Maryland, My Maryland

Ready or not, Omicron is here. Balmer Sun, Maryland reports most new COVID cases recorded in 24-hour period, 6,218, as officials warn of surge’s impact on hospital capacity

Maryland reported 6,218 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, marking the most infections added in 24 hours during the coronavirus pandemic, as officials painted a bleak picture of how the virus’ surge could shape the rest of the winter.

The new data means that more than one in every 1,000 Marylanders was confirmed to have a coronavirus infection in the past day.

But officials said they were most concerned about COVID-19 hospitalizations, which doubled since the beginning of December. Those patients, approximately 75% of whom are unvaccinated, are burdening a health care system experiencing an exodus of medical personnel due to fatigue and frustration, health experts said.

Infections are occurring in both the unvaccinated and vaccinated people, though those who are vaccinated and have received a booster shot were most protected against severe illness and death.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan gave a coronavirus update Tuesday from Government House, where he is quarantining after contracting the coronavirus. The Republican governor said state projections show COVID-19 hospitalizations could reach 2,000 come January, potentially eclipsing pandemic high marks established in January this year.

It doesn't help that Maryland's coronavirus website is suffering it own woes, from a cyber attack (who does that, and why?), and the holiday weekend. It's hard to get current data, but we've seen to date is pretty astonishing:

Elsewhere, it surveys have shown that 70-90% of new WuFlu cases are due to the Omicron variant, which for all practical purposes might as well be considered a new disease, seeing as how it has, on average, milder, more cold-like symptoms than the earlier strains it is rapidly replacing, and more capable of infecting people with immunity acquired from catching the virus or from vaccination. It also appears more quickly after infection, lasts a shorter time, and is even more infective; all changes consistent with the normal respiratory virus tendency to mutate to toward evading immunity, becoming more infectious and yet milder. A virus has one job; to reproduce. If its host species is becoming more immune, variants that dodge that immunity are favored, as non-immune hosts become rarer, more infectious variants will thrive, and a good little virus wants its host to walk around and infect as many hosts as possible. Killing it, or rendering it immobile is just plain bad for business.

As we enter winter (i.e. flu season) here in the more northern part of the country, and the center of infection shifts from the southern red states to northern blue states. Consequently, the politics has changed as well. Blue state governors will not be accused of malfeasance when their populace succumbs to the illness in massive amounts; it will all be blamed on the unvaccinated and the unmasked, even though the virus now seems perfectly capable of spreading despite these precautions. 

AJ Kaufman, PJ Media Recent COVID Surges Debunk Deceitful Partisan Narratives

Writing in the Wall Street Journal late last week, Karol Markowicz noted, “Covid is suddenly funny and cool now that all the right people are getting it.”

Sadly, there’s truth in that claim.

The latest outbreaks in the liberal Northeast again exposed a fallacy that COVID-19 is some red-state phenomenon.

Washington, D.C., now the pandemic’s epicenter, has almost 200 COVID cases per 100,000 residents, more than a 500% increase during the last two weeks. This is much more than right-leaning Alabama or Mississippi, for example, which have fewer than 20 cases per 100,000.

Other places seeing significant case increases include Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. These are all blue states, for what it’s worth.

Again, the omicron wave finally ends callous left-wing claims that coronavirus is somehow fueled by Republican opposition to draconian mandates or school closures.

Embattled D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is overly zealous with edicts, yet the omicron surge has hit the nation’s capital at a time when winter’s arrival simply means that Northeast and upper Midwest locales are particularly vulnerable because there’s a seasonal aspect to COVID. It can’t be contained by an omniscient government. The Southeast got slammed several months ago by delta, and now omicron is roaring through the North.

But for hyper-partisan blatherskites like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, crass partisan opportunism is the preferred game.

Krugman said Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis “has effectively acted as an ally of the coronavirus,” and is running a “death cult.”

I'm hoping the Omicron is really mostly a bad case of sniffles, because it looks like a lot of us are going to get it, vaccinations, masks, or not.