Huntley out with covid

Sorry you had it and thank you for getting vaccinated. I get it that people are done. Fatigue is real. I don’t agree with all the policies and practices put forward, but many are good. Others need updating. 

I’m sorry for whatever your sources are. I don’t watch the news much or follow social media on the topic. I look for studies, not sound bites. I have literally sat in rooms to measure and calculate probabilities of contracting various infectious diseases in different indoor environments and I have published science on related topics. I’ve worked with epidimiological models. Ststistics and math are important in this world of distributions, not black and white absolutes. My training and education (doctorate) help me sort through a lot of data, sometimes conflicting or with confounding factors and I can come to conclusions outside echo chambers and I always recognize my bias and ask if I could wrong. There’s still a lot we don’t understand.

Vaccines work. They are not 100% effective (and never will be) and with different targets (different proteins in varinats) effectiveness is going to change. But night and day outcomes where vaccination rates are decently high. Masking keeps people’s germs more to themselves since this is spread mostly through aerosols. Distancing helps droplet spread. Increased ventilation disperses potential viral load (but can also be done poorly). Testing provides a screen to react based on other factors.

All risk mitigation is by layers of simple protections. All of these things save lives, and to say otherwise is ignorant. And they are not that hard while keeping businesses open, games played, etc. Frankly, other countries are doing it better. Our choices based on misinformation have prolonged this pandemic. One might be done with the virus but the virus is not done with us.

It’s great news that Omicron is (hopefuly) less lethal. It sucks things evolve. We will all likely be exposed and that may be how this thing burns out. But let’s have mild cases with bodies ready for it and not overwhelm the heroes in the hospitals. Let’s love our neighbor (and fellow Utes) by doing some relatively small things to be part of the solution.