December 21, 2021

[Andrea J.]

sorry Arawak....forgive me I am slow.
please clarify about Aruban students/citizens living abroad?
are you saying if university student X is in Holland and is ill with covid..........that student is counted in Aruba's numbers?
I must be reading this wrong.

Non-residents are just that. People who don't live on the island. That includes Aruban students/citizens living abroad. There's about 1000-5000+ non-residents arriving daily into Aruba, the vast majority of that daily number are tourists. Undocumented migrants as I understand it would be classified under residents as well.

On the vaccines, Aruba is pretty much all Pfizer with boosters for 50+ being administered already. 10% of the population is boosted I believe. Aruba's vaccines are incorporated into the vaccines the Netherlands buys and gets shipped over. Grenada has to get the vaccine on its own and like most of the regional countries, they had to buy AZ or Chinese vaccines because the supply of Pfizer and moderna were all taken up by the "richer" nations.

[Dennis J]

Totally agree.By definition - if you “live” in Aruba you are a “resident”. Nonetheless, non-resident numbers are worrisome. Wonder if Aruba will increase mandatory “insurance” that covers housing of non-resident active cases. Remember when first instituted what seems like ages ago, it was a daily charge. Then they reduced to $15 for an entire stay.

Keep safe and wising everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday Season, and a Better New Year.

[Mike G]

Totally agree.By definition - if you “live” in Aruba you are a “resident”. Nonetheless, non-resident numbers are worrisome. Wonder if Aruba will increase mandatory “insurance” that covers housing of non-resident active cases. Remember when first instituted what seems like ages ago, it was a daily charge. Then they reduced to $15 for an entire stay.

Keep safe and wising everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday Season, and a Better New Year.

I feel the same way. They aren't calling them "citizens".

And if they want to obfuscate the numbers by grouping things together then they will run the risk of people interpreting the numbers how they want. I plan to consider non-residents as people like me visiting the island for a short period of time (a week +/-) unless and until they choose to break that cohort out. And this steep rise in those numbers does not give me confidence in visiting at this time.

And yes, very worrying. Wait till you see the total # of positives from yesterday. It will really get your attention.

[Dennis J]

Sorry - repeat message.

Everyone keep safe.

[Andrea J.]

as of 12:50 pm the DVG has not yet released the numbers for Dec 21.

I feel the same way. They aren't calling them "citizens".

And if they want to obfuscate the numbers by grouping things together then they will run the risk of people interpreting the numbers how they want. I plan to consider non-residents as people like me visiting the island for a short period of time (a week +/-) unless and until they choose to break that cohort out. And this steep rise in those numbers does not give me confidence in visiting at this time.

And yes, very worrying. Wait till you see the total # of positives from yesterday. It will really get your attention.

[Arawak]

sorry Arawak....forgive me I am slow.
please clarify about Aruban students/citizens living abroad?
are you saying if university student X is in Holland and is ill with covid..........that student is counted in Aruba's numbers?
I must be reading this wrong.

Negative. If they come to Aruba and test positive they are treated as any other non-resident.

They could just eliminate the option of testing in Aruba. I'm not sure why that's still needed as I can't believe that almost two years into the pandemic that it would still be difficult to obtain a PCR test before flying.

Everyone should be expecting very high daily positive numbers soon. Record breaking, like everywhere else. Seeing 100,200,300 daily positives should come as no surprise. It's also the fastest way out of the pandemic. Also given Aruba basically never experienced hard measures, you'd expect immunity to be quite high already in the population(vaxxed and/or recovered).

[Aruba4ever]

There is limited immunity if you had covid already and are unvaccinated according to what I read recently. Here is a part of a recent study. Oct 25, 2021 -- People who don’t get vaccinated against COVID-19 should expect to be reinfected with the coronavirus every 16 to 17 months on average, according to a recent study published in The Lancet Microbe.

[Arawak]

There is limited immunity if you had covid already and are unvaccinated according to what I read recently. Here is a part of a recent study. Oct 25, 2021 -- People who don’t get vaccinated against COVID-19 should expect to be reinfected with the coronavirus every 16 to 17 months on average, according to a recent study published in The Lancet Microbe.

The only immunity that really matters is protection against serious illness and hospitalization. Eventually(not quite there yet), people and governments are going to have to start getting over paying attention to positive case numbers as this virus isn't going away. With Omicron, protection against infection is around 30%(previously 80%). Lower depending on how long ago you got the jabs. However, protection against hospitalization is still 70% (down from 93%). These numbers are also potentially skewed because the South African population is both much younger and also there is a large degree of natural immunity from previous infections. So, these "protection" numbers could be even lower for us(Aruba, US, Europe).

With a booster, protection against serious disease is 70-85% when it comes to Omicron. Even with Delta, vaccinated people were getting infected left and right. Difference was that they (mostly) just didn't end up in hospital compared to those without the vaccine.

For us to "defeat" this virus, the vaccines would have to have a protection against infection of 100%. The vaccines were already far away from that even with Delta. Whether you are vaxxed, recovered or both, everyone helps with increasing the herd immunity levels. As time goes on though, effectiveness wears off for everyone.

In short: Everyone contributes to our collective immunity. Every single person has a date with Omicron in a very short term given the sheer rate of infection and it being one of the most contagious strains humanity has ever known. We're in for a very hard and (hopefully) short burn. Being vaxxed and/or infected previously will give your body a better chance, but really there's no 100% guarantee.

Also, many vaccinated people "let go" after getting vaxxed because they maybe consciously or subconsciously thought they were protected now. Unfortunately, the vaccines were never 100% effective, so there will always be the chance for breakthrough infections or serious illness. We see this here too, but more so in places with the "QR codes" to access events. People in those events act like it's 2019(like the christmas party in Norway where 100 people were double jabbed and still 83 tested positive.


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/hea...gainst-omicron

[Aruba4ever]

You are correct in the fact we need to learn to live with it for sure as its not going anywhere. Enjoy Xmas.