[HN Gopher] Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes...
___________________________________________________________________
Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe
Covid: study
Author : richardatlarge
Score : 321 points
Date : 2021-12-14 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| oxymoran wrote:
| " The study by Discovery Health, South Africa's largest health
| insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000
| were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital
| admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent
| lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March
| 2020."
|
| 29% LOWER THAN OG COVID
|
| In other words, a bad cold or the flu. This is possibly our way
| out of this mess if it can become the dominant strain, why are we
| still peddling fear about omnicron instead of hope?
| nostrademons wrote:
| COVID is about 10x more lethal than flu across all age ranges,
| so if this is 29% lower than the original strain, it's still 7x
| more deadly than flu.
| jedimastert wrote:
| If we peddle hope in the wrong way, it'll give people an excuse
| to not get the vaccine or the boosters.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If you lie, or omit the truth and get caught, they will never
| listen to anything you say ever again.
| vkou wrote:
| I wish the antivaxx/snake oil/it's just the flu folks were
| held to that standard.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I don't think you'd believe anything they would have to
| say, would you? Either way, if you are a public health
| official you have to be held to a higher standard than a
| guy with Facebook account.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > a bad cold or the flu
|
| If Covid was only 40% worse than the flu and the cold, then
| this wouldn't have been a pandemic at all.
|
| Also, one thing that possibly distorts this study is that a
| large amount of South Africans got only vaccinated in recent
| months. Given that the vaccine is most effective in the
| beginning, this might positively affect South Africans's
| resilience against Omicron and it's not clear yet (afaik) to
| what extent that skewed the stats.
| wnevets wrote:
| I can't believe this is the top comment on hacker news but I
| guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore.
| Animats wrote:
| Moderna is working on a vaccine targeting the Omicron variant for
| 2022.[1]
|
| The mRNA vaccine technology is "agile". There's a workflow from
| sequencing a virus to generating a candidate vaccine. It only
| took two days to generate the original COVID-19 vaccine. It's the
| clinical testing in small, then large groups that's the time
| consuming part.
|
| Also, the inhaled vaccines are entering clinical testing.[2] It's
| not like we're stuck with the original vaccines.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/28/moderna-says-an-omicron-
| vari...
|
| [2]
| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e1637976-5c3f-11ec-90d0-c...
| oldstatsstudent wrote:
| Did anyone notice the comparison of vaccine-based immunity to
| natural immunity in the findings within the source PR [0]? With a
| little work, you can compare them.
|
| If we convert the measure used in finding 2 (relative risk of
| reinfection) to finding 1's (relative protection), then the study
| found that natural immunity from Delta variant gives 60%
| protection against Omicron; roughly double the vaccine's
| protection.
|
| Unfortunately, no stat was given for natural immunity's
| protection against hospitalization.
|
| From finding 1: _individuals who received two doses of the
| Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had 33% protection against infection,
| relative to the unvaccinated_
|
| From finding 2: _People who were infected with COVID-19 in South
| Africa's third (Delta) wave face a 40% relative risk of
| reinfection with Omicron_
|
| Am I reading this right? Wonder why they used different metrics?
|
| 0: https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-
| room#/pressreleas...
| [deleted]
| cmonfeat wrote:
| Given the high percentage of the population in SA who has
| already had an infection, there's probably a significant chunk
| of people in finding 1 who also already had natural immunity.
| That's probably going to make it difficult to use these results
| to compare vaccine-based immunity to natural immunity, right?
| bognition wrote:
| There are a few important bits here:
|
| First: "The study by Discovery Health, South Africa's largest
| health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which
| 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital
| admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent
| lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March
| 2020."
|
| and second: "At the same time, the vaccine may offer 70 percent
| protection against being hospitalized with omicron, the study
| found, describing that level of protection as "very good.""
|
| Yes the vaccine does improve outcomes BUT the hospitalization
| rate for unvaccinated people is still lower with Omicron than
| previous variants.
| sjwalter wrote:
| > Yes the vaccine does improve outcomes BUT the hospitalization
| rate for unvaccinated people is still lower with Omicron than
| previous variants.
|
| Why "BUT"? Shouldn't the second part be, uh, a good thing?
| trutannus wrote:
| It sounds from this like the diminished efficacy is being
| compensated for by the reduced lethality of the new virus.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Reduced lethality ? How many times can we catch covid ?
| Symptoms might be cold like in ~90% case but long term damage
| ?
| chinathrow wrote:
| > Yes the vaccine does improve outcomes BUT the hospitalization
| rate for unvaccinated people is still lower with Omicron than
| previous variants.
|
| In this very specific demographic. Other countries will have
| different outcomes, as seen with the current state of the
| pandemic (looking at Europe, for example).
| croes wrote:
| Don't forget this part: "South Africa has a quite high
| seroprevalence of prior infection, particularly after delta,
| and in some parts of South Africa up to 80 percent of people
| were exposed to previous infection"
|
| So it could simply be that the mild cases were previously
| infected, what happens to an unvaccinated without prior
| infection is a different story.
| akamaka wrote:
| South Africa's excess deaths amount to 1 out of every 200
| people. The most vulnerable have already been removed from
| the sample set.
|
| I'm going to wait for severity data from where I live,
| because that's what matters.
| tsol wrote:
| Correction: SOME OF the most vulnerable have already been
| removed from the sample set.
|
| I'm still waiting on proper large scale studies as well,
| though. It'll probably be at least a week or two until we
| get that
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| every year more vulnerable people are added to that set as
| population ages, gets fatter, has more advanced coronary or
| metabolic disease, etc.
|
| not trying to contradict here I think it will be less each
| year.
|
| maybe governments will even start telling people their dirt
| and exercise choices are exacerbating this disease!
| markdown wrote:
| > maybe governments will even start telling people their
| dirt and exercise choices are exacerbating this disease
|
| Don't worry, Joe Rogan is on the case!
| kansface wrote:
| > every year more vulnerable people are added to that set
| as population ages, gets fatter, has more advanced
| coronary or metabolic disease, etc.
|
| The number added each season is not necessarily the same
| number as the ones removed in the previous year - see the
| prevalence of really bad flu seasons for instance, which
| occur every 2-3 years or so.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ___q wrote:
| > unvaccinated without prior infection is a different story.
|
| No it's not, the study specifically mentions "the relative
| reduction of risk conferred by prior proven COVID-19
| infection"
|
| https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room
| croes wrote:
| Infection risk but not hospitalizations risk or death risk.
| That's what I meant, the previous infection doesn't protect
| against infection but might prevent severe cases.
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| When they are saying this is less severe - is that based on
| ~20% of the country having Covid or ~80%?
|
| There are these estimates that ~80% of SA had Covid.
|
| If so - previous variants were 1/4th as severe - since 3/4ths
| of the cases went undetected... Right?
| kansface wrote:
| I don't understand this study. Why not compare the
| hospitalization/fatality rates between _current_ omicron/delta
| infections between similar cohorts?
|
| Comparing to an earlier wave is hopelessly confounded on prior
| infections in the intervening time and similarly, on the most
| susceptible having already been killed off.
|
| Maybe they did what I'm suggesting and its mostly just bad
| reporting?
|
| edit from the summary :-/ :
|
| Vaccine effectiveness: The two-dose Pfizer-
| BioNTech vaccination provides 70% protection against severe
| complications of COVID-19 requiring hospitalisation, and 33%
| protection against COVID-19 infection, during the current
| Omicron wave. Reinfection risk: For individuals
| who have had COVID-19 previously, the risk of reinfection with
| Omicron is significantly higher, relative to prior variants.
| Severity: The risk of hospital admission among adults diagnosed
| with COVID-19 is 29% lower for the Omicron variant infection
| compared to infections involving the D614G mutation in South
| Africa's first wave in mid-2020, after adjusting for
| vaccination status Children: Despite very low
| absolute incidence, preliminary data suggests that children
| have a 20% higher risk of hospital admission in Omicron-led
| fourth wave in South Africa, relative to the D614G-led first
| wave.
| drited wrote:
| Thank you for removing the uncertainty on that! Agreed
| regarding the unspecific reporting. Seemed to me to be one of
| those areas where the author assumed you'd assume... I
| dislike that as it introduces the possibility of
| misinterpretation.
|
| Now the next question is what is the percentage reduction in
| deaths for Omicron vs prior variants. It seems like more than
| the 29 percent reduction in hospitalisation given the first
| death from Omicron was reported in Britain last week right?
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think we have to be very careful with data from around the
| world. There are a lot of co-factors. We already know that
| generally being immuno-compromised makes covid a much riskier
| proposition for those groups. In a recent deep dive into the
| Ivermectin studies done around the world, it was shown and
| proven that in Bangladesh that Ivermectin reduced covid
| mortality. However, when digging deeper, Bangladesh has a 80%+
| infection rate of worms with most people having 7-23. So taking
| Ivermectin helped save patients from covid mortality but only
| in the sense that it made them less immuno-compromised. The US
| population (e.g.) doesn't have worm infections like that. Any
| data from a specific geographic area/country/race/etc. may only
| have validity within that same group.
| rbartelme wrote:
| "Less severe" as in less hospitalizations and death. The long-
| term effects of comorbidities are still being hashed out. A fair
| amount of the literature surrounding pulmonary megakaryocytes,
| platelets, and covid, is pretty alarming.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Who cares?
|
| If you die with Omicron, you are very old and dying above the
| average life expectancy, or already sick with chronic preventable
| illnesses caused by poor lifestyle choices. We should be banning
| McDonalds advertising, not deputizing waitresses to be
| vaccination police.
|
| If you are not very old or already sick and get omicron, whether
| you have antibodies or not, you're going to experience mild
| symptoms, if anything at all, and achieve broader and more
| durable immunity than you would get from vaccine alone.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| > deputizing waitresses to be vaccination police
|
| Oh god, I fled post-the_donald reddit to avoid trite drivel
| like this. Please don't.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| You've obviously never worked a service job.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| I tip generously, shout "behind" walking behind people and
| occasionally ask for "two tops" in restaurants on accident.
| Wrong again.
|
| That's partly why I support laws that keep service workers
| safe, instead of regurgitating cliches like "vaccination
| police."
| [deleted]
| fuzzybassoon wrote:
| This comment adds nothing to the discussion and of course
| ignores important factors like:
|
| * people with cancer or autoimmune diseases * concerning early
| signals like drastically increased hospitalizations in the
| under-2 population * unchecked spread allowing further
| mutations that could be worse
|
| It also lacks human decency.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Good point. Let's fire half of all the black people again
| like we did 2020. You're so empathetic and really looking out
| for the little people out there.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| You sound like you're fun at parties /s.
|
| If we're looking at the US, "already sick with chronic
| preventable illnesses causes by poor lifestyle choices" is >50%
| of our population, so I would say a _majority_ of people care
| (here). Our society and businesses have done a pretty good job
| making sure most people don 't have the time available to make
| the right choices.
| ufo wrote:
| The title is misleading. It is possible that Omicron is just as
| severe and that the effect in the study is because a large
| percentage of the population had some immunity from a previous
| infection or vaccine.
|
| > South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior
| infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of South
| Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to previous
| infection. We don't think it's a question of virulence, but more
| a question of exposure to vaccination and prior infection, so we
| would be cautious to try and interpret that this is a less
| virulent strain. We'll have to see what happens in other parts of
| the world before we make a call on this.
| elsherbini wrote:
| Another quote from the press-release of the study:
|
| >"Epidemiological tracking shows a steep trajectory of new
| infections, indicating Omicron's rapid spread, but so far with
| a flatter trajectory of hospital admissions, possibly
| indicating lower severity," explains Dr Noach. "This lesser
| severity could, however, be confounded by the high
| seroprevalence levels of SARS CoV-2 antibodies in the general
| South African population, especially following an extensive
| Delta wave of infections." [1].
|
| So, to actually make the comparison we'd need to compare new
| Delta infections with new Omicron infections time-matched,
| comparing people who were seronegative to start with. This
| would be really hard to do in South Africa since there is a
| high proportion of seropositive people.
|
| [1] https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room
| sjg007 wrote:
| Also the 20% increase in child hospitalizations is no joke.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The study adjusted for vaccine status [0] but was still
| comparing things to the initial wave in 2020, which is strange
| and I would like to know their justification for that.
|
| For a bit more of an apples-to-apples comparison they should be
| comparing omicron hospitalization & fatality rates to those of
| non-omicron variants over the same period of time. It doesn't
| look like they've done that, and I'm not aware of a study that
| has systematically done this (yet).
|
| It would certainly be a holiday-season gift if we shifted to a
| more virulent but less serious variant, but I'll hold out for a
| bit more information before I completely buy into that
| narrative. That can be difficult: people want to believe some
| good news here. Heck, my initial _gut_ reaction was to push
| back against your objections but my career has trained me to
| resist that sort of thing. It won 't be good for the erosion of
| trust in the media if they've jumped the gun on this and
| Omicron doesn't turn out the way we hope it will.
|
| https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Did they also adjust for previous infection?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Not that I can tell (EDIT: They did, see comment further
| down) This seems to be research release by PR, not a
| published study. Although even if they adjusted for prior
| infections they should still be comparing comparable time
| periods. It is really odd if they didn't, and odd if they
| _did_ do it but the results weren 't included in the
| release. The initial 2020 wave is a reasonable baseline,
| but not a good measure of relative risk factors between
| variants right now especially because 2020 didn't include
| Delta.
| ___q wrote:
| Yes
|
| > For individuals who have had COVID-19 previously, the
| risk of reinfection with Omicron _is significantly higher_
| , relative to prior variants.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Thanks-- I missed that in my read through.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| You can easily disprove your theory by using the number of
| vaccinated vs unvaccinated that were exposed. We are talking
| about severity and not spread, that is easily done.
| simonh wrote:
| It's not the commenter's theory, it's the theory proposed in
| the article itself and that the commenter quoted. It's
| somewhat possible to account for the vaccination rate, but
| not really for resistance due to prior exposure because there
| are so many unknown variables in that.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > It is possible that Omicron is just as severe and that the
| effect in the study is because a large percentage of the
| population had some immunity from a previous infection or
| vaccine.
|
| All viruses are severe if you have no immune protection from
| them. A small number of people die from the cold every year.
| The only thing that matters is how severe the infection is
| given the immunity you have.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Well, yes, but if you're naively comparing the severity of
| omicron infections to that of the previous strains then
| that's just apples and oranges because the degree of
| immunization in the population is _not_ the same, even if you
| only consider non-vaccinated people.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > severity of omicron infections to that of the previous
| strains then that's just apples and oranges
|
| Comparing the severity of the viral strains on some
| objective scale, if that's even possible, is at best an
| academic curiosity. Severity comparisons only really matter
| in giving us an accurate idea of how likely severe illness
| and death will be so that individuals, families, and public
| health officials can make any changes necessary.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, it is definitely too soon to be sure of anything like this
| headline, and that's the word of the leading epidemiologists I
| follow.
|
| Plus, this combination could be a lot WORSE for the hospital
| capacity situation.
|
| Even if the virulence/severity is only a fraction, the severe
| consequences will still grow exponentially, just further to the
| right on the curve.
|
| Meanwhile, the curve will grow a lot faster to the top of the
| graph because the greater exponential growth among both the
| unvaxed and the vaccinated.
|
| So, higher percentage of severe cases and lower transmisability
| would be less bad -- fewer sever cases and much greater
| trensmissability is almost the worst case.
| drcongo wrote:
| If you want misleading titles, try this [0] from the Guardian.
| Every single other news outlet covering this study managed an
| accurate headline.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/covid-
| vaccinat...
| notabee wrote:
| Additionally, severe illness and deaths are a lagging
| indicator. Cases are going to wildly outpace those figures
| because of how transmissable this is, until they don't. Deaths
| especially often take months from onset.
| simonh wrote:
| Hence the credulous articles about how India was 'special'
| when the virus first started spreading there because there
| were so few fatalities. Turns out it was spreading incredibly
| fast so cases were surging, but it took a month or more for
| the wave of deaths to follow. But follow it absolutely did.
| algo646464 wrote:
| I don't think that it is misleading. The severity of a disease
| is relative to the current situation.
|
| For example, it could be the case that Omicron is actually less
| infectious than the original variant, when compared in the
| setting of 2020. It spreads faster today because, (i) because
| of preexisting immunity most cases are very mild, and so lots
| of people become unwitting carriers, (ii) people have gone back
| to normal behavior after vaccination, and (iii) the vaccines
| inhibit the other variants much more than Omnicron. So Omicron
| gets more opportunities to infect and spread. Of course, all
| this is just conjecture and could be true or false.
|
| What matters from a practical point of view is that, Omnicron
| is less severe in the general population today(for various
| reasons), as compared to the original strain back in 2020.
| gruez wrote:
| > I don't think that it is misleading. The severity of a
| disease is relative to the current situation.
|
| I think it is misleading. AIDS is much more survivable in
| "the current situation" because of various drug advances we
| made in the past few decades. Does that mean 2021 AIDS is
| "less severe" than 90s AIDS? I guess you could claim it's
| technically less severe, but the wording definitely suggests
| it's something about the virus, rather than the environment.
| themgt wrote:
| So if we had:
|
| * variant "D" that kills 1% of the 20% of the population that
| isn't seropositive
|
| * variant "O" that kills 1% of the 20% of the population that
| isn't seropositive _and_ 0.2% of the 80% of the population
| that is seropositive
|
| The takeaway is "good news everyone, variant O is less
| severe!"
| croes wrote:
| It is misleading if you compare a country with 80% infection
| rate with countries with much fewer infections. If the milder
| cases are because of previous infections it could be a hard
| hit for unvaccinated first timers.
| fanzhang wrote:
| Technically anything is "possible" -- but what does the
| Bayesian weight of evidence say at this point?
| xyproto wrote:
| There are plenty of people in intensive care, though.
| sjwalter wrote:
| There always are. Average hospital staffing and resource
| levels mean at its minimum ICUs are at ~78% capacity. Come
| low vitamin-D season, January or February, most ICUs hit
| capacity every year.
|
| Google doesn't run its data centers at 5% capacity for the
| same reasons ICUs don't.
| greedo wrote:
| Sure. It's normal for hospitals to be delaying routine
| surgical procedures (where they make most of their money)
| due to not enough staff and beds. It's not just about ICU
| capacity, it's the overall hospital capacity. My small town
| has three primary hospitals, and all are seriously
| overloaded now.
| timr wrote:
| > The title is misleading.
|
| Just because you _disagree_ with something does not make it
| "misleading". The question of prior immunity is not unknown, is
| an obvious question, and in fact is mentioned in the article
| and discussed in the study.
|
| The title accurately reflects the contents of the study. I have
| many issues with Washington Post's coverage of Covid, but this
| is actually fair.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is still misleading. We don't actually have enough
| evidence to make such bold claims because the unknowns exist.
| timr wrote:
| Again: Just because you _disagree_ with something does not
| make it "misleading". Your opinion is not truth.
|
| No research paper stands alone, and we never have all
| context on a given question. You disagree with the
| conclusion for reasons -- that's fine. Make your arguments,
| and see if you can convince people. That's how science
| works.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| a large percentage of the planets population has some immunity
| from previous infection or vaccination
| SippinLean wrote:
| > For individuals who have had COVID-19 previously, the risk of
| reinfection with Omicron is significantly higher, relative to
| prior variants.
|
| https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room
| gjm11 wrote:
| Doesn't e.g. "a 73% relative risk of reinfection" mean being
| 0.73x as likely to be infected?
|
| These numbers show (as one would expect) that prior infection
| makes you less likely to get Omicron, and that prior
| infection with more recent strains does so more effectively.
| (Which might be because they're more Omicron-like, or because
| the infection was more recent. I'm guessing more the latter.)
| epgui wrote:
| Biochemist here, you are spot on. I came here to say the same
| thing.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It would be nice, and seemingly feasible, if they could compare
| to recent Delta infections (or even current one, seeing as both
| variants are present right now). Presumably any kind of
| acquired immunity is more comparable to 3 months ago vs. 21
| months ago.
|
| It could still be that among people infected with Omicron,
| there is a larger proportion of vaccinated people, due to
| vaccines being less efficient, but that's still a better
| yardstick.
| janmo wrote:
| Also, most people who would have died of Covid in South Africa
| already died during the Beta and then the Delta wave.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| It's also early days for the new variant. I would love and do
| hope this is true, but it's previously take weeks and months to
| start seeing fatalities after the first reported cases, so it
| may be too early to make this statement yet; waiting for the
| law of big numbers to kic in.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I would suspect that most people who are were already
| vulnerable have already passed or built immunity _if_ the virus
| is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death
| rate despite equivalent risk.
|
| Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little
| optimistic? To me, the news that we may be replacing COVID with
| a less severe strain is some of the best news of the year.
| COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all means
| try to replace it with something weaker!
|
| EDIT: Also, on a side note, the actual doctor who found Omicron
| said it was less dangerous. She even described it as "extremely
| mild." https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgddw4/omicron-variant-
| inter... Needless to say, politicians and news hosts decided to
| completely ignore her description about it.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Optimism on the part of news outlets can be dangerous here.
| It may cause people to prematurely relax their precautions,
| and if it turns out to be wrong it will further erode trust
| in media outlets that jumped the gun. Considering the study
| was comparing Omicron to the initial wave of 2020 infections
| (a strange choice) I am not confident in the results. If it
| turns out to be correct, it will be more of an accident than
| accurate analysis.
|
| As for the doctor that discovered it: Here experience with
| infected individuals is anecdotal data. She has not, to my
| knowledge, been involved in systematic studies. She is a
| general practitioner so here experience with this has been on
| the ground, primarily with the patients she has seen.
| Certainly this is useful but it is not a replacement for
| well-formed studies. Medical research and epidemiology are
| distinctly different activities from medical practice, even
| if many people involved in both have a medical degree.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The doctor who found it, isn't a psychic. She doesn't have
| any information the rest of us don't. She's just describing
| her personal experience.
|
| And her experience is entirely consistent with Omicron
| appearing less virulent because it's infecting the previously
| infected and vaccinated who already have some degree of
| immunity.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| > because it's infecting the previously infected and
| vaccinated who already have some degree of immunity.
|
| The doctor isn't a psychic but how do _you_ know this
| JamesBarney wrote:
| How do I know "her experience is entirely consistent with
| Omicron appearing less virulent because it's infecting
| the previously infected and vaccinated who already have
| some degree of immunity."
|
| 1. We know that break through infections are less serious
| than infections to the unvaccinated and uninfected. 2. We
| determine virulence by # of hospitalizations (or other
| serious outcome) / # of infections 3. If we add more
| infections that don't have serious outcomes (because they
| are break through cases) that greatly increases the
| denominator without affecting the numerator. 4. This is
| how you could have Omicron be just as virulent as the
| original but look less virulent to a doctor. (Because of
| the break through cases)
|
| Does that make sense?
| sjg007 wrote:
| Hope is not a strategy.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Nor is irrational panic
| sjg007 wrote:
| Reality exists somewhere in the middle where we work
| together on rational mitigation strategies.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| We have mitigation strategies. Vaccines. We've had them
| for a year. Anybody can get them. Boosters even. You can
| even mix & match your preferred make & model at this
| point!
|
| We don't need any further mitigation strategies. Vaccines
| were the only real mitigation strategy we ever had.
| sjg007 wrote:
| The medical and scientific consensus is that vaccines
| alone are not enough.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Could you imagine a company where lawyers had complete
| control over product development and the entire company
| designed their goods around whatever the lawyers said?
| Every square inch of the product would be covered in
| legal disclaimers, everything would have foam padding on
| the corners, and the box it came in would have you sign a
| 40 page document before you could even open it. I have no
| clue how the actual product might function but whatever
| it does, there is no way its failure would result in a
| lawsuit; which means it probably doesn't work very well
| at all.
|
| Sometimes I feel this is what people want when they say
| we should be listening to "medical and scientific"
| people. They want us to build society around the advice
| of exactly one profession to the exclusion of everything
| else.
|
| It takes way more than just a very narrow expert to run a
| society. For two years we've handed the keys over to
| exactly one form of expert and completely ignored every
| other form of expertise.
|
| These "medical and scientific" folks you talk of can yell
| "not enough" until they run out of air but that doesn't
| mean we should listen to them. Of course they are gonna
| say "it isn't enough"! That is their job! That doesn't
| mean we should to listen to their advice.
|
| It may come as a surprise to some people but at some
| point you have to move on from covid no matter what these
| "experts" say. There are vastly more problems with the
| world than one specific form of illness.
|
| This blind adherence to a small set of "medical experts"
| is completely myopic and is resulting in a cure that is
| much worse than covid ever was. We've had a vaccine for a
| year. You can mix & match boosters at this point. Party
| is over. Covid is here to stay. Move on, people.
| sjg007 wrote:
| If COVID is here to stay, we still need mitigation
| strategies and for people to follow them.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| what would those mitigation strategies be?
| panarky wrote:
| _> a little optimistic?_
|
| Sure, for this immediate wave [more transmissible less
| virulent] is better than [more transmissible more virulent].
|
| But that's awfully myopic. What happens after that?
|
| Since mutation rate is a function of the number of viral
| particles, and more transmission means many more hosts
| incubating many more particles, we should expect to see more
| new variants, faster.
|
| So the probability just went up that we'll get a new wave of
| a new variant that's [more transmissible more virulent] and
| will kill 10x more people than alpha through omicron will.
|
| That's a probability and not a certainty, but life is
| probabilistic and our risk level just went up a lot.
| newbamboo wrote:
| This. When omicron and delta mate and produce offspring,
| we're going to be screwed. Deltas virulence + omicron
| transceptability = the Great Wave of summer 2022. It will
| be a good year for Pfizer investors and Russia.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _When omicron and delta mate and produce offspring_
|
| While there can be recombinations of some similar
| viruses, that's not the common way that viruses
| propagate, and it's not mating. Point mutations are much
| more common. And if they do recombine there's no reason
| to (automatically) expect that the results will be the
| worst characteristics of both.
| marpstar wrote:
| It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long,
| and COVID is clearly not driving us to extinction.
| adventured wrote:
| > It's a miracle that the human race has survived this
| long
|
| It's not a miracle or anything close to that level of
| implied bafflement (devoid of being able to explain it
| rationally). We're excellent survivors overall, and a lot
| more than that. We're very skilled at resource
| utilization, we're relatively talented at conceptual
| thinking, we're competent tool builders on a planet ripe
| for it, we possess the ability to plan far ahead and
| understand consequences numerous steps out, we have
| memory capabilities that are quite effective across most
| of our lifetimes, most of our species is not particularly
| violent and is generally good natured & friendly (only a
| very small fraction of the population will ever commit
| serious acts of violence), we function quite well
| together in groups/tribes/cities/nations (compounded,
| shared outcomes), and so on. It's not particularly
| complicated, despite the doomsayers that will never stop
| existing amongst us (their mentality says more about them
| than it does the human race).
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Are you arguing the equivalent of "something increasing
| the chance of another world war is not a concern, because
| previous world wars clearly didn't drive humans to
| extinction"?
| panarky wrote:
| Is it optimism to settle for any outcome that's better
| than extinction?
| dham wrote:
| If the world wasn't so fat and it was 50 years ago, COVID
| probably would have been nothing, or the Hong Kong Flu.
| Sargos wrote:
| The Spanish Flu was over a hundred years ago and hit the
| world the same way Covid did even though there was no
| McDonald's or obesity epidemic back then.
| native_samples wrote:
| Spanish Flu definitely not the same severity as COVID,
| not even close.
|
| Apparently though people's risk perceptions about COVID
| are wildly off base, by orders of magnitude.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-
| estimat...
|
| 40% of US Democrats think COVID hospitalization risk if
| you're unvaccinated is 50%! Fifty percent! The real
| answer is less than 1%. Other polls have shown similar
| things for fatality rates, like estimated 16% IFR on
| average in France. It really makes me realize why people
| act in such extreme ways, if that's what they think.
|
| COVID is to a large extent a total failure of our
| societies ability to disseminate accurate information.
| Unfortunately this misinformation catastrophe is largely
| the work of the very same people who are constantly
| complaining about misinformation.
| kenjackson wrote:
| How is it possible that anyone thinks 50% of all
| unvaccinated people have been hospitalized -- for just
| about anything! Seeing polls like this give me so little
| faith in our ability to make judgments as a country on
| anything non-trivial.
| dham wrote:
| Yes but Spanish Flu was really really bad. Affected
| everyone. Covid is not the Spanish Flu or even the Flu.
| The flu kills children and is indiscriminate. 80% of
| hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are related to
| weight.
|
| We should have prioritized health and Vitamin D in April
| 2020. At that time it was clear it was mainly affecting
| overweight people. Of course even almost 2 years later
| people still don't think that as a whole. They say
| comorbidities. Just say it like it is... it's mostly fat
| people. The news and society won't say that.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| 80% of hospitalizations and death globally or in the US
| specifically?
|
| Globally that is one thing, but if that data point is in
| the US, then the baseline population is something like
| 60-70% overweight/obese to begin with. In which case,
| that elevation from baseline isn't as significant as
| implied.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > 80% of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are
| related to weight.
|
| Citation for this? I've never heard this at all.
| dham wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-
| roughl...
| kenjackson wrote:
| OK, that says something slightly different. Because 42%
| of the US population is obese, even if Covid hospitalized
| completely at random you'd expect 42% of those admitted
| to be obese (not that obesity is the cause of 42% of
| admissions). They saw 50% admitted were obese. This
| implies that being obese increases the risk of
| hospitalization by ~20%.
|
| But still useful data. Thanks.
| peter422 wrote:
| And long covid? The two people I know who had longer term
| side effects were quite healthy.
|
| Also by some definitions America is "mostly fat people"
| so your point is not that meaningful to begin with.
| dham wrote:
| You mean post-viral syndrome? I mean yea it's a thing
| with viruses but it will go away eventually. I had a cold
| a few years ago and was sick for like 3 months. Some of
| long covid is mental, so there's that aspect. Some say
| vaccination can help but that might just play into the
| mental aspect.
|
| The human mind can create symptoms very easily,
| especially if every day you get bombarded by social media
| and news about Covid.
|
| > Also by some definitions America is "mostly fat people"
| so your point is not that meaningful to begin with
|
| True, but I'm just saying this wouldn't have been an
| issue 30 - 50 years ago.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| There was a world war distracting resources.
| jessaustin wrote:
| WWI actually caused the epidemic. The first cases
| appeared in Kansas, and many doughboys were infected at
| Fort Riley before carrying the illness to Europe. Woodrow
| Wilson, who lied about staying out of the war until the
| day after his reelection, may have been the USA president
| who harmed the world the most.
| rajin444 wrote:
| How do you reconcile this with the human race existing for
| so long? I guess you could make the argument global travel
| has changed things, but I'm not sure.
| lisper wrote:
| > How do you reconcile this with the human race existing
| for so long?
|
| For a disease to make us go extinct it would have to be
| highly transmissible _and_ have a fatality rate of close
| to 100%. Anything less than that, and evolution will
| produce a generation of humans that are resistant to (or
| otherwise able to protect themselves from) the disease,
| and from there the population will replenish itself. The
| great plague had a fatality rate of 30% and it didn 't
| even come close to threatening our existence as a specie.
| (In fact, the resulting redistribution of wealth arguably
| contributed to the advent of the renaissance.)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I mean, we can strive for more than just existence. The
| Black Death didn't wipe us out, but that doesn't mean it
| was fun to undergo.
| [deleted]
| mikenew wrote:
| Covid can't just mutate to become more and more
| transmissible off to infinity. The likelihood of a new
| variant being able to out compete Omicron is lower than a
| variant that can out compete Delta. There's also selection
| pressure towards milder disease, because someone with
| milder disease is more likely to be out in the world
| spreading it than they are to be quarantined at home.
|
| The probability of a more transmissible, more virulent
| strain just went down, not up. It certainly isn't zero, but
| "more transmissible less virulent" is exactly how viruses
| tend to evolve. Mutations are a dice roll and it there's no
| way to be sure of anything, but being a little optimistic
| is completely appropriate.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Hoping it's mild is great. Betting your life it's mild is
| dumb.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| > Betting your life it's mild is dumb.
|
| But keeping the panic dialed up to 11 for two years is very
| healthy.
|
| Signed, someone who probably now has a cardiac neurosis.
| aantix wrote:
| 243 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S.
| (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality).
|
| The death distributions are very clear.
|
| If you're healthy, betting that you would be OK is a very
| reasonable bet.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Depends on what you consider reasonable. Per this study
| [0] NYC had, as of June 2020, about 100 deaths under age
| 65 from people _without_ comorbidities. During the same
| time period there were about 200,000 cases. This made the
| chance of a healthy person dying from COVID about 1 in
| 2000.
|
| Given the option, I'm not taking that bet. I wouldn't
| play Russian roulette even with a 2000-bullet revolver.
| Especially when there are pretty simple steps I can take
| to further minimize the risk.
|
| (It would be nice to have more-- and updated-- data than
| this. If anyone is aware of a source, I'd love to know
| about it)
|
| That's also discounting other (and possibly not yet
| known) complications from getting COVID. There might not
| be much of any, but we it will be some time before we
| know that so I wouldn't discount that factor in my risk
| analysis.
|
| Serious measure to mitigate transmission rates still
| seems like a very reasonable practice, even for healthy
| people.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7327471/
| aantix wrote:
| >Depends on what you consider reasonable
|
| Thank-you for acknowledging the subjectivity of Risk
| Tolerance.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yep, we all draw our own lines on that. The complicating
| factor with COVID is that acting on your own higher risk
| tolerance impacts other people too. That's why we've seen
| such disagreement in society over the types & level of
| precautions to take. (Apart from when it is just outright
| politicized for political gain)
| r00fus wrote:
| Death is merely the most extreme outcome. Not dying
| doesn't mean you're OK.
|
| Long COVID is a big deal, and it apparently affects half
| of those who get COVID [1]. Furthermore, even double-
| vaxxed, while protected against hospitalization or death,
| are still at risk (reduced about 50%) for long COVID [2].
|
| Until/unless Omicron has been proven to have less severe
| long covid symptoms, yeah I'm treating it with the same
| caution that I'd do with Delta.
|
| [1] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-
| people-get-... [2]
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2
| in_cahoots wrote:
| That article is so bad it might as well be
| misinformation. 79% of the people in the study were
| hospitalized, and the authors did not correct for this.
| timr wrote:
| > Long COVID is a big deal
|
| Long Covid is not a defined term. It comprises everything
| from "post-hospitalization syndrome" -- which is
| something that has existed since long before Covid -- to
| "slight cough for a few weeks". If you're young (under
| 65) and otherwise healthy, you are _highly unlikely_ to
| have anything more than a minor illness. Particularly
| after vaccination.
|
| Here's a paper that might interest you:
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/ful
| lar...
|
| > In this cross-sectional analysis of 26,823 adults from
| the population-based French CONSTANCES cohort during the
| COVID-19 pandemic, self-reported COVID-19 infection was
| associated with most persistent physical symptoms,
| whereas laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection was
| associated only with [loss of smell].
|
| In other words, in a large study out of France, the only
| "long covid symptom" _actually correlated with SARS-CoV2
| infection_ was loss of smell. All of the other various
| symptoms were associated with self-reported illness, but
| not confirmed illness.
|
| This is a fairly strong argument that "long covid" is at
| least partly psychosomatic. We'd probably see this more
| clearly if the various "long covid" studies didn't rely
| exclusively on self-reporting of symptoms, and mix
| together all levels of illness.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Ironically if this is true, then the people loudly
| handwringing about "long covid" are the ones who are
| inflicting it on others, by encouraging people to fear
| it.
|
| To combat this, perhaps we could swap the masks out with
| gags. /s
| dTal wrote:
| That works out to 1-in-400. 6 times more deadly than base
| jumping. Not factoring the risk of long-term disability
| from post-viral CFS.
|
| I'll happily give those odds a miss.
| aantix wrote:
| Those (likely) aren't your odds.
|
| Without knowing your specific background, your numbers
| are probably much less.
|
| E.g. ages 0-17, there's been 644 deaths. Across a cohort
| with ~75,000,000 people.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
| #Ag...
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Assuming that OP is a teenager or toddler...I guess that
| could be called "passive-aggressive optimism."
| dTal wrote:
| And I've had a HN account for over 8 years... precocious
| little scamp aren't I!
| jjk166 wrote:
| For context, the cancer death rate is 153 per 100,000 in
| the US, so about 60% of the risk from Covid. Am I living
| in constant fear of cancer? No. Am I taking reasonable
| precautions to avoid getting cancer? Yes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some NFL stadiums host 100k people. Would you go to a
| game if you knew 243 people were going to be randomly
| executed at it?
| aantix wrote:
| Would you attend the game if it were 11 people?
|
| Because that's what you do every time you drive. 11 crash
| fatalities per 100,000 people.
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-
| statistics/detail/state...
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| That risk is an order of magnitude lower. Moreover,
| you're not taking that risk "...every time you drive".
| That risk is much lower, of course, given that most
| people drive more than once a year.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Correct. It is about 1 death per 100 million miles driven
| per the table given by the other commenter. Those are
| actually much better odds than I was expecting!
| clairity wrote:
| that doesn't mean it takes you driving 100m miles to die;
| that's a population level statistic. your lifetime
| chances of death by car is 1 in 100.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Right. The 100m miles is more useful because it sets the
| scale of usage. 1 in 100 odds over your lifetime doesn't
| say anything about how likely you are to die at any given
| point in time. It's just that when you do die, there was
| a 1% chance it was in a car accident.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Moreover, you're not taking that risk "...every time
| you drive". That risk is much lower, of course, given
| that most people drive more than once a year.
|
| The OP comparison of Covid to a football game has the
| same issue, of course.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Driving has benefits.
|
| Getting infected with COVID does not.
| slingnow wrote:
| These statements don't follow from anything anyone has
| said.
|
| You would need to compare the benefits of driving to the
| benefits of living a normal life, and compare that to the
| risks of dying from each.
|
| Why would getting infected with COVID have benefits? What
| are you trying to say?
| landemva wrote:
| 'Why would getting infected with COVID have benefits?'
|
| Why do you think you get a choice? Without extreme
| measures of staying locked up, most everyone will
| encounter the virus. Why not help your body deal with it
| by going for a walk today to get some exercise? Life is
| to live, not eat ourselves to overweight deaths.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Getting infected with COVID does not.
|
| Going to a live game has benefits. Do those not matter?
| rajup wrote:
| Getting back to life with COVID with the appropriate
| amount of precautions and restrictions has benefits.
| Current hysteria and alarmism shows we are not there yet.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Except COVID is not the end goal here, it is living a
| full life in proximity to other human beings that comes
| with a risk of getting COVID. It is no different in
| purpose than driving for the most part.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's a wide spectrum of precautions available. I
| traveled overseas recently, but I KN95 masked on the
| plane and tested before departure and on arrival. I felt
| like I was living a pretty full life in Bora Bora, while
| _also_ taking steps to ensure the safety of myself and
| others around me.
|
| Same thing with driving; we have a variety of safety
| precautions - quite a few of them mandatory - involved
| that help tilt the cost/benefit balance in our favor.
| adolph wrote:
| Why travel anywhere if you are living a flu life in Bora
| Bora?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Unfortunately, that was my travel _destination_ , so I
| only got a week there. I heartily recommend a visit.
| adolph wrote:
| It's a pity you and your fellow travelers are destroying
| the world with your carbon emissions. Good thing you wear
| a mask tho.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Good news: you can address that, if you're so inclined.
| https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/company/global-
| citizens...
| adolph wrote:
| _With our Eco-Skies(r) CarbonChoice carbon offset
| sponsorship program, we'll purchase carbon offsets on
| behalf of our customers so all their corporate air travel
| with us is 100% carbon neutral._
|
| So they will buy carbon indulgences for your corporate
| trip to Bora Bora but not regular travelers?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's presented as an option on checkout for any United
| flight, or you can do it directly after the fact at
| https://united.conservation.org/. $34 for my round trip.
| megablast wrote:
| Yes. Pollution. Destruction of land. Serious injury.
| Noise. Urban sprawl.
|
| So many benefits.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| No NFL stadiums host 100k people. All stadiums in the US
| with a capacity over 100k are college football stadiums:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._stadiums_by_ca
| pac...
|
| > Would you go to a game if you knew 243 people were
| going to be randomly executed at it?
|
| Covid-19 deaths are not randomly distributed. We've known
| this for nearly two years now.
| iso1631 wrote:
| I suspect many people would go especially if they knew
| 243 people were going, the types of people who believe it
| wouldn't happen to them, only to others (probably someone
| who made the "bad choices" in life because
| god/fate/karma/etc)
| mrtksn wrote:
| Just look at well vaccinated populations like UK or Spain and
| then look at not well vaccinated like Bulgaria to see if it
| holds.
|
| Unfortunately, in Bulgaria you see that the size of the
| deaths wave still follows the size of the infection wave.
|
| The "no vulnerable people to die are left" hypothesis doesn't
| hold. Those who survived survived because they were lucky,
| careful or vaccinated. It's not true that the virus burned
| through the population and the remaining are the immune or
| resilient survivors.
| sjg007 wrote:
| The UK has basically indicated that it is going to be bad
| and are relying on boosting before the new year to blunt
| the impact. If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming..
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming..
|
| If they lock down again, they'll lock down every single
| winter from here on out. Lockdowns in a post-vaccine
| world are complete madness.
| mitigating wrote:
| "The omicron variant is cause for concern -- but not panic" -
| Biden
|
| "Most Omicron cases in US have been mild but most were
| vaccinated" from CDC reported on by CNN and MSNBC
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/health/omicron-cases-us-
| cdc/i...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-report-
| omicro...
|
| There may be more but that was a quick Google search. You
| said "politicians and news hosts decided to completely ignore
| her description about it." but that's incorrect
| altcognito wrote:
| It shouldn't be surprising that the people that complain
| most vociferously about "The media panic" are selectively
| hearing only what reinforces their view of the media.
|
| That being said there are a lot of people hand wringing
| about "we don't know yet, we don't know yet" in this very
| thread. Three weeks into it, and the evidence is almost
| overwhelming: it is not likely to be nearly as bad.
|
| I followed the original covid news in early January and I
| fought against the narrative that it was "just the flu". We
| would know by now if the news was bad.
|
| That being said, folks should continue to remain vigilant
| in those areas where spread is prevalent.
| ljm wrote:
| > COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all
| means try to replace it with something weaker!
|
| Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it within
| a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine
| fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join
| Smallpox and Polio though.
|
| That said, we've accepted an annual winter uptick in flu
| infections and we just tell people most vulnerable to get
| their yearly flu jab; less vulnerable folks can stay at home
| for a bit and manage the symptoms. If that's what we have to
| do for covid every winter then so be it.
|
| I would still call that a victory overall.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It won't join smallpox because it has lots of animal
| reservoirs.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/health/covid-deer-
| animals/ind...
| jatone wrote:
| I havent seen any evidence covid is seasonal. it may become
| seasonal. but nothing in the past 2 years as indicated it
| is.
| coolspot wrote:
| Have you seen infection/death charts? It peaks in winter
| and at its minimum in summer.
| unmole wrote:
| Have you seen the charts for India?
| selectodude wrote:
| Have you seen the charts for literally the rest of the
| world?
|
| You're picking an outlier as proof that its not seasonal.
| Others may say it's the exception that proves the rule.
| unmole wrote:
| > Have you seen the charts for literally the rest of the
| world?
|
| I just did. There are no discernable spikes coinciding
| with cold weather for India, Brazil, the UK or Russia.
| selectodude wrote:
| I decided to check Brazil really quickly and there's a
| very steep drop off once summer hit. I don't even need to
| bother with the UK.
| unmole wrote:
| The steep drop off starts of in July which in Brazil is
| winter.
| tbihl wrote:
| Just so other commenters can understand: are you saying
| that you haven't seen the charts with enormous spikes on
| them every time a place enters a cold season? Or that you
| find them to be uncompelling for some (as yet
| undisclosed) reason?
| unmole wrote:
| The second wave hit India at the height of summer. That
| outlier is big enough for me to be sceptical.
| kiba wrote:
| _That said, we 've accepted an annual winter uptick in flu
| infections and we just tell people most vulnerable to get
| their yearly flu jab; less vulnerable folks can stay at
| home for a bit and manage the symptoms. If that's what we
| have to do for covid every winter then so be it._
|
| Accepted? I would call that normalizing as well. According
| to an estimate, about 290,000 to 650,000 globally died of
| the flu each year.[1]
|
| Normalization means it's a problem out of mind out of
| sight. We stop demanding these problems to be solved.
|
| 1. https://www.who.int/news/item/13-12-2017-up-
| to-650-000-peopl...
| rkk3 wrote:
| At a certain point we accept the tradeoffs and get on
| with it. A few hundred thousand people die of the flu
| every year. So what? It's tragic, but that is life.
| kiba wrote:
| Normalization is not about accepting tradeoff. It's
| accepting defeat.
|
| At some point, drastic measures start being worse than
| the disease. It doesn't mean we should ignore the few
| hundred thousand death.
| rkk3 wrote:
| 56 Million people die a year. There are vaccine's and
| treatments available for the Flu. The deaths aren't 0 but
| don't think it's something to moralize about and call a
| defeat.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| If it means more lockdowns and more restrictions, more
| government powers; absolutely normalize COVID. We have
| given up enough.
| kiba wrote:
| Just because our economy cannot withstand further
| lockdowns and restrictions doesn't mean that the
| normalization of COVID is any more excusable. It just
| means we failed.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| To take this to extreme: We've failed to solve deaths. We
| should have solutions to aging and indefinite life.
|
| Since we have 100% death ratio, show us your health
| history along with your verifiable ID. We are the
| ministry of Truth and Safety.
|
| In all seriousness: We need to push back on robbing of
| civil liberties. No one cared to check for flu vaccine.
| It should be the same for COVID now that it's getting
| weaker and it won't end forever.
| selectodude wrote:
| It has nothing to do with the economy. Humans are social
| creatures. You can pay me $100,000/mo to sit in my house
| indefinitely and I can almost guarantee you it'll end in
| depression and suicide.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Damn the economy, I just want the media to stop
| terrorizing my friends and family.
| azekai wrote:
| >Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it
| within a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine
| fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join
| Smallpox and Polio though.
|
| We would have to completely redesign our current method of
| vaccination, then. We do not have a sterilizing vaccine for
| COVID (like we did for smallpox and polio). The current
| vaccines all use spike proteins to prepare a body's
| antibodies against the main infection tool of the COVID
| virus. This method indirectly prevents the virus from
| efficiently infecting cells in vaccinated hosts, but it
| does not and cannot eradicate the virus.
| bagels wrote:
| Is it possible for one to be developed?
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| What other target would be better for a sterilizing
| vaccine?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Malaria.
| tbihl wrote:
| Would someone who is flagging this comment please,
| instead, respond to it? If it is so trivially dismissed,
| please show the rest of us.
| [deleted]
| sjg007 wrote:
| Huh? I would suggest you read: https://www.theatlantic.co
| m/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz...
|
| We don't actually have sterilizing vaccines for smallpox
| or polio either.
| azekai wrote:
| That article strikes me as largely playing a semantic
| game. From the article:
|
| >The classic tale of sterilizing immunity unfolds
| something like this: A pathogen attempts to infiltrate a
| body; antibodies, lurking in the vicinity thanks to
| vaccination or a previous infection, instantly zap it out
| of existence, so speedily that the microbe can't even
| reproduce. No symptoms manifest, and most of the body's
| immune cells never get involved, a bit like an intruder
| smacking up against an electric fence around a building,
| leaving the security guards inside none the wiser.
|
| and
|
| >This is a very neat story. And it is "almost impossible
| to prove," Mark Slifka, an immunologist and vaccine
| expert at Oregon Health & Science University, told me. To
| show sterilizing immunity, researchers have to
| demonstrate that an infection never occurred--a big ask,
| considering that microbiologists can't even agree on what
| an infection actually is.
|
| If that is the definition used, yes, you are right. It is
| also basically useless as a term, as it is 'almost
| impossible to prove.' If you wish to use another term, we
| can do that. Instead of sterilizing, I could simply say
| 'highly effective.' Suffice to say, the mechanisms used
| by the COVID vaccine and the polio vaccine are very
| different. At most, the polio vaccine only included 3
| strains (or variants)- the Salk vaccine, the first, only
| targeted type 1, but two more were added later over the
| course of years.
|
| All of this is to say- the _highly effective_ polio
| vaccine works because there are very few polio variants
| and people are immunized against them directly.
|
| The COVID vaccine does not make one immune to the virus,
| or immune to the spike protein. The presence of the spike
| protein in the vaccine provokes an autoimmune response in
| the form of antibodies that will target that spike
| protein. This is somewhat effective, and a clever 'hack'
| that allows us a measure of protection. However,
| different spike proteins can be used by different variant
| viruses.
|
| I am not antivaccine, and while autoimmune systems can be
| fairly complex, it is certainly worth discussing. Frankly
| I find the obfuscation and sloppy, ideological reporting
| to be frustrating. On all sides I see a lack of rigor and
| emotional attempts at control.
| capdeck wrote:
| > I would still call that a victory overall.
|
| Humanity declared victory over every single pathogen to
| date (eradicated, contained or seasonal) because we are
| still here and thriving. We should go on with our lives.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| In the mean time we should do whatever we can to avoid
| filling hospitals to capacity.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Maybe build more hospitals? I mean, in march of 2020 we
| expressly locked down to build up healthcare capacity.
| Where is it?
| jaywalk wrote:
| It's almost completely a staffing issue at this point.
| Good thing we fired a bunch of healthcare workers because
| they didn't want to get vaccinated!
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > It's almost completely a staffing issue at this point
|
| So these politicians should treat this like an emergency
| and drive dumptrucks of money up to healthcare staff not
| working and get them back. Get nursing students. Do
| whatever it takes. Think outside of the box. This is
| supposed to be an emergency, is it not?
|
| I mean, if it was an emergency and healthcare was truly
| an issue, why aren't those hospital tents and hospital
| ships docked in the harbor of every major city? "Lack of
| staff" is just an excuse in an emergency. You work around
| it. Make it happen. It's an emergency, right?
|
| And if it isn't an emergency, why are we mandating
| anything at all? Shouldn't we all be going about our
| lives like we did prior to march 2020? If it isn't an
| emergency why are governments still using emergency
| powers to push mandates onto citizens instead of actually
| dealing with hospital shortages?
|
| None of this makes any sense at all when you really start
| thinking about it. Absolutely none of it... Never did,
| never will...
| sjwalter wrote:
| Sure, but hospitals are run at a level to hit peak
| capacity at the point when vitamin D deficiency peaks.
|
| Here's LA County using overflow tents in 2018 because the
| flu season was particularly bad:
| https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-flu-
| demand-2018...
|
| So it's not like this is some new threat. "2 weeks to
| flatten the curve" came along with some understanding
| that hospitals would increase their resources. Instead,
| in many states, they've spent more time working out which
| unvaccinated staff to fire and how than they have
| increasing staffing levels.
| rajup wrote:
| Sounds good. 2 years on with enough vaccines and
| antiviral pills on the way if you still believe hospitals
| are "filled to capacity", I'd like what you're smoking.
| isoskeles wrote:
| I'm smoking a wadded-up copy of that Rolling Stone
| article about gunshot victims waiting for the ER.
| capdeck wrote:
| ... or maybe we should stop closing hospitals during the
| pandemic?
|
| [US Closing Hospitals At Record Pace During Pandemic -
| YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz46ZQSRdRE)
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic?
|
| I'm optimistic.
|
| A version of Covid that is much more contagious, but less
| likely to be severe is a great way to get the immune system
| of the vaccine avoidant trained on how to recognize and fight
| Covid.
|
| For those who have already been vaccinated, a mild
| breakthrough infection would serve the same function as a
| booster shot.
| macintux wrote:
| > For those who have already been vaccinated, a mild
| breakthrough infection would serve the same function as a
| booster shot.
|
| Except booster shots don't infect _other_ people.
| pbourke wrote:
| 30% less severe with twice the rate of spread does not seem
| like a good tradeoff. You have an exponential increase in
| cases but a linear reduction in hospital admissions.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little
| optimistic?
|
| No. This is a perfectly good crisis and to do so would be to
| let it go to waste.
| tannisphere4 wrote:
| Someone out there is doing a study on meta-communication
| during COVID. The internalization of dominant narratives on
| social media is such an unspoken axiom, that merely
| SUGGESTING optimism results in a flurry of "we can't be
| sure!" finger-waves.
|
| One could hypothesize that those who derive greater self-
| esteem or self-worth from social dynamics would engage in
| behaviors where the long-run probability of increasing
| self-esteem is higher. In other words, the most adaptive
| posts on both sides of a social media debate would be those
| which: A) maximally increase self-esteem via ingroup
| loyalty, and B) cause the debate to be prolonged or not
| resolved, thereby increasing the duration of A. The "we
| can't be sure" defense in response to optimism is B.
| legulere wrote:
| Of course we should be optimistic that omicron and variants
| that will follow will be less severe.
|
| But that hope should not be treated as a fact like the
| headline does.
|
| Another hope could be that omicron is actually not as
| virulent as delta, but only spreads so fast in South Africa,
| because people can get reinfected.
| manjana wrote:
| > Another hope could be that omicron is actually not as
| virulent as delta, but only spreads so fast in South
| Africa, because people can get reinfected.
|
| It's seeing a pretty explosive growth rate in Denmark.
|
| https://sum.dk/ministeren/sociale-medier-
| arkiv/2021/december...
|
| https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/status
| r...
| brokensegue wrote:
| The south African doctor had insufficient evidence to
| conclude it was "extremely mild". Waiting for more data was
| the right course.
| tn890 wrote:
| > I would suspect that most people who are were already
| vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus
| is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death
| rate despite equivalent risk.
|
| You are forgetting about the most vulnerable group of all:
| immunosuppressed people.
|
| They cannot mount a sufficient immune response, in severe
| immunosuppression like after a transplant event months or
| years after. In some cases the covid mortality for these
| people can approach 40% for young adults.
|
| We have to be mindful of people like this when thinking about
| dropping mask mandates and such. Or "whoever's not vaccinated
| dies of their own fault". Not 100% true.
|
| We as a society must protect those most vulnerable.
| AustinDev wrote:
| This may come off wrong but... COVID is not the first
| virus. Immunosuppressed people for all of human history
| have been falling victim to the common cold, the flu and
| other infections most humans can deal with safely. You
| can't stop the world economy and the benefit that brings to
| the majority of society to save a fraction of a percentage
| point of the population that is Immunocompromised.
| tn890 wrote:
| Wearing a mask in a supermarket does not "stop the world
| economy". Americans are borderline insane with the mask
| mandate
| jkubicek wrote:
| Americans are full-on insane with their opposition to
| mask mandates.
| mitigating wrote:
| How does wearing a mask hurt the economy?
| alex-korr wrote:
| Try having a 3 year old child with a speech impediment
| that has to wear a mask in childcare for 6 hours a day.
| Does wonders for their ability to communicate.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I personally go out a heck of a lot less with these
| insane mask mandates. I _hate_ wearing a mask.
|
| Plus many of these people arguing to keep them around
| forever forget that actual living humans work at these
| businesses. It takes a lot of privilege to suggest
| employees should continue wearing masks forever to make a
| small set of extremely fearful customers feel "safe". I
| bet 99% of the "pro mask" people on are not in a place
| requiring them to wear a mask 40 hours a week.
| vkou wrote:
| This may be a simple answer to a simple question - but it
| doesn't.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I live in a state where mask mandates are essentially gone.
| Very few people wear masks here and they are not required
| in schools so only ~5% of kids are wearing them at my
| children's elementary school. Everything seems pretty good
| so far, no marked rise in cases and almost no cases in my
| kids school over the last year, maybe 25 total, all mild. I
| am in no way saying masks don't work, in fact I think that
| they do. With that said, I have not worn a mask in a long
| time, I am fully vaccinated including a booster and
| essentially figure that is enough. I work from home so if I
| get covid its going to be from my kids.
|
| "We have to be mindful of people like this when thinking
| about dropping mask mandates and such."
|
| Not arguing with you, just genuinely interested on how long
| you would advocate for mask mandates? Would you be willing
| to accept mask mandates in perpetuity?
| sjg007 wrote:
| Just wear a mask in indoor public places until the
| pandemic is over.
| jaywalk wrote:
| No.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Just wear a mask in indoor public places until the
| pandemic is over.
|
| I'm fully vaccinated, so why should I? And when will the
| pandemic "be over"? Covid is here forever and ever. As
| long as we keep testing at the level we do, we will
| always find new variants and always see "spikes" of cases
| every single winter.
|
| When, specifically, do the states with mask mandates
| remove them? Why not today? What makes a month better? Or
| a year? Or never?
|
| Pushing for masks at this stage is arguing we wear masks
| forever. That isn't a world I care to live in.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Your solution is a good one and makes logical sense but
| do you think that this pandemic is going to end? It shows
| no signs of abating currently and the new variant is even
| more communicable. How does one determine when the
| pandemic has ended, what is the benchmark? Covid will
| always be with us going forward. your solution also
| involves kids wearing masks in school for potentially
| years and years. I noticed a massive difference in
| behavior with my youngest kid during his year of wearing
| a mask in school and after the mandate went away. He went
| from a reserved almost sad little kid when I picked him
| up each day back to his prior outgoing happy self after a
| few weeks. Obviously my experience is anecdotal but I
| have spoken with other parents that observed the same.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _" Everything seems pretty good so far"_
|
| There shortages of hospital beds across many states [0]
| If you want a full perspective on things, look further
| than your own state.
|
| Unless you live in Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, North
| Dakota, or Montana then everything is not going very
| well. Most people don't live in these states, and many of
| the states with loose mask mandates are not in that short
| list. A small are just about holding their ground, but
| about 40 states have seen a >= 15% increase in infections
| just in the last two weeks, and one of the least
| restrictive states for mask mandates (Texas) has
| increased by 80%. [1]
|
| [0] https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-
| utilization
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-
| cases.html
| landemva wrote:
| Increase in infections does not equal death. It does
| bring the population closer to herd immunity. Infections
| and recovery bring sterilizing immunity, which is not
| provided by the shots.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Infections have been a lagging indicator for deaths this
| entire time and immunity from infections does not appear
| to last as long as immunity from vaccinations. The people
| most resistant to right now are those who had covid
| already _and_ get vaccinated.
|
| I also don't understand your assessment that we are
| reaching (or can reach) herd immunity: We're not there on
| the common cold or influenza, and it seems COVID mutates
| at rates that will keep it around as well. Early evidence
| on Omicron indicates that it in particular is better at
| reinfection than other strains, so I hope the data in the
| next few weeks confirms its milder nature, but
| reinfection provides even more opportunity for variants
| to emerge.
|
| We're much better off than we were a year ago: The
| holiday spike is (so far) not as bad, deaths are lower
| than last year at this time, and vaccines are widely
| available. But we're not back to normal yet (probably
| never will be) and I don't think we're doing as well
| right now as we could be, and I think we can make a lot
| more progress before we declare this thing over and
| adjust to a new status-quo.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| "cases" is not really a relevant variable anymore. It's
| been two years of a "pandemic" and I don't know a single
| person who's died from this ting yet. Of course, none of
| my Seattle neighbors will go out to walk their dog
| without wearing 3 masks.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Cases are absolutely relevant: they have been a lagging
| indicator for deaths the entire time. It will take
| another 2-3 weeks to see how the current spike in cases
| plays out in deaths. Hopefully Omicron actually is less
| lethal, but we'll see soon enough.
|
| As for your experience, it is not predictive or
| representative given the ~800,000 US deaths. Especially
| because you live in an admittedly very cautious area.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's funny too - there's apparently no consideration
| given to "maybe I don't know anyone who's died because
| everyone in my community is so cautious".
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes-- and yet just about anyone in this community would
| roll over laughing before pointing out the obvious if
| someone said "Why are we devoting so much energy to
| computer security? We've never even been hacked"
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| That's a good point.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Just as an anecdote -- I moved from a very cautious place
| (SF) to a place on the complete opposite side of the
| spectrum. I knew a handful of people who were infected in
| SF but none who died, but I know a ton of people here who
| have got the disease, including a bunch who have died.
| The local Facebook group is _filled_ with prayer requests
| for loved ones who are being admitted under very dire
| circumstances and my healthcare worker friends here are
| completely shellshocked from all the death they 've seen
| in the community.
|
| Give me "unnecessarily wear a mask while walking the dog"
| and no deaths every day if my other option is "never wear
| a mask anywhere" and be surrounded by death.
| roywiggins wrote:
| We are maybe a couple months from Pfizer's new antiviral
| becoming widely available, and it will probably work for
| immune compromised people. There's also a recent EUA for
| a long-acting antibody PrEP injection that should help
| immune compromised people avoid infection in the first
| place.
|
| Both of these may be widely available in the US quite
| soon.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| This is a good response and I think would be something
| that should be taken into account. I am still not going
| to start masking again unless a much more severe variant
| rises but I can understand setting a firm deadline based
| on an emerging technologies. Issue is that there will
| never be a 100% solution and some states more willing
| than others to let mandates run forever. What happens if
| those emerging technologies are not as effective as
| hoped? It becomes a slippery slope with the deadline
| kicked down the road. Personally I think we are all going
| to get covid eventually in much the same way we all get
| the flu. Everyone that wanted to get vaccinated (in the
| US) and boosted has had a chance to do so now. Most
| Americans that want to avoid human contact can for the
| most part via amazon and food delivery services, work is
| obviously a different matter for most people. Perhaps I
| am selfish which I am open to, but at this point after
| having taken 3 shots and been very mask conscious for the
| first ~14 months I am tapped out and willing to roll the
| dice as the risk ratio seems relatively low to my age
| group and I have no pre-existing morbidities.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The Pfizer data on their new pill Paxlovid is very good.
| It's not emerging, it's here and will be available to
| people very soon. We will probably all get covid,
| wouldn't it be better if we all got it _after_ treatments
| that cut deaths by 90% are widely available?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/14/does-
| pfizer...
| landemva wrote:
| The unmentionable and ridiculously safe antiviral is
| available today. But Ivermectin is cheap so it must not
| be considered.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| If only it worked at all, that'd be a great option.
| landemva wrote:
| NIH report says it does.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
| 'Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad-spectrum
| antiparasitic agent with demonstrated antiviral activity
| against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe
| acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).'
| mikeyouse wrote:
| That's not an NIH report -- that's a random paper posted
| on the NIH domain. IVM may have some benefit in countries
| with parasite problems, unfortunately it doesn't do much
| in the rest of the world. Has already been discussed to
| death, there's no conspiracy, everyone would have _loved_
| for it to help but it really just doesn 't;
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-
| more-t...
| roywiggins wrote:
| Yeah, it's so silly. It's not like there aren't studies
| and doctors willing to investigate cheap, effective
| treatments for covid with existing drugs.
|
| We know that steroids work because they were studied,
| they definitely work, they're cheap and now they're the
| standard of care. Why didn't the anti-ivermectin
| conspiracy come for dexamethasone? It's left
| unexplained...
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Would you be willing to accept mask mandates in
| perpetuity?
|
| I think it depends on location. In key environments like
| public transport and supermarkets and other spaces that
| everyone needs to be able to access it seems reasonable
| to me that we might keep them for at least a 5-10 year
| horizon if that proves necessary. It just doesn't seem
| like a big deal to wear a mask, and it would cut down on
| the need for more restrictive measures like lockdowns.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > It just doesn't seem like a big deal to wear a mask
|
| What about the fully vaccinated, boostered employees who
| work at these places? Should they also continue wearing
| masks despite being at virtually zero risk of major covid
| issues?
|
| But yeah, no thanks. We didn't do masks in 2019 and we
| sure as heck shouldn't keep doing them going forward.
| Masks were a hack to get us to vaccines. They aren't
| something we should be keeping around anymore.
| lieut_data wrote:
| > It just doesn't seem like a big deal to wear a mask,
| and it would cut down on the need for more restrictive
| measures like lockdowns.
|
| My wife has a medical exemption from wearing a mask. She
| cannot live a normal life when the standard response to
| her being out in public is disgust, constant questioning,
| or outright rejecting her due to "in-store policies."
|
| My father has been wearing a mask, but constantly deals
| with hyperventilation issues. He's working with his
| family doctor to determine next steps.
|
| Some things are a big deal for some people. I support
| anyone wearing a mask if they so choose. I oppose mask
| mandates as a one-size fits all solution.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Actually legit medical exemptions are rare. Why can't we
| do mandates with exemptions (maybe an exemption card from
| a doctor)?
| lieut_data wrote:
| > Why can't we do mandates with exemptions (maybe an
| exemption card from a doctor)?
|
| I expect my wife would have to strap her card over her
| mouth to satisfy the social pressure to conform. It's not
| in most people's imaginations that anyone else could
| suffer from something that doesn't bother them.
| rajup wrote:
| No thanks.
| iso1631 wrote:
| It's interesting how Scotland, which kept a mask mandate,
| and England, which dropped it, affected cases.
|
| From start to end of October, cases per 100k, 7 day
| average
|
| Glasgow -- 300->220
|
| Edinburgh -- 210->250
|
| Manchester -- 290->220
|
| Birmingham -- 250->280
|
| 4 similar cities, two with mask mandates, two without.
|
| And smaller ones
|
| Aberdeen -- 267->330
|
| Southampton -- 300->410
|
| Perth -- 320->260
|
| Hereford -- 290->580
|
| So there may be something there, would need more data to
| really see, but it certainly isn't a glowing mandate for
| masks
| sjg007 wrote:
| There are plenty of scientific studies showing that masks
| work.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| All conducted in the heat of the moment where saying
| anything that gives the slightest wiff of "masks don't
| work" gets you shunned, your career destroyed, and all
| social media platforms labeling your content as
| "misinformation".
|
| Yeah... I'm sure all these studies done post-2019 are
| totally legit though.
| iso1631 wrote:
| But do they show how much mask mandates work in the real
| world, do they explain why Edinburgh and Glasgow are
| indistingishable from Mancehster and Birmingham in
| numbers of cases detected?
| Aloha wrote:
| I think in reality, COVID fatigue has set in, and thats
| the issue.
| kansface wrote:
| Obviously, the material a mask is made from stops medium
| sized particles from flowing through some highish
| percentage of the time. No good faith actor is disputing
| that. Studies don't control for real world usage, actual
| public adoption, actual masks, etc. They also do not
| control for changes in behavior that we'd expect to occur
| contemporaneously to the time periods mask mandates are
| adopted (ie, during spikes in infection). When infections
| go up, I personally stop going places where lots of
| people congregate - a huge percentage of people change
| their behavior in ways that are both germane and
| impossible to track in response to perceived risk. They
| also do not or can not control for the differences in
| behavior in the societies that can actually adopt and
| enforce mask mandates in the first place; ie, a city that
| refuses a mandate in the face of a spike has citizens
| that are more risk tolerate (or something) as compared to
| eg SF.
| adolph wrote:
| I think the number analyzing actual mask usage is fewer
| than you'd think.
| roywiggins wrote:
| There's already data that shows masks work.
|
| https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-
| mask...
| defaultprimate wrote:
| https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bangladesh-mask-study-
| do-...
|
| https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
|
| "At present there is only limited and inconsistent
| scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of
| masking of healthy people in the community to prevent
| infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2
| (75). A large randomized community-based trial in which
| 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group
| wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found
| no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2 (76). A recent
| systematic review found nine trials (of which eight were
| cluster-randomized controlled trials in which clusters of
| people, versus individuals, were randomized) comparing
| medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the
| spread of viral respiratory illness. Two trials were with
| healthcare workers and seven in the community. The review
| concluded that wearing a mask may make little or no
| difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness
| (ILI) (RR 0.99, 95%CI 0.82 to 1.18) or laboratory
| confirmed illness (LCI) (RR 0.91, 95%CI 0.66-1.26) (44);
| the certainty of the evidence was low for ILI, moderate
| for LCI."
|
| https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/337199/W
| HO-...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7546829/
| roywiggins wrote:
| Look, I'm not qualified to evaluate a study like this,
| but between Science and "el gato malo" published on
| Substack, I think I'm going to have to go with Science on
| this one, pending some recognized expert in the field
| with a human name saying otherwise.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Skepticism and methodological criticism are
| definitionally "science". Not cult like faith. Ad
| hominems and appeals to authority are not valid
| arguments.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Paying more attention to information in a peer-reviewed
| journal than information in a pseudonymous substack is
| not "cult-like faith." Of course the study could be
| wrong.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| The study is not and has not passed peer review.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Hasn't it? Looks published to me. It has a doi and
| everything.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069
| defaultprimate wrote:
| My mistake, the link in the article you first posted
| still shows it as a working paper and I couldn't find it
| with the original title when searching.
|
| Interestingly the DOI does not show up
|
| https://dx.doi.org/
|
| Here's some further criticisms:
|
| https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1073440/latest.
| pdf
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296
|
| https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118
| 6/s...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The author of the study that the bad cat is trying to
| discredit wrote a long, persuasive rebuttal to the
| simplistic critiques he's been reading on Tyler Cowen's
| blog;
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/11
| /ja...
|
| They saw a significant reduction in covid presence in
| communities with more masking -- even though total
| masking was still only 40% in those communities -- which
| is very much in line with all the other literature.
|
| I literally can't believe people still pretend like masks
| (especially surgical/KN95s) don't protect people when
| it's completely self-evident since we've used them
| _forever_ to protect people in medical settings.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| It doesn't address the primary criticisms of the bad cat,
| and you should really read the comments on the article
| you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on
| mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses
| in healthcare and community settings.
|
| They don't work, at all, across decades of research and
| dozens of studies. They're not going to magically start
| working for COVID when they haven't worked for the flu or
| any other respiratory virus in the past.
|
| >forever to protect people in medical settings.
|
| Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to
| protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _you should really read the comments on the article you
| linked_
|
| Even if I disagree with TC on something, I still think
| he's pretty much intellectually honest, i.e., is not
| beholden to one political agenda or another simply
| because it matches his world view or completely unaware
| of competing data. And he often does a good job in
| striking a balance on ideology & practicality (State
| Capacity Libertarianism comes to mind)
|
| However the comments section on MR are often a hot mess
| of cherry picking or misinformation parroted back by
| people trying emulate TC's style without anything
| approaching his intellectual rigor.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| > and you should really read the comments on the article
| you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on
| mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses
| in healthcare and community settings.
|
| Unfortunately, Tyler Cowen's blog has worse Covid
| commentary than even HN does, which is pretty impressive
| given the amount of HCQ/Ivermectin/bioweapon conspiracy
| theorizing here.
|
| > Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to
| protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.
|
| This is patently untrue.. you're not one of those "virus
| particles can fit through masks" people are you? As just
| one example of how obvious it is that masks protect
| against viruses in HCW from the last SARS outbreak;
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7112437/
| defaultprimate wrote:
| I literally linked several meta-analyses that show it's
| patently true.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| You should perhaps read the studies you've linked a bit
| closer? When mentioned (as several of them are explicitly
| about masks in non-healthcare settings) - they all
| advocate for universal masking in healthcare settings
| specifically to limit the spread of Covid...
|
| > _Although more research on universal masking in heath
| settings is needed, it is the expert opinion of the
| majority (79%) of WHO COVID-19 IPC GDG members that
| universal masking is advisable in geographic settings
| where there is known or suspected community or cluster
| transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus._
|
| > _1. In areas of known or suspected community or cluster
| SARS-CoV-2 transmission, universal masking should be
| advised in all health facilities (see Table 1)._
|
| > _All health workers, including community health workers
| and caregivers, should wear a medical mask at all times,
| for any activity (care of COVID-19 or nonCOVID-19
| patients) and in any common area (e.g., cafeteria, staff
| rooms)._
|
| > _Other staff, visitors, outpatients and service
| providers should also wear a mask (medical or non-
| medical) at all times_
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Opinions not supported by empirical evidence are not
| opinions worth listening to.
|
| "Experts" supported eugenics, antibacterial soap,
| breakfast cereal, the food pyramid, lobotomies, and all
| kinds of other things on the basis of popular "consensus"
| mikeyouse wrote:
| See now you've gone and boxed yourself into the typical
| HN corner...
|
| The people making those recommendations are experts in
| the field and have all read the relevant research.
| Weighting the good studies vs. the bad ones, measuring
| evidence, etc. They literally exist to give guidance on
| world health matters based on the spectrum of results
| from all these different researchers.
|
| And here you are, telling me that in your _opinion_ , we
| should ignore their assessment and only trust these few
| specific papers that you choose to emphasize. (At least
| you've stopped advocating for ivermectin now?)
|
| A bit of a paradox to get people to rely on your opinion
| when you've previously said we shouldn't rely on opinions
| isn't it? Or is it just that you don't like the WHO's
| opinion on World Health issues because they might be in
| the pocket of "big surgical mask".
| defaultprimate wrote:
| I haven't boxed myself in anywhere, I've maintained the
| same position throughout.
|
| I'm not telling you anything in my opinion. I'm telling
| you what the empirical evidence says or doesn't say.
|
| I have not stopped advocating Ivermectin. The empirical
| evidence shows that it is still an extremely cheap, safe,
| and correlated treatment demonstrated across populations
| of billions through a mechanism of action that has been
| well established.
|
| There's literally no reason not to try it, and there's a
| reason it's part of treatment regimens across several
| countries. Its use doesn't involve eroding the liberty of
| the populace or solidifying absolute power of state. It
| has virtually zero side effects medically or
| socioculturally, unlike things like masks or vaccines
| that have zero long term data
| iso1631 wrote:
| Perhaps, but given there's doesn't seem to be a clear
| difference between Scotland and England, that leads to
| questions like
|
| 1) Were people in Scotland (with higher masking) being
| less cautious in other areas (washing hands, staying
| further away, etc)
|
| 2) Was the weather worse in Scotland, leading to more
| closed windows
|
| 3) Are people in Scotland more likely to be tested and
| thus more cases caught
|
| The problem I have is that
|
| The Scientific method comes out with great studies
| (wearing masks, all things being equal, reduces
| transmission)
|
| That leads to a prediction (enforcing masks reduces cases
| figures)
|
| That prediction doesn't hold out (Scottish cases figures)
|
| So we need to revisit the prediction,
|
| 1) Does a mask mandate increase mask usage (anecdotally
| it appears so, but I only went to Glasgow and Manchester
| in October)
|
| 2) Does increased mask usage lead to other behaviours
| which would increase risk
|
| 3) Does increased mask usage lead to more awareness in
| testing
|
| 4) Do anti mask people go round licking door handles to
| try to spread covid to prove their points
|
| These are perfectly valid questions, yet you can't ask
| them, because half the responses will be some idiotic
| cultish anti-mask covid denier, and the others will be
| some cultish mask worshiper
| sjwalter wrote:
| > I am in no way saying masks don't work, in fact I think
| that they do.
|
| This is still so hilarious to me. It's pretty obvious
| that some masks work, that is, n95 or whatever actual
| respirator masks. It's pretty obvious that other masks
| don't work at all, that is, 99.99% of masks worn by the
| public at large.
| mitigating wrote:
| " It's pretty obvious that other masks don't work at all"
|
| So a N95 mask works and covering your mouth with a
| bandana has no effect at all? Not even 10%?
| adolph wrote:
| I was putting on two N95s until someone said three was
| three times as effective so I started wearing three, then
| one day I did the math myself and don'tcha know, 95% of
| 95% of 95% is 86%! So I'm back to one mask now,
| underneath my motorcycle helmet.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Surgical masks probably help on a population level.
|
| https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-
| mask...
| jjgreen wrote:
| This is still in peer-review
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's since been published in Science.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069
| iso1631 wrote:
| Given that surgical masks stop droplets from spreading as
| much (especially when you sneeze), and given that bugs
| spread via droplets, clearly they do something. You may
| argue on the level of that reduction, or that your right
| to go out in public without wearing a mask outweighs that
| reduction, but to just say "masks don't work" is
| disingenuous.
| Karsteski wrote:
| > Not arguing with you, just genuinely interested on how
| long you would advocate for mask mandates? Would you be
| willing to accept mask mandates in perpetuity?
|
| This is the problem, isn't it? For how long will these
| mandates be in place for? Right now, it's clear that they
| won't end until populations start revolting.
| jkubicek wrote:
| > Right now, it's clear that they won't end until
| populations start revolting.
|
| That's not at all clear. My very cautious Northern
| California county dropped the mask mandates when cases
| started dropping this summer and only re-implimented them
| when cases and hospitalizations started to rise again.
|
| I don't see any reason for them not to drop the mandates
| again when infection/hospitalization rates drop down to
| acceptable levels.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > acceptable levels
|
| Define acceptable levels? And does this suggest we
| continue masking every winter when "cases surge"? There
| will always be a variant of covid. Always. It's never
| going away. Basing mask mandates of any metric, be it
| cases, hospitalizations or deaths means every winter
| you'll be wearing a state mandated mask.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Are you trolling or do you really think that "every
| winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask"?
|
| We've been in this pandemic now for close to 2 years. At
| every single point, government rules and guidance have
| lagged recommendations from the experts. I'm confident
| that there is exactly 0 chance that any governmental body
| in the US is going to continue to mandate masking after
| it's no longer necessary.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Are you trolling or do you really think that "every
| winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask"?
|
| At this point, in the states that have mandates? I'm
| honestly not sure. There sure seems to be no rush to
| remove them despite having low "cases" and
| hospitalizations not being an issue. And given none of
| these states have given a single hint as to when they
| will go away... who knows?
|
| States that continue this are absolutely normalizing
| mandated masks. Vaccines were sold as the end of masks
| (and they morally should have been regardless of what
| politicians say). Vaccines are the best we can do.
| Mandated masks in a post-vaccine world makes absolutely
| no sense at all. What other target could a government
| reasonably set after a vaccine? "Cases"?
| "Hospitalizations"? Well... those will always be there.
| So do we just keep doing this forever?
|
| And if you say "hospital capacity" shouldn't these
| governments have fixed that already? We gave them two
| years and it was an emergency so where is the hospital
| capacity we put our lives on hold for? I mean, its still
| an emergency right? Shouldn't people be super pissed that
| government hasn't dealt with the actual problem they keep
| saying we have?
| unmole wrote:
| What were these people doing every flu season?
| wokwokwok wrote:
| Wanting something to be true does not make it true.
|
| Even if it turns up _to actually be true_ , the fact that so
| many people _want it to be true_ is an excellent reason to be
| cautious in how you look at things here, because that is
| causing a lot of people to say things that haven't been
| proven to be true.
|
| The evidence so far looks like cause to be cautiously
| optimistic, but when the people giving out that evidence say
| "it's too soon to be sure", then pay attention.
|
| It's too soon to be sure.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Don't all viruses become more mild over time? Even Ebola
| gets much less lethal towards the end of an outbreak as it
| evolves to preserve its habitat. Small pox is a possible
| counter ecample it seems like it was pretty lethal for
| millennia.
| soperj wrote:
| How's that going with Aids?
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| Only if you restrict to viruses that haven't killed their
| host population ;) But even then you could just wait
| until another higher-intelligence species appears and
| give them the same pathogen.
|
| If everything survives, the resulting community can live
| with each other and that requires a sufficiently mild
| virus. However that doesn't help predict the future,
| because you can't enforce the precondition of everyone
| surviving.
| mmastrac wrote:
| There's no guarantee a virus gets more lethal. Viruses
| select for survival and less lethality is _one_ strategy
| (though a fairly good one).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| In the context of a pandemic there's also the relative
| fitness (strain vs strain) optimization.
|
| So a more lethal virus _during a pandemic_ must also be
| more _transmissible_ , as it's actively competing for the
| same susceptible hosts with other circulating strains. If
| another strain gets there first, chances are it's going
| to prime that host's immune system sufficiently to
| prevent reinfection.
|
| Which means it needs not just more lethal mutations, but
| also more transmissible ones. The probability of all of
| those coinciding seems low, as the former are more likely
| to arise in immunocompromised hosts, and the latter in
| circulation among dense populations, no?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Even Ebola gets much less lethal towards the end of an
| outbreak as it evolves to preserve its habitat.
|
| No, it doesn't.
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/faceboo
| k-p...
|
| > The claim makes a broad generalization about pathogens
| that's not supported by science. It has been well-
| documented that pathogens can evolve to be more virulent.
| And many viruses, including HIV and Ebola, have in fact
| become more lethal over time.
|
| As you note, smallpox disproves the idea that viruses
| automatically become mild. It had thousands of years to
| do so and carried a 30% mortality rate still.
| iso1631 wrote:
| No, they tend to become more spreadable, but there's no
| reason they couldn't become even more harmful as they
| evolve, rather than less. The strains that will win out
| are those that do less immediate harm (thus become more
| spreadable as people don't stay in bed ill), but that
| doesn't mean after a week or two they couldn't get really
| harmful (we saw in the first wave that covid was
| generally a week of nothing, a week of symptoms at home,
| a week in hospital, a week in intensive care, and then
| into the grave, with a certain chance of recovering each
| week. Imagine a mutation which reduced that recovering
| chance, that would cause more death, but not affect the
| spreading in the first week)
| nicoburns wrote:
| No. They often do, but not always. Other counter
| examples: Rabies. Spanish Flu.
| timr wrote:
| > Wanting something to be true does not make it true.
|
| Indeed. And wanting something to be false does not make it
| false. People _on both sides_ of this debate are far too
| eager to run with their preferred opinion and accuse anyone
| who disagrees of "misinformation".
|
| _" I don't like this paper, and I see arguments against
| it, therefore it is dangerous and wrong."_
|
| It's petty behavior.
| choeger wrote:
| The thing is that even the pessimistic explanation of the
| data (high immunity due to prior infection) should give
| everyone (except maybe some countries) hope. After all,
| most industrialized countries should have a double digit
| percentage of prior infection by now.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| According to what I heard through the Covid update of work.
| Omicron settles more in the nose and not as much in the
| long ( their source was a doctor).
|
| Although it's too early to be sure, it would explain both
| an increased transmissibility and a milder variant.
| megablast wrote:
| You understand that what you said is pure nonsense right?
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Based on? The second part seems logical tbh and the first
| part actually did happen ( 1200 employees and a decent
| company, so I doubt their would be lies. We're no
| better.com ).
|
| Also, it is similar enough to what i heard before from a
| conference about covid previous year.
| lee wrote:
| Additionally, the demographics of South Africa are different
| too. The median age is significantly lower than most Western
| countries.
| jmull wrote:
| The headline looks good to me.
|
| Few headlines work without context so what we want is for them
| to choose the most obvious, pertinent context. I think we all
| care a lot more about what Omicron means to us now, not what it
| would have meant if it were the main variant at the start of
| the pandemic.
|
| And, of course, anyone who cares about the topic should read
| past the headline.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Weird, I thought that the natural immunity from COVID-19 wasn't
| as strong as the vaccine.
| colordrops wrote:
| Why is it ok to to be skeptical of findings if they are
| optimistic when it comes to covid, but if you challenge a
| pessimistic finding you are an anti-science anti-vaxxer piece
| of work? Let's be consistent here.
| roody15 wrote:
| This is honesty good news. The best case scenario is a new less
| deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and
| spreads worldwide.
|
| Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear
| train running full steam.
|
| A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural
| immunity and doesn't require a vaccine is an absolute win win for
| the world.
| DarknessFalls wrote:
| It's so good in fact, it makes me wonder if this was the Wuhan
| Virology lab's penance act.
| newsbinator wrote:
| There's no particular reason to believe this. It's just as
| likely as "space aliens did it" at this point, until there's
| more evidence in any given direction.
| renaudg wrote:
| > The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious
| strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide.
|
| No, this scenario wouldn't be good news at all.
|
| Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear
| improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an
| exponential worsening.
|
| In other words, the reduced risk of an infected person getting
| into hospital is dwarfed by the exponential increase in the
| number of sick people, and the net result is way more hospital
| admissions. This could easily overwhelm healthcare systems in
| the coming weeks and make them unavailable for _anyone_ who
| needs them, not just Covid patients (unfortunately, these
| indirect casualties of Covid are undercounted)
|
| Secondly, each new infection is an additional ticket in the
| great variant evolution lottery. The more infections, the
| higher the risk of a vaccine-escaping, serious disease-causing
| new variant being selected. Low vaccinations rates in South
| Africa, plus the high number of untreated HIV+ patients there
| (who struggle to get rid of Covid and are a perfect breeding
| ground for variants) are thought to have contributed to
| Omicron's emergence.
|
| That's why "let it rip through so we get natural immunity" is
| such a short sighted stance.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear
| improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an
| exponential worsening.
|
| No it's not, if delta infected say 1b humans and omicron
| infects 4b humans deaths can easily be offset by a lower
| fatality rate
| inciampati wrote:
| The problem is that (higher) exponential growth will cause
| many more hospitalizations to happen in a much shorter time
| interval. That can make the wave more deadly even if the
| virus is somewhat milder.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You're missing the point. If Delta kills, say, a million
| people, and Omicron only kills half a million people, but
| Omicron kills that halved amount in, say, 1/10th the time,
| Omicron is more likely to lead to overwhelmed hospitals.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I wish they would just triage unvaccinated people below
| everyone else so hospital capacity would stop being a
| problem.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > That's why "let it rip through so we get natural immunity"
| is such a short sighted stance.
|
| That is absolutely not what the OP said, fwiw
| singingfish wrote:
| Yep, the result of a large number multiplied by a small
| number is still a large number. It's definitely a worry.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear
| improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an
| exponential worsening.
|
| With the current data available from SA, EU, and UK, the CFR
| has not been shown to be marginally lower, but dramatically
| lower. Things could change, of course, but right now the
| first part of your statement is really the case (as
| observed).
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to
| prevent infection. The story has always been that it reduces
| symptoms and hospitalization, so there are plenty of
| opportunities for the disease to get "tickets" in the
| evolution lottery. Between that, the animal reservoirs (COVID
| can spread to different species), and the millions of people
| in undeveloped countries who will never get a vax, COVID was
| guaranteed to mutate no matter what the public policy.
| Letting it rip is less a strategy and more an acknowledgement
| of reality.
| josephg wrote:
| Who cares about the advertising? The data is in, and the
| vaccines do both - they decrease your chance to be infected
| and they make symptoms much more mild if you are infected.
| The combination of factors is why hospitalisation rates in
| highly vaccinated countries plummeted.
|
| Or at least they did until omicron. Unfortunately 2 doses
| of the existing vaccines are pretty ineffective against
| omicron. 3 doses make the vaccines work better - but I'm
| honestly a little concerned.
| jimmyearlcarter wrote:
| The vaccine was initially sold as the tool to end the
| pandemic and get life back to 'normal'. The narrative has
| evolved to suit the deficiencies of the vaccine and keep
| profits from sinking.
| yread wrote:
| They could have ended the wildtype pandemic. As soon as
| delta appeared it was impossible. They have 90%
| efficiency at best and you need 84% of all people
| protected to stop delta (1-1/R0 for R0=6). It's
| impossible to get such high vax rate.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Not necessarily. Eg the Netherlands has ~77% vaccination
| rate, which is pretty close to the quoted 84%.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| We're at 80% vaccination in Spain... I think we can
| surpass 84%.
| jefftk wrote:
| 37.7M fully vaccinated, 47.35M population -- impressive!
|
| I was initially assuming you were excluding kids or other
| people ineligible to get vaccinated.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| It was kinda-possible to return to normality with delta
| though. The entire EU is above 70% of the total
| population, with some countries above 80%. And of the
| unvaccinated, most are children who are less susceptible
| in the first place.
|
| But with Omicron, it's literally like we're back to March
| 2020. Norway (with 81% vaccination rate) went from
| normality to full lockdown in the past two weeks. I'm
| pretty sure that's coming everywhere else during the next
| month or so.
| sharken wrote:
| If lockdown is considered then it goes to show how little
| politicians know about the virus.
|
| We need to treat Corona the same way we treat the flu and
| we should start now.
|
| As an example the current number of hospitalizations here
| in Denmark is about 50% of the worst period for the
| 2017/18 flu.
|
| The thing is that various governments have neglected
| hospitals and health care, that is the real problem that
| must be dealt with.
| nostrademons wrote:
| They pretty much did end the Delta pandemic in the Bay
| Area. We had a minor spike up and then it subsided
| without any major restrictions or strain on the
| healthcare system. Vaccination rates are 95%+ where I am,
| so 0.95 * 0.9 = 0.855 and it was still over the herd
| immunity threshold.
| dyslexit wrote:
| > The narrative has evolved to suit the deficiencies of
| the vaccine and keep profits from sinking.
|
| The narrative may have evolved but that was more due to
| the virus evolving rather than some conspiracy driven by
| Pfizer and Moderna to sell more shots. More people being
| vaccinated benefits everyone, not just the pharmaceutical
| companies, and saying otherwise is a bit paranoid.
| teolandon wrote:
| Any links to any marketing material "selling" the vaccine
| as the tool to end the pandemic?
| de_keyboard wrote:
| The UK government absolutely did this.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| Governments requiring it to work regularly again is the
| only "marketing material" you need.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Or if the virus gets irrelevant.
|
| One doesn't exclude the other. People don't see an end
| with natural evolution, so the vaccine was/is the main
| focus for a long time.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| the vaccines may not have been advertised as that, since
| the evidence during development for that was marginal. but
| recent evidence suggests that it does prevent infection.
| unfortunately, less true with omicron.
| roenxi wrote:
| > The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to
| prevent infection.
|
| A lot of people believed they were. I've spent some time
| arguing with people that the punishments for not taking the
| vaccine were too extreme, and that government-supported
| firing of people from their jobs was a bad idea.
|
| It was extremely common for people to argue that the
| vaccine would cut down on transmission (which is basically
| saying infection) and end the pandemic. Without that pillar
| it gets quite hard to justify the discrimination against
| unvaccinated people in Australia. Not sure about the rest
| of the world but I assume there is a similar story.
| chasd00 wrote:
| this is why i was, and continue to be, against the
| various vaccine mandates. My employer said to me "upload
| your vax card or get an exemption else be fired". It was
| a bridge too far for me and I submitted for an exemption
| request on grounds of personal conscious. However, a
| couple weeks later we get another email that says if your
| exemption request is denied you are fired. I could have
| taken a moral stand but i have a wife + 2 kids and a MIL
| dependent on my income and I decided it wasn't worth it.
| I ended up canceling my request and uploading my vax
| card.
|
| In the US the politicians know a law mandating the
| vaccine is a non-starter. So, instead, they encouraged
| and supported employers threatening their employees. I
| guess it's ironic that everyone is quitting everywhere
| anyway.
| foobiekr wrote:
| This isn't true, and the lack of testing during the phase 3
| trials to see if there were non-symptomatic cases was a
| deliberate design choice to avoid answering that question.
|
| I'm all in on vaccination, but let's not rewrite history.
| rndmio wrote:
| That's not completely true either. The UK phase 3 trial
| of the AZ vaccine included weekly testing to catch
| asymptomatic cases.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to
| prevent infection.
|
| In the USA? Yes, they were. There was no mention of a
| future need for boosters. There was a simple promise of
| safety, and for things to return to normal.
| spankalee wrote:
| No, they were promoted as drastically reducing the chance
| of severe symptoms and hospitalizations.
| hpoe wrote:
| I've heard that but then why do people say we need to get
| vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable members of
| society if the vaccine isn't actually slowing the spread
| and doesn't prevent infection?
|
| EDIT:
|
| To be clear I already had COVID and didn't have any serious
| symptoms so the argument about a hospital bed doesn't
| necessarily apply to me. Beyond that I actually got
| vaccinated, my question centers around the disparity of
| treatment we are giving individuals who are vaxxed and
| those who are not if both are capable of spreading. Further
| it brings in the question of vaccine mandates if they are
| much less effective then we were led to believe.
| bbatchelder wrote:
| Vaccinated people are between 60-80% less likely to
| infect others, and they are infectious for less amount of
| time.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you're vaccinated and become infected, you will have
| less of a viral load, and thus will spread less viral
| particles to others. The duration of infection will also
| be much shorter, thus lessening the time you can spread
| the infection to others. The vaccine also prevents some,
| but not all, infections in the first place.
|
| You're also less likely to take up a hospital bed that
| someone who is more vulnerable than you needs.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > I've heard that but then why do people say we need to
| get vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable members of
| society if the vaccine isn't actually slowing the spread
| and doesn't prevent infection?
|
| Why are you (and others) thinking that since vaccines
| aren't 100% effective it doesn't help protecting other
| people ?
|
| What kind of dissonance cognitive gets you there ?
|
| Why are you blind to the fact that a vaccine that mostly
| works still help reducing infections and why do you
| equate that to "vaccines don't work to protect others
| (since some vaccinated people can still infect others) so
| I shouldn't get vaccinated" ?
|
| How come you are working from a yes/no, full-or-nothing
| angle ?
|
| A glass of water won't 100% quench your thirst when you
| haven't drunk in a long time so you won't take it ?
| maxerickson wrote:
| The vaccines do prevent infections and slow the spread.
| They just don't prevent all infections.
| sjg007 wrote:
| It's called being a decent human being and also the
| vaccine protects you as well.
| hpoe wrote:
| Well I got COVID before the vaccine came out and am not
| in a high risk group, so I'm not really that worried
| about me.
|
| But you say it is being a decent human being, but I am
| confused if we both agree the vaccine doesn't reduce
| infectivity then why would me getting it change anything
| for anyone else, since we know it doesn't protect others?
| maxerickson wrote:
| A vaccine is likely to enhance your immunity and make you
| less likely to become ill and infect others. It's not
| guaranteed to do that, but that's different than _not_
| doing it at all.
| jat850 wrote:
| It amazes me that there remains this misguided view that
| vaccination efficacy around protecting others is a binary
| mechanism. It's not. There is evidence of at least
| partial reduction in infection, not just outcome, by
| being vaccinated.
|
| That's not including the nuanced aspect of it where being
| vaccinated reduces the severity and duration of
| symptomatic cases, which by _nature_ reduces the
| likelihood simply based on time alone, of exposing
| others.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > It amazes me that there remains this misguided view
| that vaccination efficacy around protecting others is a
| binary mechanism. It's not. There is evidence of at least
| partial reduction in infection, not just outcome, by
| being vaccinated.
|
| I do not understand if this argument is made in good
| faith or if it's covid deniers stirring shit up in the
| public debate or just rationalizing their fear of the
| syringe (yes, I know of 2 anti-vax who admitted it was
| their original reasons to refuse the vaccine).
| jat850 wrote:
| I think with the majority of instances it's a matter of
| repeating what they've seen online somewhere, where it is
| nearly unilaterally presented in similar tone. Some cases
| are malicious intent I'm sure, but I wouldn't guess the
| most of them.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Seems some people have a genuine difference in the way
| they asses their risk.
|
| Some people are scared that there have been 800k+ deaths
| in the U.S. Others say that's only 1 in 400, mostly old
| and with commodities, and not that big a deal.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Parent said he has natural immunity, can you cite any
| evidence that you can get covid twice? If not then people
| who can prove natural immunity don't need the vaccine and
| are just risking their health for nothing.
| jat850 wrote:
| If you want sources I will find them, but there are
| studied and not simply anecdotal instances of multiple
| infections of covid, yes. The outcomes range somewhat
| across the board from subsequent risks of severe
| infection or death, in a way that resembles vaccination.
| jack_pp wrote:
| It seems it is rare :
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-
| health/reinfe... .
|
| Also found a recent CDC study on this : https://www.cdc.g
| ov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm... .
|
| However, from said study : "First, reinfection was not
| confirmed through whole genome sequencing, which would be
| necessary to definitively prove that the reinfection was
| caused from a distinct virus relative to the first
| infection. Although in some cases the repeat positive
| test could be indicative of prolonged viral shedding or
| failure to clear the initial viral infection (9), given
| the time between initial and subsequent positive
| molecular tests among participants in this study,
| reinfection is the most likely explanation"
|
| Do with this as you will, but it seems there's nothing
| concrete. "most likely explanation" isn't good enough to
| force people to get an emergency use, rushed vaccine.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Or more simply, 5x as contagious but 1/2 as deadly? That's
| still a lot more deaths.
| kbelder wrote:
| Good chance it means more deaths sooner, but fewer total
| deaths.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| No it's not. Contagion spread is logarithmic, and has
| obvious upper bounds. E.g. about a third of the us has
| gotten Covid. 5x contagious does not give you 166% of the
| population infected. Nor does it give you 100%. Probably
| not even 90%. I would bet no more than 50% over the next
| year.
|
| Half as deadly on the other hand is a big deal. It's not
| just deaths, it's also hospitalizations. If you imagine the
| bell curve of outcomes, the deaths are the small tail on
| the right and the hospitalizations are the fatter bit on
| the right. If you get to move everything to the left a bit,
| you remove the biggest chunk of the population from getting
| hospitalized in the first place.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Natural immunity is the ONLY way back to a sane planet. It's
| time you take a step back, look at what happened for two
| years now, and realize we don't need this insanity anymore.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| That would make sense but been the originally strains did not
| overwhelm hospitals. New York has the highest and craziest
| number of cases and deaths at the beginning and didn't put
| one person onto the ship that was provided for temporary
| beds. Hospitals did not run out of beds and now the biggest
| problem is running out of staff, the same as every industry.
| At our local hospital all of the nurses quit for better,
| higher paying jobs. We're running at less hospital labor than
| even pre pandemic, aren't building new hospitals, and the
| highest peaks in cases and deaths were while the strictest
| lockdowns and mask mandates were already in place. There is
| complete fear overload and yet all attempts at preventing
| spread, even vaccines, have failed. They reduce symptoms but
| do not stop the spread. That's how contagious this virus is,
| without any symptoms whatsoever people are spreading the
| virus, even with masks on, and limits on how close they can
| be to people. We now have vaccines, we have even pills that
| have been approved, we also know healthy lifestyle fights
| against it, yet we are still in a 2 year long "state of
| emergency." Letting it rip through is not an option we can
| choose, it will happen regardless of what we do.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > didn't put one person onto the ship that was provided for
| temporary beds
|
| It wasn't for lack of need.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-
| coronavirus-u...
|
| > But the reality has been different. A tangle of military
| protocols and bureaucratic hurdles has prevented the
| Comfort from accepting many patients at all.
|
| > On top of its strict rules preventing people infected
| with the virus from coming on board, the Navy is also
| refusing to treat a host of other conditions. Guidelines
| disseminated to hospitals included a list of 49 medical
| conditions that would exclude a patient from admittance to
| the ship.
|
| > Ambulances cannot take patients directly to the Comfort;
| they must first deliver patients to a city hospital for a
| lengthy evaluation -- including a test for the virus -- and
| then pick them up again for transport to the ship.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _New York has the highest and craziest number of cases
| and deaths at the beginning and didn't put one person onto
| the ship that was provided for temporary beds_
|
| The ships weren't for COVID patients, they were for non-
| COVID cases so that hospitals could focus on the overflow
| of COVID patients that they were better equipped to handle.
| Turns out that at the beginning of a global pandemic, not a
| lot people opted to go to the hospital even if they needed
| to because of fear of infection.
| drited wrote:
| >marginally lower case fatality rate
|
| The op didn't state marginally could you please share where
| you are getting this from?
|
| The first publicly confirmed death globally from Omicron was
| reported just yesterday (source:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-says-omicron-
| spread...
|
| Given that the South African study discussed in this
| Washington Post article included 78k people, none of whom
| died if the above Reuters article is correct, doesn't this
| suggest that the case fatality rate is a lot lower (not
| marginally lower)?
| aqme28 wrote:
| It's growing exponentially and deaths are a lagging
| indicator. The true denominator is far from 78k people.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Pretty much every estimate of exponential growth has
| turned out to be logarithmic. Which makes sense. That's
| how % of new nodes reached in a random walk through a
| graph works.
| drited wrote:
| I know deaths lag cases. I mentioned just the cases in
| the south African study because those are the earliest
| cases we have. None of the 78,000 cases up to 7th Dec in
| South Africa resulted in a reported death up to 13th Dec.
|
| This can be deduced from yesterday's Reuters article I
| linked which said the first reported death globally was
| in the UK (not South Africa) and from the fact that the
| study looked at 78,000 cases of Omicron from 15 November
| 2021 to 7 December 2021 (source:
| https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room). At the
| time the Reuters article was published we were 6 days
| after even the most recently reported of those South
| African cases.
|
| I wasn't trying to present the global denominator - that
| is far higher than 78,000 since it includes all
| countries, not just the 78k reported in the South African
| country.
| krona wrote:
| > _The first publicly confirmed death globally from Omicron
| was reported just yesterday_
|
| _With_ Omicron, not _from_ Omicron. It 's an important
| distinction.
| drited wrote:
| The headline says "with" and the first bullet point says
| "from". The first paragraph says
|
| "the first publicly confirmed death globally from the
| swiftly spreading strain"
| bagacrap wrote:
| there really can't be an "exponential" increase in the number
| of cases, whatever that means, given that there's a hard
| upper bound which is the number of hosts.
| stnmtn wrote:
| While technically correct, you and I both know what they
| meant by exponential. Sure, there's a limit, but if we're
| looking at function that is exponential until it reaches an
| inflection point where there's simply less hosts to infect
| than possible...
| oneoff786 wrote:
| By exponential, you mean there's a steep part but you
| don't really know the difference between exponential and
| logarithmic.
|
| The rapid slowdown of infections is FAR below 100% of
| people.
| stnmtn wrote:
| > Sure, there's a limit, but if we're looking at function
| that is exponential until it reaches an inflection point
| where there's simply less hosts to infect than
| possible...
|
| What do you think I meant by this? Do you think I believe
| that the rate of infection will keep going up literally
| exponentially until it hits 7 billion then turn flat, or
| do you think that by my usage of 'inflection point' maybe
| I had more nuance than that?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I took it to mean you're claiming growth is exponential
| or nearly exponential until it nears 100% like a sigmoid
| function.
|
| But that's wrong. Growth stalls out much much earlier.
| It's just not right to call disease spread exponential.
| stnmtn wrote:
| In a math classroom, you are right. But when we're in a
| context of talking about the disease on an internet
| forum, you are being needlessly pedantic and extremely
| nitpick-y if you expect people to describe the ways
| infections grows as "similar to a sigmoid function"
| rathan than the well-understood and extremely common
| "exponential growth" term.
| rolph wrote:
| a rate of change in the rate of change, to wit a second
| order derivative
| makeworld wrote:
| > leads to natural immunity
|
| Evidence so far suggests Omicron has high rates of reinfection.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| Doesn't this depend on how much cross-immunity it provides?
| snarf21 wrote:
| This isn't some final strain so let's all hurry up and get it.
| The more people that get any variant increases the likelihood
| of new variants and we don't get to pick what they do. We need
| to stop thinking about this as a pandemic that will end and
| start thinking about it as an endemic disease that is never
| going away. Soon, you'll be getting your annual covid shot
| along with your flu shot. It is going to continue to kill
| immuno-compromised people for a very long time. Our lungs are
| definitely our weak spot (just look at the elderly mortality
| rates for pneumonia, 20-30%).
| drexlspivey wrote:
| It is most likely pretty close to the final strain, viral
| mutations are optimizing for high transmission and low
| severity (to not kill the host and maximize infections) and
| this one is pretty close to the global maximum.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Why do people parrot this nonsense?
| engmgrmgr wrote:
| people are easily influenced by others who they admire,
| even if they have no idea what they're talking about.
| athletes, politicians, investors, artists, etc.
| engmgrmgr wrote:
| Evolution isn't programmed, it's a function of survival. If
| there's a highly infectious virus with a huge lead time to
| develop deadly symptoms, that's more than enough to spread
| "optimally"
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _viral mutations are optimizing for high transmission and
| low severity (to not kill the host and maximize infections_
|
| The selection pressure that _sometimes_ selects for weaker
| strains is large amounts of viral hosts dying, causing the
| stronger strains to literally die out in the corpses they
| create.
|
| People aren't dying in droves because of COVID. There is
| little evolutionary pressure to select for weaker variants
| of the virus.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Yes, the best case scenario might be an extremely mild disease
| that gives everyone natural immunity to more virulent strains.
| But half as deadly with twice transmission rate is kind of a
| wash, in the short term right?
|
| But if R > 1, eventually everyone gets it and has their lottery
| ticket drawn, so increased transmissibility just speeds that
| process up (unflattens the curve). With the vaccines, R was <
| 1, so it would have petered out. That scenario looks out the
| window.
|
| I think its a little early to be making confident predictions.
| Lots of potential confounds, e.g. while hospitalization rates
| have been lower in South Africa, I believe that the
| demographics have skewed younger than in previous waves too.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Perhaps. But keep in mind, the world isn't suffering equally.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-heal...
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural
| immunity and doesn't require a vaccine is an absolute win win
| for the world.
|
| No. Covid reeinfects. There's only a short-lived immunity.
| Covid is not a cold. If it doesn't get your the first or the
| second or the third time it will get you the 15th time.
|
| Long term damage is not getting enough attention.
|
| In decades _maybe_ we get a mild covid.
|
| > Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear
| train running full steam.
|
| And they should. 2 years in and in a month we are back to 2020
| measures and public health policies have barely improved.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Long term damage is not getting enough attention.
|
| Too bad all those back-to-office-adamant employers completely
| ignore this. Like, OK, I get infected cause I had to commute
| to work and then you fire me/lay me off and I'm left holding
| the bag, financially and physically cause you really wanted
| to make your leasing payments "worth it".
| 988747 wrote:
| > No. Covid reeinfects. There's only a short-lived immunity.
|
| So let's Omicron, or any other mild variant spread, we'll get
| reinfected regularly, thus developing resistance to more
| malignant strains. That's how we beat flu, which, believe or
| not, was deadly in the past. Now we get millions of flu
| infections each year, but no one cares, because they are
| mild.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > we'll get reinfected regularly, thus developing
| resistance to more malignant strains.
|
| Clearly not how it works and not what's happening.
|
| We are not developing resistance to more malignant strains
| so far despite the virus and its variants spreading.
|
| Plus, mild symptoms when contagious are not indicators for
| long term covid damages on organs. Want to take the risk ?
|
| > That's how we beat flu, which, believe or not, was deadly
| in the past.
|
| We didn't beat flu. We still need vaccines every year.
| Believe it or not, it's still deadly.
|
| We have vaccines for Covid and it's still not enough to
| live like Covid is another flu.
|
| > Now we get millions of flu infections each year, but no
| one cares, because they are mild.
|
| Millions of covid infections. It's still not mild and way
| too soon to know if omicron is milder short term and milder
| long term. You are talking a distant hypothetical future.
| People were already saying that in january 2020. Didn't pan
| out. What's different now ? We got worse variants.
|
| It's time public voices stop comparing covid to flu. Covid
| is way more contagious than the flu.
|
| Flu patients in ICU don't need 7 or 8 nurses. It's a
| different beast and it hasn't yet taken every evolutionary
| paths it can take.
|
| Letting it rip through the population hoping it magically
| build a resistance ? Eugenics and wishful thinking.
|
| edit:
|
| > we'll get reinfected regularly, thus developing
| resistance to more malignant strains
|
| Omicron is telling us it doesn't care much about our
| previous wuhan/alpha/delta infections when we look at
| current numbers.
|
| Reinfections can send you to the ICU and then you toss a
| coin if you make it for one more year. How many times do
| you want to take that risk ? Once a year ? Are you in your
| thirties ? Then when your are ~45 and the risk of getting
| in the ICU gets higher than now, will you still take the
| risk to get Covid this year thinking you are building a
| resistance ?
|
| We don't build resistance to next year's flu when we age.
| If/Since covid will be seasonal/periodical and evolve it's
| likely we will regularly need boosters/new vaccines.
|
| And considering its high transmission capabilities we will
| still need masks and other preventive measures.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Waiting decades with government policies in place and altered
| behavior is not a realistic option. Most people would rather
| risk infection over the long term.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _In decades maybe we get a mild covid._
|
| That's incredibly quick in evolutionary terms. _If_ COVID
| becomes milder, it may take many human lifetimes for that to
| occur. In the mean time, it can mutate into something
| stronger.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Agreed. I still have to come to terms to that myself so I
| use `decades` not to scare people too much but... also my
| understanding of the situation and evolution is not solid
| enough to get into an argument about decades vs lifetime so
| I stick to decades because it can also mean centuries :/.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| >Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear
| training running full steam.
|
| Enragement is engagement, and how better to enrage people than
| scaring everyone out of their wits and politicising everything
| as far as humanly possible? I'm certainly no COVID denier nor
| vaccine sceptic, though to me it's astonishing how little
| discussion has happened around the fact that everyone from some
| randomer's blog to major media outlets have every incentive
| towards alarmism and sensationalism and no incentive at all for
| moderation and sober analysis.
|
| If you're a media outlet of any description and you write
| articles / film videos using hard-hitting emotional language to
| make people as terrified as possible, they'll be doomscrolling
| through your content all day and seeing lots of ads in the
| process. Even if it turns out your content was complete
| bollocks, you still got the engagement and ad revenue and by
| the time you post a correction (if you even bother) the news
| cycle has moved on to the next _Horrible Truth you Must Read
| All About Right Now Or Else Bad Things will Happen to You_. If
| you instead write a calm, measured article that right off the
| bat admits the caveats with any scary claims then nobody will
| read it and your potential readers /cash cows will be off on
| your competitor's sites that _are_ using sensationalist and
| alarmist language.
|
| The depressing thing is that even the average 'masks and
| distancing every winter forever' people and average
| 'restrictions are just a cover for politicians to consolidate
| their authoritarian power' people have far more in common with
| each-other than they do with say, Rupert Murdoch. So much
| completely artificial hatred has been generated and it has
| driven completely needless shards of anger and resentment
| between colleagues, between friends, and between families.
| Centmo wrote:
| Fix the incentives, fix the world.
| clairity wrote:
| it's worth always keeping in mind that the only dichotomy
| that matters in political economies is that between the
| wealthy and powerful and everyone else, not left-right,
| black-white, east-west, socialist-capitalist, or anything
| else. it's been this way for all of human history past and
| will likely be so for the rest of it too. that's a sober
| position to take, not a cynical one, as some might argue. the
| more dynamic our political and economic engines are, the
| better for the general welfare (obviously at the extreme this
| breaks down, but we're not in danger of that extreme any time
| soon, if ever).
|
| masks provide no _added_ protection in most common situations
| where they're used, but provide much political leverage,
| which is why they're popular. same with (non-sterilizing)
| vaccine mandates and other arbitrary public restrictions.
| these are political wedges, not effective public health
| measures. if we were worried about public health, vaccination
| status wouldn't be considered at all, only infection status.
| we'd also be policing private behavior (family /social
| gatherings) much more invasively, rather than public behavior
| (grocery stores and restaurants).
| pfisch wrote:
| "the only dichotomy that matters in political economies is
| that between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else"
|
| I always think of this as putting on different pairs of
| glasses to see the world through different lenses. That is
| one lens. left-right is another lens.
|
| There is no "the only lens that matters". There are many
| lenses which have different degrees of predictive power
| depending on what you are observing. You don't use a
| microscope to look at the stars.
| clairity wrote:
| left-right is the worst of political dichotomies. it
| provides no purpose other than to arbitrarily divide the
| world into good vs. bad from the perspective of the
| viewer. that's meant to solely benefit politicians, not
| provide any clarity, because it collapses the acceptable
| political narratives down into a palatably small set from
| which the politician can form a base. in short, it's pure
| bullshit.
| lb0 wrote:
| Very confusing statements, any sources?
|
| To start with one, https://twitter.com/maxplanckpress/statu
| s/146668793563865497...
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Your second paragraph assumes our governments have the
| means to do that. They don't. Which breaks the logic of
| your conclusion. And masks do _add_ protection. Their
| political leverage is null. What is gained by authorities ?
| There 's no advantages.
|
| > if we were worried about public health, vaccination
| status wouldn't be considered at all, only infection
| status.
|
| Ww are worried. Infection status is considered. Vaccination
| status is considered. You are building a counter stance to
| drive a point that aims to minimize the covid problem.
|
| You can fight reality with logic and interpretations and a
| different philosophical approach of the situation but facts
| don't care. Hospitals are regularly overwhelmed, people are
| dying when they shouldn't and the virus doesn't care about
| our psychotic or neurotic bouts. We know that if we do
| nothing it gets worse real fast.
| ShrigmaMale wrote:
| Of course there's a political advantage. It's something
| that forces everybody to visibly declare an affiliation
| with a side at all times in public. That will always be
| used for political advantage.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| If I put on a seat belt while driving in a car, what
| political affiliation does that signal?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > It's something that forces everybody to visibly declare
| an affiliation with a side at all times in public.
|
| No. Forcing people to wear a police badge or a yellow
| star or a hijab or a a beard in some places would fit
| that outlook but the first reason to wear a mask is a
| medical/prophylactic one. The fact some people (right or
| left) decided to associate that with political beliefs is
| another matter that has nothing to do with the inherent
| advantages that wearing a mask provides in some
| occasions.
| deadbunny wrote:
| What nonsense the only ones that have made masks
| political is the right-wingers of the world for whatever
| convoluted "freedom" reasons they have come up with.
|
| I don't wear a mask because of my political beliefs. I
| wear a mask due to the abundance of evidence that it
| helps prevent transmission. If you assume my political
| affiliation from that not only would you be wrong but you
| know what they say about assuming.
| aftbit wrote:
| I was with you for the first paragraph, but the second
| makes a number of concrete statements about the virus that
| are contrary to what I've heard elsewhere, so I'd second
| the ask for sources.
| chimprich wrote:
| The evidence of the past year or two suggests otherwise.
|
| For the first few months of 2020, media outlets were
| constantly downplaying the threat of pandemic. They
| consistently under-reported the risk. "Should we be worried?
| No! The threat is remote!"
|
| What also sells papers (or attracts eyeballs) is giving
| people an impression of superiority: "look at all those
| ridiculous other people panicking!"
|
| There's also the generation of anger: "you're being lied to!
| It's all a hoax / other people are trying to manipulate you
| by making you scared!"
|
| Another angle is making people feel good: "everything is
| fine, don't worry about anything!"
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I think it's more of "all of the above". Anything and
| everything that creates engagement will be published and
| spread out.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| >For the first few months of 2020, media outlets were
| constantly downplaying the threat of pandemic. They
| consistently under-reported the risk. "Should we be
| worried? No! The threat is remote!"
|
| This hasn't been my experience, in fact the British
| government's SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for
| Emergencies) was advising the government to lean on the
| press in order to increase 'the perceived level of personal
| threat' early in the pandemic[1]. I really do think the use
| of behavioural psychology to encourage compliance with
| government policy is one of the lesser-discussed aspects of
| the pandemic that future historians will correctly give
| more importance to than we did at the time. In all honesty
| this isn't so much a criticism of how the British
| government acted during the pandemic but how it acts _in
| general_. This institutional bent towards the manipulative
| is partially what led us into the unmitigated disaster that
| is the War on Terror in my opinion, consent for which
| largely stemmed from a state of fear among the general
| public made worse by poor journalistic norms.
|
| >Another angle is making people feel good: "everything is
| fine, don't worry about anything!"
|
| I've not seen a single bit of serious journalism along
| those lines, it's either been 'COVID is going to kill us
| all and it's the plaguebearing hordes of the unvaccinated
| who are to blame' or 'The government is turning
| totalitarian and it's the fault of out-of-touch bureaucrats
| that need to be removed' (the article I linked is very much
| a member of that species). I've come across very little in
| the way of sober analysis, almost every piece of journalism
| I've come across on the topic carries some kind of moral
| judgement against $group in it. The point I'm making is
| that moral judgement sells and feels good to dole out to
| people you don't like, but it also robs us of a little
| humanity every time we do it.
|
| [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-
| admit...
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| I think GP is referring to earlier than that: when Covid
| was in China and was starting to blow up in Italy
| crummy wrote:
| Like this: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/
| coronavirus-fe...
| ctoth wrote:
| Oh man remember this?
|
| If they're used correctly, P95 and P100 face masks can
| reduce the likelihood of being exposed to coronavirus by
| blocking contaminated air particles. Currently, the
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises
| against people in the US using face masks because most
| people who aren't trained medical professionals may not
| know how to fit them properly, and the risk of exposure
| in the US is so low to begin with.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| But at the time the risk was still small, because the
| virus was mostly not in the US yet. Article doesn't say
| the risk will remain small in the future, does it?
| lb0 wrote:
| I agree, its strange the different bubbles we live in, but
| none of my news sources didn't have the "Omicron likely
| weaker" headline?!
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Mine had. Not less than 24hours before the story emerged.
| Which result in 2 things: loss of trust in public
| authorities public faces ("omicron is a christmas gift
| !") and loss of trust in the scientific public faces
| ("omicron may be milder").
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| The big question is whether the disease is genuinely milder, or
| whether the mild cases are just a consequence of the virus
| infecting people who are partially immune (due to the immune
| escape properties). We'll learn the answer in a few weeks when
| the strain has had a chance to infect the old and unwell and we
| will see if the hospitalizations and deaths increase.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >The big question is whether the disease is genuinely milder,
| or whether the mild cases are just a consequence of the virus
| infecting people who are partially immune
|
| The initial data says that even though South Africa has a
| much lower vaccination rate, omicron is mild.
|
| From today:
|
| > lack of high death and hospitalization rates, despite the
| fact that Omicron has spread at breakneck speed across the
| country and accounts for most of the infections over the past
| three weeks, is the most glaring difference.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-omicron-variant-south-
| afr...
| inciampati wrote:
| The lower vaccination rate is more than offset by the high
| rate of prior infection. This might also mean that omicron
| is mild if you have been previously infected. Populations
| with high vaccination rates and low infection rates might
| be at risk. Or they could be fine. We can't extrapolate to
| them from the situation in SA.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| One of the issues of fast spread is that hospitalizations
| and deaths lag behind infections for a few weeks.
|
| If you don't correct for it, it's easy to see "10x as many
| cases but few deaths" just because cases went up so quickly
| that deaths didn't start yet. Of course, this can be
| corrected for, and I'd expect a _good_ study to do so - but
| I would NOT trust a typical news article to make the
| distinction, nor would I trust it to skip the temptation to
| misinterpret the study for a more interesting headline.
| spurgu wrote:
| A few weeks? From what I've seen staring at case/death
| charts I'd say it's somewhere around two.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The last paragraph of the WaPo article we are all
| commenting on:
|
| _"South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior
| infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of
| South Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to
| previous infection," she said. "We don't think it's a
| question of virulence, but more a question of exposure to
| vaccination and prior infection, so we would be cautious to
| try and interpret that this is a less virulent strain.
| We'll have to see what happens in other parts of the world
| before we make a call on this."_
| GeekyBear wrote:
| A study was done testing samples pulled from ~1.5 million
| blood donations in the US looking for Covid antibodies.
|
| >By May 2021, the combined infection- and vaccination-
| induced seroprevalence estimate increased to 83.3% (95%
| CI, 82.9%-83.7%)
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2784013
|
| The delta variant surge didn't hit the States until after
| this study concluded, so one would expect the numbers to
| be quite a bit higher today.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| It's believed that 70%+ of South Africa have already had
| covid, and there is substantial protection from severe
| cases on reinfection.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe that having a large number
| of previously infected individuals is unique to South
| Africa?
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| SA isn't unique, but it's the location of the study this
| post is about, so the stats there are relevant.
| MatteoFrigo wrote:
| https://covidestim.org/ provides estimates of the
| percentage of previously infected individuals by US
| state. I happen to be in Massachusetts, for which they
| estimate around 50% previously infected, with error bars.
| So a bit lower than South Africa, but not too far in the
| big scheme of things.
|
| The UK provides some estimates of seroprevalence in blood
| donors (thus a skewed sample): https://www.gov.uk/governm
| ent/publications/covid-19-vaccine-... (Figure 3). These
| estimates aren't quite what you are looking for, but one
| test is sensitive to previous infection and estimates 20%
| previously infected, whereas another test is sensitive to
| (infection OR vaccine) and estimates ~100%. Basically, in
| that population, pretty much everybody has some kind of
| antibodies.
|
| To answer your question, I would say that SA doesn't look
| particularly unique.
| peteradio wrote:
| Dude that article is saying its due to underlying immunity
| according to the source vaccinologist:
|
| > Professor Shabir Madhi, a vaccinologist at Wits
| University in Johannesburg who ran trials on AstraZeneca's
| COVID vaccine, believes it is the substantial percentage of
| the population in places like Gauteng province -- which
| includes the urban hubs of Pretoria and Johannesburg and
| has seen a dramatic uptick in new infections -- with
| underlying T-cell immunity that is preventing the disease
| from becoming more severe.
|
| It should bring deep shame on people to see their own
| source material used directly in contradiction to their
| claim.
| standardUser wrote:
| "...or whether the mild cases are just a consequence of the
| virus infecting people who are partially immune"
|
| There are not a lot of people out there still who are not
| partially immune at this point, due to vaccine, recovery or
| both. It varies by region of course, but it's certainly true
| in most parts of the US.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Hospitalisations and deaths will likely increase regardless,
| as so many more people will be infected, even if it's
| proportionately less dangerous to a given individual. But I
| agree, more data in the next few weeks are what we need to
| make genuine determinations.
| fbourque wrote:
| Won't it contribute to more variants in the future if it
| spreads? But maybe we are past that point with other variants?
| laluser wrote:
| Yes, as long as it is out there, it means it can continue to
| mutate.
| patentatt wrote:
| But doesn't this demonstrate that the selective pressures
| tend toward higher contagiousness but less severe disease?
| So if there were a new variant, wouldn't it likely be just
| more of what makes this one favorable?
| magneticnorth wrote:
| I think we aren't very confident yet that there's much
| selective pressure toward less severe disease - the
| reason being that the virus does a lot of its spreading
| before symptoms get to be their worst, so the severity of
| "worst" doesn't seem to factor into the evolutionary
| fitness of the virus. And this is supported by the fact
| that delta was both more contagious and more severe.
|
| We seem to have gotten lucky that omicron is even more
| contagious but less severe; fingers crossed that bolsters
| worldwide immunity.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _But doesn 't this demonstrate that the selective
| pressures tend toward higher contagiousness but less
| severe disease? So if there were a new variant, wouldn't
| it likely be just more of what makes this one favorable?_
|
| No, evolution doesn't work that way.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Isn't the concern with "more variants" that you'll get some
| which are resistant to the vaccine, which apparently this one
| already is?
| pwthornton wrote:
| Depends on your definition of require. The flu doesn't require
| a vaccine, but if we had much higher vaccine uptake each year
| we would save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. It's
| possible that with really high vaccine uptake and other
| measures we could make the flu a lot more rare.
|
| If we end up with a version of COVID that is less deadly and
| then we decide to not take vaccines seriously, we'll end up
| with endemic hundreds of thousands or millions of people dying
| every year. In the U.S., is an extra 100,000 dead a year
| something we should be OK with?
| hpoe wrote:
| If the choice is between that and permanent "emergency
| powers" for all levels of government to continue to panic and
| scare monger and implement things like vaccine passports,
| required immunizations as a condition of employment, the
| destruction of SMB and the demonization and hostility towards
| anyone that doesn't trust The Science (while shutting all
| discussion down about The Science because the plebs aren't
| smart enough to understand The Science)
|
| Then yes yes I will take that.
| jimmyearlcarter wrote:
| You know Covid-19, like the flu, is treatable right?
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/. Also in
| what universe does the flu kill hundreds of thousands of
| people?
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account because (a) single purpose
| accounts aren't allowed here; (b) using HN primarily for
| ideological battle is not allowed here; (c) trollish
| usernames are not allowed here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| qez wrote:
| This isn't good news. The title says it's more resistant to the
| vaccine. That is the worst possible thing.
| [deleted]
| calebm wrote:
| I agree. Maybe COVID has changed to be more cooperative with
| humanity (it's a good strategy for parasites to not kill their
| hosts).
| pvarangot wrote:
| It's a virus. If you grab a single grain of soil there's
| probably more things "having strategies" there than COVID.
| The media just makes it sound like it's alive but it's
| literally the less-alive thing that still evolves
| biologically that anyone knows about.
| chinathrow wrote:
| How can a virus have a "strategy" when all which occurs are
| random mutations during replication? I wonder about this a
| lot.
| anchpop wrote:
| Random mutations cause random changes to "strategy", and
| viruses with "strategies" that cause them to spread faster
| become more common
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| A strategy doesn't have to be planned to be executed.
|
| A random mutation that causes the virus to be more mild
| would cause people to rationally take fewer precautions
| against it. Then it gets to spread more, which is
| evolutionarily advantageous to the virus, but it doesn't
| kill as many people, which is advantageous to humans.
|
| Note that there are a ton of viruses people get infected by
| on a regular basis that don't even have symptoms. Those
| viruses "spread like the plague" but because they're _not_
| the plague, nobody cares.
| andruby wrote:
| It's "just" Darwin's theory, ie "survival of the fittest"
| at work. The virus isn't conscious and isn't choosing a
| strategy.
| tomxor wrote:
| The simplest version of survival of the fittest, continued
| existence. Entropy preserving entropy, it's more of an
| emergent property of reality than a strategy.
| lukeasrodgers wrote:
| It probably makes no sense to talk of a virus having a
| strategy. I don't agree with all of his stuff but the point
| of Daniel Dennett's "intentional stance" is basically that
| attributing mental states to things is just a pragmatic
| matter. If it helps us understand virus behavior better to
| treat them as if they have strategies (which implies
| mentation), then we should do it. I don't see how it would
| help at all here, though.
| rolph wrote:
| the random mutation concept is close to but not exactly the
| situation. there is a low frequency event that results in
| mix and match of large regions of sequence. This is very
| different from error prone replication error, or point
| mutation.
|
| this occurs when a host is coinfected with two or more
| viral strands of differing origin. most often virus of
| close familial lineage do this, but that isnt exclusive.
|
| the mechanism is molecular promiscuity during replication,
| there is a jump from one strand to another in proximity,
| thus recombining.
|
| cocirculation is required for this to occur, high frequency
| of co infection is required for recombinant mutants to
| occur with predictive certainty.
|
| like the gatekeeper and the keymaster, we should avoid
| allowing delta, and omicron to contact each other, and
| surveil the sequences closely.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's similar to Dawkins' "selfish gene" analogy.
| standardUser wrote:
| Pathogens can benefit from evolving in ways that allow them
| to spread more easily, and sometimes that means not killing
| your host too soon. But transmissibility with COVID is
| highest before symptom onset, so death of the host never
| comes into play.
| throwawaymsft wrote:
| People think the virus has a strategy, like it's playing a
| sport and deciding an outcome.
|
| Tell the Black Plague its strategy of killing 30% of is
| suboptimal. Or to the species driven to extinction by a
| disease. "Inanimate object, that was suboptimal to your
| existence!"
| [deleted]
| earthbee wrote:
| If a past infection with Delta doesn't protect against Omicron
| should we expect an infection by Omicron to protect against
| Delta or any future strains evolved from it?
| wmock wrote:
| completely agree with you - at this point, if we can coexist
| with covid, it'll hopefully become more and more like the
| common flu
| chimprich wrote:
| > A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural
| immunity and doesn't require a vaccine is an absolute win win
| for the world.
|
| There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less
| pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes
| observed with this variant so far are because of immunity
| generated by vaccines and prior infections.
|
| The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a
| fantasy.
| [deleted]
| native_samples wrote:
| Evidence so far:
|
| - Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths.
| There's only one reported death so far "with" Omicron, about
| which there are absolutely no details released whatsoever and
| which was rather suspiciously announced by the UK PM just
| before a vote.
|
| - Pathogenicity: all reports from SA say the symptoms are not
| only extremely mild, but don't actually match COVID symptoms
| at all. The first person to get it thought they'd simply been
| in the sun too long. Muscle aches, a slight headache, etc.
| Basically common cold symptoms.
|
| - Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of
| Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the overall
| vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of vaccines.
|
| There's really two ways to look at this. One is that the
| vaccine programme has now completely failed, but it doesn't
| matter because new COVID is mild.
|
| The other is that really, Omicron isn't a COVID-causing virus
| at all, and that this marks the end of COVID. Because:
|
| 1. The symptoms are different. Different symptoms = different
| disease.
|
| 2. The severity is different. Both are mild but Omicron
| appears to be super mild. What it creates can barely be
| classed as a "disease" at all.
|
| 3. The virus is different. Much more heavily mutated than any
| other variant so far, in fact, so much so that some of the
| DRASTIC people are starting to suspect it may be another lab
| leak. Unfortunately, there have been scientists doing GoF
| research on SARS-CoV-2, their papers are public to view.
|
| I think in a properly functioning and rational health system,
| it would be very hard to describe this new variant as COVID.
| Based on the evidence and reports so far it would be more
| rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of the type
| that occur every year.
| romwell wrote:
| > One is that the vaccine programme has now completely
| failed
|
| You mean _succeeded_? As in, prevented many people from
| dying, and forced the virus to mutate into Omicron, which
| is far less dangerous.
| native_samples wrote:
| Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised as
| being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only 6
| months ago, no longer provide any protection at all.
|
| As for the vaccines forcing mutation, SA is only 25%
| vaccinated so that doesn't work.
|
| Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people
| from dying? That is something for history to judge. There
| just isn't good enough data on vaccine deaths to judge
| that at the moment. The problem for COVID vaccines is
| that whilst they may some people from dying of COVID, not
| many life years are saved because almost all the COVID
| deaths are concentrated in the very elderly. Meanwhile
| vaccine injuries are a looming iceberg because they
| aren't being properly tracked or recorded. The number of
| random cardiac failures in athletes is well up this year
| and eventually people will stop being in denial about the
| reasons. The long term damage from this programme can be
| judged in five or ten years.
|
| However, if Omicron does display Delta as it appears to
| be doing very rapidly, we can say that at most the
| vaccines were useful for maybe 6-8 months. Bearing in
| mind you aren't "vaccinated" until your second dose and
| there's a gap.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I don't think I've ever seen so many wrong sentences in a
| single HN comment.
|
| I would love to go through and debunk them all, but I
| don't have the time or the crayons, nor would I think it
| would be effective in changing your beliefs. You're too
| far gone.
| romwell wrote:
| All I ask in response to this comment is that if you do
| get COVID, please post somewhere on HN so that you could
| be properly nominated for the Herman Cain award[1].
|
| Thank you in advance.
|
| [1]https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
| ADSSDA wrote:
| > Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised
| as being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only
| 6 months ago, no longer provide any protection at all.
|
| It's disappointing to see complete lies like this on HN.
| Vaccines have been, and remain, incredibly effective in
| preventing hospitalization/death, even without a booster
| (although everyone should also get their booster).
| chimprich wrote:
| > Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people
| from dying? That is something for history to judge
|
| Please don't post this nonsense on HN. There's ample
| evidence for vaccines saving the lives of millions.
| kcplate wrote:
| > I think in a properly functioning and rational health
| system, it would be very hard to describe this new variant
| as COVID. Based on the evidence and reports so far it would
| be more rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of
| the type that occur every year.
|
| I suspect that if this omicron had emerged in 2018 at least
| with the symptoms and lack of severe disease that we have
| seen so far...it would likely have been described as a
| virulent common cold and may have gotten an occasional news
| mention, but zero public and government panic.
|
| I think the phrase "Look for the devil and you will find
| him" is going to describe virology and government approach
| to virology for probably the next decade. This is a shame,
| because it seems to create and feed tyrants at almost every
| level of government.
| chimprich wrote:
| > Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths
|
| This is not correct. We've seen quite a few
| hospitalisations. See the dramatic uptick in South African
| hospital numbers.
|
| Deaths have generally occurred about 4 weeks after
| infection. Omicron was only reported to the WHO about 3
| weeks ago.
|
| The rest of your post is of a similar level of confusion.
| manwe150 wrote:
| > Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of
| Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the
| overall vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of
| vaccines.
|
| I see currently reported numbers of 75% and 81% for those
| rates respectively, which means unvaccinated people are
| over-represented by about 30% relative their percentage of
| the population. Now these numbers are still very new, and
| unreliable, have no confidence interval, and only for
| infection, not hospitalization. But I don't think that
| difference would be irrelevant, unless it ceases to hold up
| after data is collected over the next few weeks.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| There are two primary factors driving virus evolution - not
| killing the host and defeating the host's immune system.
| Killing the host, at least with humans, is an evolutionary
| dead end, since we go out of our way to quarantine the body
| and destroy or permanently confine it.
|
| In humans, viruses typically evolve to be less severe and
| more infectious over time.
|
| There's significant evidence that omicron is less severe. At
| some point we should see an equilibrium reached with the
| coronaviruses, and the hope is that it'll be as mild as
| seasonal colds. Omicron could be a significant leap in that
| direction.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-
| hea...
| stickfigure wrote:
| It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away.
| Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated
| simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir.
|
| Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and
| less-deadly. It will happen eventually, and then covid will
| be just another common cold.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and
| less-deadly_
|
| The selection pressure that _sometimes_ selects for weaker
| viral variants is stronger viral variants killing their
| hosts in droves, thus preventing the stronger variants from
| passing on their genetics to new hosts.
|
| That selection pressure doesn't exist, because people are
| not dropping like flies due to COVID. The virus is free to
| mutate into something stronger because there is little
| pressure to stop it.
| ASinclair wrote:
| > Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and
| less-deadly
|
| What selection pressure exists to make it less-deadly? It
| takes weeks for the virus to kill people and they are most
| infectious early on.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The same selection pressure that applies to every other
| disease. Symptoms make you less likely to spread.
| Fatalities make you _much_ less likely to spread. Most of
| the diseases you carry are completely asymptomatic.
|
| This is why island populations all get sick when a ship
| comes in.
| thedorkknight wrote:
| Don't most covid deaths happen after you're no longer
| infectious? I thought a lot of that was from the cytokine
| storm.
|
| But to the other commenter's point, if omicron DID get a
| more deadly variant that kills you after you've already
| infected other people due to presymptomatic spread, then
| why would that variant be likely to die out? It's already
| reproduced before killing the host
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's overall less likely to reproduce because we take
| measures against covid collectively. What spreads more
| unhindered, covid or the common cold?
|
| A disease that spreads before it's symptomatic may not
| face negative selection pressure for some individuals,
| but on the aggregate people wear masks, avoid contact,
| even entered lockdowns, are more likely to obtain
| vaccination, and so on.
|
| There's a stronger behavioral response to a more deadly
| covid than there is to one that is entirely harmless.
| It's not just death that reduces rates of transmission,
| and it's not just sick or symptomatic people who avoid
| contact.
| tehjoker wrote:
| selection pressure is for increasing reproduction. covid
| spreads before it kills. unless we get radically
| depopulated this pressure is nonexistant
| dragontamer wrote:
| > It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going
| away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got
| vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal
| reservoir.
|
| You know that Smallpox was in cows (aka: Cowpox), right? We
| still wiped it out.
|
| Smallpox, Measles, Polio. We've wiped out diseases before,
| and we can do it again if we so try. I'm frankly more
| flabbergasted that people don't even know the history of
| diseases and are so pessimistic about this subject...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Those diseases could be (mostly) eradicated because they
| have _incredibly_ effective vaccines - the CDC quotes 95%
| for smallpox, 97% for measles, 99-100% for polio. No
| currently known Covid vaccine is that effective and there
| 's no obvious reason to expect future ones will be.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Its all relative.
|
| Measles is 3x more infectious than even Delta.
|
| Current vaccines are 95% effective against the original
| strain, 60% vs Delta, unknown vs Omicron.
|
| You boost the vaccine however, and you're back to 90%
| efficacy vs Delta, and like 75% vs Omicron.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The difference isn't as minor as I think you're
| suggesting. Compared to 95% efficacy, 90% efficacy means
| twice as many vaccinated people get sick and 75% efficacy
| means five times as many get sick. I don't see how
| eradication programs would work with such a differential,
| and (relatedly) I don't know of any experts who think
| it's feasible to eradicate Covid with current technology.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > You know that Smallpox was in cows (aka: Cowpox),
| right?
|
| It seems unlikely that many cows caught smallpox, given
| the prevalence of cowpox. Cowpox is a different disease,
| and was the first vaccine, after which the very concept
| of "vaccination" is named. Milkmaids had long been known
| for their immunity to smallpox. If smallpox had been in
| cows, milkmaids would have been known for universal
| smallpox exposure instead.
|
| > I'm frankly more flabbergasted that people don't even
| know the history of diseases
|
| Not a good look.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Cowpox is a different disease
|
| That conferred immunity to smallpox. Which makes it about
| as "different" as Omicron is to Delta or COVID19.
|
| In any case, Cowpox is case-positive proof of animal
| reservoirs of smallpox.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Which makes it about as "different" as Omicron is to
| Delta or COVID19.
|
| Sure, that's fair.
|
| > In any case, Cowpox is case-positive proof of animal
| reservoirs of smallpox.
|
| Huh? No, it isn't.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Fine.
|
| UK eradicated Rabies. I'm pretty sure we all agree Rabies
| has substantial animal reservoirs, right?
| stickfigure wrote:
| Rabies only has animal reservoirs, it isn't spread
| person-to-person. And it appears that the localities that
| have eradicated rabies have done so by dropping animal
| baits with oral vaccines.
|
| So... small, mostly deforested island countries may have
| a good chance against animal-borne viruses that have
| inexpensive edible vaccines.
|
| The wealthiest country in the world hasn't managed to
| eradicate rabies. Covid isn't going to end this way.
| makomk wrote:
| Cowpox produced strong enough immunity to smallpox that a
| vaccine likely derived from it completely wiped smallpox
| off the planet, but it's very much not the same disease -
| cowpox doesn't spread effectively in humans and is much
| less deadly. There's just really good cross-immunity
| between the two that made vaccination possible using
| 18th-century technology and understanding of science,
| even though their last common ancestor seems to be way
| back in prehistory.
| firmnoodle wrote:
| Agreed. But I don't hear anyone talking about making a
| old style COVID vaccine that prevents infection, disease
| or transmission. That's what's different in this case. We
| don't currently have what we many of us used to think of
| as a vaccine.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The vaccines are 90% effective against the original
| strain and Alpha to transmission / infection.
|
| Efficacy dropped to 60% vs Delta, and drops again to 30%
| vs Omicron. Boosters seem to rise back up to 90% vs Delta
| and 75% vs Omicron.
|
| That's why so many people are talking about boosters: it
| has a measurable impact on transmission for Omicron (and
| Delta).
| stickfigure wrote:
| Measles is making a strong comeback. It's a bit early to
| declare victory.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Largely in antivax communities though.
|
| It's not a problem in any area with high vaccine
| compliance.
| jcadam wrote:
| > selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly
|
| If left alone, yes. We are not leaving it alone.
| manwe150 wrote:
| Well, logically speaking, we never needed vaccines, since
| some percentage of the human race will survive COVID
| regardless. The question always was just whether you can
| improve your own odds of staying healthy. And so far that
| data seems to have been strongly in favor of vaccination of
| yourself and those around you, with further increased benefit
| demonstrated from opting for a booster shot. But still never
| being essential or necessary for survival.
| MereInterest wrote:
| You seem to be interpreting "essential" as "essential for
| continued human existence", which is a pretty low bar.
| "Essential for maintaining public health", or "essential
| for preventing excess deaths" would be better
| interpretations. While vaccines are not essential for
| continued human existence, they are essential for
| maintaining public health and preventing excess deaths.
| the_doctah wrote:
| You could make the same argument for the common Flu.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I get the flu shot every year, to help reduce
| transmission and reduce the severity if I get it myself
| gmadsen wrote:
| I don't think that was the question? It was how to not
| overload hospitals and create a safer environment for those
| in the population most at risk. Thus healthy young adults
| getting vaccinated to reduce the rate of spread
| [deleted]
| andrewflnr wrote:
| If I evades vaccines for more dangerous variants, I'm not
| convinced catching it will make me immune to those variants
| either. It might actually be different enough to be
| independent.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Have you seen any evidence that this may be likely?
| chimprich wrote:
| We know Omicron can cause infections in people who have
| already been vaccinated or recovered from Delta; why would
| the reverse not be true?
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| That omicron is able to so easily infect people who have
| had and recovered from delta points to it being almost a
| different disease from the perspective of the immune
| system.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I think the reality is a lot more complicated than that.
|
| There are many possible paths moving forward and from what I
| understand, if Omicron continues to mutate, it can take
| different, possibly more lethal strains.
|
| There's a human tendency to wrap events into a neat story, with
| a beginning, middle, and end. But viruses are apathetic and
| ahistoric. They don't care for narrative.
| bla3 wrote:
| I think it's not yet a given that omicron competes with delta.
| Since they're fairly different it's possible both strains can
| coexist.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Data shows otherwise. In ZA over 85% of cases are omicron
| from not existing last month.
| bla3 wrote:
| That might still be true if they coexist. But I'm no
| expert. https://erictopol.substack.com/p/omicron-is-
| getting-more-def... says they compete, so I'm willing to
| believe that. But the thread
| https://mobile.twitter.com/trvrb/status/1470420195567030274
| linked from there says it's not certain, and it sounds
| fairly convincing too.
| chki wrote:
| This is unclear at the moment, see also
| https://mobile.twitter.com/trvrb/status/1470420216232374281
| jpambrun wrote:
| There is literally ~90% more cases per day compared to 2
| weeks ago in South Africa..
| [deleted]
| ok123456 wrote:
| Vast majority of those are mild illness or where it was a
| secondary finding. There's been a sharp decline in the
| number of hospitalizations requiring additional oxygen.
| eloff wrote:
| Agreed. I found out about this early perhaps due to my South
| African family who sent me this doctors analysis:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vI4XczqZ8
|
| It could be excellent news. It sounds more virulent than delta,
| so should displace it given enough time, and much less
| dangerous.
|
| If this holds up, countries are doing the exact wrong thing by
| banning travel from South Africa. The thing to do would be to
| open travel with no restrictions and maybe even subsidize the
| airfares. The sooner you replace delta with omicron in a
| country, should this continue to hold up, the better.
|
| I bet not a single country does the logical thing. It's
| politically infeasible, because it's counterintuitive and the
| population wouldn't understand or support it. Plus the
| politicians themselves aren't exactly the sharpest.
|
| But it doesn't matter. Delta swept the world in under six
| months. Omicron may well do the same if what we're seeing so
| far about the R value holds up. At this rate it may well just
| be a matter of time.
|
| The "end" of the pandemic, at least in ways that matter may
| well be on the horizon.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The sooner you replace delta with omicron in a country,
| should this continue to hold up, the better.
|
| You think you want that, but this also increases the chances
| of Omicron evolving into something worse, like picking up
| genetic fragments from a haemorrhagic virus, or being able to
| cross the blood-brain barrier.
|
| The 2nd wave of the Spanish flu was deadlier than the first:
| being infected by an earlier variant doesn't automatically
| make one immune from subsequent variants, especially when
| given maximum genetic resources and time to work with by
| letting it run rampant. The ideal scenario would be making
| COVID extinct ASAP.
| chki wrote:
| Making COVID extinct is unfortunately not a reasonable
| scenario. There will be animal reservoirs, high vaccination
| rates are difficult to achieve for most countries, long-
| term lockdowns will be hard to enforce if you're not China.
| furyofantares wrote:
| A vaccine resistant strains is extremely bad news; if it's less
| severe that would be good, but that remains to be seen while
| it's obvious now that vaccines are less good against it.
|
| We should be pressuring our governments to make paxlovid legal
| and to encourage work on Omicron boosters, rather than
| pretending this is good news.
| comradesmith wrote:
| I don't think this indicates omicron is vaccine resistant.
|
| But rather that the current vaccines aren't effect for
| because omicron is substantially different from the original
| covid strain used to develop those vaccines.
|
| The same thing happens every year with the flu.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Yes, that's what I meant, and why I advocated for
| developing omicron boosters in the post.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, a highly infectious vaccine resistant strain spreading
| while the world opens up and people rely on the waning
| strength of their first two shots is pretty much a recipe for
| year three of this crap.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > recipe for year three of this crap
|
| Only in places that continue to consider covid the only
| problem society should focus on. It might be hard for some
| to imagine but we cannot continue to put the world on hold
| for exactly one specific form of illness.
|
| For one thing, we've created a pandemic of untreated mental
| illness. All these people I see walking their dogs at night
| on a rainy day alone on the street wearing a mask with
| foggy glasses are gonna have a hard time getting over
| this... All the people who haven't left their house in two
| years are gonna need some help. People have lost their
| minds and it is gonna take a while to heal.
| fullshark wrote:
| At this point I'm expecting this crap to be a thing until
| we have a winter of excess deaths at or below Pre-Covid
| levels. Once that is observed I think people will finally
| move on. It sounds like this is still going to result in
| deaths, so I am now expecting year three of this crap.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-
| deat...
|
| I think eventually that winter will come, but the process
| will be gradual and vaccines/antiviral treatments will only
| be able to accomplish so much in terms of mitigation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| At some point, it seems like you have to weigh the
| lifetime risk of dying from COVID against the loss of
| life enjoyment and decide "We shouldn't subject ourselves
| to another 1.25% of our lifetime of this (whatever "this"
| is) to lower the fatality rate from Y to X." (If you're
| lowering from 5% to 1%, that trade makes sense for even
| severe social restrictions. If you're lowering it from
| 0.5% to 0.4%, that trade makes no sense for anything
| beyond the very mildest of restrictions.)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think it's better to consider some kind of "casualty
| rate" that includes long COVID, rather than just the
| "fatality rate". At the moment it's possible some people
| may never fully recover full function after contracting
| COVID even though they survive.
| moistly wrote:
| The people who never fully recover are orders of
| magnitude more expensive than the dead. The latter are a
| one-time cost in lost productivity and care expenses; the
| former are an on-going cost. Since we, collectively, are
| the ones who are going to pay via taxation, we should IMO
| be a hell of a lot more concerned about COVID's long-term
| consequences.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| While I don't think you're _wrong_ , in practice I think
| most people use fatality rates as a proxy that kinda
| implicitly includes non-fatal harms. How often do people
| talk about heart disease or obesity in terms of "casualty
| rates"?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| People (Or at least governments), seem unwilling to take
| that kind of stance.
| fullshark wrote:
| Beyond personal choice, in America statewise regulations
| and urban v. rural differences in mitigation techniques
| may mean citizens vote with their feet and gov'ts respond
| to properly shore up tax bases.
|
| In any case I'm no longer thinking this has a clear end
| date, just a gradual fade into memory, the exact length
| of time it takes undefined/unclear.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| What good are "studies" when a majority of government seems to be
| ruling by the seat of their pants?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Omicron is apparently very unstable and as such may not be with
| us very long before another variant emerges from it:
| https://twitter.com/_b_meyer/status/1470124417749557248?s=20
| richardatlarge wrote:
| Quote: The study by Discovery Health, South Africa's largest
| health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which
| 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital
| admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent
| lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March
| 2020.
| raphaelj wrote:
| Could it be because we just got slightly better at treating
| Covid before hospitalization?
| simonh wrote:
| How do we treat Covid before hospitalisation? I just caught
| it at the weekend and feeling pretty crappy. I'm not aware of
| any particular treatment I should be taking.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Monoclonal antibodies, Florida is taking a early treatment
| approach and you can receive monoclonal antibodies as
| prophylaxis if you have been in contact with someone who
| has been infected[0]. Apparently it reduces the risk of
| death by 70% and the risk of even having symptoms in the
| first place by 82%.
|
| [0]https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/monoclonal-antibody-
| therapy...
| kevinpet wrote:
| There's one approved drug that is probably effective
| against covid, Fluvoxamine.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8633915/
|
| Everyone knows Paxlovid is safe and effective too, but you
| aren't allowed to take it yet.
| the_doctah wrote:
| "Everyone knows"? Paxlovid was submitted for emergency
| approval to the FDA just last month.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Fluoxetine as well: "Fluoxetine use is associated with
| improved survival of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia: A
| retrospective case-control study" -
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34856085/
|
| "Do the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor
| Antidepressants Fluoxetine and Fluvoxamine Reduce
| Mortality Among Patients With COVID-19?" - https://jamane
| twork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
|
| "Mortality Risk Among Patients With COVID-19 Prescribed
| Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Antidepressants" -
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarti
| cle...
|
| "Mortality risk is confirmed to be significantly
| decreased among patients with #COVID-19 prescribed SSRI
| antidepressants, and particularly #fluoxetine, and
| fluoxetine or #fluvoxamine, in a large (n>80,000) US
| observational study." - https://twitter.com/HoertelN/stat
| us/1460309793558646785?s=20
|
| Dr. Farid Jalali's track record on accuracy of statements
| on the pathophysiology is excellent. Here's a thread that
| outlines how and why SSRIs work to reduce illness in
| COVID: https://twitter.com/farid__jalali/status/144087699
| 7182300169
|
| Platelets and serotonin are involved in the disease.
| Serotonin tends to cause inflammation, clotting, and
| vasoconstriction. A significant feature of COVID-19 is
| elevated plasma serotonin. (Here's an almost random
| source for this: https://twitter.com/ivanajpavlovic/statu
| s/146071264917663334... ... another:
| https://twitter.com/__ice9/status/1345194722055385091 ...
| these are tweets, yes, but they link to papers.)
| Platelets have serotonin transporters and serotonin
| receptors. SARS-CoV-2 does a lot of things; One of the
| things it does is that it kills platelets by inducing
| necroptosis (source: https://twitter.com/DrKoupenova/stat
| us/1418558896390688776?s... ). This releases the
| serotonin inside them, causing other platelets to clot.
| SSRIs block platelets from picking up serotonin produced
| and secreted by enterochromaffin cells in the digestive
| tract; This is the source of the platelets' serotonin
| payload (more here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterochromaffin_cell ). If
| an SSRI is taken early, platelets will have reduced
| serotonin payloads, which limits the serotonin-induced
| damage to the lung.
|
| I had no idea about any of this until recently.
|
| Another thing I had no idea about: Serotonin is
| _metabolised by the lungs_. https://twitter.com/ablative_
| sasha/status/144016208428566528... -- and COVID-19
| damages the lungs. It's a bad feedback loop involving way
| too much free serotonin.
|
| There are other things at play but this is one of them.
| SSRIs work for a lot of patients, have a significant and
| confirmed benefit, and a mechanism of action that makes
| sense.
|
| I've also seen pretty substantial claims / results that
| arginine, N-acetylcysteine, and melatonin seem to help.
| The best way to dig up those scientific results that do
| exist on it is actually to search Twitter for it. Try to
| find reliable-seeming scientists that are linking to
| actual papers and are careful in not suggesting too much.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Budesonide inhaler had amazing results in one early trial,
| then moderate results in another. I'd get one, very little
| side effects.
| tbihl wrote:
| This is another problem of the modal Western approach. Few
| people have any knowledge of mitigating strategies or
| medications because we've moved so aggressively to
| eradicate discussion of those things.
| vkou wrote:
| No, what we've done is that some parts of our press have
| denounced shilling of snake oil that doesn't work.
| There's no shortage of that shilling still taking place,
| though.
|
| And as for knowledge, step into a hospital, and you'll
| see plenty of medications being used to treat actual
| cases of COVID. Doctors don't just put an oxygen mask on
| your face, and wait for you to die. You'll find a bit
| more knowledge there than you will in a deraged InfoWars
| rant, or a Joe Rogan podcast.
|
| Unfortunately, that knowledge doesn't have 190 million
| monthly listeners. [1]
|
| [1] If the most popular podcast[2] in America is your
| definition of 'eradicating' discussion, it's certainly an
| odd one.
|
| [2] Or, if you're looking for variety in your media, you
| could always tune in to AM radio. Or the biggest
| television news syndicate in the world.
| simonh wrote:
| We have entire industries and research institutions
| funded to the tune of billons of dollars doing exactly
| that, using the very latest technology and scientific
| techniques. If there were effective treatment strategies
| that were easily discoverable, It'd have been patented,
| clinically trialed and be available from a counter near
| you at an affordable price extremely quickly. If it was
| cheap or safe enough, whole foods and such places would
| have shelves full of it. Capitalism is pretty good at
| that sort of thing, just look at all the vaccines we got
| in less than a year.
| swebs wrote:
| You seem to be implying that the Eastern approach is
| better, but the evidence doesn't support that at all.
| tbihl wrote:
| Sorry, 'Western' was lazy shorthand for 'Western
| civilization', which covers most places geographically. I
| meant to exclude from my statement only poorer societies
| that don't have the luxury of being stupid in their
| healthcare approach to this disease and time.
| ok123456 wrote:
| In the vast majority of the hospitalized omicron cases in ZA,
| the finding was secondary and they were in the hospital for
| some unrelated cause.
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| Maybe it is lower because it is the second infection some had.
| vkou wrote:
| Edit: double post, reference edited in above.
| tylerscott wrote:
| Source?
| [deleted]
| richardatlarge wrote:
| Wouldn't that be inconsistent with the other, related data:
|
| Quote:
|
| "National data show an exponential increase in both new
| infections and test positivity rates during the first three
| weeks of this wave, indicating a highly transmissible variant
| with rapid community spread of infection."
| croes wrote:
| Maybe "new infection" doesn't mean first infection.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| Second infections, on average, have slightly worse outcomes
| then first infections among the unvaccinated.
|
| https://jim.bmj.com/content/69/6/1253
|
| It's a small sample, but it was done on data available in
| 2020, which was before vaccines were available.
| dsizzle wrote:
| That link shows most (69%) have similar outcomes. 68.8% --
| 19% had worse symptoms and 12.5% had milder symptoms.
|
| Small sample size, but even similar result is somewhat
| surprising -- I would've thought the 2nd infection would be
| weaker.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Went looking for later studies with larger population
| sizes and found this review https://www.sciencedirect.com
| /science/article/pii/S204908012...
|
| It's not that much larger -- I guess reinfections are
| hard to find -- but surprisingly this found that ICU
| admission was higher for reinfections.
| [deleted]
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Worth bearing in mind, 19% -> 3 patients, 12.5% -> 2
| patients.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Indeed, small sample size!
| giantg2 wrote:
| Or they were vaccinated
| elsherbini wrote:
| South Africa has <25% vaccintion rate. "South Africa has a
| better vaccination rate than most countries on the
| continent: Just under one-quarter of the population has
| been fully vaccinated" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/world/africa/south-
| africa...
| ageitgey wrote:
| For what it's worth, the vaccination rate in South Africa
| is low. It's only around 25% for the original course with
| little to no boosters done.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| So it's a weak cold at best. Still, these "vaccines" aren't going
| to sell themselves.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads straight into flamewar. It's not
| what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. You can
| make your substantive points without that, so please do so.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I read an article somewhere that said something along the lines
| of "...due to fears of the omicron variant corona virus" and all
| I could think of was that, nobody has fears. Only the media
| outlets are the ones saying the word "fear" here. I haven't heard
| a single person where I live or elsewhere ever say they were
| fearful of the coronavirus in the past three months.
|
| This is worse than Alex Jones freaking out about black hawk
| helicopters. This is a straight up echo chamber of a narrative
| being spit out. The only people who should be fearful are the
| vaccinated. To which, like the governor of Colorado said, "it's
| your own fault at this point."
| shtopointo wrote:
| This is pretty good news imo. A mild version of Covid is in a way
| like a vaccine. Maybe this is how COVID fizzles out.
|
| * all disclaimers apply: I am not a doctor, you should still take
| care of yourself if you're immunocompromised / old / diabetic /
| overweight / unhealthy etc.
| alex-korr wrote:
| Prediction - nerds will drum up any FUD related to omicron to
| postpone return to the office. I am seeing it in my company
| already - in the today's tech virtual townhall "omicron is going
| to hit hard, so why go back to the office in Jan" was the most
| upvoted comment in the stream.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > nerds will drum up any FUD related to omicron to postpone
| return to the office.
|
| And push for mask mandates that require people with jobs at
| stores and stuff to continue wearing their mask 8 hours a day,
| 40 hours a week until forever. "It's just a piece of cloth" say
| all the privileged tech workers typing from their cozy home
| office. If tech workers had to wear masks their entire workday,
| I bet most of them would be screaming to get rid of them.
| Instead the force all the (mostly vaccinated) "servant class"
| that brings them deliveries, makes their food, and checks out
| their groceries to wear some nasty mask all day and when these
| tech workers are called back into the office "but still wear
| masks" they all scream about it and continue to work from home.
| ... because wearing a mask for an entire workday absolutely
| sucks.
|
| Our response to this virus requires a hell of a lot of
| privilege when you really start thinking hard about it. Don't
| even get started on how our response completely decimated the
| working class and transfered massive amounts of wealth in to
| the pockets of some of the richest people in the world. But
| hey! We are saving grandma!
| ImaCake wrote:
| Maybe people are just scared? There's no ulterior motives
| needed about working in the office here. Omicron _is_ scary.
| Also with something this spectacularly infectious it pays at
| the community level to work from home and slow the spread.
| Maybe consider the vulnerable in your community before you
| force your entire company to catch covid and then infect their
| grandparents.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| Nobody wants to pay Bay Area rent to live next to drug addicts
| and piss smelling sidewalks.
|
| Everyone I know in tech that was in SF has moved out of SF.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Obviously some people do, otherwise there wouldn't be so many
| people still living in SF...
| stakkur wrote:
| Almost no vaccines prevent infection (e.g., rotavirus vaccine).
| But most reduce/prevent symptoms. In fact, it's _still_ not
| proven that existing COVID vaccines 'prevent infection'--that
| is, provide sterilizing immunity.
|
| Unless I'm missing something, this 'study' seems to do little
| more than support that understanding.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I wonder if there is comparative research on the mutations of
| SarsCov2 compared to other betacoronaviruses. Is it mutating
| similarly, or do the vaccines /self-isolation and distancing
| cause a different mutation pattern
| jimmyearlcarter wrote:
| SHUT IT DOWN
| nikkinana wrote:
| Remember folks covid is a cold virus
| boringg wrote:
| I have a question for anyone who has a serious level of knowledge
| on virus evolution: As viruses evolve over time is there any
| correlation to severity - do they have trade offs as they evolve?
|
| I am hoping that it would be some kind of trade off that the
| virus makes in that it can spread more easily but not be as
| severe (I understand that it is unlikely nature requires a trade-
| off). I ask as my concern is that while this variant might be
| much more effective at spreading and _hopefully_ less severe in
| its disease - are we not just making a massive breeding ground
| for the variant after this one that could potentially be as quick
| spreading but with a greater severity of disease?
| Fiahil wrote:
| Play with Plague Inc.
| (https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/22-plague-inc)
|
| Every single press title the last two years can be related
| somehow to a single Game. New variants, new mutations,
| spreading faster vs killing more people, ... All these
| tradeoffs are quite well modeled.
|
| Building a resistance to vaccines ("the cure") is also one
| areas where your virus can evolve, and -to be honnest- I prefer
| it to fight vaccines than to develop a "total organ failure"
| mutation.
| dtech wrote:
| It's a game, not a model. Real mutations aren't directed or
| instantly spread to all infected people like in the game.
| Iirc people also don't get better once infected.
| moreira wrote:
| You are right about the trade-off: A more infectious, less
| deadly virus is the natural evolutionary path for them.
|
| But about the breeding ground, not really: If one day some
| super deadly variant evolves, it's not popping up in all of the
| infected hosts at the same time. It'd still need to infect
| everyone from scratch, and since we all have our guard up right
| now, it'd definitely have an incredibly hard time doing so.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| "I am hoping that it would be some kind of trade off that the
| virus makes in that it can spread more easily but not be as
| severe..."
|
| I've definitely seen outlets postulating that the endgame for
| COVID-19 would be it doing exactly this-- becoming way more
| contagious but way less severe, basically a just a kind of
| cold. These "final" variants would quickly spread everywhere,
| choking off the supply of new hosts for the more deadly
| variants, effectively achieving herd immunity.
| gilbetron wrote:
| No one replying has a "serious level of knowledge", so instead,
| turn to sources that do (or report serious sources!)
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-ev...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ (really good one)
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7255208/
|
| In short, we don't know and won't know until this is all "over"
| a few years in the future, at least.
| joebob42 wrote:
| Imo part of the joy of hn is that this isn't actually true.
| Obviously not everyone knows what they are talking about, but
| some of the people who really do have serious knowledge on
| any given topic are on hn, and the average person here is at
| least slightly less likely to think they have knowledge when
| in fact they don't.
| coldcode wrote:
| Any genetic mutation which causes premature death of the host,
| or fails to be communicative will generally die off. Any
| mutation which keeps the host alive (or at least longer), or
| makes it easier to transmit the virus to another host, will
| keep the virus around. This type of behavior can be muted if
| there is an animal host that acts as a reservoir.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Sort of. Sometimes.
|
| Viruses evolve according to evolutionary pressures. I'm
| surprised we don't see Covid mutations that invalidate PCR
| tests - perhaps it's too soon, or even, who knows, maybe they
| are there and we don't know?
|
| The common trope is that if the virus is too deadly, then it
| doesn't have a chance to find new hosts. This is kind-of what
| happened to "SARS-1" - it tended to kill its hosts before they
| could pass it on.
|
| Unfortunately, this is only a weak effect in Covid. Most of the
| spread happens well before people are very ill; in terminal
| stages of severe Covid, many people in fact would test negative
| for virus presence. So there is little evolutionary pressure on
| the virus to be less deadly - by the time it kills people, we
| are spent vessels from its point of view.
|
| I suppose a mutation that makes it completely benign would be
| beneficial, as current rules on self-isolation curb the spread
| of strains causing symptomatic disease.
|
| There are pressures that make it _more_ deadly: a mutation
| leading to higher viral load is both more deadly and more
| transmissible. So unless the transmissibility increases too
| much (and virus is way too deadly), we might even expect the
| virus to become more deadly. This hasn 't happened yet,
| thankfully.
|
| An example I used elsewhere was the introduction of Myxomatosis
| in Australia, to control the invasive rabbit population. Over
| time, the local strain evolved to be _more_ deadly, but with a
| longer incubation periods. This way, bunnies had more time to
| pass the virus around, then once that job was done, the virus
| was happy to kill them off.
|
| On the flipside (and very long timescales), since some people
| appear to be genetically more resistant to the virus, you can
| expect natural selection to do its job. But since overall death
| rate from Covid is low-ish (no more than 1%, you'd say, and
| skewed towards older, non-reproducing individuals) this would
| take a long time.
|
| Another hope is that, if the disease is less serious in
| children, perhaps immunity it built up during the usual period
| of childhood infections. There is another coronavirus, which
| causes a mild cold in children, but can be very serious in
| adults (apologies, I can't remember what it's called).
| Thankfully, a single infection gives more-or-less complete
| lifetime protection - so most people have it as children and
| never worry about it again.
|
| In either of these cases, we're talking about generational
| timescales.
| ufo wrote:
| Apparently there are some variants of Omicron that can't be
| detected with current PCR tests. We may need to update the
| list of primers at some point.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/07/scientists-
| fin...
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Just to clarify, as it's not clear from that sentence: it
| can still be detected with PCR, just not distinguished from
| other variants as easily.
| makomk wrote:
| The current PCR tests detect three different regions of RNA
| that are expected to be relatively well conserved, so there's
| no single mutation that can cause PCR tests to not detect
| them and we'll hopefully get a substantial early warning that
| allows the tests to be adapted if they ever head in that
| direction. One of the three markers detected by some of the
| PCR tests is actually invalidated by Omicron and some other
| variants but it's likely either bad luck or the result of
| some other benefit this mutation gives the virus. In order to
| get much benefit the virus would basically have to dodge all
| the things the PCR tests check for at once and that's hard to
| evolve.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Yeah, Alpha had the same mutation as Omicron too.
|
| I'm not a virologist by any stretch of imagination.
| Mutations seem to come in bundles; I'm just surprised that,
| given typical PCR tests only test for three RNA fragments,
| that we don't see mutations that evade it.
|
| The main evolutionary pressure on Covid in developed
| countries is Public Health clamping down on it like a ton
| of bricks. A variant that quietly evades PCR tests, self-
| isolation etc. is set up for life.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| > So there is little evolutionary pressure on the virus to be
| less deadly - by the time it kills people, we are spent
| vessels from its point of view.
|
| A variant that infects more people from a single host
| (assuming everything else held constant) is a positive
| selective pressure. So increasing the contagious period is
| beneficial. But the length of the contagious period is
| inversely related to the timing and strength of the immune
| response. So we should expect the virus to become less deadly
| over time, assuming there's a hard limit to its ability to
| evade a typical immune system.
| dtech wrote:
| > I'm surprised we don't see Covid mutations that invalidate
| PCR tests
|
| PCR tests for RNA or DNA, that's not something a mutation can
| change. I don't know for Covid, but usually a PCR test
| targets something fundamental & stable. That might need to be
| updated with new variants.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| They test for particular fragments, not the whole thin. 3
| fragments usually in the UK.
| chki wrote:
| Isn't that the only thing a mutation can change? What is
| mutating in the virus if it's not the DNA?
| lovecg wrote:
| Viruses that evade the PCR test for Covid would be a
| different species almost by definition, and with enough
| mutations that could happen. These tests don't detect other
| common cold causing coronaviruses for example.
| 323 wrote:
| > _I 'm surprised we don't see Covid mutations that
| invalidate PCR tests _
|
| The people who design the tests know which parts of the
| sequence are more likely to mutate, so they pick the more
| conserved parts. Also, most PCR tests check for 3 different
| parts of the sequence. Which is why Omicron can still be
| detected even if there is a mutation in one part checked by
| the test, since the other 2 parts still match (the so called
| S-gene-dropout).
| simonh wrote:
| gjsman addressed the issue of severity very well, so I'll just
| comment on tradeoffs.
|
| The adaptations that affect severity and those that affect
| transmissibility generally seem to be different. These are two
| axes on which a new variant can very in either way. The most
| successful new variants will tend to be highly transmissible
| (for obvious reasons) but also tend to be lower severity for
| the reasons gjsman gave in a sibling comment.
|
| That's only a tendency though, evolution will throw up variants
| on all sorts of different points on the transmissibility and
| severity scales and may the most successful virus win. Yes high
| severity variants will tend to kill off their victims sooner,
| but if also highly infectious that might overcome that effect.
| In any case killing off victims still leaves a trail of
| devastation. It can take a while for all of this to play out.
| fer wrote:
| It depends on what you call severity.
|
| If severity means the host dies quickly rather than slowly,
| there's obviously selection pressure and that mutation will die
| off relatively quickly vs the rest, since it won't have as many
| chances to spread as the less severe strain. E.g. SARS/MERS.
|
| If severity means the host dies more often, but it still takes
| a long time to die, the selection pressure is much lower, and
| it will roughly spread the same as the less severe strain, all
| other things being the same. E.g. Spanish Flu.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Spanish Flu did evolve to become more mild. All modern
| seasonal flu variants are descended from it.
| chimprich wrote:
| > Spanish Flu did evolve to become more mild
|
| That doesn't make sense. We have seen regular waves of flu,
| some being more pathogenic than others. There has not been
| a "direction" of flu strains becoming milder. So-called
| Spanish flu came after weaker strains.
|
| > All modern seasonal flu variants are descended from it.
|
| I don't think this makes sense either. The more serious
| strains of flu we've had in recent decades have for example
| included contributions from bird and pig viruses.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Certainly there is variability, evolution is
| fundamentally a random walk, but no strain since 1918 has
| come close to that one's severity, and the genes causing
| cytokine storms in infected individuals, which was why
| that strain was so deadly, seems to have been quickly
| lost. Subsequent strains that were highly virulent seem
| to have evolved new mechanisms.
|
| Viruses can pick up genes from lateral gene transfer.
| Basically in the process of copying their own genetic
| material while replicating, they might inadvertently copy
| some extra genetic material that was just lying around in
| the host cell, and it gets incorporated into their
| genetic code, producing recombinant strains. Further,
| just as animal strains can jump into humans, human
| strains can jump into animals. So for example in 1968 the
| H3N2 flu lineage started in birds, jumped to humans where
| it recombined with 1918's H1N1 making human H3N2, and
| then jumped into pigs to make Porcine H3N2. Indeed
| there's evidence that H1N1 started out as an avian strain
| that jumped to humans and swine around the same time, but
| this is still an open academic debate.
| fer wrote:
| Eventually. But as it appeared it was more virulent than
| its immediate ancestors.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Eventually in this case being approximately 18-24 months
| from the first wave, which coincidentally is very close
| to where we are in the current pandemic.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Viruses evolve to be more fit. Presumably, a mild version and
| more contagious version may even have evolved in one of the
| billions that were infected these years, but it didn't spread
| much because of self-isolation and restrictions. A variand that
| s more debilitating would be less likely to transmit.
| [deleted]
| cableshaft wrote:
| One thing that makes Covid-19 a bit different from other
| viruses that have trended towards milder infections is its long
| incubation time (while still being infectious). So it can
| already spread pretty easily even if it's killing those people,
| and thus there's not a lot of darwinian pressure to become
| milder.
|
| It might still trend towards that over time, but it will
| probably be slower at it than other viruses, and thus the 'it
| gets milder over time' aphorism about viruses doesn't apply as
| strongly to Covid-19.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It's not binary; if the virus is less infectious during
| incubation than during full infection, there's still
| selective pressure for milder symptoms.
|
| A new variant need only replicate slightly faster to dominate
| (eventually).
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yeah I even said it would probably trend towards milder
| over time, just more slowly. That's definitely not a binary
| claim.
| scythe wrote:
| I think that the basic severity-lowering gradient still
| applies, but now it happens in two dimensions. Furthermore,
| it seems plausible that the sequence of variants "Original"
| -> Delta -> Omicron follows such a pattern.
|
| First, evolutionary pressure will select for a lower dormancy
| period, i.e. a lower time to contagion. This is because a
| variant with a shorter dormancy will spread faster than one
| with a longer dormancy period if both are present in the same
| population. This is also exactly what happened with the Delta
| variant, which is asymptomatic generally for a shorter
| period[1] than the original variant, because it replicates
| faster.
|
| Second, the usual process occurs for the usual reasons. This
| _may_ be happening with Omicron.
|
| [1]: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-
| conditions/...
| zamfi wrote:
| That's only one pressure driving viral evolution.
|
| Another pressure is social response to infection: so far, the
| predominant response to a more-virulent or more-lethal strain
| has been lockdown and/or other behavioral change, see: delta
| in India. On the flip side, a variant that causes milder
| symptoms is less likely to cause the same social response,
| which allows the virus to spread more widely.
|
| This may (may!) be what we're observing with Omicron. In any
| case, we'll know much more in a few weeks.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I'd say that's normally true, but there's not a ton of
| lockdowns with even Delta right now, so while I agree that
| it probably isn't going to get _worse_ , there's still not
| a ton of pressure from social response as it is right now
| for it to get milder (maybe you could argue pressure from
| vaccines I guess).
| daxfohl wrote:
| Yeah I think we can learn what society thinks is
| acceptable risk just by looking at death counts over the
| last two years. They've pretty much leveled out. So as
| the virus mutates into less (or more) harmful variations,
| we'll see the world react less (or more) strictly, but
| overall death count will remain stable.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Presumably the steady state will happen after the virus
| mutates into a less dangerous variant (as infecting more
| people will be evolutionarily advantageous for the
| virus), and eventually we all get it and build up
| antibodies, at which point its virulence further
| subsides.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| Do you realise that mutation is not something the species
| can consciously control?
|
| How could the virus have mutated to become milder to suit
| the social response if the society, as it stands today, is
| continuing to do what they previously did..?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| There's likely millions of virus variants out there
| already. Some will evolve to become much more contagious
| and most won't do much of anything.
|
| When a more severe variant starts dominating and everyone
| goes inside and stops spreading it that makes the more
| severe variant die out. As it dies out, and people go
| outside, variants that are milder will thrive because
| people won't lockdown as easily. This can repeat forever
| until eventually the virus is completely benign. Of
| course it's all based on randomness so it's not exactly
| predictable what will happen.
| nostoc wrote:
| Except "Everybody goes inside and stops spreading" is not
| something that is unique to a variant of concern.
|
| When everybody goes inside, all the variants stop
| spreading. The pressure is the same on every variants, so
| there's no source of evolutionary advantages on any
| variants.
| skulk wrote:
| > no source of evolutionary advantages on any variants.
|
| Any variant that is able to co-exist with (rather than
| kill) its host during a full lockdown has a significant
| advantage. We co-exist with several coronaviruses
| already.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's like the "invisible hand" or the "selfish gene" -
| just an analogy.
| random314 wrote:
| The lockdown prevents severe mutations from replicating
| because of lockdowns. Milder mutations don't result in
| lockdowns hence ...
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's true on an individual level too: someone who is very
| sick will stay at home, but someone with a mild head cold
| will still go out.
|
| There's going to be a negative correlation between
| severity and something like "velocity" of infected
| persons.
| lovecg wrote:
| But has this been true in practice? Was any variant
| successfully stopped with lockdowns? I suppose
| hypothetically if there's a new strain with like a 10%
| fatality rate there will be new extreme measures where
| that could be the case, but it hasn't happened yet. Even
| the extreme early 2020 measures failed to stop the virus.
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| > Was any variant successfully stopped with lockdowns?
|
| Statstically speaking, almost surely yes: with millions
| of infections there are thousands of variants, _every
| day_. If somebody was prevented from infecting somebody
| with _their_ variant (as patient 0) technically we
| stopped variants with lockdown. Maybe they more favorable
| for us, maybe they were more dangerous from us.
| lb0 wrote:
| Which lockdowns in our hemisphere had the goal of
| stopping the virus? All I know about (or have been part
| of) never stated that goal, only goal was to break waves
| and avoid overload of health care systems, which most at
| least helped with.
|
| And then it goes on because measures are reduced, and
| zero-covid never was a goal... would even go so far that
| some few countries pretty successfully did zero-covid
| strategies and stopped their virus, though sure, that is
| a pretty futile thing if the world is not "globally"
| doing this and you are likely not isolating
| forever/completely - so we just start to live with it.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Or do lockdowns just prolong the inevitable?
| [deleted]
| alliao wrote:
| I once hoped a lesser severe but a more transmissible variant
| would win, but then I don't think HIV did or at least within my
| life time.
| shtopointo wrote:
| Not an expert, but from hearing about it from various sources:
|
| As viruses evolve they generally have 2 paths of evolution -
| they either become more deadly, or more contagious.
|
| The ones that become more deadly will kill the host quicker,
| and so won't have enough time to spread to others.
|
| The ones that become more contagious are by definition weaker,
| they will spread to more people, but the effects will be
| milder.
|
| There are some theories to suggest that pandemics (like the
| Spanish flu) ended because the virus eventually mutated to a
| milder, more contagious form.
| clashmoore wrote:
| I can't find the excerpt, but I read "The Great Influenza: The
| Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History" by John M. Barry
| during this pandemic. It was an okay read if you're looking for
| something to pass the time.
|
| There was a passage that suggested that virus evolutions
| happens all the time which sometimes gives us a super severe
| strain. But usually these super sever strains don't evolve into
| even more severe strains - generally they evolve back towards
| the "baseline" severity and the severe strain burns itself out.
|
| From that, I had hope that the Delta variant of COVID was one
| of these outlier super severe strains and that all subsequent
| evolutions would fall back but it's not looking like that is
| the case when omicron was found.
| julianozen wrote:
| I am not a professional.
|
| I have been basing a lot of my virus information from Tomas
| Pueyo. Here is my source:
|
| https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-omicron-qu...
|
| In this article he clarified that generally viruses that spread
| more are less severe (as killing the host makes it tougher to
| spread). The asymptotic nature of Covid sort of broke this
| assumption because Covid can lie dormant in someone for a week
| before the person shows severe illness
| sjwalter wrote:
| Asymptomatic spread is not nearly as prevalent as originally
| feared.
|
| Also, those who do not get symptoms (that is, most who catch
| covid) do not spread the virus in general, which is why it's
| now called "presymptomatic" spread.
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| Yeah, technically a variant who lies dormant for a long time
| while spreading slowly is a better fit than one that is
| noticed.
|
| Didn't we learn anything from Plague Inc?
| tbihl wrote:
| >In this article he clarified that generally viruses that
| spread more are less severe (as killing the host makes it
| tougher to spread).
|
| It takes far less than death to reduce spread. People who
| feel sick stay home from work (not guaranteed, but with
| enough frequency that it matters), don't go out to eat, don't
| wander around and go to parties, and so on. Any time they're
| sitting home, they've hurt the chances that their variant is
| the winning-est variant.
|
| Again with the caveat about dormancy periods for Covid.
| wayfarer1291 wrote:
| Not necessarily. Smallpox was around for a very long time till
| we vaccinated our way out of it. Same with polio.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| From what I know as not being a professional doctor, I would
| say that it _appears_ to me that viruses get less dangerous
| over time, not more dangerous. This _appears_ to be because
| viruses that are overly dangerous kill off their hosts too
| quickly, limiting their ability to spread, whereas the milder
| forms don 't kill their hosts as easily and spread more
| broadly, building immunity against the stronger variants over
| time.
|
| Edit: The result of this, if you look at previous diseases that
| have plagued humanity (see Black Death), is a high initial
| death count when the virus breaks out, but the death rate
| declines as the milder variants spread and people survive them,
| building immunity to stronger versions, until eventually the
| virus mostly disappears.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's not something you can count on; smallpox remained highly
| lethal across thousands of years. There's probably also a bit
| of an element of natural selection against _humans_ involved;
| the people who died early of the Black Death may have been
| genetically more susceptible to it.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| I've heard that it depends on the virus. Some become less
| severe as they become more contagious, but sometimes their
| severity stays the same.
|
| Naively, you'd think selection pressure would decrease
| severity, because severity is not how viruses spread. However,
| if (some of) the same mechanisms that ar causing the virus to
| spread better are also responsible for (some of) its severity,
| then things may not really get better over time --unless our
| immune systems themselves adapt, but that generally requires a
| first infection...
| [deleted]
| exabrial wrote:
| IIRC, this was predicted, which is hopeful and good thing. I
| remember reading an article last summer that generally diseases
| become less severe over time.
| simonh wrote:
| Generally, statistically yes, but not always. Most of the
| people that died in the Spanish Flu epidemic died in the second
| wave, a year after the first. A couple of years after that and
| less dangerous variants came to dominate but there was huge
| devastation before that came about.
| tbihl wrote:
| >but not always
|
| Nonetheless, in your example it did. At extreme cost, though
| that was already understood when you said Spanish Flu.
| simonh wrote:
| Yes long term, I'm just making the point that it can swing
| the other way for significant periods of time along the
| way.
| loourr wrote:
| Yes. Covid will continue to mutate to become more contagious and
| less deadly. This is the natural progression of endemic viruses,
| they don't want to kill their hosts and they want to spread.
| [deleted]
| the-dude wrote:
| Viruses have no agency, will or desires.
| mrkstu wrote:
| The one imperative they do have, in effect, is to replicate.
| That imperative translates into the real world into analogues
| of action that replicate to equivalent observable effects.
| lambdaba wrote:
| This kind of anthropomorphism is acceptable, it's not like
| the poster doesn't understand how evolution works... I'm
| pretty sure "experts" have used the phrase as well. The gist
| of the comment is correct though.
| the-dude wrote:
| A variant could emerge which is more contagious and more
| deadly.
| [deleted]
| jjk166 wrote:
| "Want" in this case is clearly understood to mean the option
| that is evolutionarily favorable.
|
| Per this site's guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest
| plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker
| one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| By the time people die of covid they've already spread the
| virus. Generally by the time people die they've cleared the
| virus. It's the inflammatory response that kills them. There's
| really no evolutionary pressure for covid to become less
| virulent since people can spread it prior to being symptomatic.
| minitoar wrote:
| There absolutely is pressure because you spread it for longer
| & to more people if you're not horribly symptomatic or dead.
| JudasGoat wrote:
| I am going to go against the grain here and ask someone more
| knowledgeable than myself if the large number of changes in this
| variant is typical in virus evolution? Because as an outsider, it
| appears to me that studying the history of past pandemics would
| present a road map as to what must be modified to attenuate the
| damage potential in a virus. I suppose my question really is, why
| are we chancing GOF research, if not to use in this situation?
| cknoxrun wrote:
| Your question caused a likely ludicrous and unoriginal idea to
| pop into my head - I wonder if it would be possible to
| purposefully engineer and release a mutated form of a virus
| like SARS-CoV-2 that demonstrates the ability to replace more
| dangerous strains, but causes only mild symptoms? Essentially
| to accelerate a process that we hope to see happen naturally.
| wonnage wrote:
| Influenza viruses mutate enough to require new vaccines every
| year, coronaviruses tend to mutate less frequently but this is
| offset by the number of hosts with Covid
| beebmam wrote:
| There are currently trials in the US for a universal
| influenza vaccine which will counter most possible mutations
| of the influenza virus: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-
| releases/nih-launches-c...
| beebmam wrote:
| Thank you for your question.
|
| There are virologists and immunologists currently exploring the
| mutation-space of SARS-CoV-2 for nearly all potential mutations
| that produce a viable virus capable of infecting human cells.
| Based on that mutation-space, they're trying to determine if a
| vaccine regime can exist which can counter all possible
| mutations of SARS-CoV-2. So far, it looks like it's possible.
|
| Here's a presentation about the work being done at the Howard
| Hughes Medical Institute about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIcaSqQFrX0
| eadmund wrote:
| > There are virologists and immunologists currently exploring
| the mutation-space of SARS-CoV-2 for nearly all potential
| mutations that produce a viable virus capable of infecting
| human cells. Based on that mutation-space, they're trying to
| determine if a vaccine regime can exist which can counter all
| possible mutations of SARS-CoV-2. So far, it looks like it's
| possible.
|
| Well, that would be just awesome! Any chance for similar pan-
| effective vaccines for other viruses?
|
| It would be pretty cool if COVID-19 ended up having the
| silver lining of enabling a step-function improvement in
| vaccine technology.
| Sitio wrote:
| What do you mean by studying past pandemics?
|
| We did not had that many and I'm not sure but I assume COVID is
| one of the most studied ones.
|
| Due to our modern technology and the high capital damage.
|
| Certain predictions were expected through pref pandemics like
| expecting COVID becoming 'normal' like the common cold.
| AustinDev wrote:
| What I'm curious about is if the "leaky" vaccines are actually
| the cause for the amount of mutation we've seen in Covid in 2
| years. Variants seemed to accelerate after vaccine rollout
| began but, I'm not remotely qualified to say they're related.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| It doesn't seem likely. Vaccines were mostly rolled out in
| the west (read: United States), whereas the initial variants
| (alpha and delta) were a result of COVID proliferation in
| unvaccinated areas. Delta, for example, first really blew up
| in India.
|
| It is important to not forget the little details, and to
| avoid speculations based on broad statements (e.g. the
| vaccines "rolled out" and we got "more variants"). The
| vaccines started rolling out to very specific locations and
| we got variants everywhere.
| [deleted]
| stef25 wrote:
| Is the "less severe" part just from a roll of the dice? I wonder
| what's the likelihood of something more severe / extremely severe
| appearing in the next few years. Be it a variant of Covid, or
| something new altogether.
|
| That should be the main take-away from this whole thing ... there
| needs to better healthcare, even in the "strongest" of countries.
| A comment here a few days ago really drove that point home.
| Germany, the EU powerhouse with 80 million people is on its knees
| (lockdowns again, despite good vaccination rates) because it
| can't handle a few thousand individuals needing ICU beds. That's
| just unacceptable. Until now we've been pretty lucky but that
| luck might run out soon.
| 323 wrote:
| > _I wonder what 's the likelihood of something more severe /
| extremely severe appearing in the next few years_
|
| We already know one such thing - bird flu (H5N1 - 50%
| mortality). Luckily it doesn't pass from one human to another.
| But scientists already built a version that presumably can
| (gain-of-function):
|
| > _(2019) Controversial lab studies that modify bird flu
| viruses in ways that could make them more risky to humans will
| soon resume after being on hold for more than 4 years.
| ScienceInsider has learned that last year, a U.S. government
| review panel quietly approved experiments proposed by two labs
| that were previously considered so dangerous that federal
| officials had imposed an unusual top-down moratorium on such
| research._
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-controvers...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Omicron is an evolution in the spike, which is what the mRNA
| exclusively focused on (and assumed would not evolve).
|
| That's why the mRNA vaccines aren't super effective for it.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Missing link to the original research (not in the article):
| https://discovery-holdings-ltd.mynewsdesk.com/pressreleases/...
| vmception wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do we really require these studies? Like it is
| good to have more and more sources, but wouldn't the expected
| outcome to be the following:
|
| - vaccines that replicated the spike protein will be less
| effective since omicron has a modified spike protein, because the
| immune system only was trained to notice the spike protein and
| not the payload
|
| - naturally induced immunity from prior exposure to Sars-Cov-2
| will be more effective because the body made immunity to the
| payload alongside the total viral shape
| SergeAx wrote:
| Yes, we need to know how severe the illness from this variant
| is.
|
| It was never a question of transmission. When we got news from
| Norway where 120 vaccinated negative tested people came into
| the restaurant for a couple of hours and at least 60 of them
| came out with positive omicron test - it became clear that we
| are fucked. Also, news from South Africa, where two people were
| quarantined in a hotel their rooms was across the corridor, and
| virus got from one to another, despite they never get out, just
| opened the door to take food and make tests.
|
| So it looks like everybody will have this variant in the next
| year, except maybe people in distant places. The question was
| how many will get seriously sick and how many of them will die.
| Looks like numbers will be lower than expected.
| vmception wrote:
| Also meaning natural immunity faster, hopefully an
| underwhelming hospital load.
|
| Someone needs to check if masks and cloths over nose and face
| still have moderate effectiveness in densely populated areas.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Do you really need to check the safety on your gun if you
| expect that it's on?
| fabian2k wrote:
| The data on severity is still difficult to transfer across
| countries. What seems reasonably certain is that vaccinations and
| previous infections do protect reasonably well against
| hospitalization and death. It is still not clear how the
| unvaccinated and not infected will fare.
|
| And the speed of this variant is enormous. We're seeing a
| doubling time between 2 to 3 days in several countries like
| Denmark or the UK. That is far faster than any previous variant.
| peteradio wrote:
| You gotta be careful with those doubling times. Is that due to
| the raw number of tests being done increasing substantially? If
| it is unnormalized raw reported numbers then they can't exactly
| be used to infer the doubling time without more information. I
| know this is something everyone must know by now, but you will
| still see incorrect comparisons in media.
| jollybean wrote:
| The 'big flaw' in the SA observations lie in in the fact that
| they have _huge_ seropositivity rates, I believe well over >50%
| of the population has had COVID, many of them contracted multiple
| strains. And - they've had quite a lot of people die already from
| it.
|
| So that Omicron is not hugely lethal among a population with
| 'natural' tolerance and where a good swath of the ill have been
| killed ... is maybe not so surprising.
|
| Maybe there is a good answer to this but the SA reports I have
| seen don't seem to directly speak to this issue.
|
| FYI CDC's seroprevelance data for SA [1]
|
| [1] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/12/21-1465_article
| cryptonector wrote:
| So... who cares? Seriously, if it's no worse than a cold, can we
| please stop talking about vaccination for it?
| hollowcelery wrote:
| The article doesn't say that it's no worse than a cold. In
| fact, all signs show that it can be worse than a common cold.
| This is a non-sequitur.
| 34679 wrote:
| Omicron has been found in 38 countries and there are still no
| deaths caused by it. [1] The media are running with the story
| that the first death from Omicron just happened in the UK, but
| read Boris Johnson's quote:
|
| "Sadly at least one patient has now been confirmed to have died
| with Omicron," Johnson told reporters [2]
|
| This sounds batshit crazy, because it is, but in the UK, if you
| die from something unrelated while infected with SARS-COV-2, it's
| counted as a COVID death. [3] The key word in Boris' announcement
| is "with".
|
| 1: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-york-becomes-
| fo...
|
| 2: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-says-omicron-
| spread...
|
| 3: https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2020/08/12/behind-the-headlines-
| co...
| panarky wrote:
| Do you have a source that says covid did not contribute to the
| death of the UK patient?
| 34679 wrote:
| Just the quote that says "with" instead of "from" until the
| data is released.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I love how we often assume every single word someone says
| is carefully chosen to 100% reflect what one wants to
| communicate.
| the_doctah wrote:
| For press releases like this, they damn well should be.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > "Sadly at least one patient has now been confirmed to
| have died with Omicron," Johnson told reporters at a
| vaccination centre in London.
|
| This wasn't a press release fyi.
| tannisphere4 wrote:
| Before that data point resolves itself, remember that n=1
| doesn't really support either meta-narrative. Not saying you
| are doing this, but I'm sure there are many who are preparing
| to both sharpen this data into a spear for the "other side",
| and at the same time, preparing a cognitive dissonance
| process to explain the data should it not support their meta-
| narrative.
|
| The end result is discussion that advance little in the
| Shannon information sense, but maximally clarify every
| individuals social net.
| tyrfing wrote:
| It won't be reported as an Omicron death unless it is
| sequenced, which excludes a vast amount of cases and lags cases
| by up to 2 weeks.
|
| Initially reported Omicron cases in the US predate knowledge of
| Omicron, confirmed cases are from November, and today's story
| of 13% of samples in Washington state likely being Omicron is
| based on test data from a week ago.
|
| 0 or 1 deaths being reported so far as caused by Omicron is
| still consistent with "Omicron is roughly as bad as previous
| strains, and will result in a lot of excess deaths."
| 015a wrote:
| This is an unfortunate reality of this pandemic; the vast
| majority of deaths, even with Delta and the OG, were among
| those people with pre-existing conditions, including the most
| common: obesity and related disorders like type-2 diabetes.
|
| I think Boris' statement is accurate, but you're right; our
| reaction to it needs to be taken in context. The media and
| government will talk non-stop about vaccination and treatments,
| which are incredibly important due to the _reality_ of the
| pandemic, today. But, mentioning weight, eating healthier,
| exercising, critically analyzing your own risk factors (with
| the help of a doctor), etc; out of the question.
|
| I wish I could scream at our leftist leadership right now:
| Managing fear is wildly important. Every spectrum has extremes.
| On the extreme right we have vaccine denialists; that's
| unhealthy. But on the extreme left, we have the opposite [1];
| people who are so afraid of this thing they can barely live
| their daily lives, people who isolate, become depressed, and
| even kids who are so impacted by at-home learning and impaired
| social lives they commit suicide. That's blood; the rightwing
| media and government leaders spill the blood of people who
| won't get vaccinated, and the leftwing media and government
| spills the blood of people so caught up in the fear of this
| thing they neglect their own mental and socioeconomic health.
|
| A (leftist) friend just told me three days ago: "Every other
| human is a threat."
|
| At this point, we need to heal. Vaccinations, treatments;
| absolutely. But far more importantly, we gotta put COVID behind
| us, even if its still here. That responsibility falls on the
| media and government leaders. Early in the pandemic, we
| (probably) overplayed the severity of the disease to convince
| people to isolate; we didn't know how bad it would be, so it
| was the safer, correct route. Today, I think we need to
| underplay it. Don't lie; don't obscure. But the fearmongering
| will destroy our society far faster than COVID does.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/drewtoothpaste/status/147012370236491367...
| DanBC wrote:
| > and even kids who are so impacted by at-home learning and
| impaired social lives they commit suicide.
|
| Suicide rates may rise in future, but all the available data
| says that they have not gone up yet. This is using real time
| monitoring data.
|
| > Don't lie;
|
| Quite.
| [deleted]
| kingkawn wrote:
| It remains to be seen if the reduction in severity is offset by
| the increase in infectiousness.
|
| Just as an example, if a new virus is only 1/2 as deadly but 3x
| as infectious the mortality rate would climb by 50%.
| zzzeek wrote:
| cue the "it's just the flu!" army.
|
| on this end, I do not want covid at all, straight up. I will keep
| wearing my N95 to all the dirty looks I keep getting and boost as
| much as the boosts are there.
| tannisphere4 wrote:
| But would you also engage in these behaviors if you couldn't go
| online and A) project action onto an "army" that neither exists
| or has occurred; and B) gain social prestige by allying with a
| dominant narrative?
|
| The question isn't intended to be rude, or suggesting your
| motives are tarnished. Just a query into the extent online
| projection (and presumptions about it) affect our choices. Note
| also that I am distinguishing between your stated choices and
| the choices themselves.
| mitigating wrote:
| Since zzzeek is an online identity, how much social prestige
| is he getting? Does he direct other people to posts that he
| wears a mask?
|
| Maybe on Facebook where people often use their real name I
| could see that as a possible motive but here?
|
| Why is it so hard to think that people who disagree with you
| about masks are wearing them because they want to be safe? I
| wonder if the divide and anger is because each side believes
| the other is taking action to make a point and nothing else.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| > I will keep wearing my N95 to all the dirty looks I keep
| getting and boost as much as the boosts are there.
|
| The masks have never been about protecting yourself but have at
| it. I don't care what you do just stop forcing your attitude on
| everyone else. At this point you're just trying to make a
| statement, not protect anyone.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Cloth masks are somewhat effective at protecting those around
| you, but only slightly effective at protecting you; masks
| like the N95 do both quite effectively, if you wear them
| properly.
| listless wrote:
| I think you should plan on getting it at some point. That's
| what endemic means and that's where we are. You're just
| prolonging the inevitable.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Prolonging the inevitable" still has a benefit for hospital
| capacity. If every uninfected person went and got it
| tomorrow, it wouldn't be pretty.
|
| I'm still wearing my KN95 to busy indoor places in part
| because it's been nice not getting colds/flus for the last
| two years, too.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I can still remember my boss telling people with a cold to
| take a DayQuil and power through their workday.
|
| I really hope that mentality never comes back.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It never went away if you were a non-exempt employee.
| tgv wrote:
| That would not have been a particularly good advice in times
| of polio.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| People probably fear being paralyzed more than they fear
| death.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Neither are particularly desirable.
| ianhawes wrote:
| I would advise receiving the vaccine and follow-up boosters.
| That way, when you inevitably contract COVID-19, your risk of
| death is unlikely.
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