solarbird | Re: Regretfully disagreeing (Reply)

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Well - as I said - I'm not saying it's going away, I'm saying it'll be like the flu. That means case surges like in flu season, but much, much lower in scale compared to what we've been through now.

The other factor which I haven't explicitly talked about in these particular posts but which has been described in papers - and I've mentioned this - is that breakthrough cases are continuing to appear to be much less contagious. I still haven't heard a good mechanism for it, but the numbers continue to indicate that this is true. There are lots of reasons suspected for this (and it's probably a combination of reasons) but none that I've seen really specifically confirmed.

Also, CDC numbers out today are showing that at least in the US, booster restores vaccine protection to about 90% against omicron specifically. With an omicron-specific booster in the pipeline, that number should go up, not down. Obviously, we need to get vaccination re-normailsed, and I think getting this mixed into the childhood-vaccination mix will eventually manage that.

You're certainly correct in that immunity to re-infection starts declining after a couple of months. But immunity severe effect appears to be very stable, even for those many months past vaccination.

So between the vast majority of cases being minor to outright unnoticed, and reduced case load, and reduced ability to spread the disease even if you have it, I really don't see a good case to be made for massive spikes moving forward.

I certainly hope I'm not wrong. I have a history of being right, particularly on major calls like this. But the only way to know is to find out, I suppose. And we'll just see.