We have all seen the lines: people on the Upper Eastside are willing to wait over 1 hour to get tested and in the Lexington Ave. / 86th Street neighborhood I counted 5 free testing sites just this morning.
The Mayor and the Governor weigh in here:
Hochul Says No New
Shutdown as Omicron
Overtakes Delta, Fuels Case Records
and apparently, we are not alone:
The U.S. Faces Another Covid Christmas as Omicron Fuels a Rise in Cases
Here is a scary story I heard firsthand. You know all major offices and businesses are having Christmas parties. So this one happened about 7 days ago: 100 guests and some catering people. Everyone was tested for Covid the day of the party. Everyone was negative. Everyone was vaccinated x2 and most had had a booster shot. 2 days after the party one person had Covid (symptomatic cold-like illness). So they test all 100 guests again 3-7 days after the party. Now 25/100 are positive and some of them have symptoms.
25% of vaccinated people were apparently NOT protected? Wow!
Well, perhaps they were protected from having a severe disease requiring an ER visit or even hospitalization. It is a bit too early to tell.
Avoid office parties! Perhaps we need to lock down again?
A covid testing site in Washington: The mayor reinstated an indoor mask mandate on Monday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
R&R - Reachout and Rebuild 
Thanks for the information. Happy and Healthy Holidays
Sent from my iPhone
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I have become increasingly of the view that advertising the number of “new cases” in the abstract has become increasingly irrelevant. That piece of information is being used by the right to: criticize the Biden administration’s handling of the virus (pointing out that some 400,000 Americans died under his watch); allow continued criticism of Fauci/CDC/FDA as misinforming Americans; and offer credibility to the anti-vaccine cohort by showing the rampant increase in cases despite the availability of vaccines. The prevalence of vaccines and related medications put the state of play in a far different place than what we saw eighteen months ago, and should be an impetus toward analyzing the state of the virus within the United States in a more relevant light.
I think it would be much more informative to publicize the number of new hospitalizations and new COVID-related deaths; that information should be further broken down into a comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. No one is listening to the Biden administration’s pleas that the increased hospitalizations and deaths are occurring with far more regularity (and almost exclusively) within the unvaccinated cohort. The numbers won’t lie (even if there are those who won’t believe them) and would hopefully offer a more compelling incentive to get vaccinated.
It never ceases to amaze me that the press (and others) continue to sing from the same hymnal rather than re-analyzing the actual state of affairs. That this may be the product of a ratings chase makes the practice even more deplorable.