🌍 Delta is not the last one — more variants this fall, a tough winter

“We're going to hear about other variants in the fall. It's going to be a tough winter. ... We cannot shut down.”

“I think what we need to solve for is how do we have these vaccines come to market much faster and be much more variable in their efficaciousness because we are going to have a lot more of these kind of emerging variants over the next couple of years with SARS-CoV-2, but also with potentially engineered bugs that we need to be careful about.”

“I mean, I think that there's a very good chance that some politicians are going to try to use this for another shutdown in the fall.”

“I think you're right and I think the teachers unions, the NEA and the AFT are already putting all sorts of demands on going back to school.”

“So, as that starts to happen, the implications for the economy, I think, are pretty significant. Because I think people, whether there's a policy change or not, people are going to get scared again. And people, if we're not kind of enforcing economic lockdown, people will go into social lockdown. And we're going to revisit, you know, more of the behavior we saw over the past year, where people are going to be nervous to travel, people are going to be nervous to fly, people are going to be nervous to go to restaurants. And, you know, the downstream consequences of everyone kind of locking up again, even if the government doesn't enforce lockups, could be pretty catastrophic.”

“The point is, guys, Friedberg is right. These things aren't going away. We have a cohort of people who will continue to allow this thing to become worse than it has to be. And I think that there will be economic repercussions and discrimination against those people for that. And I think economically, we are going to take a step back because politicians will try to slow the economy down again.”

“This is not a big deal. I mean, for me, okay, it was not a big deal. It was like a mild cold. I am not going to change my I'm going to go back to normal, like my pre COVID behavior. And I would tell you, like, if you're double vax, I don't think you need to be that afraid of this.”

“I'm not changing my behaviors. I made my I made my decision. My risk assessment is if I get it, then I'm doubly protected. And I'm not going to wind up in the hospital. I'm going to focus all my energy on riding my bike and taking my kids out and having a good time. I'm not going back in lockdown.”

“So look, one thing that seems pretty certain, this variant is going to be everywhere fast. ... The R0 on this could be as high as 40, which is, you know, measles by comparison is 12 to 13 ... it's got incredibly good evasiveness around people that have the vaccine or have had the virus. So it's going to spread like crazy.”

“They have record cases right now, but deaths and they're also done great with the vaccine”

“there could be this thing happening where Omicron is the you know, the the air bomb that gets dropped, clears the room and then it's all over”

“Some studies show as much as 40 times more infectious than Delta, highly contagious, extreme, very much airborne. It's going everywhere. ... There's no end. There's no end in sight.”

“My biggest optimism is just that Omicron is a much less virulent virus, and it sweeps through the population, and we slowly see this pandemic becoming less severe.”

“Unless something escapes from the lab again, I think that we're going to be okay. I think this is the end of the end.”

“And thank God, it feels like Omicron is, you know, leading us out of this.”

“No, I think getting Omicron helped you because it enabled you to see that this, for you, was largely a nothing burger. And so you could come out of your house and start acting normal. I think there's a lot of people all over the country who are like that.”