I think there is a lot of confusion over the numbers.
A lot of folks keep saying, so what, it's twice as bad as the FLU, but we've lived with the FLU for a century. And Vaccines don't prevent getting infected. For those folks, please keep reading.
The biggest problem with COVID is the capacity of our Healthcare System can't handle "Twice the FLU" or 3x a bad FLU season.
Here is analogy I came up with that might help clarify things.
Take a highway that can handle 10,000 cars a day, at max load.
Now put 20,000 cars a day on it. Everything grinds to a halt.
Now, you can't even get 10,000 cars through a day. Deadlocks all over.
COVID is trying to put 50,000 cars a day on that highway.
Our health care system is designed to handle things like peaks in the FLU or natural disasters. It's not designed to handle a Pandemic "Surge".
COVID (waves or surges) are fairly concentrated time wise and it's putting 4-5x FLU load on the system in a fairly short time (1-2 months). When that happens everything falls apart. So even non COVID patients will get less or no care.
So if everyone could get a vaccine, wear a mask (when it makes sense) and social distance it all helps keep that peak down or even spread it out more over time. So that the system doesn't pop a circuit breaker and the lights go out. So maybe the Vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting it or the mask doesn't. But we know they help. If EVERYONE pitches in to minimize their own risk (Vaccines, Masks, Social Distance, stay home as much as possible) it will help the peak from getting too high.
All the things above don't have to stop you from enjoying life. But I think you can survive skipping that concert you wanted to go too and still enjoy things.
What's really bad right now is Omicron spreads even faster than all variants before. And currently just as lethal. Now it's going to be harder than ever to keep that PEAK down so the health care system doesn't collapse around us.
You can't look at each thing, masks, vaccines, number cases etc. You have to look at it as a whole in relation to our healthcare system.
Good news is the Peak is already going down in South Africa (they are a month ahead). We probably won't peak until late January. And we are close to the highest ever right now. And the Slope of the curve is straight UP.
Have a good holiday, at home
