Latrinsorm
11-27-2021, 07:27 PM
The Omicron variant was discovered in South Africa.
Yesterday it had been confirmed in south Africa, Israel, Hong Kong, and Belgium.
Today it has been confirmed in the formerly United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.
It is already in the United States.
.
And we didn't even need a new variant to return to 2,500 daily deaths this winter...
- cases were already up 33% overall over the past three weeks, and we never got below four figure daily deaths.
- cases were already up 40% among children, guaranteeing that COVID would continue to kill twice as many children as measles did before vaccination.
- vaccinations had already slowed to a trickle; where we were once vaccinating 2,000,000 a day, we were down to 100,000. total vaccinated deaths were up 100% in one month yet we never reached even 1,000,000 boosters a day, further compounding our uniquely American inability to get partially vaccinated people to fully vaccinated.
.
The outcomes to the introduction of Omicron are quite a limited set - either it coincides with the holiday surge and drives daily deaths above 3,000, or 4,000, or 5,000... or it prolongs the holiday surge and keeps us above 2,000 daily deaths for months longer than last year's holiday surge. In either case hundreds of thousands will die needlessly, and we will give the coronavirus tens of millions of more chances to generate yet another variant.
There is no time to change any of this.
The time to act was months ago, and we chose to miss it.
The surge will recede in the spring or summer, and smart people will again confidently declare that the pandemic is over, permanently winding down, as they did in the spring and fall of this year.
They will be wrong.
Dead wrong.
Again.
.
We can choose to finally ignore these voices of incaution, well meaning or otherwise.
We can choose to finally take this virus seriously.
We can choose to finally demand action, immediate action, forceful action.
From our government, from our friends and family and coworkers, from ourselves.
Or, we can choose to start the whole cycle over again, and choose to pretend we couldn't do anything to save millions of lives around the world, and choose death, death always, death over all.
Forward thinking leaders such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson have already taken sharp action including mask mandates. It's really not that difficult a choice, and it's really not that difficult a task, and it's really not that difficult to see our next choice of failure is an inevitability - an entire nation reaching out and burning its hand on a hot stove over and over and over and over and over. What's one more time?
What's another eight hundred thousand lives lost?
Yesterday it had been confirmed in south Africa, Israel, Hong Kong, and Belgium.
Today it has been confirmed in the formerly United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.
It is already in the United States.
.
And we didn't even need a new variant to return to 2,500 daily deaths this winter...
- cases were already up 33% overall over the past three weeks, and we never got below four figure daily deaths.
- cases were already up 40% among children, guaranteeing that COVID would continue to kill twice as many children as measles did before vaccination.
- vaccinations had already slowed to a trickle; where we were once vaccinating 2,000,000 a day, we were down to 100,000. total vaccinated deaths were up 100% in one month yet we never reached even 1,000,000 boosters a day, further compounding our uniquely American inability to get partially vaccinated people to fully vaccinated.
.
The outcomes to the introduction of Omicron are quite a limited set - either it coincides with the holiday surge and drives daily deaths above 3,000, or 4,000, or 5,000... or it prolongs the holiday surge and keeps us above 2,000 daily deaths for months longer than last year's holiday surge. In either case hundreds of thousands will die needlessly, and we will give the coronavirus tens of millions of more chances to generate yet another variant.
There is no time to change any of this.
The time to act was months ago, and we chose to miss it.
The surge will recede in the spring or summer, and smart people will again confidently declare that the pandemic is over, permanently winding down, as they did in the spring and fall of this year.
They will be wrong.
Dead wrong.
Again.
.
We can choose to finally ignore these voices of incaution, well meaning or otherwise.
We can choose to finally take this virus seriously.
We can choose to finally demand action, immediate action, forceful action.
From our government, from our friends and family and coworkers, from ourselves.
Or, we can choose to start the whole cycle over again, and choose to pretend we couldn't do anything to save millions of lives around the world, and choose death, death always, death over all.
Forward thinking leaders such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson have already taken sharp action including mask mandates. It's really not that difficult a choice, and it's really not that difficult a task, and it's really not that difficult to see our next choice of failure is an inevitability - an entire nation reaching out and burning its hand on a hot stove over and over and over and over and over. What's one more time?
What's another eight hundred thousand lives lost?