Thank you for that update Daiwa!!

At this point we're really talking about 2 different populations, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.  This little graph says a lot.  U.S. hospitalizations, Blue line is unvaccinated, green line is vaccinated.  Putting social responsibilities aside, which I do not, we are all literally paying for that either through insurance premiums or taxes:

Link: You have to go here, then on the left side click on "Vaccine Effectiveness and Breakthrough Surveillance", then choose "Hospitalizations by Vaccination Status - Covid.net" from the dropdown:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

Stay safe, Spencer...and get better soon...

Oops, went off on my little data-mission and missed that.  I hope it's a mild one, get well soon.

The NSW health minister made a brave statement that everyone in the state will get the omicrom variant.... despite many residents having their 1st and 2nd vaccinations, and some even having had their booster shot.  I sure hope he's wrong because that would mean most of Australia would contract it.

There is talk of a 2nd booster shot here and possibly a 3rd.  Israel has already mandated a second booster shot to all who have had their initial shots and their 1st booster.  A 3rd booster is being discussed there and is somewhat likely.

Sadly, I see no end, no light at the end of the tunnel.  Every time the experts come up with a vaccine to combat the current strains, this damned disease comes up with yet another variant that's near immune to current vaccines and it runs rampant through society.

Merry Christmas and a rapid recovery! 

Happy new year, too!

I know it seems like an eternity, but the pandemic has only been going on for two years.  Consider the polio epidemics which (officially) started in the U.S. in 1916.  The Salk vaccine was first administered to children in 1954.  In other words polio was active for almost 40 years!  We are miles ahead of this RE covid because of how advanced medical science is now.  Boosters for covid may become a regular thing like flu shots; I have no problem with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_polio

That would be my guess.  I'm a weird dude, but I actually kind of enjoy getting those shots - they always seem to be so darned happy to be doing it.   

Yeah, it took some years before an effective polio vaccine was produced, but in this day and age we have far better technology to combat disease and epidemics, and hopefully the scientists working on the covid vaccines are able to develop one that's effective on all strains.... now and even future ones that as yet have not evolved.

I don't have a problem with annual booster shots, either, but that was my point of not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.  Hopefully one will appear, but I think we will be living with covid much as we do with the flu and the common cold.

My belief is that getting COVID is now a matter of when, not if, now that this much more highly contagious (but fortunately less lethal) variant is exploding across the globe.  Vaccinated folks will generally tolerate the illness much better; that's the nature of all vaccines for these respiratory viruses.  I've seen a jump just this week in patients in my practice testing positive, all but one vaxed, none of whom are particularly sick; nearly everyone with a runny nose for more than a day wants a test.  A few of my patients who have repeatedly tested negative are among the most symptomatic.  There are beaucoup non-COVID viruses out there, too.  I fully expect to get COVID despite my 3-vax status.  We'll see over the next 6 months or so whether I'm right or not.

The difference between hospitalizations between vaxed/not vaxed is not particularly surprising and I would expect that difference in rates to narrow somewhat over time as the disease marches on.

There has always been and will always be a subset of people who make poor life decisions which affect their utilization of healthcare services and I'm OK with paying for that discrepancy through insurance or taxes.

To Victechnical's point, there are fundamental differences between the polio/smallpox type viruses and respiratory viruses that made it possible (once the technology evolved) to virtually eradicate the former.  The relatively rapid mutation rate of all coronaviruses makes eradication virtually impossible.  All we can do is mitigate against disease frequency, severity and duration, as is the case with influenza.  Barring a miraculous breakthrough that we can't begin to imagine, they will always be with us and will always pose a threat to the more immunologically vulnerable.

Is it possible that every 100 years there will be a global pandemic? With Covid-19 it was terrible. Perhaps, for now, only vaccination is what everyone should do. I have injected Pfizer and still regularly wear a mask when going out. My family plans to have a long journey to Florida, once the epidemic here is better controlled.

As if I needed something to drive the point home, I have two patients, a couple, who had 8 members of their family visit from out of state for the Christmas holiday, in a town with historically very low numbers of COVID cases.  All of them, including 2 children, were vaxed - 9 thrice, 1 twice.  Mom/grandma came down with a little sore throat Christmas morning. Now all 10 are COVID positive, within 4 days of the first signs of illness in any of them.  Fortunately, they are all only mildly ill with cold-like symptoms.

Talk about going on 'just a 3 hour cruise...'

More to follow if things take a darker turn.

Recently a nurses aid told me that Covid would go away if they stopped talking about it on the news so much. What genius! Now all we have to do is convince the news agencies to stop talking about hunger, war, racism, poverty, cancer, etc etc etc.

If only it were that easy  Sadly, however, the world is more complicated than that.