The last complete stats I saw for total US was 58.3% for whites and 48.5% for blacks. But even if we accept your numbers as more accurate. The economic circumstances argument certainly has at least some viability.

It would need to be specifically studied. But not necessarily an easy one. Many confounding and conflating aspects.

For example, in both my numbers (where Hispanics were at 58.5%) and yours, Hispanic and white % are equal. However, I doubt their economic situations are as equal.

Also consider it is the FDA who centend societal factors have yielded lower black vaccination rates and thus justify using race, not economic status, for part of determine therapeutic access.

It is actually a very complex situation and is not even close to fully analyzed.

Using vax status may make practical sense but it only makes moral sense if EVERY personal choice is considered. However doing so is not only impracticable but antithetical.

You familiar with Waiting for Godot, are you ?

Chances masks won't be mandatory in March?

March as in 5 weeks….coin flip.
March as in 10 weeks … 90%

IMO

IMO

Clark County

March 1 30%
March 31 10%

I really wish I shared your pretty positive view, but, no..... not for indoors, public areas. I think we may see a loosening, then as rates rise.... another mask requirement for indoors public areas.

90% chance in 10 weeks seems like fantasy land.... especially since it didn't happen in late October when numbers were somewhat reasonable.


Maybe by June?

The reason for my optimism is the recent consensus on masks efficacy. Govt agencies are acknowledging that anything less than N95 or similar type masks have very low efficacy.

CDC efforts show that the original virus and early variants had a R0 around 2-2.5. Omicron R0 is 18-20. Let’s be optimistic+ and use 2.0 and 20.0; nice easy 10x more contagious.

Now how well do masks work. There is also a table published in WSJ and also by ACGIH estimating exposure time between two persons for contracting COVID based on the mask they wear. These times based on pre delta variants.

No masks 15 min. Both cloth masks 27 min. Surgical masks 60 min (1h). N95 25h. So if we assume omicron is 10x more contagious and these times impacted linearly. So now no masks is 1.5 min, cloth 2.7 min (is that even a difference), surgical 6 min and N95 2.5 hr.

If these umbers are correct and if we follow the science, then it is very obvious with omicron anything less than everyone wearing N95 masks really do little to slow the spread. Add to this that vax immunity from infection is near zero (even 4jabs doesn’t prevent infection) and similar data for prior variant COVID immunity shows that trying to prevent the spread is effectively futile.

Before I am cast as a antivaxer or COVID denier again, I am neither. Quite the contrary. I am VERY glad we have the vaccines. While they don’t prevent infection they do majorly improve outcomes. So does prior COVID also.

Given the amount of vax and prior COVID immunity in the US population, especially amount the most at risk for death or serious illness, we CAN survive the omicron wave. East coast appears to already be seeing declines. And since omicron DOES appear to protect from reinfection from omicron and prior strains.

So maybe, just maybe riding out omicron is how we exit the pandemic. So yes I am optimistic. But the optimism is imo data based. The question is will we follow the data and will the govt release the incremental control acquired during this pandemic. Or will they fight to retain that control?

Probably before June. Fore is exactly right that it should be lifted by the end of March. UK has already ended all of their restrictions and we usually track about six weeks behind them. I could see the CDC dragging their feet until late April, but really, they'd just be doing that for show. They were embarrassed last year when they lifted the restrictions in May right before the Delta surge, so they're probably going to continue to force the public to wear masks for an extra month, long after Omicron completely collapses. It also gives them time to keep watching UK and Europe data. So sometime in April seems reasonable.

Also, it's an election year and there's zero chance the Dems want people wearing masks this summer and fall. They're going to have a hard enough time holding onto their jobs as it is, thanks to the current administration. Many of them will just announce their retirement before November, and save themselves from the humiliation of losing to opponents with zero political credentials. I'm not saying they deserve to lose, but at this point they're all tied to Biden, rightly or wrongly, and they definitely don't want to go down with the sinking ship. The health bureaucrats will retire too, rather than face the prospect of a Republican Congress digging into their business. Francis Collins has already done so, and Anthony Fauci is not far behind him.

Even if "science" insists the pandemic is still ongoing, the American public wields tremendous influence over their politicians, and most Americans are done with the pandemic. This isn't Australia.

If they'd like to keep their jobs, they'll wave the white flag of surrender. Many of them are going to lose their jobs anyway, but there's always a chance Americans will show them some mercy, given that this was a difficult two years to navigate.

They made a lot of mistakes and performed very poorly. But I wouldn't have done any better, in their situation. This was a tough task. Some would say an impossible task.

Politics over lives?

Nobody knows what variants will show up. Even the Biden administration recently admitted that the focus in the future will be on controlling the virus, not eliminating it.

I remember reading stuff in 2020 saying we might wear masks for decades. At the time I was stunned thinking we wouldn’t have mask mandates in 2022. But here we are.

Remind me... when is summer again?

Why do you see this as politics vs lives?

TLDR:
Masks do not stop this virus. These vaccines do not prevent infection or spread. Omicron is likely the most contagious virus known. But also has lower mortality. Therapeutics help. Life needs to go on.

Masks can’t stop the spread of omicron (or delta either really). Probably not future strains either
Vaccines and infections from earlier strains do not incur immunity from omicron infections
Omicron is less deadly than earlier strains
Both prior infection, from all strains, and vaccines do provide protection from serious illness
We now have increasing therapeutic options
Even without new therapeutics treatment protocols are improved
In the most at risk population groups, we have deep vax penetration

Yes, even with all of these improvements, some who contract omicron will die. How do you stop the unstoppable? People die of flu also. Even the common cold can lead to death in some circumstances. We cannot prevent all deaths.

We do need to do what we can to protect the most at risk. But we also need to realize that vax mandates won’t stop the spread. And they also have costs. All mandates have costs. We must balance these competing priorities. But, at least imo, omicron and the above points have shifted the balance point.

How long has the LV mask mandate been in effect? Does that correlate to anything that Fore is stating? How do the current numbers indicate it will be lifted in 10 weeks?

Sisolak to the media in 2020 at the beginning of the shutdowns-“People are dying!”

Now Sisolak is in an election year. People are still dying, hospitals are more overcrowded, but he seems to have given up on shutdowns and even a lot of the restrictions that used to be in place, such as limited capacity in stadiums, restaurants, gyms, etc., despite Omicron being far more contagious.

Do lives stop mattering in an election year? Other countries got harsher with restrictions, but Nevada didn’t.

Back in 2020 I saw a lot of statements like this:

https://www.ktnv.com/news/coronaviru...onse-reopening

But now people seem to be more cool with it if grandma might get sick and die. But as the media used to tell us, we can’t be getting virus fatigue and the virus doesn’t care if it’s inconvenient to us to wear masks, go to a sporting event, go to the movies, etc.

Grim

In your simple binary mind, you fail to recognise that vaccines lower mortality, risk of hospitalisation & long term side effects.

It's glaringly obvious how biased you are, as well as your lack of qualifications to talk to anyone on this subject.

It’s really a fascinating chart that ultimately argues against mask mandates. If you can protect yourself from a 2.5 hr encounter with an infected person simply by deciding on your own to wear an N95, then what do we get by mandating masks? Sure, if you mandated masks and people complied, you could last 3.3hrs or more depending on the type of mask the infected person decides to wear, but is that really the situation people are concerned about when dealing with the public? (This assumes an N95-specific mandate is off the table, which I think is practically the case.)

If you read the full response I clearly and repeatedly point out that these vax are good. I am just pointing out that with omicron they do not prevent infection and do not prevent vaxed from spreading it.

I even predicted a post like yours. If you read some of my other posts on this you would know I was fully vaxed and boasted subsequently I came down with COVID. It was very minor for me. Probably because of my vax status.

I am very pro vax. But I do know it is NOT preventing omicron spread. I also do not support mandates since the costs outweigh benefits.

So no I am far from binary on these vax. You obviously do not even understand what TLDR means. Maybe your mind is even more simple than mine.

I heard today, but did not catch the source, that for the US, omicron he/they are predicting a case peak before the end of Jan followed by a rapid decline.

If this prediction becomes true by the end of March, we will have two months of rapidly falling cases. Positivities would be back where they were in early Dec. will be imo a strong case for dropping mask mandates.

Those numbers were for both donor and recipient wearing the same kind of mask and they were properly worn and fitted. For the N95 case both wearers were assumed to be wearing M95 masks and each were blocking 90% of the virii. Or maybe I looked at the wrong cell.

If both were wearing N95 but masks were blocking 99% of virii, which is a best case more likely achieved with respirators or custom fitted masks than one or two size fit all masks, the time goes up by 100x or 250hr.

I agree that a N95 mandate is highly impracticable. Even with govt sending out 500 million of them. We would need that many a week. Plus the reality iswe can’t get people to wear cloth and surgical masks correctly. If a N95 mask is comfortable, it is very unlikely it is on correct. They are not supposed to be comfortable.

2.5 hrs is with the uninfected person wearing N95 and the infected person unmasked.

I get the peak. Was Clark County mask free in early December?

Early December wasn't an election year. Sisolak knows exactly what he needs to do to save himself, and he's itching to do it. Las Vegas will have no restrictions by May or June, at the very latest. And unless another variant pops up that's as deadly as Delta, Clark County will continue to gamble and party unmasked for many months, at least until after the November votes are counted. The arrival of winter could bring with it some fresh restrictions, depending on who wins the governor's race, of course.

On some of the odds sites, Republican Dean Heller is a slight favorite over Sisolak. Should be interesting, so many people hate Sisolak for his handling of the Unemployment system during Covid, and the masks/etc.

Did we understand omicron in early Dec? We’re the cases falling drastically in early Dec?