[teejers1]

What about MT's post suggests the "sky is falling"?

It's a useful post with factual information. Rather hopeful factual information in fact.

If we go by history, we know you have been pushing against pandemic restrictions from the very beginning, when we had no vaccine and with a virus that was probably more dangerous, though less infectious. Whereas MT from the beginning has posted facts and useful information, your posts usually lacked pertinent facts and instead were mostly whining and baseless conjecture.

Omicron is more mild. Thanks to vaccines and forced acquired immunity, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I hope it will be here soon. But we have the highest test positivity of the whole pandemic now, and hospitalizations and ICU utilization is rising quickly, even if stays are shorter and there are less deaths (though will hopefully peak soon, if wastewater data is a reliable indicator). Still even with less deaths, in some places elective cases are being cancelled and wait times for beds are very long, like during earlier surges.

I do think and have posted here before that Omicron will be the transition point to endemicity, but we're not quite there yet.

From Day 1 I have been a proponent of basing policy off hospitalization figures.  I used facts, as they were available.  There were numerous significant gaps in the facts posted by SCC website, obfuscating the ability of folks to comment on the wisdom of certain policies.  The most notorious omission being the correlation of comorbidities/age with deaths/hospitalizations.  Those were (and are) rather important figures to integrate when coming up with sound policies.  [I believe the head of CDC recently stated that 70+% of those dying from Covid had 4 or more comorbidities!  That's a pretty significant fact that you couldn't find anywhere in SCC numbers.  You also have leaders of UCSF hospitals saying the reporting of Covid hospitalization numbers need to be cleaned up because so much of that are people being admitted for Issue A but then testing positive for Covid, though asymptomatic (and would never be hospitalized for that)].  And regardless, we're now learning that many of the "facts" (i.e., numbers reported on hospitalizations and deaths) may not have been as infallible as many here trumpeted during the first year+ of the pandemic.

Look, I was (and remain) all for being smart - get your shots, wear masks and distance indoors.  But I also was (and remain) opposed to the surrender mentality that reigned, particularly in school settings, particularly in our county. 

Sorry that I did not reel off article after article replete with numbers/stats/etc. painting the grimmest picture possible and that my posts were whining and baseless.  I'm an eye test guy in most things, and my eyes and instincts were telling me that there was (and remains) overreaction to virus response, though I also believe the overreaction has been lessened as the pandemic progressed and as administration changed. (BTW, the eye test comment brings this post back to Stanford sports!).

[teejers1]

What about MT's post suggests the "sky is falling"?

It's a useful post with factual information. Rather hopeful factual information in fact.

If we go by history, we know you have been pushing against pandemic restrictions from the very beginning, when we had no vaccine and with a virus that was probably more dangerous, though less infectious. Whereas MT from the beginning has posted facts and useful information, your posts usually lacked pertinent facts and instead were mostly whining and baseless conjecture.

Omicron is more mild. Thanks to vaccines and forced acquired immunity, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I hope it will be here soon. But we have the highest test positivity of the whole pandemic now, and hospitalizations and ICU utilization is rising quickly, even if stays are shorter and there are less deaths (though will hopefully peak soon, if wastewater data is a reliable indicator). Still even with less deaths, in some places elective cases are being cancelled and wait times for beds are very long, like during earlier surges.

I do think and have posted here before that Omicron will be the transition point to endemicity, but we're not quite there yet.

From Day 1 I have been a proponent of basing policy off hospitalization figures.  I used facts, as they were available.  There were numerous significant gaps in the facts posted by SCC website, obfuscating the ability of folks to comment on the wisdom of certain policies.  The most notorious omission being the correlation of comorbidities/age with deaths/hospitalizations.  Those were (and are) rather important figures to integrate when coming up with sound policies.  [I believe the head of CDC recently stated that 70+% of those dying from Covid had 4 or more comorbidities!  That's a pretty significant fact that you couldn't find anywhere in SCC numbers.  You also have leaders of UCSF hospitals saying the reporting of Covid hospitalization numbers need to be cleaned up because so much of that are people being admitted for Issue A but then testing positive for Covid, though asymptomatic (and would never be hospitalized for that)].  And regardless, we're now learning that many of the "facts" (i.e., numbers reported on hospitalizations and deaths) may not have been as infallible as many here trumpeted during the first year+ of the pandemic.

Look, I was (and remain) all for being smart - get your shots, wear masks and distance indoors.  But I also was (and remain) opposed to the surrender mentality that reigned, particularly in school settings, particularly in our county. 

Sorry that I did not reel off article after article replete with numbers/stats/etc. painting the grimmest picture possible and that my posts were whining and baseless.  I'm an eye test guy in most things, and my eyes and instincts were telling me that there was (and remains) overreaction to virus response, though I also believe the overreaction has been lessened as the pandemic progressed and as administration changed. (BTW, the eye test comment brings this post back to Stanford sports!).