Interesting opinion on how the response to Covid should change, now that omicron is proving to be a milder disease
"The balance of power between human and virus is shifting. Better armed against a lesser enemy, our species no longer needs to hide in a bunker waiting for a viral wave to pass. That means it's time for our Covid response to change....
"As we enter the "endemic" stage of the virus, however, there is confusion about what an updated approach should look like...
"omicron appears to affect the body differently than previous variants...omicron may replicate in the lung more slowly than delta, which would give the immune system more time to respond.
"vaccines (and especially booster shots) have led to dramatically lower levels of hospitalization and death.
"Omicron's ability to infect a wide variety of animal species with which humans have regular contact, such as cats, dogs and deer, has made draconian policies focused on restricting human behavior even more futile.
"The [CDC] reduced self-isolation from 10 days after a positive test to five days...The old self-isolation rules make little sense for a virus that has the severity of the common cold in most cases. It is an enormously costly policy, especially when you consider the teachers and health-care workers who must stay home after a positive test, even when they have no symptoms and could work safely with masks.
"Talk of ending mass testing in Britain is premature, but eventually it would make sense to scale it back during periods of low infection rates, while maintaining capacity to ramp up free supply during outbreaks.
"Levels of vaccination and immunity, and access to hospitals and treatment, should determine levels of restriction — not infections."
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