QUICK FORECAST FOR HOW THE 2ND POST LOCKDOWN WINTER LOOKS
Brought to you by: Dr. Presto after a brief hiatus
When herd immunity doesn't quite go as planned. A few countries in a similar spot right now.
View: https://twitter.com/Jean__Fisch/status/1727699178921263178?t=vppMSo2wqCYzG1xGexmEsw&s=19
Sweden and their supposed herd immunity are getting ass blasted as well:
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Also here in Ontario we're on the verge of the end of the omicron era. JN.1 should be dominant by Christmas or New Year's. It will be different, unknown about whether it will be more or less severe; it has just become dominant in a couple countries, so far no real alarm bells and some vague anecdotes from hospitals about a very distinct symptom profile (it doesn't sound great but anecdata is just anecdata). Though the later omicron lineages have clearly been more nasty than the og omicron. Immunity has generally kept things clinically mild per infection and that probably continues with the new variant. But still mostly unknown as it is a pretty distinct lineage to the point where it's almost a new virus all together much like Omicron was.
As a whole many nerds were hoping for the mutational rate of covid to slow down a bit as the population obtained immunity, however it appears to have picked up according to one recent study. This will have implications on the hope that it one day becomes truly seasonal. It clearly thrives in colder, drier weather but it's still around in fairly significant numbers 12 months a year, largely because of how quickly this thing mutates and evades prior immunity so the pool of susceptibles will always be quite high. It mutates around 3x faster than the flu right now so that's gonna result in more nonstop waves all year and on avg 1 infection every ~1.2 years for each person (will obviously vary depending on how one behaves, where they work, etc).
