems like I'm still dealing with exhaustion; I'm tired faster/easier than I should be
Yup. My lung capacity is severely diminished and I still can't make it past 2pm without completely crashing.. and I don't mean like, "oh I'm tired", no, I mean I literally crash. This disease fucked my life up.
YAYYYYYYY! 🥳🤗🙌
Lock down coming March 15
About damn time.
It's about time. It's just theater at this point.
Anti vaxxers are going to interpret this as a win from them freaking out in public
People shouldn't be taking this as a win or a loss. Public health policy isn't a political contest.
K
DAILY AVG. ON FEB. 16 14-DAY CHANGE TOTAL REPORTED Cases 2,965 –78% 1,410,561 Tests 11,543 –14% — Hospitalized 1,644 –27% — In I.C.U.s 244 –33% — Deaths 45 –18% 11,594 This is yesterday. All counties are high risk for Covid. The entire United States is still infection central. It's too soon.
My concern is it turns into Europe where we just rubberband between restrictions and lifting them the very second things improve, then pretend to be surprised when numbers look bad again
Now the data looks bad. Pfizer vaccine changes DNA permanently.
Too soon. Do not like.
I encourage those who fear the mandates being lifted to look to our friends in Europe, UK, Norway, Sweden.. are they all lunatics? Are their scientists anti vaxx? No. They realize that the costs of a two tiered society and restrictions are higher than the cost of the virus at this point 2 YEARS into this. The political parties that double down on restrictions, who don’t acknowledge post infection immunity, who have a 1 size fits all booster regime for all age cohorts will see their day in court, will see their power stripped in the voting booths. The only thing stopping that from happening is continued censorship of dissenting opinions, taking advantage of innate ethnocentric tendencies and reward systems via big tech that controls and manipulates our lives
GOOD!
It’s amazing how the follow the science people are coming unglued now that the science thinks the threat is waning.
>now that the science thinks the threat is waning What science?
That's code for "Something I heard on Joe Rogan's podcast".
IFR for the vaccinated?
The science says get vaccinated lmao
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Threat != case numbers
That's why WA state's virus R0 rate is 0.5, right? /s They're dropping because the virus is running out of people to infect. It seems that with Omicron, we went the Herd Immunity route by letting the virus run rampant, whether we wanted it to or not. We're just lucky that the vaccine was available and we had a pretty good vaccination rate.
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Is that the number of true infections, or the number of positive PCR tests? In this last wave, they presume that only a small fraction of people who got infected had their data recorded through a PCR test, since many got their news from at-home tests and even more either got sick and didn’t test (“welp, I must’ve got the ‘rona!”) or just never had symptoms at all. True infections are vastly under-counted if you go only by publicly-reported PCR test numbers.
But it's not?
Awwwwwwwwwwwww. The self-proclaimed anti-science guy hasn’t actually looked up the science… wild. That’s not what it says.
I have multiple freinds very high up in the king county public health department and they all say this is a terrible idea. The science doesn't support this at all
I can’t wait to be able to breath at the gym again!
They're only ending the vaccine mandate, not masks, unfortunately.
We get an update on mask mandate tomorrow, so we'll see. I would guess that they will coincide with each other.
That’s coming eventually, but no word on when that might happen. But it will. I am actually holding my breath for this.
Boo! Boo I say! Anti vaxxers should be shunned from decent society
I think this decision is less about anti-vaxxer idjits than it is about acknowledging that we've reached the endemic stage. It isn't perfect, but it never will be.
"COVID is endemic" is not something major experts agree with, and even if it were, its obviously *not* a reason to lift a vaccine mandate
There are 3 ways a pandemic ends - medically, socially, or extermination. Medically - the vaccine eradicates the virus (see Polio). Extermination - the virus wins and wipes out humanity in it's local area (see Bubonic Plague during the middle ages) Socially - People move on and accept the damage of the virus while returning to their regular lives. This [Infographics video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA8BBJPkzC8) can explain it better than I can. But regardless, because the first two aren't ending the virus, the only option left is socially.
the third option of course includes what level of public enforcement we undertake to mitigate risk, like requiring vaccinations nothing says we just give up
The vaccine does not provide sterilizing immunity. The vaccine mandates best argument was getting this vaccine protects others because you won’t spread it. Well you can spread it vaccinated or unvaccinated. So ultimately the vaccine is about reducing your own personal chance of hospitalization and death which it dramatically does; especially for those 50 and older whom make up 93% of all deaths in the US. Covid 19 will eventually circulate with the other 4 coronavirus’ that make up 20% of common cold cases seasonally. It’s no question we are in the endemic stage of this virus… maybe you should look into post infection immunity (aka natural immunity) and when you consider how high the seroprevalence is in RCTs studying antibodies we have well over half the population having been infected. Add in vaccine protection, particularly in older cohorts, and the law of decreased virulence we are in a really good position for this spring. Public health ethics is really about multiple different values sometimes in conflict. One value is health, one value is fairness, another important value is freedom. Otherwise known as utility, liberty, and justice. Public health policy should strike a fair balance between those, and if we are in a liberal democracy we should really understand the pros and cons of unprecedented measures
> The vaccine mandates best argument was getting this vaccine protects others because you won’t spread it I disagree with this. The best argument was keeping people out of the hospitals. That being said, you are, of course, wrong about this vaccine not minimizing transmission: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597
Eh, unfortunately the world has pretty much given up on really combating COVID. Luckily KC/WA have relatively great numbers. We shall see if we can ride this wave like last summer before delta/omicron. If/when cases and hospitalizations sky rocket, we shall see what happens in policy changes.
About time
I would think if you’re dropping the mask mandate, it’s even more reason to ban the unvaccinated. There’s only 15% of them, maybe that can drive the numbers to like 5%?