COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]

Arathrael said
My guess is typical mask wearing might be fairly effective for short exposures, but less so for longer exposures, like longer journeys on public transport or being in a shared office for hours. Things like ventilation would also be a factor.

As far as the UK goes, we're not relying on masks at all anyway. Mask mandate on public transport, shops, etc., ends next week, the mask wearing we briefly reintroduced (and I mean briefly, it's only been in place for a couple of weeks) for secondary schools is being lifted from tomorrow.

We're also planning to end compulsory self-isolation entirely from 24th March, and that might be brought forward.

Basically betting that vaccination is sufficient to keep cases and severe impact at a tolerable level. Tolerable for who is another question.

Israel is probably going the same direction and I'm very confident the rest of the world will too in the next few weeks to a month. I'm guessing even Asia starts to remove restrictions even at the risk of an outbreak.

If they are smart the booster push will get put on hold as well so we aren't boosting people with a vaccine that barely slows down transmission, has a short efficacy span with an updated version on the way at a time where we are about to hit really low covid levels. Wasted effort IMO.

I'm not saying we should try to catch Omicron but I will say the longer we can let it hang around the better off we all will be in the long term.

It'll be interesting to see if the summer wave is stunted by immunity levels from this wave or we keep seeing two seasons waves.

Next fall, around the early part of November is when boosters should be pushed again. This thing made a massive leap towards endemic and we should be really thankful. Reminds me of a line in Moneyball, "When your enemy is making mistakes, don't interrupt them". We are at that point with Omicron.