By Monica Gandhi and Leslie Bienen

Dr. Gandhi is an infectious disease doctor and director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Bienen is a faculty member at the O.H.S.U.-Portland State University School of Public Health. She has researched zoonotic — from nonhuman animals to humans — disease transmission.


Thankfully the variant is arriving in a different pandemic landscape in the United States: one in which vaccines, tests and, soon, oral treatments are available. The country will need a new framework for thinking about what comes next, and in highly vaccinated areas, focusing on a different set of numbers, hospitalizations, rather than case counts, can better tell us how we’re doing.

America is in the slow process of accepting that Covid-19 will become endemic — meaning it will always be present in the population at varying levels. But the United States has effective tools to deal with that reality, when it happens in the future.


Learning to live with the virus long-term will require changes in both mind-set and policy. Relying on Covid-19 hospitalizations as the most important metric to track closely will provide the most reliable picture of how an area is faring with the virus. And by focusing attention on the number of hospitalizations, health professionals can better focus on reducing them.


This becomes especially important as case counts become more complicated. A positive case of Covid-19 doesn’t mean what it used to if you are vaccinated. Most breakthrough infections, which will grow as the number of vaccinated people increases, so far remain mild. Although antibodies wane over time and may be affected by variants, T cells and B cells generated from vaccines should continue to offer protection against severe illness. Right now, in areas of high vaccination, an increase in cases does not necessarily signal a comparable increase in hospitalizations or deaths.

https://nyti.ms/3EHT0jv

The vaccines have changed the significance of a positive test for Covid.

https://twitter.com/AnnieAndrewsMD/status/1469448583728488451?s=20


I just found out! She's running for Congress in SC.

https://www.drannieandrews.com/

I went to a 1:30 matinee today. OMG! Such a fabulous movie.
IMHO Much better than the original version. Better acting, better directing, much better script, better integration of the songs into the story. Retained the original Jerome Robbins choreography. Certainly the best movie musical I've ever seen and one of the best movies, period.
I don't know how it will do. This was a weekday matinee. Not many people there and those that attended skewed way older. I don't know if a classic musical will have any appeal for younger folks.
If you do have an interest I'd urge you not to wait to see it streaming. It's one of those experiences that is special on the big screen, and the screen at the multiplex was humongous.
I'm going to see it again before it closes. A really special experience.

In an extremely unusual posting the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated it may release opinions tomorrow morning. Extremely unusual for a Friday:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/

From the Court&s website description of its procedures:

Prior to hearing oral argument, other business of the Court is transacted. On Monday mornings this includes the release of an Order List, a public report of Court actions including the acceptance and rejection of cases, and the admission of new members to the Court Bar. Opinions are typically released on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and on the third Monday of each sitting, when the Court takes the Bench but no arguments are heard.

https://www.scotusblog.com/


SCOTUSblog is stating they will release one or more opinions tomorrow.

Yes, Saturday is the day when 1000s of tipsy Santa Clauses go on a massive pub crawl through Manhattan. The holiday fun begins at 10:00 AM. I hope everyone has their Santa Con maps so they can join you in the festivities!
Nothing else can get you in the holiday spirit than a Santa Con participant filled with holiday spirits! Merry Christmas!


https://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/holidays/santacon-2021-everything-you-need-to-know-from-maps-to-transit-booze-bans/3440356/

Of all the City's glorious Christmas traditions, none is more beloved than Santa Con!

Some of the sensible people who know the subject are beginning to weigh in on what Omicron means for us. Dr.Jha is at Brown University and sometimes.appears on TV. He says that there are three groups who will be effected differently by Omicron. I figure the group most relevant to DU is the vaxxed and boosted. This is his tweet about that group plus the one about people who have received just two shots:


https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1468566645111205892?s=20


People on the thread were rightly concerned about the status of 6 month to five year olds. I've read that a vaccine for them is expected early in the new year.

Aren’t Real, or Are They? Inside a Gen Z Conspiracy Theory.
Peter McIndoe, the 23-year-old creator of the viral Birds Aren’t Real movement, is ready to reveal what the effort is really about.

The New York Times
By Taylor Lorenz
Dec. 9, 2021, 9:44 a.m. ET
Leer en español
In Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.”

On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral.

Last month, Birds Aren’t Real adherents even protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.

The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds don’t exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren’t Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan.

https://nyti.ms/3y8vxFM

Apparently, it's a conspiracy theory satire
But there's probably something to it. I think the CIA drone idea is a good one

And here's all you need to know:

https://birdsarentreal.com/

This is a very long article from Buzzfeed on the CDC's failed attempt in the earliest days of the pandemic to produce a test that would tell us where covid-19 outbreaks were actually occurring. It's a pretty sad story. Worth the read:


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/covid-test-false-positive-failure-cdc-documents