Editors’ Blog

Keep an eye on an emerging discussion about the apparent peak of infections in Gauteng province in South Africa. That is the region where Omicron was first discovered and where its spread first caught fire. (We don’t actually know where it originated.) I don’t want to characterize what this means because I know nothing. But even the people who know a lot don’t appear to have a clear idea what it means. I note it here because even though it’s not clear what it means it does seem to be different enough to what was expected to require some explanation. And that explanation could deepen or change our understanding of what Omicron is.

Professor Shabir Madhi of University of the Witwatersrand notes that Omicron crested after 4 weeks compared to 8 weeks for the earlier two waves. In his thread Madhi provides other tentative but encouraging numbers on disease severity. But it’s the apparent plateau that seems to have people scratching their heads. Others, including Tulio de Oliveira who did the first lab work on Omicron, suggests caution, pointing to population shifts in Gauteng at this time of year.

Along with vaccines, masking has been one of the most solidaristic parts of the pandemic. If everyone masks up, then everyone’s risk goes down dramatically. That’s true and it should continue to inform our actions. But if you remain risk averse or are from a vulnerable population, you do have options if you live in a community with poor masking or simply want to up your odds. It wasn’t the case early in the pandemic. But today n95 and other related high filtration masks are pretty widely available. Not everyone finds these comfortable. It really depends on the person. I’m used to using them for woodworking and I wear them for long periods of time and don’t give it a second thought. Depends on the person.

Until perhaps as recently as yesterday the assumption was that the current run-up of cases, especially in the Northeast, is actually still Delta. Omicron is still to come. That no longer appears to be the case. We don’t know for certain yet because we don’t have the scope and speed of genomic sequencing that would allow us to know definitively. But the assumption now is that we’re already here, in Omicron. Almost two years into this pandemic we have managed to be at least partly caught off guard by another blowup of the disease.

No overarching Jan. 6 news today but a lot of incremental developments over the last 24 hours to catch up on, in no particular order:

Here is a topic I don’t see enough discussion of. We hear a lot today (for good reason) that voting rights and the protection of democracy is the issue. Social spending, climate, immigration, infrastructure … they’re all important but they all rest on having a working democracy where voting determines who runs the government. All true. But the laws we’re actually talking about, the ones that are written and ready to pass (if Sinema and Manchin would let them come to a vote) or even in concept don’t actually address the main issue that has everyone’s attention. They’re critical. Don’t get me wrong. But they don’t actually address the catalog of situations in which you hold a vote, count the votes and then simply set the votes aside if you don’t like the result.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the seeming “punt” of the reconciliation bill and how Democrats can still generate forward momentum.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

TPM Reader TD fled the country under Trump and isn’t coming back anytime soon:

Hi, Josh. I agree with your post. The country’s in a bad way, and Dems generally and Biden specifically need to find a better way to talk about it. I wanted to add my thoughts about where we are, how we got here, and where we’re going.

TPM Reader PT checks in on Manchin, BBB, and the current swoon:

For pretty much the entire time of the Biden Administration legislative activity, I’ve been of the opinion that the whole issue of the BBB was best understood as a kind of culture war. The problem that the Manchin caucus really has with the BBB is that it represents a Democratic Party in which the moderate / conservative / Manchin caucus is not firmly in the driver seat all the time, for all things.

I start with the proviso that we are in a radically better position than we were two years ago. Most of the population is vaccinated. We have experience treating COVID. We have effective antivirals coming online. But this morning in New York City has a feeling of déjà vu. My inbox is filled with a rush of cancellations: school holiday events; a journalists’ drinking get-together that had just restarted after a two year hiatus postponed the morning of; lines outside testing centers snake around the block. It all has the feel of Spring of 2020 when everything was normal and then on a dime it wasn’t.

Let me share a couple more thoughts on boosters.

The UK is currently in a mad dash to get boosters into the arms of as many people as possible. We’re certainly pushing boosters here too. But it’s a singular focus there in a way that is not the case here. That’s the first, second and third part of their strategy basically. They’re advising work from home and universal masking. But basically it’s to buy time for getting boosters in as many arms as possible over the next two to three weeks. They’re deploying the military to set up pop-up clinics, advising hospitals to suspend routine care to focus on booster administration. They have a goal of getting every adult in the country boosted by the end of the month. So really they’re pulling out all the stops.