The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

Bottom line, omicron is serious, possibly more so than any other point in the pandemic so far. The rate of spread is unprecedented even if it is more mild and the effectiveness of vaccines is greatly reduced for preventing infection and largely remains to be seen in other areas. Masks and testing remain a critical tool to help slow covid spread and keep people safe, and funding to healthcare should be a priority as lockdowns (something I have been staunchly in favour of) are not a viable long term strategy. 

Feel free to tell me how I'm wrong about all of this.

I think you're pretty right on.

I would disagree about the effectiveness of boosters. I have always been skeptical of what the Pfizer CEO says. As you point out, he is very invested in selling vaccines to the world. However, the estimate is that the booster is going to be, if I recall correctly, back to 70% effective vs infection. And there are lab results (eg antibody tests) that support good efficacy numbers.

How many boosters are we going to need? I don't know. No one knows. We'll see. Clearly if we need boosters every year that may be a problem. But non-mRNA nasal spray vaccines might help.

By the way it's 84 days now. So I can get my 3rd dose on January 24...

In theory, yes. But they just opened booster shot registration to the 50+ crowd on Monday, and most people seem to have appointments 2-3 weeks out.

So, if it's wide open now, that's great, but they are not going to suddenly have appointments for everyone within the next month. And I'm quite sure the issue here is not vaccine availability but the availability of jabbers to jab the jabbees.

Those of us who are good at working the system will get our vaccine quickly. Those of us who are less good, won't. Inequity, here we are.

Quebec has explicitly said "not enough vaccinators". I don't know if Ontario has said that. But it's clearly true.

I thought they changed the six months to three?