[winflop]

Fwiw, in an email today the Stanford admin said there have been ~400 student positive tests and ~300 faculty/staff/postdoc positive tests in the past week.

For context, in the 2020-21 academic year, at the height of the pandemic (and with mandatory weekly testing for everyone) there typically were 20-30 student and 10 faculty/staff/postdoc positive tests per week.

Omicron may be less severe on average, but with those case rates it would be incredibly irresponsible to hold large non-essential gatherings indoors in person.

Has even one of those 700 people been hospitalized?

I don't think much can be done to stop omicron from spreading. The only question is how long do you want it to take to do so? The risk is people being hospitalized (or worse), which thankfully isn't happening at anywhere near the same rate as it did for delta and previous mutations, doubly so among the vaccinated.

Are you sure flop? Reuters disagrees with your assessment. And this is outdated news by now: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/cdc-chi...022-01-07/

No, I'm not sure, which is why I posed it as a question. But the reality is that with rare exception, omicron is severely impacting the unvaccinated but not the vaccinated. Sadly, few if any are reporting on this important delineation. From the article: "We are still seeing those numbers rising," Walensky said, noting that while cases outpaced hospitalizations and deaths, rising hospitalizations were primarily among the unvaccinated.

What's happening to the unvaccinated is of minimal relevance to the Stanford community given the super-high vaccination rate.

There is also a newly-emerging frustration which is that hospitalization numbers include both people hospitalized FOR Covid and people hospitalized WITH Covid. NY state just reported that more than half of their current Covid hospitalizations are people who were hospitalized for other reasons but incidentally tested positive for Covid during the admissions process. Locally (according to the Murky News), both UCSF and Stanford hospitals have reported over 25% of their Covid patients hospitalized with Covid, not for it.

At this point, my hope is that omicron burns through quickly, with minimal impact to the vaccinated.

[winflop]

Fwiw, in an email today the Stanford admin said there have been ~400 student positive tests and ~300 faculty/staff/postdoc positive tests in the past week.

For context, in the 2020-21 academic year, at the height of the pandemic (and with mandatory weekly testing for everyone) there typically were 20-30 student and 10 faculty/staff/postdoc positive tests per week.

Omicron may be less severe on average, but with those case rates it would be incredibly irresponsible to hold large non-essential gatherings indoors in person.

Has even one of those 700 people been hospitalized?

I don't think much can be done to stop omicron from spreading. The only question is how long do you want it to take to do so? The risk is people being hospitalized (or worse), which thankfully isn't happening at anywhere near the same rate as it did for delta and previous mutations, doubly so among the vaccinated.

Are you sure flop? Reuters disagrees with your assessment. And this is outdated news by now: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/cdc-chi...022-01-07/

No, I'm not sure, which is why I posed it as a question. But the reality is that with rare exception, omicron is severely impacting the unvaccinated but not the vaccinated. Sadly, few if any are reporting on this important delineation. From the article: "We are still seeing those numbers rising," Walensky said, noting that while cases outpaced hospitalizations and deaths, rising hospitalizations were primarily among the unvaccinated.

What's happening to the unvaccinated is of minimal relevance to the Stanford community given the super-high vaccination rate.

There is also a newly-emerging frustration which is that hospitalization numbers include both people hospitalized FOR Covid and people hospitalized WITH Covid. NY state just reported that more than half of their current Covid hospitalizations are people who were hospitalized for other reasons but incidentally tested positive for Covid during the admissions process. Locally (according to the Murky News), both UCSF and Stanford hospitals have reported over 25% of their Covid patients hospitalized with Covid, not for it.

At this point, my hope is that omicron burns through quickly, with minimal impact to the vaccinated.