A new, subvariant of Omicron has emerged, which some have begun calling “son of Omicron,” but public health officials say it’s too soon to tell what kind of real threat, if any, this new strain will present.
In the meantime, it’s worth watching BA.2, the World Health Organization says. The subvariant has been identified across at least 40 countries.
BA.2 accounts for only a small minority of reported cases so far. The one exception is Denmark, a country with robust genetic sequencing abilities, where estimates range from 50% to 81% of cases.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada have conducted the world’s first molecular-level structural analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant spike (S) protein. The analysis – done at near atomic resolution using cryo-electron microscopy – reveals how the heavily mutated Omicron variant attaches to and infects human cells.
The S protein, which is located on the outside of a coronavirus, enables SARS-CoV-2 to enter human cells. The Omicron variant has an unprecedented 37 mutations on its S protein – three to five times more than previous variants.
We are still learning about the omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, but here is a breakdown of what we currently know:
There are no confirmed cases in NYC of the omicron variant, but we may start seeing such cases in the city soon. Delta remains the dominant strain – about 98% of sequenced specimens.
While a lot is still unknown about omicron, early evidence suggests that those who’ve had COVID-19 in the past may be more easily reinfected with omicron.
Vaccination, masking and testing remain our most important tools in fighting this new potential variant of concern. Vaccines are available for anyone 5 and older, and we recommend boosters for any adult who is fully vaccinated.
It’s an inconvenience to prevent the spread of COVID Concealing my face is like concealing myself from experiencing the world Using hand sanitizer is like burning my hands off Melting my flesh off
Can’t say no to a social event! My life revolves around my social identity More so than it revolves around being able to breathe out of my lungs!
The January jobs report from the Labor Department is heightening fears that a so-called “tight” labor market is fueling inflation, and therefore the Fed must put on the brakes by raising interest rates.
This line of reasoning is totally wrong.
Among the biggest job gains in January were workers who are normally temporary and paid low wages (leisure and hospitality, retail, transport and warehousing). This January employers cut fewer of these low-wage temp workers than in most years, because of rising customer demand and the difficulties of hiring during Omicron. Due to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s “seasonal adjustment,” cutting fewer workers than usual for this time of year appears as “adding lots of jobs.”
Fed policymakers are poised to raise interest rates at their March meeting and then continue raising them, in order to slow the economy. They fear that a labor shortage is pushing up wages, which in turn are pushing up prices — and that this wage-price spiral could get out of control.
It’s a huge mistake. Higher interest rates will harm millions of workers who will be involuntarily drafted into the inflation fight by losing jobs or long-overdue pay raises. There’s no “labor shortage” pushing up wages. There’s a shortage of good jobs paying adequate wages to support working families. Raising interest rates will worsen this shortage.
There’s no “wage-price spiral,” either (even though Fed chief Jerome Powell has expressed concern about wage hikes pushing up prices). To the contrary, workers’ real wages have dropped because of inflation. Even though overall wages have climbed, they’ve failed to keep up with price increases – making most workers worse off in terms of the purchasing power of their dollars.
Wage-price spirals used to be a problem. Remember when John F. Kennedy “jawboned” steel executives and the United Steel Workers to keep a lid on wages and prices? But such spirals are no longer a problem. That’s because the typical worker today has little or no bargaining power.
Only 6 percent of private-sector workers are now unionized. A half-century ago, more than a third were. Today, corporations can increase output by outsourcing just about anything anywhere because capital is global. A half-century ago, corporations needing more output had to bargain with their own workers to get it.
These changes have shifted power from labor to capital — increasing the share of the economic pie going to profits and shrinking the share going to wages. This power shift ended wage-price spirals.
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Slowing the economy won’t remedy either of the two real causes of today’s inflation – continuing worldwide bottlenecks in the supply of goods, and the ease with which big corporations (with record profits) are passing these costs to customers in higher prices.
Supply bottlenecks are all around us. (Just take a look at all the ships with billions of dollars of cargo idling outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, through which 40 percent of all U.S. seaborne importsflow.)
Big corporations have no incentive to absorb the rising costs of such supplies — even with profit margins at their highest level in 70 years. They have enough market power to pass these costs on to consumers, sometimes using inflation to justify even bigger price hikes. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” the CEO of Kroger said last June. “What we are very good at is pricing,” the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive added in October.
In fact, the Fed’s plan to slow the economy is the oppositeof what’s needed now or in the foreseeable future. COVID is still with us. Even in its wake, we’ll be dealing with its damaging consequences for years — everything from long-term COVID, to school children months or years behind.
The January jobs report shows that the U.S. economy is still 2.9 million jobs below what it had in February 2020. Given the growth of the US population, it’s 4.5 million short of what it would have by now had there been no pandemic.
Consumers are almost tapped out. Not only are real (inflation-adjusted) incomes down, but pandemic assistance has ended. Extra jobless benefits are gone. Child tax credits have expired. Rent moratoriums are over. Small wonder consumer spending fell 0.6 percent in December, the first decrease since last February.
Given all this, the last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further. The problem most people face isn’t inflation. It’s a lack of good jobs.
Friday’s jobs report from the Department of Labor was a warning sign about the US economy. It should cause widespread concern about the Fed’s plans to raise interest rates to control inflation. And it should cause policymakers to rethink ending government supports such as extended unemployment insurance and the child tax credit. These will soon be needed to keep millions of families afloat.
Employers added only 199,000 jobs in December. That’s the fewest new jobs added in any month last year. In November, employers added 249,000. The average for 2021 was 537,000 jobs per month. Note also that the December survey was done in mid-December, before the latest surge in the Omicron variant of Covid caused millions of people to stay home.
But the Fed is focused on the fact that average hourly wages climbed 4.7% over the year. Central bankers believe those wage increases have been pushing up prices. They also believe the US is nearing “full employment” – the maximum rate of employment possible without igniting even more inflation.
As a result, the Fed is about to prescribe the wrong medicine. It’s going to raise interest rates to slow the economy – even though millions of former workers have yet to return to the job market and even though job growth is slowing sharply. Higher interest rates will cause more job losses. Slowing the economy will make it harder for workers to get real wage increases. And it will put millions of Americans at risk.
The Fed has it backwards. Wage increases have not caused prices to rise. Price increases have caused real wages (what wages can actually purchase) to fall. Prices are increasing at the rate of 6.8% annually but wages are growing only between 3-4%.
The most important cause of inflation is corporate power to raise prices.
Yes, supply bottlenecks have caused the costs of some components and materials to rise. But large corporations have been using these rising costs to justify increasing their own prices when there’s no reason for them to do so.
Corporate profits are at a record high. If corporations faced tough competition, they would not pass those wage increases on to customers in the form of higher prices. They’d absorb them and cut their profits.
But they don’t have to do this because most industries are now oligopolies composed of a handful of major producers that coordinate price increases.
Yes, employers have felt compelled to raise nominal wages to keep and attract workers. But that’s only because employers cannot find and keep workers at the lower nominal wages they’d been offering. They would have no problem finding and retaining workers if they raised wages in real terms – that is, over the rate of inflation they themselves are creating.
Astonishingly, some lawmakers and economists continue to worry that the government is contributing to inflation by providing too much help to working people. A few, including some Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are unwilling to support Biden’s Build Back Better package because they fear additional government spending will fuel inflation.
Here again, the reality is exactly the opposite. The economy is in imminent danger of slowing, as the December job numbers (collected before the Omicron surge) reveal.
Many Americans will soon need additional help since they can no longer count on extra unemployment benefits, stimulus payments or additional child tax credits. This is hardly the time to put on the fiscal brakes.
Policymakers at the Fed and in Congress continue to disregard the elephant in the room: the power of large corporations to raise prices. As a result, they’re on the way to hurting the people who have been taking it on the chin for decades – average working people.
I finally saw No Way Home. We waited until now because the theaters would be less crowded, and we went during a week-day. There were just us and four other people there and we were sitting way apart from each other. I’ve gone this far without catching omicron, even though people around me have been exposed and had to isolate. So far, we’re asymp or the vaccinations held.
So I was spoiled, but a friend who went with me wasn’t and it was great to see his reaction with each new ‘surprise’.
I had this idea since Ned might be 'magic’ he might become Hobgoblin, the brainwashed version that is, and Peter might go visit Bucky to get insight on what it’s like to be brainwashed and if the 'real’ him was still in there somewhere….which is just an excuse to squeeze Sebastian into a Spider-Man movie so he and Tom would have some scenes together….can you image the press tour? lol.
Speaking of Sebastian, I will not be watching Pam and Tommy, simply because I’m not interested in the story. I watch for the story/plot, not the actor. Not judging….that’s just how I roll. I didn’t watch the Devil all the Time either, because the story didn’t interest me.
I’m genuinely concerned that I’ll have no real way to tell when it’s safe for me to start doing things again, because the CDC basically told everyone to get fucked and die, I’m surrounded by people taking the, “eh, if I get covid, I get covid” approach, and I can’t fucking tell what’s a reasonable safety precaution anymore.
I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m still scared of getting sick, but the world is moving on without me, and I’m just so disoriented, y'all.
Everyone I live with IS immunocompromised, and this comment comes off very “it’s fine, the only people who are still dying are disabled people,” which really just serves to cement my original point about the world moving on without me.
Just want to add that that person is so incredibly wrong! The current science (or in layman’s terms check here) says that about 50% of everyone who gets covid, vaxxed or not, immunocompromised or not, will end up with long lasting symptoms, ones that last beyond the four weeks of infection. Now this statistic includes symptoms that resolve on their own eventually as well as ones that are permanent. But one in every two people will have long lasting covid symptoms. Sure being vaxxed decreases your chances of catching covid in the first place and it decreases the chances of it being severe, but it won’t stop the long term symptoms. Even if you get a “mild” or asymptomatic infection, you still have a 50/50 shot of having long term symptoms. And this is just the most current science, for all we know the number could be higher! We don’t yet know the full extent to which covid fucks up the human body.
Oh and PLUS, omicron has an R0 value of somewhere between 8 and 15, making it the second most infectious disease in the whole world (second only to measles). The R0 number is a measure of how infectious a disease is. For comparison the R0 of the flu is generally 1.5.
And yet EVERYONE I talk to is completely ignoring this and calling omicron more mild than previous strains, that it’s comparable to the flu (never mind that the science says it’s about twice as likely that you’ll have long lasting symptoms from covid than the flu). It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. But we’re not losing our minds. Especially if you’re disabled/chronically ill, getting covid could be devastating even with a “mild” infection. My brain doesn’t know how to process all of this. The wide spread scale at which people are saying “fuck you” to disabled lives makes me want to vomit.
But uh OP I hope this justifies your actions/thoughts. You’re not alone in this either!
I am triple vaxxed and caught Omicron while masked and outdoors, but working with the unmasked public.
Yes, technically I’m fine. But I spent a week basically unable to sleep or really rest because I had what I can only describe as restless legs syndrome. It hurt to lay down or sit down. I frequently had to move to keep from being in pain. While I’m grateful that this symptom eventually went away, it’s the kind of symptom - weird & neurological - that has become a permanent condition for others.
My breathing also remains permanently impacted. I am, was, in great shape - cardio and strength building exercises on the regular. I now frequently get winded walking up stairs. Exercise in general is much harder and I am fighting to maintain my current state, let alone get back into the kind of fit I used to be.
And there’s NO WAY OF KNOWING how long I will be impacted or if my symptoms will ever increase or resurface. We just don’t know.
I’m the best case scenario: a person in excellent health and triple vaxxed and I still suffered and continue to experience symptoms. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about your own health, and plenty more to care about and be concerned for the health of others.
The immunocompromised are not disposable.
OP, I’m sorry we as a society failed so hard and you have to live with this fear and exhaustion.
I’m genuinely concerned that I’ll have no real way to tell when it’s safe for me to start doing things again, because the CDC basically told everyone to get fucked and die, I’m surrounded by people taking the, “eh, if I get covid, I get covid” approach, and I can’t fucking tell what’s a reasonable safety precaution anymore.
I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m still scared of getting sick, but the world is moving on without me, and I’m just so disoriented, y'all.
Everyone I live with IS immunocompromised, and this comment comes off very “it’s fine, the only people who are still dying are disabled people,” which really just serves to cement my original point about the world moving on without me.
Just want to add that that person is so incredibly wrong! The current science (or in layman’s terms check here) says that about 50% of everyone who gets covid, vaxxed or not, immunocompromised or not, will end up with long lasting symptoms, ones that last beyond the four weeks of infection. Now this statistic includes symptoms that resolve on their own eventually as well as ones that are permanent. But one in every two people will have long lasting covid symptoms. Sure being vaxxed decreases your chances of catching covid in the first place and it decreases the chances of it being severe, but it won’t stop the long term symptoms. Even if you get a “mild” or asymptomatic infection, you still have a 50/50 shot of having long term symptoms. And this is just the most current science, for all we know the number could be higher! We don’t yet know the full extent to which covid fucks up the human body.
Oh and PLUS, omicron has an R0 value of somewhere between 8 and 15, making it the second most infectious disease in the whole world (second only to measles). The R0 number is a measure of how infectious a disease is. For comparison the R0 of the flu is generally 1.5.
And yet EVERYONE I talk to is completely ignoring this and calling omicron more mild than previous strains, that it’s comparable to the flu (never mind that the science says it’s about twice as likely that you’ll have long lasting symptoms from covid than the flu). It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. But we’re not losing our minds. Especially if you’re disabled/chronically ill, getting covid could be devastating even with a “mild” infection. My brain doesn’t know how to process all of this. The wide spread scale at which people are saying “fuck you” to disabled lives makes me want to vomit.
But uh OP I hope this justifies your actions/thoughts. You’re not alone in this either!
I am triple vaxxed and caught Omicron while masked and outdoors, but working with the unmasked public.
Yes, technically I’m fine. But I spent a week basically unable to sleep or really rest because I had what I can only describe as restless legs syndrome. It hurt to lay down or sit down. I frequently had to move to keep from being in pain. While I’m grateful that this symptom eventually went away, it’s the kind of symptom - weird & neurological - that has become a permanent condition for others.
My breathing also remains permanently impacted. I am, was, in great shape - cardio and strength building exercises on the regular. I now frequently get winded walking up stairs. Exercise in general is much harder and I am fighting to maintain my current state, let alone get back into the kind of fit I used to be.
And there’s NO WAY OF KNOWING how long I will be impacted or if my symptoms will ever increase or resurface. We just don’t know.
I’m the best case scenario: a person in excellent health and triple vaxxed and I still suffered and continue to experience symptoms. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about your own health, and plenty more to care about and be concerned for the health of others.
The immunocompromised are not disposable.
OP, I’m sorry we as a society failed so hard and you have to live with this fear and exhaustion.
Covid, or rather this pandemic, has taken so much from me. And yes, I do feel sorry for myself. And there’s nothing wrong with that because frankly, if more people felt sorry for people like me, we would all have more of a life right now.
The virus itself sucks and is probably far more damaging than we currently give it credit for. But the people are worse. The majority of people are happy to allow anyone with a health problem to shield at home and infinitely rot, so long as they can live life as though the pandemic never happened. They don’t care that I’m not on hospice care, bed bound or hooked up to a million machines. They don’t care that two years ago I was living like them; that they couldn’t have picked me out in the street. My home is my prison now and I should just accept that. After all, we the 6 million are the minority.
I think that if we ever get through this pandemic, I will never trust or care for people the same again. I used to think that most people were decent, with just a few bad eggs. Now, you’re a cunt and a danger to my life until proven otherwise.
This pandemic has taken my empathy and leniency. I don’t care for those who are ill if I saw them making poor decisions that caused it. I don’t look the other way when I see people breaking the rules or putting others at risk, instead I make a mental note of their selfishness. I see people I used to care about at pubs and clubs and restaurants and I wish long covid on them. I see people recover from Covid and a part of me is bitter that they never learnt their lesson. I want them to suffer. I want them to regret they ever set foot out their front door. I want them to feel as helpless and trapped as I do.
Josh, I’m training to be a doctor. How can I have such a cold heart? I guess that’s what happens when it seems it’s been broken by 60 million people all at once.
This pandemic has taken my ability to feel much at all. I am so chronically, severely hopeless and angry that there’s nothing but palpable numbness. I read headline after headline of ways the government is making my survival ever more difficult, and I just sigh and roll my eyes. I am a bottomless pit of rage. There is so much in here, yet there is no pile up to see. Sometimes my chest aches. Often I feel an overwhelming urge to lash out or set buildings alight. But I don’t feel the power of anger that I used to feel. There’s just an empty, all consuming hatred of this reality.
This pandemic has taken my family from me. My grandparents go out and live their lives and I can hardly blame them; i don’t rate their chances against Covid so they might as well enjoy their time. But that makes them a risk to me, and their hearing impairments mean I cannot visit them safely with a mask. It’s been three years since I spent Christmas with them; I could go if they swore to isolate for two weeks first, but I just know my aunt, uncle and cousins wouldn’t. My company isn’t worth that to them. My parents work for the NHS and see patients every day; the past two years have been filled with fleeting visits in car parks with takeaway McDonalds and all the windows down. This Christmas, we exchanged presents at a motorway service station halfway between us.
I’ve lost three friends so far to Covid, because asking them to keep me safe was too much. They’re hardly a loss, but the situation hurts to know that all these years, my life had so little value to them. The healthy people don’t understand. “It’s not that deep” they say, “they just want to live their lives”. But it is. Actions in this pandemic reflect our core values. They may want to live their lives, I’d just like to survive mine a little longer.
I can’t even make more friends. I started this uni course with the clear understanding that I would have to choose my health over my social life time and again. And I do. I watch as everyone else gets to know each other and spends time together, at the places where they catch covid and bring it again and again into lectures. I am barely safe to learn, let alone find human connection.
At 18 years old I saved up for a plane ticket and flew to the USA alone. Finishing college really let me learn what freedom was. I’ve been on spontaneous trips up and down the country. I used to catch trains and buses so often and loved how small it made the world feel. I loved making passing visits to cities during changeovers, becoming part of the hustle and bustle. Watching people rushing around me, taking in the departure boards and learning how to almost flawlessly manage the tube networks. I was free and I could go anywhere and do anything.
Now, my world really is small. It’s the size of a one-bedroom flat; 4 rooms to be precise. Without university or medical appointments, I would stay in here for months. I spend my weeks excited to finish my work, only to realize when I reach the weekend that I have nothing to do to reward myself. At best there are films, TV shows, games and books. But they’re all good at giving me a headache. Nowadays, I get most of my serotonin from ordering a takeaway desert once a fortnight. We do sometimes go out, but we have to be mindful of people. We walk around the nearby parks and graveyard and beaches. But there’s only so much grass and sand and ocean you can see before it becomes dull. Some days I sleep in even though I’m not tired, simply because it’s an easier way to pass the time.
Don’t get me wrong, after two years I have learnt to appreciate some of the smaller things. I remember a time when I would have been thrilled to hear I finally had a flat with my partner and that we had our own rats too. I’m insanely grateful for the progress I’ve made and the little family I have. I try my absolute best not to take them for granted; I’m so scared I’ll lose them as well.
The pandemic has also changed my perspective on my memories. There was a time, for around a year, when I had a really fucking good time that all came to an abrupt end when you died. Before covid, I used to resent that it had ended. That my depression, which was essentially in remission, had come back to consume me. All I wanted was to get back to being happy. Now though? Of course I wish to be happy. But I look back on that specific time and I’m just overwhelmed with joy and appreciation that it happened at all. I’m so glad I got to live a little bit of life before all this, and I’m honestly happy that I did it with so much naivety about what was to come. I had and did and felt some amazing things, and I can’t express how grateful I am for that. That’s not to say I’m glad for the pandemic though, as I’m sure in another life I could have learnt to appreciate these things in a less damaging way.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, exactly, Josh. I’m just being honest where I’m at. Maybe one day in the distance future I will able to look back at this with relief that life has improved. It would make a nice change; most of my reminiscing now involves remembering the early pandemic when covid wasn’t this out of control and people still wanted to help one another. I never thought my life would become this bad and now honestly, Josh, I see no way out. I used to think there was a light at the end of the tunnel, but now it’s faded to black. I’m resigned to living in this prison for the foreseeable future, in the hopes that one day I will be thankful I spared the health I do have and be able to start living again. Maybe I’ll be 25, or 35 or 45. Who knows. One thing I know is that I am not the same person I would have become without this pandemic. And I don’t think I’m ever going to be the same again.
Now, Josh, if you could just pull some strings with the guy upstairs and get him to sort this shit out, that’d be grand.
Healthy people asking me for my thoughts on covid is kinda starting to feel like when bullies would talk to you in high school and you knew it was a trap but weren’t quite sure how
Like I know you don’t actually care so just cut to the part where you say we should all just live with it and I should isolate forever and be done with it
