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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saracenus" data-source="post: 8503043" data-attributes="member: 47839">I get it.  Its been almost 2 years of this and everyone is getting fatigued. Just remember that your risk assessment for those conventions were is pre-Omicron variant. If you were what I consider fully vaxed (2 jabs and booster) and wearing masks prior to Omicron you were pretty safe if you weren't 6 months out from your last jab with Delta. Heck, I went and saw Patton Oswalt perform right before Thanksgiving. I got COVID tested before it and again after it.The New York anime con that just happened in late early DEC became a super spreader event because the new variant can break through our current vaccines... For example, small, 30 person friend group at that con with at least 2 jabs (the CDC standard for fully vaxed in the US) and roughly half of them caught the new COVID strain. Most were asymptomatic and only a couple got hit hard. 35K people were asked to test out of 55K in attendance.This is concerning but completely anecdotal.Please take this with huge grains of salt, the CDC weekly COVID reports are just starting to show real data from DEC and there are tons of research still ongoing. We will have a better idea of what Omicron is doing in the next 2 to 4 weeks. The projections in that weekly report (every Tuesday) are currently based off of data collected from England, Denmark, and South Africa witch are farther along in their Omicron phase. This will get refined as we gather our own data.The TL;DR version: We are entering a new phase and what we know in the Delta phase of this Pandemic may not apply in the on rushing Omicron phase. Use caution until we get harder data.MASKSAs far masks go, the current standard recommended for Omicron is a three-ply surgical mask (you can get these at local stores) with a cloth mask over it. But the gold standard is the N95 NIOSH masks (This is the US Standard). KN95s (Chinese Standard) are good too, but there are so many counterfeits out there its hard to be sure (I avoid these right now). There is a South Korean version that is 90% instead of 95% with particulates (I forget the code for them) and there are almost no counterfeits in the market right now.  A cloth mask by itself is basically worthless with the high R factor/transmissibility of Omicron. If you are just wearing just a plastic face shield... come on man.US NIOSH LISTS (CDC N95 and CDC/FDA N95 Surgical):[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/disp_part/default.html[/URL]OTHER COUNTRIES STANDARDS (KN95s with Emergency Approval from the FDA):[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-emergency-use-authorizations-medical-devices/personal-protective-equipment-euas[/URL]PLEASE NOTE: KN95 Masks have to come from specific manufacturing plants in China in order for FDA emergency use in the US, there are tons of them that bare the KN95 logo that come from other manufacturing plants, buyer beware.EDIT: It's Omicron, not Omnicron. But hey, I misspelled it consistently throughout my post, so I got that going for me...</blockquote>

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