NY Times:
David Wallace-Wells/New Yorker:
There is a difference between individual risk (lower because of decreased virulence relative to Delta) and community risk (high with Omicron because of transmissibility and previous strain on health care/hospitals). That’s why “milder” ≠ “mild”. This is not a mild wave.
NY Times:
Asish K Jha/Twitter (lightly edited):
EJ Dionne/WaPo:
John Stoehr/Editorial Board:
Perry Bacon Jr/WaPo:
Early Data Hints at Omicron’s Potential Toll Across America
The extremely transmissible Omicron variant is spreading quickly across the United States, making up a vast majority of U.S. cases after becoming dominant in the week before Christmas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that it is still too soon to predict the full impact Omicron could have on deaths and illness across the country. But data in some of the earliest-hit cities are beginning to show what the future could hold.
So, here's how we beat COVID, people: https://t.co/RUiTGvdh71 pic.twitter.com/F9onJCszc0
— Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99) January 9, 2022
David Wallace-Wells/New Yorker:
America’s Omicron Wave Already Looks More Severe Than Europe’s
But while this is all encouraging, it is not clear that those same patterns observed abroad will hold here in the U.S. In fact, there are already early signs in hospitalization and ICU data that the experience of Omicron in America may be harsher than has been observed so far in Europe. This should perhaps not come as a surprise, given that Delta was much more lethal in the U.S. than in Europe — and the current data may still reflect some lingering cases of that variant. And it does not mean a tsunami of deaths is right around the corner or that this new variant will mean for the U.S. what Delta meant for India. (To begin with, the U.S. is, by global standards, very well vaccinated.) But the higher rate of severity observed so far is a reminder that the shape of a pandemic is not simply a matter of the biological properties of the virus; it is also determined by the social and immunological context in which that virus spreads. And it appears that, with Omicron as with Delta, the American context may be different enough to make a real difference, delivering perhaps considerably more severe illness and death than we’ve seen on the other side of the Atlantic….
To this point in the Omicron surge, at least, American fatalities have not grown dramatically from that plateau, and the small rise we have observed is as likely to be the result of ongoing Delta cases as Omicron infections (that is how fast this surge has come upon us — our data are still telling a story about the last one). Anecdotal reporting from around the country suggests that while new patients are crowding hospitals and emergency rooms, to the doctors working in those hospitals the Omicron cases appear, on the whole, less serious. But while the New York Times reported this week this wave is putting less pressure on ICUs than previous ones, state data tell a different story: A comparable proportion of hospitalized cases are already now in the ICU as was the case in New York during the winter surge of early 2021. Then, hospital admissions reached 9,000; now, we’re already past 10,000. ICU admissions got to 1,600; now, we’re at 1,404.
There is a difference between individual risk (lower because of decreased virulence relative to Delta) and community risk (high with Omicron because of transmissibility and previous strain on health care/hospitals). That’s why “milder” ≠ “mild”. This is not a mild wave.
NY Times:
How to Think About Covid Data Right Now
“We are going to have a lot of people sick, and even if a smaller proportion of those individuals have really horrible illnesses and adverse outcomes, it’s still a lot of people,” said Janet Hamilton, the executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.
With so much risk for infection right now, public health experts say that keeping an eye on case counts and trends can encourage people to make decisions to protect themselves from infection and to avoid infecting those around them, like by getting a booster shot or wearing a mask indoors.
“We’re still in a situation that needs caution,” said Ms. Hamilton. “We’ve had a month with Omicron and there’s just still a lot we don’t know.”
WATCH: "We will never get to 70, 80, or 90% of the population vaccinated without a mandate," @ZekeEmanuel says. #MTP "And for the Supreme Court to take that away in the midst of an emergency seems to me to be very wrong." pic.twitter.com/3T3oCKWBbz
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 9, 2022
Asish K Jha/Twitter (lightly edited):
Watching national data and being in the hospital this week I see two things that appear contradictory. But both are true. 1. Link between cases & hospitalizations is much weaker with Omicron than in the past 2. Our healthcare system is in trouble Thread: the moment we are in
Let's talk about I'm seeing in the hospital first. In the hospital, seeing lots of COVID patients. Some admitted due to COVID. They are all either: 1. Unvaccinated 2. Very high risk folks not boosted And some admitted "with" COVID as incidental Almost all not boosted
Our current state h/t @MichaelGIsonMD pic.twitter.com/Y9Pe7Xp0aC
— Kavita Patel M.D. (@kavitapmd) January 9, 2022
EJ Dionne/WaPo:
Garland’s caution is an asset when it comes to holding Trump accountable
But the remarks were reassuring in different ways. And not everyone who welcomed Biden’s direct and eloquent indictment of Trump and his apologists within the Republican Party felt as warmly about Garland’s studiously restrained promise to “follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption.”
The stark differences in tone and content can be explained straightforwardly: Biden’s tasks are, by the broadest definition, political. Garland’s task is precisely to keep politics out of prosecutorial decisions.
Biden’s bracing speech from the site of the attack showed he understands that he had no alternative but to confront, publicly and forcefully, the metastasizing anti-democratic movement ignited by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
What “milder” looks like when a variant is significantly more infectious, despite being less severe, than the previous variant. pic.twitter.com/JuZzjfeXo6
— Connor Ewing (@ConnorMEwing) January 9, 2022
John Stoehr/Editorial Board:
This is how the Republicans are whitewashing the J6 insurrection out of existence
And how the Big Lie became so easy to believe.
Can the truth compete with lies?
Lies are really seductive, especially when they tell us what we want to believe. But I want to believe that the truth can not only compete, but that it’s what we prefer. (I have motivated reasoning too!)
I think we’d really rather know than not know to face reality. It’s Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. We’re deluded by shadows. If we learn that truth, it hurts us. When we try to tell others about the delusion, they try to hurt us. It’s easier to pretend you don’t know about the delusion.
But knowing is powerful. If you can know about the delusion, you can fix it. If you can see, it doesn’t have power over you. I don’t think we want to feel helpless. So you have to give people the truth in a way that makes them feel powerful and in control. So much of our political discourse is about disempowering people.
The fate of America is crystallized in Sen. Ron Johnson's re-election bid in Wisconsin. He's a spreader of Putin's propaganda, an enemy of free elections, a demagogue whose anti-vax lies are killing Americans. A vote for Ron Johnson is a vote for a fascist dictatorship.
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) January 9, 2022
Perry Bacon Jr/WaPo:
The rise of a pro-democracy media
The media has long had a problematic “both sides” approach to covering politics. After Donald Trump became president, the media couldn’t avoid covering him very negatively. So the press essentially adopted a modified version of both sides, implying that Trump was an outlier but the two parties were otherwise fairly similar. Then came the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, culminating in the Jan. 6. attack on the Capitol, all of which proved decisively that it wasn’t just Trump — much of the Republican Party was willing to break with core democratic values to hold power.
As a result, over the past year, an emboldened media has not only extensively covered the new radicalism of the GOP — its questioning of election results, targeting of election officials and push to ban discussions of race relations in schools — but increasingly described long-standing Republican tactics such as aggressive gerrymandering and support for voting restrictions as the dangers to democracy that they are.
Two important shifts in the media’s approach are worth highlighting in particular.
Maybe controversial view: The country’s antidemocratic backslide would be getting way more attention if it wasn’t happening during a serious pandemic https://t.co/Ss3Th6kYVb
— Maya Sen (@maya_sen) January 7, 2022