Even as we wonder where those school district mask mandate battles are at in court, many smaller school districts have been closing because they don't have a choice. The Trib notes that if it's not teachers, it's school bus drivers and other staff that are missing. (This comes in the midst of a spate of national reporting about yet another job-filling shortage, in ... bus drivers!) Schools in more rural and small town areas that stay open are seeing parents waiting for hours, in some cases, in child pick-up lines. For parents who work remotely, or else commute to a metro area (Austin-Round Rock for the Hutto parents profiled, Denton or the Metromess proper in my area), it's a frustration. The biggest surge is southwest of San Antonio, down to the Laredo area.
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Meanwhile, per my discussion of a week ago: When DO we get from pandemic to endemic?
My guess is that, beyond the Omicron surge ebbing, without an immediate replacement, things will be quieter in Texas at least in spring. For Texans and Tex-ass businesses not wedded to keeping the indoors exactly the same temperature no matter the time of year, this means less heat or AC, and at restaurants, people dining alfresco because they want to, not just because of COVID fears. We'll see what summer brings.
Scientists expect further variants after Omicron. This itself should be of no surprise. "Just the flu" varies every year, and contra horseshoe theory wingnuts of left and right, this doesn't mean that vaccines are a failure. It just means they can be more or less successful against different variants, like "just the flu" vaccines. Nobody outside nutters argues this means flu vaccines are a failure.
Ars Technica discusses why, from the start, scientists worried about Omicron.
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