Does Omicron Signal the End Game for COVID?

By Dom Nozzi

A video I saw recently points out that…

*There is a growing consensus that Omicron – the weakest variant of COVID — is becoming endemic (like the flu).

*However, if the US opts to wait until Omicron deaths go to zero before we end COVID restrictions, the US will never end restrictions.

*In bad flu seasons, we have 200-300 deaths PER DAY, but we don’t require masks or other restrictions for that.

*The so-called “Delta Variant” will be gone soon.

There are serious medical downsides to the idea of endless masks and endless shots and endless restrictions and endless concerns about COVID.

Each of these endless pandemic measures inevitably ramps up social isolation significantly. Smaller and fewer social gatherings, more staying at home instead of going out and interacting with others, more sitting on the couch watching TV, etc.

There has long been strong science that social isolation leads to:

*A weaker immune system.

*A higher likelihood of sickness and disease.

*Higher levels of depression.

*Emotional woes such as depression and short temper.

*Less happiness and lower quality of life.

*Higher levels of obesity.

*Higher levels of stress and anxiety.

*A reduction in the number of friends and support one obtains from friends.

*A shorter life expectancy.

Each of these ills is almost self-evident, as humans are a sociable species. Being a sociable species means we decline when we are isolated, and thrive when we are together.

By the way, anyone who has such a high level of concern that they intend – for the rest of their life — to wear a mask at airports, in airplanes, and in big crowds should never, ever fly on a plane again. A mask does almost nothing to reduce transmission inside a metal tube full of people. Particularly because pretty much everyone on planes will occasionally pull down their mask to eat or drink during the flight.

Life is a series of tradeoffs. I’m not willing to accept the tradeoffs associated with endless COVID safety measures (measures which, it turns out, actually reduce our health safety in many ways, as I point out above). I’m unwilling to adopt for the remainder of my life all the above-mentioned precautions, never fly on a plane again, AND accept the several medical downsides I list above.

Instead, based on all I’ve learned and in consideration of all the tradeoffs, I think it makes a lot of sense – now that we are seeing the end game of Omicron – to behave the way 99.9999 percent of us have behaved for several decades regarding the flu. Get a shot every year, and wash your hands whenever you use such public things as doorknobs and bathrooms.

Politics of the Pandemic

By Dom Nozzi

Like it or not, Donald Trump and Republicans win more votes with their position on the pandemic (and Democrats lose votes) for at least two reasons.

First, with about 30 million Americans out of work due to the pandemic lockdown (in the summer of 2020), Dems are seen as callous toward those financially suffering unemployed Americans because they want to keep the economy locked down.

Trump and Republicans are seen as empathetic to those people because they want to accelerate re-opening the economy.

Second, when Dems create the impression that they are very worried about the virus (compared to Trump and Republicans), they perpetuate the Trump and Republican narrative that Dems are weak “snowflakes.”

COVID and Safetyism

By Dom Nozzi

I continue to agree that some people (not all – I cannot recall the last time I wore a mask, for example) will be wearing masks for the rest of their lives. COVID is highly likely to be like the flu. Prudent people will be getting both a flu shot and a COVID shot every fall.

As for the state of affairs, I continue to think that the infection rate, hospitalization rate, death rate, etc., is way overblown by the media.

I’m currently reading a book called The Power of Bad. The authors talk about how humans are hard-wired to be profoundly affected by bad news and hardly affected at all by good news (in other words, bad news tends to stick with us and traumatize us for a long time, whereas good news does not tend to put us in a “good mood” for more than just a brief time. We forget “good” news very quickly).

Examples: what is a word that is the opposite of “trauma”? Does anyone ever have PTSD for good things? What is the opposite of “murderer”? What about the opposite of “disgust”? In each case, there is no “good” example because bad is way more influential and powerful to us than good, so our language has a large number of words for “bad” things and much fewer words for “good” things. The media and the Internet have significantly ramped up this problem of our always being terrified of bad to the point that we think and behave irrationally.

You really need to read the book.

Applying the concept to relationships, the authors note that studies find the most long-lasting relationships are those where both people in the relationship know that avoiding doing or saying bad things is far more important than doing good deeds for (or saying good things to) your significant other.

My on-going advice: stop reading or listening or watching the media – particularly when it is reporting on the hysteria topics such as politics or pandemics. If you don’t ignore the media, you will be gravely and wrongly misled into becoming convinced – like Chicken Little – that the WORLD IS COMING TO AN END. Examples: Steven Pinker and Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg reporting that on a huge number of social/environmental well-being indicators, the world is making tremendous progress. Almost none of us know this because the media is manipulating us 24/7 with hysterical falsehoods. A great many of us therefore wrongly think all those indicators are significantly worsening every week. The media no longer reports reality and truth. Their almost single-minded objective is to maximize how much money they make. And the best way to do that is to exaggerate or use dishonesty to enrage and terrify us. I call it the “Daily Dose of Doom.”

I can always tell who watches the news or listens to the news or reads the news too much: They are the ones who are most afraid of such things as crime and environmental ruin and drugs and political doom. So much so that their perception of what is really happening in the world is extremely far from what is really going on. Studies confirm this, by the way. I also believe that those who continue to wear masks in public are nearly always people who watch far more news (the Daily Dose of Doom) than others.

In my opinion, with vaccines and boosters and extremely low rates of infection (or substantially negative infection outcomes) means that lock downs and mask wearing and group size limits and no hand shaking are instances of “safety theatre.” People wearing masks at this point are simply virtue signaling (“look at how safe and virtuous and ethical and wonderful and progressive I am for wearing a mask!”).

I’m not saying I want to force people to stop doing things like wearing a mask, but I am saying that I feel sorry that many people are so infected with the “safetyism” disease that they engage in extreme efforts to be “safe.” At some point, people need to realize that it is impossible to have 100% safety in life. There will always be some level of risk in life (thankfully!), and doing things like mask wearing or reduced socializing severely detracts from quality of life.

Life is too short to significantly curtail pleasant experiences in life due to worry over exquisitely tiny risks.

Lack of Information in the Information Age

By Dom Nozzi

I consider myself to be relatively well-informed on current events, yet when a neighbor told me yesterday he tested positive and I should consider getting tested, it occurred to me that I have no idea how to get tested (and I’ve read countless articles about COVID over the past year or so).

I am also extremely befuddled about the best ways to sign up for vaccination.

If someone like me is so clueless on this, it is scary to think about how many others out there probably have far less knowledge about COVID and vaccines.

My befuddlement exemplifies how pathetic the US has become regarding its ability to inform citizens of important information.

I think a big part of the problem today is that with the internet and TV service providing an almost infinite number of (conflicting) media sources with wildly different levels of accuracy and coverage, our hyper-information age is, ironically, much worse in many ways in conveying information to people.

Consider, say, the Sixties, when pretty much everyone got information from a tiny number of sources: the local newspaper, and one of three TV networks. Today, we get information from tens of thousands of sources.

And yet in many ways, we know less than citizens in the Sixties.