[HN Gopher] South Africa's omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides...
___________________________________________________________________
South Africa's omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it
grew
Author : kyle_morris_
Score : 214 points
Date : 2021-12-22 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| collaborative wrote:
| I became alarmed about covid since it first appeared in Wuhan,
| but these days I am more alarmed about people I meet saying that
| the unvaccinated shouldn't be admitted to hospital, etc
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's Farr's Law in action.
|
| "Farr's laws is a law formulated by Dr. William Farr when he made
| the observation that epidemic events rise and fall in a roughly
| symmetrical pattern. The time-evolution behavior could be
| captured by a single mathematical formula that could be
| approximated by a bell-shaped curve."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farr's_laws
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Why is there not an official WHO site? I don't want to know about
| things from news agencies with an agenda - I want a horses mouth
| facts.
| dehrmann wrote:
| You don't think the WHO has an agenda?
| GoatHerders2 wrote:
| phnofive wrote:
| https://archive.md/WJXml
| galgalesh wrote:
| After opening this url on my phone, it waits three seconds and
| then shows me a scam ad scaring me into purchasing a fake
| android cleaner app.
| codazoda wrote:
| Same for me. Full page add, no way to close.
| mdoms wrote:
| Ok I know it's off topic but I have got to ask, what is up with
| archive.md links? I have never in my life successfully loaded
| an archive.md URL. I either get straight up DNS errors or very
| occasionally I see a spinner that never finishes loading. Yet
| they must work for others because they're constantly being
| posted here.
| executive wrote:
| Cloudflare DNS blocks
| mdoms wrote:
| Huh. Any idea why?
| willhinsa wrote:
| You can read about their reasoning here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
|
| Posted by
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eastdakota, whose
| profile reads:
|
| > A little bit geek, wonk, and nerd. Repeat entrepreneur,
| recovering lawyer and former ski instructor. CEO & co-
| founder of CloudFlare. [ my public key:
| https://keybase.io/eastdakota; my proof: https://keybase.
| io/eastdakota/sigs/_uDY0ZsLTEWaNu5daRtuwzZtJ... ]
| majkinetor wrote:
| Why would it do that FFS ?
| stavros wrote:
| It doesn't/its complicated.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Cloudflare doesn't block them, Archive.is intentionally
| refuses to resolve DNS queries from 1.1.1.1 due to lack
| of geo information. See explanation here:
| https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
| forgotmyoldacc wrote:
| The website blocks Cloudflare DNS, not the other way
| around.
| jffry wrote:
| That's untrue, you can see Cloudflare's explanation here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
|
| Short version: The Archive.is authoritative DNS servers do
| not give correct addresses to Cloudflare when Cloudflare
| asks for them
| [deleted]
| benjiweber wrote:
| Maybe you're using cloudflare dns?
| https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
| error-1001/182...
| Bellamy wrote:
| Can someone explain in English what is going on here?
|
| I thought I understand DNS but I guess I don't.
| ianai wrote:
| For Cloudflare DNS servers the archive.md DNS server
| tells them the URL is not configured. It's configured to
| change according to which DNS server queries it by
| location/IP. It's not something Cloudflare can fix
| unilaterally. (or something like that)
|
| edit: elsewhere linked is an explanation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
| mdoms wrote:
| I am, on all of my devices. Interesting.
| toxik wrote:
| A great example of why you as a techie should be using
| your own recursive resolver.
| majkinetor wrote:
| I wish we have archive.md automatic for each post...
| yosito wrote:
| They usually help with sites that go down under a heavy
| traffic load, or that have a paywall.
| [deleted]
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Are you using Cloudflare DNS? The archive.is owners
| intentionally block it. It's occasionally blocked at the ISP
| level too.
| TaylorSwift wrote:
| Does anyone have insights/thoughts as to the implications of this
| variant growing as fast as it subsides? Does that mean a new
| variant will emerge which will be more/less infectious or
| more/less deadly?
| randomopining wrote:
| Virus just wants to replicate and spread as much as possible.
| Sometimes the side effect of this is death etc.
|
| If this one spreads super fast, has generally more mild
| effects... it will ramp up faster, infect all, and may get more
| severe so that it can last longer in the host and spread more.
|
| But the combo of high infectiousness and more mild side effects
| might be a net negative for this one. If we get a good amount
| of herd immunity, it may be a few weeks of heavy spread and
| then very little.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Viruses don't "want", anthropomorphizing COVID like media
| headlines do is a bit of a "language virus" in and of itself
| that makes global understanding of what's going on more
| difficult. AFAIK the virus mutates randomly, and we just see
| more of the more infectious and less deathly (in the short
| and mid-term) variants because those are the ones that spread
| faster and successfully among humans, but attributing even
| collective behavior to COVID, like to an ant colony, is too
| liberal of a use of our imagination.
| randomopining wrote:
| Classic HN response spending an entire paragraph to disect
| how I used the word "want" even though it's obvious that I
| meant "to achieve their goal of maximizing proliferation".
| postalrat wrote:
| Brain cells don't "want" either.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Nope but we can attribute properties to a group of brain
| cells that we can call a "human" the property of
| "wanting" without implanting incorrect analogies that, so
| far and according to our understanding of consciousness,
| don't impair the collective spread of the best knowledge
| we have about how "human" works. If you really literally
| think COVID wants something you are probably delusional
| or your understanding of what's a virus is like below
| high-school level.
| babyshake wrote:
| Is it not reasonable to use the word "want" in reference to
| natural selection tending to optimize for something?
| pvarangot wrote:
| Hmm, good question. I guess I can go full pedantic on
| this because it's HN but probably on any other social
| setting this exposition would drain everyones vital life
| and just fuel my autistic dissociation until I have no
| idea where I am anymore.
|
| Giving "natural selection" as a force the capacity to
| "want" is probably less controversial that saying that a
| virus "wants". For example if you are a religious
| evolutionary biologist you can think that natural
| selection is an entity that makes some kind of conscious
| decisions that may appear random to us only because we
| don't understand them. I don't think that believing that
| will hamper your ability to actually understand natural
| selection as much as any other scientist, specially if
| you go by the Roman Catholic tenet of unquestionable
| faith in unsolvable misteries.
|
| If you go by the more neutral terms used in evolutionary
| science I think natural selection is more of a process
| than a system or force and then it "wanting" things is
| also anthropomorphism.
|
| My personal line for when anthropomorphism is tolerable
| and when it's not is when as an analogy it can make you
| come to dangerous conclusions. For example "oh COVID
| wants to mutate, we should just let it mutate because
| when you give something what it wants it will usually
| leave you alone" or stuff like that.
| alliao wrote:
| super fast spread even with milder effects will still meant
| overwhelming healthcare capacity let's not even go near the
| notion that more infection means brewing more variants we've
| never entertained herd immunity for polio, why covid..
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not necessarily. The load that the healthcare systems must
| carry depends not just on the absolute number of cases, but
| also on how long the average stay in hospital _is_. Think
| of it as IT notorious "man-days", in this case "patient-
| days".
|
| If the infection is milder across the board, hospital stays
| will be shorter on average. People will improve faster and
| will be discharged sooner.
|
| 500 people who on average need 3 days of hospitalization
| are less of a load than 200 people who on average need 10
| days of hospitalization - unless those 500 arrive at the
| same time, of course.
| snet0 wrote:
| It only means overwhelmed healthcare if the
| hospitalisation/requirement for healthcare rate is high
| enough.
|
| If this variant is 5x more infectious, but 5x less likely
| to result in hospitalisation, the net effect on healthcare
| resources should remain level, no?
| jakeinspace wrote:
| No, there is no formula quite that simple while we're
| still in the transient, exponential growth stage for
| omicron. 5x transmissibility can lead to single-day
| infections much greater than past peaks. If omicron does
| cause a disaster in the US and other western countries,
| it will probably be due to a short (2-3 week) window of
| insanely high daily case rates, leading to very high
| daily hospitalization/ICU requirements. If the US hits
| let's say 1M confirmed cases/day for example (3x the peak
| last winter), with a daily demand for beds (non-icu) of
| ~25k, things would get very bad in urban centers. The
| combo of exponential growth and localized hospital
| resource constraints means that what would seem at face
| value to be an even tradeoff of transmissibility for
| lethality is not so simple.
|
| Omicron might be a blessing in disguise, but there is a
| very bad plausible outcome for the coming month.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Not if you factor time into that math. 5x more infectious
| on the first cycle means just 5 times the infections, and
| equal hospitalizations, but the next cycle all of those
| 5x the number of people spread it again to 5x the number
| of people. So even though it's 5x milder, you've still
| got 5x the people showing up in the hospital. It gets
| worse and worse the more cycles you go. 25x in hospital,
| 125x in hospital, etc. You run into mitigating factors in
| real life, as the entire population is consumed, but
| that's a super steep slope comparative to the baseline.
| GDC7 wrote:
| alliao wrote:
| people who have families working in healthcare would beg
| otherwise
| catillac wrote:
| More than five million probable died from Covid, the vast
| majority since summer 2020. The pandemic isn't over because
| someone decided it was. This person's comment is asinine.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > The pandemic isn't over because someone decided it was.
|
| Doesn't matter. The virus has nothing to do with how
| humans react to it. The virus didn't tell us to shut
| everything up and hunker down for 2 years. We could
| decide to move on tomorrow if we chose. Many places moved
| on almost a year ago with very little repercussions.
| GDC7 wrote:
| woodruffw wrote:
| Telling people that the deaths of their loved ones are
| "meaningless" is not a very convincing argumentative
| tack.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Let's look at years of life lost, then, shall we?
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3
|
| > YLL in heavily affected countries are 2-9 times the
| average seasonal influenza
|
| And that is after all the societal changes to deal with
| the disease.
|
| I personally think that YLL of 2-9x the flu _after_
| mitigations clearly justified the mitigations.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I personally think that YLL of 2-9x the flu after
| mitigations clearly justified the mitigations
|
| To properly debate this claim we need to know (1) the
| baseline -- how many YLLs are caused by flu?, and (2) how
| many YLLs were _saved_ by the mitigations. (Would we have
| had 2x more Covid deaths without them? 10x? 1.1x?)
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's fascinating to me that a multiple of 2-9x the median
| flu in YLL (after mitigations) in only a few countries
| "clearly justifies" the quite disruptive mitigations. I
| look at the same measures (and I'm implicitly estimating
| that the non-vaccine mitigations were around 50%
| effective) and conclude that the mitigations [excluding
| vaccines] were, in retrospect, probably not justified for
| as long and as impactful as they were on daily routines.
|
| They were (IMO) justified early on when vaccines were not
| available and when we knew a lot less about the effective
| treatment regimens.
|
| Imagine a reliable oracle tells you: "The flu season in
| 2025 will be 10x as bad as the typical flu season." Is
| that cause to shut down restaurants, bars, close offices,
| schools, and universities, shutdown borders, etc, etc.
| for 12 months to make it only 5x as bad? For me, that's
| cause to make sure I get the flu vaccine that year, wash
| my hands a little more, not go to work if I'm ill, and
| pet my dog.
|
| Some jackass tried unsuccessfully to light his shoes on
| fire and 20 years later we're still taking our shoes off
| at the airport. I hope we have a more threat-appropriate
| response over the long-run here.
| GDC7 wrote:
| They disclose a bias: "Those dying from COVID-19 may be
| an at-risk population whose remaining life expectancy is
| shorter than the average person's remaining life
| expectancy"
| wefarrell wrote:
| I don't know if it's possible to assess the infectiousness and
| deadliness in isolation from the collective social immunity.
|
| Each wave is less deadly because: a) we're getting better at
| treating it b) the most vulnerable populations have been killed
| off in previous waves. c) through vaccination and prior
| infections our individual immune systems are primed to deal
| with it.
| Marazan wrote:
| For anyone who wants to look at the raw data then you can find it
| here
|
| https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covi...
|
| This is direct from the SA government including archives of all
| the daily data for the duration of the pandemic.
|
| Pay attention to the data lag. But it isn't _that_ laggy.
| wehnsdaefflae wrote:
| Paywalled
| softwaredoug wrote:
| It seems likely that the US would still see waves over much of
| the winter.
|
| South Africa has a population of about 60 million, fairly dense
| compared to the US. Compared to the US, their spike and fall
| would be expected to come on faster (and drop faster). The US is
| more spread out but with many more people. So its great to know
| that local spikes would come and go fast, it still is a very
| acute strain likely to be spread over months as it travels around
| the country.
| [deleted]
| gentleman11 wrote:
| There was a brief spike in daily new cases that was extremely
| high, then it lowered. It will take more than a day or two to
| know if it is truly subsiding as fast as it's growing, and what
| the meaning of that spike was, so this seems premature.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-afri...
| yosito wrote:
| I read this news a week ago, so I think it's already been more
| than a day or two.
| destitude wrote:
| "case counts" are also a really bad way for measuring. Media
| likes to use it because they love sensationalizing things but
| if we already know this is a "mild" variant with little to no
| increase in hospitalizations then using "case counts" is really
| poor unit of measurement.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| All the reports about how severe omicron is say they are
| preliminary. It's just more jumping of the gun by news
| agencies. We'll know more in a week or two
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Media reports about case counts are useful because they
| precede hospitalizations by days or weeks. This allows the
| risk averse to modify their behavior sooner.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I've been tanking some downvotes for the past few days for saying
| this. Disease spread is only exponential for a brief initial
| period. It is not a good mental or even general model for how
| disease spreads. We have two years of observational covid data
| that shows this to be true.
|
| Spread slows down rapidly long before reaching 100%. People hear
| "5x as infectious" and reason that due to the nature of
| exponential models, that much more than 5x people will be
| infected. This is extremely incorrect. In truth, far fewer than
| 5x people will be infected over the long term. And again, no,
| this is not because it's hitting the upper limits of 100% of the
| population or anywhere near that.
|
| I won't be so bold as to say it's probable, but given this is not
| a novel virus, it's entirely believable to say that omicron could
| go on to infect fewer people than delta due to the past two years
| of vaccination and immunity and die off. Presuming data about
| lower severity holds, it would be surprising to me if
| hospitalization or deaths aren't noticeably lower than delta;
| which, in turn, was noticeably lower than the original.
| joshocar wrote:
| What about the population of the unvaccinated? What percentage
| should we expect of the unvaccinated to get omicron given how
| contagious it is?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| It depends on many things and will vary wildly by geography.
| I'm not suggesting this is a population level trend one can
| safely piggyback on, unvaccinated. If you are unvaccinated in
| a community with spread, your odds of getting it are likely
| comparable, plausibly higher, to previous periods.
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's a bit silly to go "it's less severe" based on death
| statistics when after two years of Corona waves, there are
| plain less individuals around for it to kill.
| dnautics wrote:
| no viral infection happens in a vaccuum. Each year's seasonal
| and nonseasonal flu comes on the backs of years of "less
| people" for it to kill, and people who have gained immune
| responses to any of its closest relatives, and people who
| have been immunized, and even humans who have been culled by
| similar viruses milennia ago during migratory bottlenecks.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Death of the vulnerable is a thing, which I referenced, but
| it's a relatively minor factor compared to vaccinations and
| immunity build up from past infections. Most people who would
| die from covid if they caught it did not catch it.
|
| I think it's a bit silly to fixate on the base stats of the
| virus rather than it's actually efficacy against the human
| population.
| midasuni wrote:
| The problem is by the time you see the effect
| (hospitilations) it's too late to do anything about it.
| It's like driving with a 20 second lag in your vision.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| There is a lot to unpack but I doubt you are as right as you
| think you are. For instance in new variant outbreaks there ate
| usually harsher responses than for known variant outbreaks, so
| it is very difficult to identity the real infectivity.
|
| But more importantly it's well established that diseases that
| those diseases spread most widely that _don 't_ kill rapidly
| (or that more generally don't have severe symptoms) and that
| have a longer period between the start of infectivity (=
| shortly after infection) and the onset of identifiable
| symptoms. So you would indeed anticipate that any disease that
| runs sufficiently long in the population becomes more mild and
| has a later onset of symptoms as variants with these features
| outcompete thr others.
|
| In other words: it is _expected_ that covid mutates over time
| to become more mild _on average_. But that doesn 't mean that
| everyone survives. Infection rates in many countries are higher
| than ever, which even if the % of severe cases is lower than
| with other variants, delta and omicron will still kill and have
| severe long-term effects on many.
| pg314 wrote:
| Covid-19 doesn't kill rapidly, so there is no pressure for it
| to mutate to become milder.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| The milder it gets, the less noticeable it is. As it gets
| less noticeable, the chance of exposure to new hosts
| increases. Seems reasonable.
| [deleted]
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I can't tell what your point is but nothing here seems to
| contradict anything I said. It's just some facts about
| diseases.
|
| I didn't say every one was going to survive omicron. I said
| the spread was unlikely to be materially higher than its
| predecessor and likely have a lower negative impact.
|
| A disease that spreads twice as fast is unlikely to infect
| twice as many people (over the long term). A disease that
| causes fewer adverse effects, let's say half as often, needs
| to, by definition, infect twice as many people over the long
| run in order to cause the same amount of harm.
|
| As a dumb mental model, if omicron is 30% less dangerous,
| then omicron needs to infect 42% more people to be as harmful
| to society. That is very difficult to achieve, especially
| given our collective immunity achieved so far. I would say
| there is little chance of this occurring.
| specialp wrote:
| A place where it hit exponential levels with really bad results
| is here in NY at the beginning. We had no precautions, testing,
| or vaccines in place yet, and hospitals were overwhelmed. It
| was honestly a scary time. That was where we started
| "flattening the curve". Now with vaccines available if there
| are surges and they are not literally building hospitals on
| fields like they were near me that is something we have to just
| live with. COVID will never hit 0 cases. People will still be
| hospitalized and occasionally die of COVID as was always the
| case with winter flu seasons.
|
| Now we are at the point where fully vaccinated people and
| people with immunity from a previous infection have a low rate
| of death or serious illness. People who are very old or have a
| compromised immune system should lay low and take precautions
| now and during every flu season when it spikes. Those who
| choose not to get vaccinated and die, that is still on them.
| Retric wrote:
| We are currently sitting at at total of over 800,000 COVID
| deaths in the US and 1,500 COVID deaths per day, which is
| roughly where it's been since September 1st. That's
| approximately an additional half a million dead people per
| year.
|
| So yes the vaccine has already saved million of lives, but I
| sure hope that this is not the new normal this winter or we
| are going to cross 1 million deaths fairly soon.
| akomtu wrote:
| We shouldnt forget that something like 80% of them were
| already old people with a variety of health issues.
| throwntoday wrote:
| And all of the young "healthy" people who died had
| comorbidities like obesity and diabetws or some
| congenital issues unknown to them.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| It would be surprising if we didn't cross 1 million deaths
| this winter.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| > _A place where it hit exponential levels_
|
| When have infection rates _ever_ been exponential? These
| things follow something more like S-curves and the people
| blathering hysterically about 'exponential' are only looking
| at the first part of those S-curves.
| svara wrote:
| Not sure what you're trying to say. Of course there is a
| limited pool of people to infect. And various effects can cause
| infections to spread in multiple waves even far from herd
| immunity.
|
| And yet, you can go from a few rare cases in your country to
| hospitals overflowing in a couple of weeks. That's because of
| exponential growth, obviously.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| The point is that
|
| 1) exponential growth has consistently ceased before the
| hospitals overflowed too bad
|
| 2) exponential growth confuses readers into thinking that a
| small boost in spread rate means many more will be infected.
| This isn't true because the exponential phase is brief and is
| a progression towards a ceiling defined by the graph, not an
| arbitrary period of time. Like what we are seeing in South
| Africa right now.
|
| The big problem is that people think an increase in the
| spreading rate will cause an exponentially higher number of
| infected. But it won't. The model is not appropriate.
| svara wrote:
| That's fair, yes. High exponential growth rates make the
| system much harder to control though, and will easily
| overshoot the 'set point' (maximal hospital capacity). At a
| 2-3 day doubling time that overshoot could look pretty
| drastic.
| orblivion wrote:
| If you're right, that would be disappointing, because it means
| there's less immunity gained than I was hoping, for the
| (relatively small) amount of hospitalization we've seen. And I
| (uneducated on the matter) would expect that if it's not really
| getting around that much, it would _not_ displace delta.
|
| But I've heard some claims that it already has started to
| displace Delta, though not from a source I'd feel confident
| citing. But just looking at it, if you believe the CDC estimate
| of 73% Omicron the other day, Delta must have dropped a lot
| despite it being winter. Appears like displacement happening.
| adzm wrote:
| The CDC estimate was a projection, not an actual recording of
| data.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _Presuming data about lower severity holds, it would be
| surprising to me if hospitalization or deaths aren't noticeably
| lower than delta; which, in turn, was noticeably lower than the
| original._
|
| Well, that should always be true: the people that are most at
| risk are already dead from earlier variants, and our treatments
| are light years ahead of where they were 18 months ago,
| reducing hospitalizations (and death) for everyone else.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people saying this. Again, it's not wrong
| that deaths are a factor here. But by far, FAR, the largest
| factor is vaccinations. We should acknowledge this.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, I don't think the SIR models work well in predicting the
| dynamic of waves
|
| The exponential part is easy and that works, but it's more
| complicated with isolation of the infectious, refractory
| periods, etc
| rightbyte wrote:
| I wonder how many of these increasing share variants you would
| expect to observe from just random walk. I.e. how much more
| infectious does a strain need to be to be measurable.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| This is of course true, but I'd imagine the counterargument and
| concern is that healthcare runs out of capacity well before the
| growth slows to a sub-exponential run.
| donquichotte wrote:
| Thank you. It is mind boggling to me how politicians and
| scientists (well, mostly MDs) keep talking about exponential
| growth and make horrible predictions, without realizing that
| exponential growth is never sustainable - a logistic growth is
| what often happens in reality if resources are limited.
| Talanes wrote:
| Asking politicians to not over-estimate exponential growth is
| like asking water not to be wet.
| lb0 wrote:
| Not understanding what you are both getting at ... the
| situation has maybe changed now.
|
| But before, here at least, it was repeatedly
| underestimating the in the aftermath clearly visible
| exponential growth, exactly as the r factor is calculated?
| Which scientist/MD doesn't understand there is a
| saturation, in the extreme even schoolers understand you
| cannot have more than 100% infected.
|
| Yes, at some point it is becoming logistic, but the
| previous waves were not about getting anywhere there, but
| going from 0.1% to 1% or more, and there it was truly
| exponential growth and overwhelming the health care system,
| what the start of that logistic curve is about..?!
| snth wrote:
| Isn't the usual complaint that people (politicians
| included) _under_estimate exponential growth?
| II2II wrote:
| You're right, but there are a number of factors at play here.
|
| First and foremost, we can only make predictions based upon
| the data we have. The data we have is mostly based upon
| people going for voluntary testing. Given the variability in
| symptoms that motivate testing, varying levels of awareness
| to potential exposure, varying willingness to get tested, and
| the availability of testing, the number of _known_ exposures
| will make it look like we 're in an exponential growth phase
| even when things are tapering off. It is hard to blame public
| health organizations for accepting this data at face value
| since the potential consequences of not doing so are
| extremely bleak.
|
| The other consideration is that people will modify their
| behaviour based upon perceived risk, whether or not
| restrictions are imposed. People will tend to comply with
| restrictions, go about life as normal, follow some sort of
| middle path, or impose tighter restrictions upon themselves.
| It takes a truly special person to put themselves into a
| position of greater risk. Even then, there is a good chance
| that they are doing little more than translating one high
| risk circumstance into another (more or less balancing out
| the growth). We are facing a situation where scientists can
| make predictions based upon what is known, e.g. the outcome
| of restrictions, or making predictions based upon anticipated
| behaviour. Given there is not enough data to model
| anticipated behaviour, the natural response is to rely upon
| models that use expected behaviour (e.g. compliance with
| restrictions or no response). Since the average actual
| response will prefer over compliance, more bleak predictions
| are made.
|
| Finally, everyone has a different understanding of life now
| as compared to life before the pandemic. I remember when the
| coronavirus first caught my attention: it was when major U.S.
| universities started shutting down. I remember when I first
| started taking it seriously: it was when my provincial
| government issued a shelter in place style order. Since that
| time, I have paid attention to what is happening and thinking
| about how I should respond. Sometimes it is in an acute
| manner. Sometimes is in a cursory manner. Either way, I am
| more likely to notice and respond preemptively to outbreaks.
| I suspect that many, if not most, people are the same even if
| their only actions are stocking up to prepare for the worse.
| Again, this will affect outcomes.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Won't downvote you, but I think that this is mistaken. I think
| that everyone will get omicron eventually.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| You're mistaken. There's no disease on this planet that
| infects 100% of people, even when constantly exposed. Our
| immune systems are quite amazing.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Who hasn't had a cold?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| "A cold" is not a single virus.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| And it will generate herd immunity...
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Maybe. There is a lot of reinfection/breakthroughs going on
| from alpha/delta to omicron. Does conferred immunity to
| omicron protect from alpha/delta? I don't know enough to
| say.
| snet0 wrote:
| On the subject of oversimplified exponential models, we don't
| even need covid data to know this to be true. The fact that
| there is a duration of an individual case being contagious is
| enough to make that obviously incorrect.
| svara wrote:
| That's not right, you can build a maximally simplistic SIR
| model with a finite infectious period. That will initially
| display approximately exponential growth, and slow down as
| acquired immunity increases.
| amelius wrote:
| Can you back this up with some math?
| kazinator wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_medicine:.
| ..
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Look into random graph models. Or exponential random graph
| models.
|
| Mathematical models are difficult because we don't know the
| real inputs and fitting a curve in retrospect is easy to get
| a compelling looking answer which is wrong.
|
| You can gain an intuition for it just imagining a random walk
| on a social network graph though. Just jump from friend to
| friend randomly on Facebook. Early on it is easy to spread to
| new people. Later on it's very difficult to find new people.
| You get stuck in the same cohorts.
|
| More simply just look at past covid outcomes. Or pretty much
| any epedemiological model. All of them claim only the initial
| period is exponential. It's the issue of how to determine the
| slowdown period that's tricky and frankly impossible without
| more data than we have. But assuming that the slowdown state
| will look similar to previous slowdown states is a good idea.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's an empirical observation, not the output of a
| mathematical model.
|
| The graph of human social contacts is not even close to
| uniformly random, so it makes sense that simplistic formulas
| would not work.
| analog31 wrote:
| At the start of the pandemic, when downloadable data became
| available, I started charting it every day. The curves for many
| countries were _uncannily_ exponential. Of course I knew that
| those curves had to tip over at some point, but I decided that
| I would use the exponential growth curve as a baseline and
| watch for deviations from it.
|
| I told my friends: "I'll breathe a huge sigh of relief if this
| thing turns over before it's infected most of us." In fact it's
| probably hard to speculate _why_ it turned over, but behavioral
| measures are probably an important factor.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Spread doesn't have to get close to 100% for things to get
| really bad.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Indeed. That's true. But thankfully that's not in the table,
| or anything close to it. I only bring that up because it's
| the natural conclusion of what will happen if you
| misunderstand how the exponential growth works.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Personally, I'm just waiting for the day when the 2^64th death
| happens.
| dham wrote:
| I think we should take advantage of Omicron right now and let it
| rip through the population as it's most likely less deadly. Not
| doing so could be catastrophic and lead to more deaths in the
| future if the virus mutates to be more deadly.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yes, but couldn't it also be catastrophic if 1) the virus
| mutates to be even less deadly and infectious or 2) Omicron has
| long-term, currently unseen consequences?
|
| I mean, not saying your strategy wouldn't be the better
| strategy in the end, just think it's hard to know the risk
| equation at this moment.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| This is fantastic if it happens elsewhere as well. The only
| reason I am not super pumped is because SA is in Summer, and
| we've seen that sars-cov-2 is impacted my seasonality
| HPsquared wrote:
| In hot places with widespread air conditioning there is also
| usually a summer peak (people go indoors and close windows,
| just as they do in cooler places in winter). SA has had peaks
| in both winter and summer.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| Oh good point. I know that is the case for the US South and I
| find it somewhat silly that media in the US always blames
| southern surges on anti-mask and anti-lockdown sentiments but
| the winter surge in the North is new variants etc. without
| all the victim blaming.
| patcon wrote:
| Even ignoring deaths, "long COVID" is still a very real unknown:
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-medic...
|
| As I understand, we don't know much about whether omicron has
| worse, same, or better outcomes in relation to long-term
| consequences and persistent symptoms. Pls do share if you've
| heard otherwise
| tdrdt wrote:
| Every virus infection can turn into a long recovery. There is
| no proof this is longer for Covid-19.
|
| The Epstein-Barr virus for example can make you tired for
| months or years.
|
| I am not saying long Covid isn't a thing, but it is not
| 'special' in any way.
|
| Virus infections can cause damage. Years ago I had an infection
| that damaged a nerve. So virus infections can leave marks. But
| most of the time, as with Covid, you will recover from it.
| patcon wrote:
| Thanks! That's a fresh angle for me.
|
| But isn't COVID novel in the damage it poses to microvascular
| systems (importantly brain and lungs), compared to other
| viruses? E.g.,
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7556303/
|
| My understanding is that this is still different from other
| viruses.
|
| So if large swaths of a country get that damage from delta vs
| omicron vs some future weaker variant, that could have very
| different public health consequences in the coming decades...
|
| Disclaimer: In tech for over a decade, but once upon a time I
| did an honours degree in biochemistry, so I'm only maybe
| half-capable of musing my way through some of these papers :)
| nsainsbury wrote:
| From what I've seen there seems to be a growing body of
| evidence that "long COVID" is very much overblown. Eg. See this
| recent meta-analysis which found that when you actually add a
| control group, most of the symptoms disappear. A higher study
| quality was associated with lower prevalence of almost all
| symptoms.
|
| Original tweet:
| https://twitter.com/ShamezLadhani/status/1472622893154639876
|
| Link to study:
| https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)005...
| nostromo wrote:
| The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd.
|
| Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA.
| Deaths didn't budge. At all.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1]
|
| Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still
| waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it.
|
| 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-
| and-m...
| volkse wrote:
| It has been discussed many times before - the issue with the SA
| data is that 80% of the population have been exposed to the
| virus (either had it or have been vaccinated) so the deaths not
| budging there can be very misleading for countries with lower
| vaccination rates.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Can anyone point to an official worldwide number of deaths
| attributable to Omicron?
| exdsq wrote:
| Take this with a heap of salt but I looked for this figure
| yesterday and found it to be 12 in several sources, but
| hard to find the official figures. Share them if you do
| find them!
| stillicidious wrote:
| Such a number would be difficult to interpret, or entirely
| meaningless, without understanding the classification
| methods and policies of each constituent region. This also
| holds true of overall death statistics.
|
| Finally with local statistics, you still have political
| dramatics like
| https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1473480933579923456
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Similar situation in Denmark as well. Huge number of omicron
| infections, but deaths haven't budged and number of covid
| patients in hospitals are actually decreasing.
| tome wrote:
| This comment links to Reuters, which says "Denmark reports
| its largest number of coronavirus-related deaths since the
| start of the pandemic: 57". Where are you getting your
| data?
|
| https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-
| and-m...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654645
| cpncrunch wrote:
| From google's covid data. It doesn't seem to have today's
| update yet.
| richarme wrote:
| Your comment is factually untrue. 17 people died yesterday.
| Didn't have this high number of deaths since last winter
| before vaccines, and from the chart deaths seems to have
| increased 10-fold compared to a month or two ago. I'd like
| to see a source for your claim that numbers in hospitals
| are decreasing.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| No, my comment wasn't "factually untrue". The 7-day
| rolling average is steady at 9 or 10 according to the
| covid data on google. It hasn't changed (at least, up
| until yesterday's data). Things may change now, as there
| were 57 deaths just announced today.
|
| > I'd like to see a source for your claim that numbers in
| hospitals are decreasing.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29644613
| JPKab wrote:
| Isn't the same percentage in the US exposed, either via
| vaccine or previous infection?
| arn wrote:
| The other related factor is omicron is more likely (than
| other variants) to infect someone who has been vaccinated or
| previously exposed to covid. So the number of infected low
| risk individuals is higher, than with previous strains.
|
| The denominator is higher than if, let's say, delta was let
| loose in the same population at the same time.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| To clarify, omicron is more likely to infect vaccinated or
| exposed individuals _than the other variants_. NOT omicron
| is more likely to infect vaccinated people than non-
| vaccinated people.
|
| The wording startled me until I understood the intended
| meaning.
| arn wrote:
| Correct. Will clarify.
| hammock wrote:
| Wait, natural immunity is real?
| zerocount wrote:
| Sure is. There's millions of us walking around without
| getting shots every six months.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Via previous infection? And if so, you're not concerned
| about waning protection? It would appear that people even
| with previous wild/delta infections have hit or miss
| immunity to omicron.
| andybak wrote:
| Please don't post comments like this. It's impossible to
| work out what your actual point is
| zerocount wrote:
| I think it's clear he's referring to the fact that
| natural immunity has protected most of South Africa and
| thus, the world is freaking out over Omicron. As was
| suggested by a doctor in South Africa at the very
| beginning, which was ignored by governments. Of course,
| excuses for the South African data not aligning with the
| whole "vaccines are the only answer" narrative are now
| being created.
| toolz wrote:
| South Africa is well under average vaccination rate globally.
| Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the virus?
| Of course they've been exposed to the virus, that's exactly
| why it's interesting to see how their deaths follow cases.
|
| There's no indication that the first world, with much higher
| vaccination rates won't fare better than South Africa, which
| seems to be faring exceptionally well relative to other case
| spikes.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think parent meant that they have a high (prior)
| infection rate, not exposure rate.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| He means they were already exposed to another variant so
| they have some immunity.
|
| That immunity may very well work better than the vaccines
| on omicron - I don't think we're far enough in to it to
| have a great idea of that yet.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| They have something like 23% vaccination rate. It is
| about as raw as it is going to get.
|
| My friends who have it now indicate it is very mild.
| andybak wrote:
| Good job we've got your friends as a data point.
| [deleted]
| crummy wrote:
| From memory, SA has 3.3mil confirmed cases, and an
| estimated 7.8x total when you include unconfirmed. So
| roughly 75 percent of the population have caught covid.
| Plus vaccinations, that adds up to a lot of mild
| reinfections.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the
| virus?
|
| "have been exposed to the virus" usually means something
| like "immune system isn't totally unprepared, but has had
| contact with this virus before (or a proxy via
| vaccination)".
|
| In South Africa, it is mostly via getting COVID-19 in the
| Alpha or Delta waves.
|
| Yes, over 70% of South Africans have had it:
|
| https://www.businesslive.co.za/bloomberg/news/2021-12-14-ov
| e...
| gavin_gee wrote:
| because the media needs something to talk about. its
| entertainment through fear driving the revenue. What else will
| CNN have as "Breaking News"
| earthbee wrote:
| It typically takes three weeks to go from being a case to dead,
| given how quickly it was rising it was very hard to get a good
| sense of how many people were likely to die before it was
| already infecting huge numbers of people.
|
| That's not panic, that's justifiable concern about a new strain
| of a virus that has killed millions of people around the world
| already.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Most people who died were not vaccinated
| martin938 wrote:
| Source? Pfizer/AZ/ModeRNA?
| ds206 wrote:
| Most people that died were 60+ years old
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, who were not vaccinated as it didn't exist for much
| of the pandemic.
| fortran77 wrote:
| And obese! https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n623
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Most people are obese.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Most people are _not_ obese. Though in some countries it
| 's certainly getting there. :(
| fortran77 wrote:
| Well, "overweight" by CDCs definition (BMI > 25 ==
| overweight). But there's a strong link between
| complications from COVID and Obesity. It's a shame nobody
| wants to make the obese pay for their externalities --
| even the people who'd like to make the unvaccinated "pay"
| in some way turn a blind eye to this issue.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| That's the issue though, everyone points out the
| correlation, but of course there's a correlation.
| Everyone's overweight. Need more analysis to show just
| how much it affects COVID outcomes. While it would have
| been nice for the governments to make more of an effort
| to get people to lose weight during the pandemic, it's
| not guaranteed it would have had the results some people
| expect.
| forgatmigej wrote:
| And most people who were infected were not vaccinated
| kadoban wrote:
| Hospitalization lags cases, and deaths lag hospitalization.
|
| So if you're seeing many cases, that's a bad sign for the
| future, and it takes a while to figure out for sure.
|
| In a global pandemic, it's best to be safe on these things,
| because the alternative is that you celebrate early and look
| like a tit (not to mention all the deaths).
| woodruffw wrote:
| I am cautiously optimistic about the severity of Omicron. But
| as others have pointed out before: deaths trail infections by
| 2-4 weeks.
|
| Omicron was first reported to the WHO on 11/24 and wasn't
| categorized as a variant of concern until 11/26. It hasn't even
| been a month since it was _acknowledged_ much less has become
| the dominant variant in most places.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Those dates'll be 24 November and 26 November for non-USA
| (etc) peoples. Thank goodness bad things didn't happen in the
| earlier-in-the-year months like 7/6 or 6/7, for example.
| xjrk wrote:
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't think there is any panic surrounding omicron and
| deaths. The panic is around whether omicron has an extreme
| effect where lots of mild and moderate disease happens in a 2
| week period. So saying "look it's mild stop panicking" isn't
| really correct. If Omicron has even a tenth of the cases the
| delta wave had, but concentrated in a smaller period of time,
| it could be just as bad or worse.
| standardUser wrote:
| Deaths have literally just shot up in SA in the last few days.
| The 7 day average has doubled in two weeks.
| ds206 wrote:
| Link to data?
| standardUser wrote:
| It's in the article in the form of a chart. But if you
| can't see because of the paywall, you can look up the same
| data on this page: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/
| 2020/world/mapping-s...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-
| afri...
|
| 3 day average is only 48 deaths per day in all of South
| Africa. We are at the 3 week mark. If Omicron was half as
| deadly as Delta we'd be seeing a corresponding spike as we
| saw the initial burst of cases weeks ago. We're not, it's a
| slight uptick. Another week and we can be quite confident.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| It's gone from 20 to 40. With some rounding and cherry
| picking of dates.
|
| This time last year it was over 400.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I hope omicron is a gateway to the virus becoming less and
| deadly until it's essentially like the common cold.
|
| But it seems unwise to be certain that will be what happens.
| Worst case scenario is omicron running wild mutates into
| something much more lethal and a bit more contagious.
|
| With a variety of uncertainties imaginable, it's understandable
| that authorities are currently taking omicron as a serious
| threat even if it seem like there's a significant chance it
| will be a "good thing" as you say.
| esturk wrote:
| > Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA.
| Deaths didn't budge. At all.
|
| > https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1]
|
| Death always lag infections. That chart is a horrible
| representation because it doesn't give a good sense of the
| intermediate dates. But you can still tell with the "7-day
| average" string.
|
| On the first/infection chart you see the graph touching the
| word "average" while the second/death chart you can clearly see
| the graph shifted away from the word "average".
|
| By the same reasoning, the death count could still spike albeit
| not as high.
| simonw wrote:
| 7-day average graphs are pretty misleading when you have a
| new variant that grows at the rate that Omicron does. You
| might have no Omicron at all at the start of the seven day
| period and majority Omicron by the end of it, at which point
| the 7-day average really doesn't mean anything useful.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That graph is also incapable of clearly showing that deaths
| didn't budge even if that actually is the case. The stroke on
| the deaths line is like half the total height indicated when
| the cases started to surge. Based on that terrible graph
| deaths could have tripled since cases started to surge.
| vmception wrote:
| Agreed, if any major US markets reintroduce restrictions, I'll
| move back to one of them just to vote the governor and health
| director out in favor of some hardcore health gambler like De
| Santis.
|
| I played along, now they're done.
|
| edit: the responder assumed something that wasn't said, and
| then wrote an essay about something thats not happening and an
| example from Mississippi. Maybe to save time from having a
| natural flow of conversation, maybe its what they actually
| beleive. Either way this is called a strawman argument.
| dpark wrote:
| > _I'll move back to one of them just to vote the governor
| and health director out._
|
| Am I correctly understanding that you intend to move to a
| different region for the sole purpose of voting against
| restrictions that otherwise would not apply to you? You're
| literally trying to be a problematic immigrant.
|
| I remember when I was in college a bunch of people did
| exactly this. They registered for residency in the state
| solely so they could vote a single issue in a state election.
| Specifically they registered so they could vote for
| Mississippi to keep the confederate flag as part of the state
| flag. So you're in great company.
|
| Honestly, isn't the whole "state's rights" thing about
| telling other people to fuck off and let them manage
| themselves? And here you are thinking you should meddle in
| someone else's self-governance.
| vmception wrote:
| It would be where I'm already registered to vote, dont
| worry
|
| Tie any restriction to ICU capacity and only if efforts
| were made to expand ICU capacity
|
| Otherwise that means the state was only pretending to care
| because it was easier to govern if people werent doing
| anything
|
| If the state actually cares increase the ICU bandwidth or
| tell us the challenges encountered doing that and how those
| are being addressed
| dpark wrote:
| You specifically mentioned "any major US markets". Are
| you admitting to voter fraud now?
| vmception wrote:
| > I'll move _back_ to one of them
|
| You're reading what you want to read, it was worded
| specifically and intentionally
|
| Its not _any_ one of them, its the one that I am
| registered to vote in.
| dpark wrote:
| You literally said any.
|
| But I'm still stuck on why. What is the point in getting
| yourself involved in something that doesn't affect you
| personally? Why is it worth getting yourself involved
| with someone else's self governance?
| vmception wrote:
| Its almost as if I live in and am registered to vote one
| of the few major counties and states that are prone to
| reintroduce restrictions, and am not currently physically
| there right now.
|
| The goal being that there would eventually be one less
| county and state that would consider restrictions.
| dpark wrote:
| From what you've said, you _don't_ live there any more.
|
| But this doesn't seem constructive so we can let this go.
| chasd00 wrote:
| one thing that isn't communicated very much is ICU
| capacity goes up and down with need. "ICU at 98%" means
| it's 98% at that point in time, ICU capacity can be added
| as needed up to a point. In the other direction a
| hospital can be at 50% ICU capacity, decide they can dial
| back ICU beds and then percent util jumps even though
| they may have fewer ICU patients. Hospitals likely have a
| target ICU utilization and add/remove beds to hit that
| target as much as possible.
| zerocount wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it was hyperbole.
| dpark wrote:
| Pretty sure it's not if you read the rest of the comment
| thread.
| arghnoname wrote:
| Jurisdictions set their own rules for time of residency
| before being allowed to vote (e.g., registration X days
| before an election, Y days of the past Z days in the
| district, etc). Some people do decide where to live based
| on political considerations. If they are voting in
| accordance to the rules set by the relevant jurisdictions,
| I don't see a problem. This happens on "both sides."
|
| I will note that it's easier to break the rules and commit
| voter fraud when you can vote by mail. In person voting at
| least requires that you be physically present on Election
| Day. I moved to California and got voting materials from
| whence I came. I did not elect to commit voter fraud and
| vote, but I could have pretty easily.
| zerocount wrote:
| I second the absurdness. It's almost as if there are entities
| that don't want it to end.
| jandrese wrote:
| One of the questions asked early on with COVID19 was how we
| managed to end the Spanish Flu 100 years ago without vaccines.
| When I saw this question posted it was typically met with
| shrugs and "not sure".
|
| I think Omicron offers a possible explanation. An even more
| infectious variant with lower mortality should out-compete the
| deadly variant over time. After a few mutations like that it
| should be no worse than the seasonal flu--which has its own
| death toll each year, remember.
| tdrdt wrote:
| A Japanese study showed that Omicron is reproducing 70 times
| faster in the bronchi but 10 times slower in the lungs than
| Delta. That's why it is giving less lung problems and therefore
| doesn't make people as ill as Delta.
| svara wrote:
| > Deaths didn't budge. At all.
|
| The plot doesn't show that. You're looking at the moving
| average which doesn't move much, but the underlying data
| (daily, presumably) shows a drastic increase in the last one or
| two data points, in line with the expected lag time.
|
| Others have already pointed out the other major issue with your
| comment, that the situation in South Africa doesn't transfer to
| many other places in the world due to the exceptionally high
| pre-existing immunity rate there.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Germany has been running at 500 deaths per day from Delta for
| several weeks (https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/de).
| The evidence from the UK is that Omicron overtakes Delta in
| just a few days (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/gover
| nment/uploads/...). As the most recent research in the UK
| suggests (https://www.politico.eu/article/omicron-variant-
| coronavirus-...), and the data in the parent comment
| demonstrates in the case of South Africa, Omicron is
| significantly less harmful. My conclusion is that we should
| really welcome Omicron as the variant that will vaccinate those
| holding out against the man-made vaccine without killing and
| hospitalising too many of them.
| martin938 wrote:
| How a new variant would convince people to take an obscure
| experimental vaccine for older strains?
| brazzy wrote:
| GP meant that they will just get infected and thereby
| acquire a degree of immunity, with higher risk of death
| than the vaccine, but (hopefully) not as high as with
| previous variants.
| lolc wrote:
| 1. The quip was that people who don't want to get
| vaccinated will get immunized through infection. Yes, using
| "vaccinated" in this context ("the variant that will
| vaccinate") is not proper usage of the term unless we allow
| the interpretation that vaccines are milder than the
| disease and Omicron _might_ be milder than Delta.
|
| 2. "obscure, experimental, for older strains": Look, the
| vaccines are not obscure. Billions had them. Experimental:
| Sure. Much as not getting vaccinated is. Remember, we
| haven't seen that virus before. Older Strains: Turns out
| protection against severe effects is still strong. I'd say
| experimentally you're better off partially immunized with
| one of the well-known vaccines than when waiting around for
| one of the variants to catch you naive.
| throwawaytemp27 wrote:
| I think the parent meant that people who had not gotten a
| vaccine will get omicron, which is hopefully mild, and will
| hopefully provide good protection. So they probably should
| have used immunize vs vaccinate.
| hammock wrote:
| Irrelevant. As the new strain outcompetes the old, the old
| dies away forever. For example, Delta became 99%+ of cases
| in the US.
| soperj wrote:
| Omicron evolved from Beta... so not really.
| Marazan wrote:
| Weekly deaths have doubled 3 weeks in a row.
|
| Yes from a low base, but they have still done multiple
| doublings.
|
| Fortunately they are on track to only rise 50% this week.
| kelnos wrote:
| That graph is pretty impossible to read; I can't draw any
| conclusions from that.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I think a lot of the panic can effectively be ignored if you're
| a bit savvy technically and follow some benchmarks.
|
| I have a little SVG "badge" that gets rendered each day. It's
| green, unless any of the following four benchmarks are exceeded
| for my local area, in which case it's red:
|
| - RT > 1
|
| - Cases/100k > 10
|
| - Test Positivity > 5%
|
| - ICU Usage > 85%
|
| If any of them are over, it's red. For me, red has meant I
| limit my social activities. This seemed about right to me for
| Delta. For Omicron, I'm holding steady with that strategy for
| now, but if it turns out that Omicron isn't as severe for
| unvaccinated people, I might relax the strategy to only look at
| ICU usage.
|
| What's been interesting over the past six months is that it has
| tended to turn red when everyone was partying, and it'd turn
| green again when people were still freaked out.
|
| At any rate, it means I can ignore a lot of the rhetoric,
| because if Omicron subsides quickly, it just means my benchmark
| will turn green sooner.
| cdrini wrote:
| That chart is misleading; the rise/spike in deaths is always
| delayed from the rise/spike in cases.
|
| It does seem like Omicron is less deadly than Delta. The big
| concern is that because it's so significantly more contagious,
| that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will
| require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to
| overwhelm hospitals.
|
| Sources: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Larry Brilliant (WHO)
| https://youtu.be/YdVymGK3OzM https://youtu.be/ltXkJTSBeaE
| starik36 wrote:
| Didn't the doctor who discovered and documented Omicron state
| that it results in mild disease? Therefore, it won't require
| ventilators and thus won't overwhelm hospitals?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| COVID in general results in mild cases for the vast
| majority. It's that sliver of the population that wont
| that's the problem.
| zerocount wrote:
| Yes, but nobody in a position to affect a country with
| Covid lockdowns and laws believed her. It seems like money
| and politics are running the show.
| andybak wrote:
| You seem to be talking in absolutes rather than
| probabilities.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| False. Even accounting for the delay it's not as dangerous,
| check and numerous news channels today:
| https://data.spectator.co.uk/category/south-africa
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| > because it's so significantly more contagious, that even
| though a smaller percentage of infected people will require
| ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to
| overwhelm hospitals.
|
| This is a legitimate _theoretical_ concern, however
| empirically it looks like South Africa 's hospitalizations
| are peaking at slightly more than half their previous wave,
| with deaths on pace to peak even lower[1][2]
|
| [1]https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1473642495095496704
| [2]https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-
| covi...
| cdrini wrote:
| I believe the scientific consensus is that there isn't
| enough data to discount that theoretical concern. There's
| still too much uncertainty on how things will pan out, so
| the recommendation is boosters + some restrictions. They're
| not going to make a bet when people's lives are at stake,
| which seems reasonable to me. With more data coming out, I
| personally do hope we find that that concern is very
| unlikely. The situation is changing drastically day-by-day.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| They are going to make decisions based on incomplete
| information when people's lives are at stake, decisions
| where deciding wrong can have material consequences to
| lives and livelihoods, because choosing not to act is
| itself a decision.
|
| I do think that the decision that was made to keep
| pushing boosters and basically do nothing else is
| probably the correct one, but not because it was the
| default thing to do and we have to wait until there's
| incontrovertible evidence that the default action will
| lead to ruin before doing anything else.
| [deleted]
| gammarator wrote:
| SA severity may not be representative because of greater
| prior immunity and a younger age skew.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Exhibit B will be the UK. Their cases started spiking
| about two weeks ago. So far their hospitalizations
| haven't budged and are even a bit lower than they were a
| month ago, less than a quarter of their pandemic peak[1]
|
| [1]https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare
| bigodbiel wrote:
| England had high prevalence during the Summer, so not
| even them, maybe Denmark
| nooneisanon wrote:
| If you're looking at the UK the daily numbers for London
| (which is ahead of the rest of England, and the rest of
| the UK) are here:
| https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-
| areas...
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Thanks. Looks like you can filter my link by London as
| well, which shows hospital admissions have doubled in the
| last 10 days from about 1/6 to about 1/3 of the previous
| peak (though patients in hospital is lower at 1/4,
| possibly reflecting shorter stays but hard to say).
| London cases have continued spiking since but may
| possibly be peaking now (not sure how much lag there is
| in backdating reported cases here) so it will be
| interesting to see how much the hospital numbers rise
| from here.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Hospital admissions are actually up a little:
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ (parent link of the one
| you provided).
|
| That said, deaths are still dropping, and have been
| dropping since November, which was a local minimum in
| _case_ numbers.
|
| The pertinent fact, I think, is that the UK is
| vaccinating like crazy, coming up to 1m boosters per day
| recently (total population just short of 70m IIRC), even
| 12-18 year-olds are getting jabbed now.
| abainbridge wrote:
| Comparing SA with itself, omicron looks less severe than
| delta.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Even in ICUs, very few COVID-19 patients are now placed on
| ventilators. It is considered a salvage therapy and survival
| rates are low.
| ls612 wrote:
| It is delayed, but not by a month. Remember the spike began
| around Thanksgiving, and it's almost Christmas now.
| nostromo wrote:
| I'm glad it's more contagious than Delta, because Delta is
| much worse than Omicron.
|
| Sure, I'd rather we didn't have Covid at all, but that's not
| been a realistic option for quite some time now.
| toolz wrote:
| I can't wait until public opinion seems to catch on to the
| fact that we will never eliminate covid. It blows my mind
| that we see 100% vaccinated universities going back to
| online-only learning. What exactly are they waiting on?
| katmannthree wrote:
| There are many places where that's a perfectly rational
| decision.
|
| COVID was never going to be completely managed by states
| less than willing to take draconian measures, the purpose
| soft-lockdowns was instead to lighten the load on our
| healthcare system so that we didn't need to invest in
| field hospitals and a bunch of field-trained doctors and
| nurses. If we had done that instead not only would the
| optics be worse (not just many more people dying, think
| front page photos of them dying in muddy tents), it would
| also dilute the market capture of the existing entrenched
| healthcare system.
| toolz wrote:
| Can you show me an area where the covid+ college age
| population was a healthcare capacity burden?
|
| Further, if we're at such risk of overburdening our
| healthcare system, how come we have fewer heathcare
| workers today than we did back in 2018? How come our
| hospital bed capacity is shrinking instead of growing?
| These don't seem to be indicators that suggest we're
| lacking capacity in our healthcare systems.
|
| In the past two years we've printed 80% of all US Dollars
| that have been printed in the history of the USD. We are
| not short on funding. Further it's not death or illness
| that is largely to blame for healthcare worker shortage
| as the only large drop in HCWs was on march 2020. Since
| then it's been growing, just hasn't recovered yet.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _What exactly are they waiting on?_
|
| Probably waiting on hospitals to be fully staffed and
| less busy.
|
| My sibling moved from being a pedatric nurse to a non-
| patient care position (not at a hospital). She'd been
| nearly permanently removed from her pediatric role and
| moved to be on the front lines for COVID care for over a
| year with no relief in sight. She spent 2 years in Iraq
| and said that this is much more tiring and exasperating
| since she's treating people that largely could have
| avoided being in the hospital at all.
|
| Her hospital has been cancelling elective procedures, so
| everyone is suffering from the COVID wave.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| This is what a liability state looks like. Nobody gets
| sued for following the CDC, that same CDC that says you
| should never eat raw sushi or rare steak
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >that same CDC that says you should never eat raw sushi
|
| Pretty good advice in my opinion.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33095945
| davidw wrote:
| > What exactly are they waiting on?
|
| The thing that needs to not happen is filling up
| hospitals. People died where I live because they could
| not get access to 'elective' surgery due to the medical
| system being slammed during the most recent Delta wave.
|
| Once that's not a factor, things will start getting more
| normal.
| johnisgood wrote:
| We reduced the number of surgeries dramatically around
| the whole country, but it has nothing to do with hospital
| capacity nor shortage of any sort.
| toolz wrote:
| Elective procedures were mandated to stop by policy - not
| due to capacity constraints.
|
| Believe it or not, but 2020 hospital capacity was lower
| than projected using projections before anyone knew what
| covid even was.
| davidw wrote:
| COVID patients completely overran the hospital where I
| live. We're a not so big city that serves a lot of really
| rural areas. The ICU was full. The regular hospital was
| full.
| willcipriano wrote:
| A lot of rural hospitals were closed last year[0]
|
| [0]https://truthout.org/articles/20-rural-hospitals-
| closed-in-2...
| spookthesunset wrote:
| If hospital capacity is such a concern, why has there
| been just about zero effort in spinning up some kind of
| capacity to deal with Covid? Wasn't that the entire
| rationale of these lockdowns in the first place? To build
| capacity for covid?
|
| Like, it's been 2 years. We shouldn't be doing any of
| these restrictions at all. We should be angry at our
| governments wasting 2 years of our non-refundable time on
| this earth while they did nothing. Blaming the public for
| hospital capacity at this point is absurd.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ICU beds require something like 7 specially trained
| nurses each to operate. Generally, availability of
| trained staff is the limiting factor (developed
| countries, at this point, generally have more ventilators
| etc than they can use), and lead time on making new
| doctors and nurses is pretty long.
| rhino369 wrote:
| While a nurse is hard to train in 2 years, you can start
| pulling doctors and nurses from adjacent specialties and
| cross train them for COVID ICU wards.
|
| If we are going to see constant new variants and new
| waves, then its the only choice we have.
| rsynnott wrote:
| At that point you have shortages elsewhere (and that _is_
| happening to some extent in some places; hospitals are
| delaying routine procedures to keep the ICUs running at
| full capacity). It's not a great solution, especially if
| it goes on a long time; when you start delaying routine
| things for years, you start seeing serious problems.
|
| Realistically, the only viable course is probably to
| vaccinate and boost as many people as humanly possible,
| and await better vaccines and therapeutics. Paxlovid
| should hopefully help when it's available in quantity.
| tdfx wrote:
| People will say "well you can't just make more nurses and
| doctors in 6 months!" However, had we built or repurposed
| buildings as COVID-specific treatment centers there would
| be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be
| applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training,
| allowing the highly trained nurses and doctors to
| supervise the process and multiply their effectiveness.
| Combat soldiers learn basic emergency medical techniques,
| with some going from knowing nothing to being able to run
| IVs and be fully certified EMTs in 6-9 months. Stories
| abound of how bad they are at hitting the vein the first
| time, but it's certainly preferable to dying in the
| waiting room.
|
| The lack of healthcare capacity has been a conscious
| choice. There's been no serious effort to build it out.
| We've chosen to indulge this fantasy that humanity can
| get control of COVID and we'll just vaccinate it out of
| existence, despite decades of knowledge about how
| difficult that would be from our research into other
| coronaviruses. So when I hear that we need to give up
| another year of normal life to "keep the hospitals from
| being overwhelmed", it is frustrating to hear.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol
| that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of
| medical training
|
| No, there wouldn't, because, among other things,
| comorbidities that must be managed, especially in the
| population most COVID hospitalizations come from.
|
| > Combat soldiers learn basic emergency medical
| techniques, even to the point of running IVs
|
| Which allows them to serve as, basically, better-than-
| nothing EMTs in the absence of anyone else, which is
| useful on the battlefield to keep people alive to get to
| proper medical care; they don't replace doctors and
| nurses, though.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > which is useful on the battlefield to keep people alive
| to get to proper medical care
|
| This is a battlefield. It's an emergency, remember? Do
| whatever it takes. We forced people to sacrifice their
| short-ass lives in lockdown so these people could figure
| it out. Where is the results? 2 years and these "experts"
| still want us to continue locking down to protect a
| healthcare system they had 2 years to build up
| specifically to manage covid.
|
| It's as if every one of our lives is worthless in the
| eyes of people making excuses. No. We paid with our time
| --something we'll never get back. It is a complete
| travesty that governments continue to blame the public
| for their own inability to figure shit out.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is a battlefield.
|
| No, it's literally not.
|
| > It's an emergency, remember?
|
| Yes and all battlefields are emergencies but not all
| emergencies have the same conditions (and thus make the
| same measures expedient) as battlefields.
|
| > Do whatever it takes.
|
| Sure, but what you are suggesting is _not_ what it takes,
| or something that would be reasonably expected to be
| useful and effective.
|
| > 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue
| locking down
|
| We never generally locked down in the US and no one is
| suggesting lockdowns now, so I have no idea what
| "continue locking down" is supposed to mean. (Some US
| jurisdictions had brief and mostly unenforced policies
| that, if enforced, would have been local lockdowns, but
| even the on paper policies expired without renewal quite
| some time ago.)
| spookthesunset wrote:
| So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2
| years of your incredibly short life down the drain to
| "flatten the curve to build up supplies and healthcare"
| with zero results? In fact, so little results that many
| places are locking down yet again like it was march of
| 2020?
|
| Do y'all not value your lives or short time on this earth
| at all? You should be _furious_ the government is still
| playing the "protect healthcare capacity" card. They
| literally _wasted_ 2 years of your life. No results. And
| they have the audacity to blame _you_ and the rest of
| society for their failure!! How on earth is that
| excusable?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2
| years of your incredibly short life down the drain
|
| I reject that that's an even remotely accurate
| description of anything that has happened, or has any
| other relevancd to reality.
|
| > many places are locking down yet again
|
| What places? Unless you are using "locking down" as
| loosely as you've used "battlefield", that's not actually
| happening, anywhere.
|
| > And they have the audacity to blame you
|
| The only people I've seen anyone in government even
| approximately blame are particular government decision-
| makers who allegedly deliberately acted to make things
| worse and the unvaccinated, neither group of which
| included me. So, again, I reject that this description is
| grounded in reality.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Sorry, not gonna play "its not a _real_ lockdown "
| pedantry with you. I don't care what you call it. Any
| restriction we made in the last 2 years be it closed
| small businesses, masks, vaccine mandates, hall passes to
| go on dog walks, "not allowed to walk on the dry sand,
| only the wet sand", closed playgrounds, closed schools...
| all of it... it was all in the name of flattening the
| curve to build supplies and increase healthcare
| capacity... right? If that is true, where are the
| results?
|
| And if the goal _isn 't_ to flatten the curve to build
| supplies and increase healthcare capacity, please inform
| me what the goal actually is. 'Cause if that ain't it...
| I have no fucking clue what we are doing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > it was all in the name of flattening the curve to build
| supplies and increase healthcare capacity... right?
|
| No.
|
| The things that were about flattening the curve were
| about avoiding acute health system overload and increased
| mortality that would result from that (for all causes,
| not just COVID, since no ICU capacity kills people
| regardless of the reason they can't get into an ICU) to
| provide time for the development of effective preventive
| and treatment interventions, minimizing deaths on the
| route to that.
|
| (The original research indicated that after a general
| lockdown period, cycling local, often more modest,
| control measures would likely be necessary to that end.)
|
| While the particular half-measures adopted and half-
| heartedly implemented have had mixed results in
| preventing health system overload (since we've seen
| temporary overload various places at various times), we
| have, in fact, developed various effective interventions
| and are on the road to more.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > it was all in the name of flattening the curve to build
| supplies and increase healthcare capacity... right?
|
| No.
|
| The things that were about flattening the curve were
| about avoiding acute health system overload and increased
| mortality that would result from that (for all causes,
| not just COVID, since no ICU capacity kills people
| regardless of the reason they can't get into an ICU) to
| provide time for the development of effective preventive
| and treatment interventions, minimizing deaths on the
| route to that. (I suppose you can call that "building
| healthcare capacity", but the goal has never been
| prinarily about bulking up the number of seriously I'll
| people hospitals can concurrently treat on a sustained
| basis, but the capacity to prevent people from getting
| seriously ill.)
|
| (The original research indicated that after a general
| lockdown period, cycling local, often more modest,
| control measures would likely be necessary to that end.)
|
| While the particular half-measures adopted and half-
| heartedly implemented have had mixed results in
| preventing health system overload (since we've seen
| temporary overload various places at various times), we
| have, in fact, developed various effective interventions
| and are on the road to more.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > The things that were about flattening the curve were
| about avoiding acute health system overload and increased
| mortality that would result from that
|
| So we agree it is about healthcare capacity. You know the
| best way to avoid healthcare collapse? Build more of it!
|
| You know the unethical, immoral way of avoiding
| healthcare collapse? Force hundreds of millions of people
| into this purgatory we are living in right now while
| doing absolutely fuck-all to build capacity. Then blame
| them all for "not taking this seriously" when their
| brilliant plan of doing fuck-all fails.
|
| Seriously. Do you not see how much bullshit it is to just
| expect the entire world, _billions of people_ to put
| their lives on hold indefinitely for _exactly one
| specific illness_ when the solution could be to simply
| build capacity to deal with covid surges? These
| governments did _fuck all_ to solve the capacity problem.
| They _dont respect any of us at all_!! They pissed our
| lives away so they didn 't have to do _anything_.
|
| Do you not value your time on this earth at all? 'Cause
| if you do, I'm sorry to tell you but the government just
| hoodwinked you into thinking it was _your job_ to
| sacrifice _your life_ so they didn 't have to do anything
| at all.
|
| Life is short dude. Expecting everybody to do this
| because "original models" by some bullshit "expert" said
| so... bleech...
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Let's say it's 100% of the government's fault, which I
| don't believe, but let's just say it for argument's sake.
|
| So why don't you run for office and do it differently?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Let's say it's 100% of the government's fault, which I
| don't believe, but let's just say it for argument's sake.
|
| Who else's fault is it? It isn't the public, that is for
| sure. You can't blame people for human behavior and "not
| taking this seriously". These governments asked us to pay
| one of the highest costs you can pay--they asked us to
| donate 2 years of our short lives to their cause. And
| thus far, they have done absolutely nothing but blame the
| public for their failings.
|
| Life is short. Being asked to flush 2 years of your life
| down the toilet in this purgatory we are in is a huge
| ask. Don't you think we should see some results now?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| These last two years have been some of the hardest years
| of my life, as a person who normally travels and works
| internationally with large groups of people, I have been
| inside the same house for two years with just my parents,
| one of whom went through chemo and a heart attack while
| covid was happening. So I feel you on how these past two
| years have seemed like purgatory, feeling stuck and
| watching life tick away.
|
| I also wish the various levels of government would have
| responded differently. I'm assuming you mean in the US,
| but that's where I am so I'll go with that. I wish the
| Trump admin would have responded differently, the Biden
| admin, the US Senate and House (2020 and 2021 members),
| my governor in Michigan, the senate and house in
| Michigan, the county health department, my local mayor,
| and more.
|
| At least in Michigan, they didn't ask me to donate 2
| years of my time, much of that has been my choice,
| frankly against what the Michigan Congress voted. The
| governor pushed for strong closures in the beginning and
| the Congress overruled that. Many of the people here have
| been acting as if there is no pandemic, doing almost
| exactly what they did before covid-19 existed. Frankly,
| even many elements of the Trump admin and US Congress
| have told us to live our lives as normal.
|
| So if anything, I think the government, at its various
| levels, have provided mixed messages on what we should
| and should not do. From complete and total lockdown, to
| open but wear masks, to complete and total return to
| normalcy. At least in my experience, I haven't heard a
| coherent "donate 2 years of our short lives to their
| cause," but rather a mixed message, coming from
| politicians, who, just as the public are people with
| human behavior.
| davidw wrote:
| > give up another year
|
| IDK, I'm in a fairly 'cautious' state, and things are
| pretty normal. My kids are in school, stores are open.
| Restaurants are open. People wear masks. It's not really
| a big deal.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > People wear masks. It's not really a big deal.
|
| Do you wear masks 8 hours a day for work? 'Cause I'm sure
| all the people who do might beg to differ.
|
| Plus masks interfere with communication. Faces are
| important.
| davidw wrote:
| A lot of it is finding the people, beyond the physical
| space. You can't just 'spin up' nurses like AWS
| instances. They're in short supply right now, and many
| are feeling burned out. There's a post going around about
| a doctor who got assaulted by deranged family members of
| a man who died. Don't know if it's real, but a lot of
| people were saying they've experienced similar and are
| just done with it.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| When you have virtually unlimited resources you can do
| almost anything you want. You just have to think outside
| of the box. If this truly was an emergency, we'd have
| found a way to staff covid ICU's. Dunno how because it
| ain't my expertise at all, but there would be a way.
|
| We managed to build giant ships in like 3 or 6 months in
| WWII. I'm pretty sure we could figure out how to staff
| 400 or so ICU's with people capable of managing sick
| covid patients. It might be all these people know how to
| do... but we could do it. We have almost unlimited
| resources to do so.
| eropple wrote:
| "I readily admit that I don't know what I'm talking about
| but at the same time I'm going to insist that my
| hypothetical situation is definitely correct and the
| knowledgeable people working on medical staffing and
| capacity management for _their entire careers_ simply do
| not know as much as me, a computer toucher. "
|
| Somehow I remain unconvinced that "thinking outside the
| box" conjures doctors and nurses into existence or makes
| those who refuse to work ICUs suddenly interested in the
| job. I guess you could demand the military have doctors
| and nurses work at the point of a gun, all so John Q.
| Public probably still couldn't go to Target without a
| mask on two years hence. That sounds great.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > makes those who refuse to work ICUs suddenly interested
| in the job
|
| Then fucking draft them into working in an ICU like you
| would draft somebody into a war. Build a second story on
| their house. I don't care. This shit is an existential
| emergency where we asked _hundreds of millions of people_
| to put 2 years of their life on hold to build healthcare
| up. Figure it out. If healthcare capacity was the reason
| we did all this, then we should have poured the entire
| nation 's worth of resources into building healthcare
| capacity. Period.
|
| It is absolutely inexcusable to continue playing the
| "healthcare might collapse" card 2 years into this. If
| people used this many excuses back in WWII we'd have lost
| the damn war. "Oh, it takes 4 years to design a build a
| ship... sorry. we can't just pull ships out of our butt.
| Guess we will just have to let them win". Bullshit. We
| made it happen. We could make it happen for this too.
|
| This is supposed to be an emergency, remember? Every
| second you have people in lockdown is a second of each of
| those peoples very short lives you've now wasted. Figure
| it out!
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Exactly. It's crazy how some people think that shutting
| down pretty much everything within days is a more viable
| alternative or even more doable than ramping up
| healthcare capacity in... 2 years. They'll usually wave
| away the massive repercussions that shutdowns cause but
| they will become very perfectionist when it comes to
| standard of care and how we need fully trained doctors
| and nothing less. It's an emergency, as you said it's not
| time for perfection because the costs are extreme
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I think what amazes me is how little it seems some people
| value their own time and life. Like, life is super short.
| I sacrificed a non-trival amount of it so these "experts"
| could build up healthcare capacity.
|
| They have a moral obligation to not waste my life...
| which they completely did. Why there aren't riots on the
| street over the fact that the public is still being
| blamed for not "taking this seriously" is beyond me. Get
| fucked, dudes--y'all had 2 years to figure this out.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Then fucking draft them into working in an ICU like you
| would draft somebody into a war.
|
| Okay, and who does their job? I mean "no-one can get
| chemotherapy because the oncology department was told to
| go work in the ICU" probably isn't a great outcome,
| either.
|
| ICU capacity can, and in many countries has, been
| expanded to some extent. But you're not realistically
| going to 10x it or anything; the main area of
| concentration has to be reducing the demand on it in the
| first place (via vaccination, pre-hospital treatment,
| public safety measures, and, as a last resort,
| lockdowns).
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Some of these places have like 400 ICU beds in a region
| of 17 million people. You absolutely could 10x that or
| even 50x that given the fact you have asked hundreds of
| millions of people to put their lives on hold.
|
| Vaccination was the end goal because it would mean we
| could reduce all that emergency capacity we were supposed
| to build up. Non pharmacutical interventions like masks,
| social distancing and lockdowns for healthy people are
| extreme asks and should be used for extremely short
| durations while you pour your nations entire pool of
| resources into building healthcare capacity up.
|
| What amazes me is somehow we managed to do exactly this
| back in march of 2020 with hospital ships and field
| hospitals. The fact that all of these were shutdown
| virtually unused after a month but we continued with all
| these stay-at-home orders shows exactly how little
| respect these "experts" and government officials have for
| the general public. The day those things closed was the
| day we should have gone back to full normal. That these
| "experts" doubled down on this crap is so immoral and
| unethical it amazes me people continued to support it.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Some of these places have like 400 ICU beds in a region
| of 17 million people.
|
| That is, of course, far too few (Where is that? I've
| never heard of a ratio _that_ low for a developed
| country). But unfortunately, the time to fix it was about
| five years before it became a major crisis.
|
| > You absolutely could 10x that or even 50x that given
| the fact you have asked hundreds of millions of people to
| put their lives on hold.
|
| With what staff?
|
| > What amazes me is somehow we managed to do exactly this
| back in march of 2020 with hospital ships and field
| hospitals.
|
| As far as I can see, those were envisaged as a solution
| to a regional problem; if covid was only a big problem in
| a few regions, then this could work via redeployment of
| staff, drawing on limited reserves of staff (military,
| bringing people back from retirement, and so on). In
| practice, very few countries managed to maintain covid as
| a regional problem, so temporary hospitals became less
| interesting because _you can't staff them_.
| throwhauser wrote:
| > When you have virtually unlimited resources you can do
| almost anything you want.
|
| > Dunno how because it ain't my expertise at all, but
| there would be a way.
|
| What makes you so sure?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I mean again I'm no expert but it seems to me that if all
| these people are supposed to do is treat exactly one
| illness, it would be possible to train a certain set of
| people on how to manage 80% of the workload and escalate
| the exceptions to somebody with more knowledge.
|
| It isn't like this staff has to treat anything else.
|
| Just an idea. Like I said, I'm no expert but the fact
| that absolutely nobody has attempted to figure it out is
| bullshit. They haven't even tried. They just keep
| throwing out excuse after excuse and blaming the public
| for their failures.
|
| They literally have almost unlimited resources. They
| could get shit figured out somehow.
| davidw wrote:
| Vaccines were readily available; perhaps no one predicted
| quite so many people would avoid them, preferring to take
| a chance suffocating to death. Administering vaccines is
| orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than expanding
| hospitals.
| [deleted]
| cynusx wrote:
| You're right, I actually had the benefit of chatting with
| somebody who organized the lab test network around
| covid-19 and asked if they (Belgian government)
| considered ramping up hospital capacity and training non-
| qualified people the basics of taking care of covid-19
| infected people... turns out they never considered it.
|
| Personally, after 2 months of being angry with the
| ridiculous response of the government I just accepted
| that you can't fight with mass stupid and moved on to
| areas of my life that are not affected by covid.
|
| But I still get surprised from time to time you know,
| you'd expect politicians to accept that everybody had the
| chance to get vaccinated and lift all the restrictions so
| that darwinism can do its work, but it seems they want to
| impose vaccine mandates instead... trying to protect
| people who don't want to be protected, what's the grand
| idea behind that?
|
| There's no real end in sight to be honest, it's better to
| ignore it as much as possible and focus on areas you do
| control
| mistermann wrote:
| I believe that covid has given us _incredible_ insight
| into the human psyche, including how well we are able to
| respond to problems that have political /tribal
| attributes to them.
|
| Considering how relatively minor covid was, and how
| simple the situation is, that so many people continue to
| disagree on basics suggests to me that we have learned
| very little from this (indicating our _capacity to learn_
| certain things is not great), and that if we ever get a
| serious pandemic (or serious anything), we might be
| f*cked.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > if we ever get a serious pandemic (or serious
| anything), we might be f*cked.
|
| If we had a serious pandemic where dudes were dropping
| like flys on the street and they had horse drawn carrages
| stacked with bodies, I don't think many people would have
| an issue dealing with it. The problem with covid is our
| response to it was way out of line with the actual
| illness. People kinda have a problem being asked to make
| huge sacrifies for something they don't perceive to be a
| major problem.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think we're probably in luck somewhat: if something
| _actually serious_ came along, I agree that people would
| be much less disagreeable, and perhaps we 'd have enough
| actual problems so authorities wouldn't have to engage in
| make work projects.
|
| That said, I think massive numbers of people (likely the
| majority still, although the tides seem to be shifting
| _extremely_ quickly lately) would strongly disagree with
| us on the degree to which covid is a "major" problem. I
| am very worried that the inability for people to even
| mutually agree upon a way of discussing (let alone
| agreeing on anything) culture war topics, and our
| inability to take such phenomena seriously, is going to
| be a gift that keeps on giving for decades into the
| future (just in time for the climate change culture war).
| com2kid wrote:
| > If hospital capacity is such a concern, why has there
| been just about zero effort in spinning up some kind of
| capacity to deal with Covid?
|
| The first wave of COVID killed a bunch of doctors and
| nurses, and burnt a lot more out.
|
| Then Delta made a bunch more doctors and nurses quit,
| with wide reports right now that 20% of nurses are
| looking to up and leave their job. Talking to my friends
| who are nurses, they are short staffed, and have been for
| some time.
|
| On top of that, the way the US does medical training for
| both nurses and doctors ensures we don't have enough
| medical professionals during normal times. Nursing
| schools can't find instructors (pay is too low) and
| hospitals are purposefully limiting the number of
| residency spots available to ensure prices for medical
| care stay high (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residency_(
| medicine)#Financing...)
|
| So, you know, business as usual in the US.
| jcadam wrote:
| Are we just ignoring all of the doctors and nurses who
| were fired for refusing vaccinations? They don't count?
| slaw wrote:
| > The first wave of COVID killed a bunch of doctors and
| nurses
|
| I never heard about it before. Could you provide link to
| your claim?
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| Some interesting numbers at
| https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/new-report-
| reveal... and https://abcnews.go.com/Health/3600-us-
| health-workers-died-co...
|
| All of that is pre-delta, remember that when COVID first
| hit in 2020 we still didn't have a good idea how it
| spread.
|
| The tl;dr is that the US government doesn't do a good job
| of collecting statistics of how many health care workers
| died of COVID.
|
| 1.5k nursing home workers seems to be the one reliable #
| from the first article, and The Guardian is saying around
| 3600 healthcare workers in total.
|
| https://www.statnews.com/2021/10/21/who-
| estimate-115000-heal...
|
| WHO reports over 100k deaths of healthcare workers world
| wide.
|
| So statistically a small #, but it doesn't account for
| the # of nurses who got COVID and had long term symptoms
| that kept them from going back to work, or who just
| decided to no longer work at all.
|
| And it looks like these #s are highly biased towards
| major population centers, so it wasn't an even
| distribution from the country or anything.
| jefftk wrote:
| 1.5k nursing home workers out of a total of about 600k.
| That's 0.25%. Across the whole population, we've had 810k
| deaths out of 330M, which is also 0.25%. So we still have
| the same number of nursing home workers per capita.
| Except that, considered per nursing home resident, it's
| an increase, because the rate of nursing home residents
| dying has been much higher than the general population.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What exactly are they waiting on?
|
| Public opinion.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If federal law makers cared about public opinion, they'd
| have declassified marijuanna as a schedule 1 drug [0].
| They also would not have done the recent weapons deal
| with Saudi Arabia [1].
|
| 0 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/356939/support-legal-
| marijuana-...
|
| 1 -
| https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/12/7/a-strong-
| majo...
| SamPatt wrote:
| Imagine running an organization based on public opinion,
| especially an opinion so wide as the whole internet.
|
| Groupthink is so dangerous.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Considering the details of the business they're in I
| don't think they have much choice other than to chart the
| course that enrages the fewest people even if that course
| is non-optimal.
| dontblink wrote:
| Normalcy. Right now everything is taken with an abundance
| of caution. Once stabilization occurs, normalcy will
| return (even if it's changed).
| toolz wrote:
| I'm not sure how you can suggest there's any caution
| here. At least not with regards to the students. They are
| a low risk category with 100% vaccination rate and their
| risk of losing out on many of the important aspects of
| college are being disregarded.
|
| This is not what caution looks like.
| azekai wrote:
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I wonder if the approach is similar to managing herpes.
| We don't yet know how to eliminate it and yet we believe
| that if someone has a current outbreak (visible sores,
| etc) than they should avoid sexual contact with others so
| they don't spread it...until it subsides again.
|
| I may not have all the details right on that, just seems
| the approach some are taking to covid is the "yes we
| won't eliminate it and yet we can try to minimize
| exposure during times of high infectiousness."
| paganel wrote:
| The public opinion around me (I live in Eastern Europe)
| does seem to have caught on to that fact, I mean the
| normal people, the problem is the media that, even here,
| keeps treating this like a thing that we could eventually
| get rid of.
| redisman wrote:
| Is there any reason to think they'll be mutually exclusive
| ?
| jerlam wrote:
| Denmark is the other country with an Omicron-fueled spike, but
| they have a corresponding increase in deaths:
|
| https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...
| ralfd wrote:
| But compare that to the delta wave last winter! The
| infections are 3-4 times higher and the death count is 2-3
| times lower (so far).
| jerlam wrote:
| So far, it does look much better than last winter, but last
| year they had neither vaccines nor significant previous
| exposure.
| kansface wrote:
| The people who were killed last winter can't be killed
| again. They were definitionally the most susceptible and we
| haven't replaced that demographic. You can't naively
| compare the two waves without a control since they effect
| very different populations. In other words, if you ran the
| same experiment backwards, you could plausible get the same
| results.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This isn't unexpected though: Besides a much higher
| vaccination rate COVID-19 has been doing the rounds now for
| two years and at some point the people that were highly
| susceptible will have simply died off. The remainder of the
| population may deal with current strains better or worse
| depending on what differences those strains bring to the
| table, and not all of those differences may end up
| targeting the same populations.
| anonred wrote:
| Genuine question as I haven't been following COVID news
| closely. What's the hospitalization rate and long term effects
| from Omicron COVID? Do we have sufficient data to suggest that
| it's milder than Delta etc?
| brazzy wrote:
| Long term effects? It hasn't even been known to exist for a
| whole month.
|
| Look around this thread and you will find many links to data
| that indicates Omicron might have less severe outcomes, but
| it's really still a bit early to really have confidence in
| that data because there are a lot of confounding factors.
| lolc wrote:
| My current Best Guess from reading Reliable Internet
| Sources(tm):
|
| > What's the hospitalization rate and long term effects from
| Omicron COVID?
|
| Hospitalization could be about the same. While we see
| decreased hospitalisations in South Africa, the assumption is
| that this is due to widespread immunity from exposure to
| earlier waves and vaccinations. For the last two weeks,
| Omicron has been hitting populations that have higher shares
| of naive subjects. Now the first results on hospitalizations
| are coming in. Refreshing my tabs constantly :-)
|
| I assume that long-term damage is related to immediate
| severity, so it's likely not going to be worse. But I'm out
| on a twig here.
|
| > Do we have sufficient data to suggest that it's milder than
| Delta etc?
|
| Suggestive evidence of mildness is being discussed. No
| conclusions.
| [deleted]
| localhost wrote:
| One report [1] (of many now) about Omicron being less severe
| than Delta:
|
| "Overall, we find evidence of a reduction in the risk of
| hospitalisation for Omicron relative to Delta infections,
| averaging over all casesin the study period. The extent of
| reduction is sensitive to the inclusion criteria used for cases
| and hospitalisation, being in the range 20-25% when using any
| attendance at hospital as the endpoint, and 40-45% when using
| hospitalisation lasting 1 day or longer or hospitalisations
| with the ECDS discharge field recorded as "admitted" as the
| endpoint (Table 1)"
|
| [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
| college/medicine/m...
| yosito wrote:
| I saw some charts out of South Africa today showing that deaths
| are starting to rise with a three week delay. I'm optimistic
| that Omicron is less severe, but it's also possible that it's
| just taking a little longer than expected to start killing
| people.
| barbs wrote:
| Do you have a link for those charts?
| tjr225 wrote:
| Don't worry about it; he saw them.
| yosito wrote:
| I can't find the ones I saw before, but the OWID charts
| show that deaths in South Africa are still rising, and
| Omicron case counts just started rising 3 weeks ago, so I'm
| still holding my breath.
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Pretty good one here:
|
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-
| updat...
| HPsquared wrote:
| https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-
| south-a...
|
| Pretty interesting how it clearly shows both "deaths" and
| "excess deaths".
|
| Here's a good one for Europe:
|
| https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
| globalise83 wrote:
| They might be, but the fact that the case rate is now falling
| means that whatever increase is seen in deaths will be very
| short-lived. That is something to be thankful for, since
| Delta has been killing large numbers of people worldwide over
| a very long period of time.
| yosito wrote:
| But we don't know why the case rate is falling so fast. It
| could be that people tend to isolate when everyone around
| them is suddenly having symptoms.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Yeah deaths have been creeping up for the last week,
| hospitalizations for the last two and a half weeks.
| Hospitalizations are actually now at about 1/3 of the Delta
| peak. This is all roughly consistent with the timeline for
| previous strains (hospitalizations lag cases by about 10
| days, deaths lag hospitalizations by about 2 weeks). The
| specific growth rates are a bit lower than what would be
| expected based on how quickly cases went up, though.
|
| I think we'll see total hospitalization and death rates peak
| at anywhere from 50-100% of the Delta wave, but over a much
| shorter time period, commensurate with higher infectiousness
| but lower severity. The severity may be simply because it's
| no longer an immunologically naive population.
| fiter wrote:
| Since deaths lag cases, have you seen a graph that has peaks
| labeled on the time axis?
| nostromo wrote:
| I added the original source so you can explore in more
| detail. You can see that in previous spikes there was a short
| delay, but in general they rose in tandem. All evidence
| points to Omicron as far less lethal than Delta.
| divbzero wrote:
| The chart towards the bottom of this page [1] provides
| another source.
|
| Like others my initial reaction was "deaths lag" but upon
| closer inspection the data is more nuanced: While deaths do
| lag, in previous waves deaths had risen substantially by
| the time cases peaked, but with omicron in South Africa
| cases have already peaked but deaths have barely risen.
| This could be partly because the omicron wave has peaked
| faster (~3 weeks) than previous waves (~1 month or more),
| partly because the population has more immunity, and partly
| because omicron is less severe?
|
| I'm not sure yet. All in all, I'm optimistic but will wait
| another week or two to be convinced.
|
| [1]: https://covid19.who.int/region/afro/country/za
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Thanks for your assorted useful comments and links.
| [deleted]
| parkingrift wrote:
| People come up with endless excuses to remain hysterical. There
| will never be enough evidence to show omicron is less severe.
| There is always some excuse as to why some data should be
| discarded or is not applicable.
|
| But when it comes to bad news, no evidence needed at all.
|
| Some people just want the world to continue burning.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I concur. It's amazing how well anti vaxxers have taken over
| the narrative.
|
| Literally all data has shown that omicron is a non-issue for
| triple vaxxed individuals, with a baseline being the standard
| flu.
|
| If someone has data showing that triple vaxxed people are dying
| at rates similar to March 2020 I'd love to see.
| kadoban wrote:
| Triple vaxxed are safe, therefore antivaxxers have won? That
| does not seem to make any sense. What am I missing?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, because there are still restrictions as a result of
| them, even though most people in the USA have been
| vaccinated.
|
| In other words policies that affect the super majority are
| being formed due to the actions of a small group.
| jedberg wrote:
| Only 20% of Americans are triple vaxxed.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yeah, about 60% double and 70% single. Anyone can get
| more vaccines for free.
|
| Not sure why people support restrictions at this point.
| If someone doesn't want to be vaccinated that's fair
| enough, but let the rest of us be free.
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm curious how you think your freedoms are being
| curtailed at this point? What do you want to do that you
| can't?
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Seriously?
|
| If someone vaxxed and boosted dies of COVID, the media spins
| it as "Look how deadly..."
|
| If someone is on Ivermectine and dies of COVID, they're
| villified as spreaders.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| For us young people (probably most everyone on here), the fear
| is not and has not been death for some time. The fear is long
| COVID, which remains poorly understood.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| jessaustin wrote:
| This is very bad news for pharma profits!
|
| There are at least some people who have figured out the right
| covid policies, because some of them are running NFL. NFL has
| ruled that asymptomatic players who received the initial round of
| vaccinations don't need to be regularly tested. With the rise of
| omicron, populations of healthy young people whose families have
| access to health care don't need to fear infection and don't need
| "boosters". Of course, many families in USA lack access to health
| care because capitalism. NFL can't directly be held responsible
| for that, although many NFL owners are billionaires so _they_
| can. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...
| voxadam wrote:
| Am I the only one who reads these less than scientific articles
| as much more than wishful thinking?
|
| I mean, I hope this pandemic comes to a close as much as anyone
| but so many of the recent news articles about the omicron variant
| being our collective way out of this pandemic seem a bit
| premature. I understand the theory that viruses become more
| contagious and less deadly over time but is there an real, peer
| reviewed science that backs up the idea that omicron is going to
| be our "savior"?
| cm2187 wrote:
| We shouldn't act until we have a peer reviewed study published
| in 18 months.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Does it even matter? Covid is here forever. Doesn't matter if
| the next variant is "good" or "worse" or "horrible". It's here
| forever. We cannot continue playing this restriction / mandate
| game any longer. We have something like a dozen vaccines
| globally, multiple treatments, etc. We've had 2 years for
| government's to build healthcare capacity to handle any "surge"
| we get and it is no longer fair to the public to keep blaming
| them any time some hospital gets full.
|
| It's time to return to actual real normal. Let people make
| their own risk assessments.
|
| Life is very, very short and we just spent 2 years of it acting
| as if the only point of our existence was to stop the spread of
| exactly one specific illness to the exclusion of basically
| everything else.
|
| Move on.
| baxtr wrote:
| Thanks for expressing how I feel. Winter was always the worst
| season for me. With Covid it has become unbearable. I've lost
| 50% of my life quality.
| snet0 wrote:
| There is a recently released preprint that concludes that
| omicron-infected have an 80% reduced likelihood to be
| hospitalised compared to non-omicron infections.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.21.21268116v...
|
| Of course, it's not yet peer-reviewed, and doesn't model the
| possible outcomes based on the conclusions, but it certainly
| _seems_ to be great news.
| barbs wrote:
| There's been no time to have real, peer reviewed science to
| make a definitive conclusion either way. All we have is
| preliminary data which seems to be trending towards the
| positive.
|
| The sensationalist flip-flopping media reports have been mostly
| unhelpful. I've been swinging between "this is wishful thinking
| and it's going to be really bad" to "this is overly dramatic
| and it's going to be ok" for the past few weeks. I've been
| feeling more of the latter recently, but I'm still not 100%
| certain. Call it cautious optimism.
| jacquesc wrote:
| They discovered the variant less than a month ago. The science
| will take time, all we can do in the meantime is make our best
| guesses
| ufo wrote:
| And that theory about viruses becoming less deadly isn't an
| universal rule in the first place. For example, smallpox and
| measles never got less deadly. In many cases, the virus
| becoming less deadly is because the population acquired
| immunity from vaccinations or previous infection, not because
| the virus evolved that way.
|
| In the case of covid, one important thing to consider is that
| people are the most infectious before they develop severe
| symptoms. Therefore, there is less selective pressure towards
| making it less severe.
| orblivion wrote:
| I wonder if there's extra selective pressure among relatively
| smart creatures like us. Supposing there's a really nasty
| disease that manifests after a week, and we're contagious for
| a few days before. Eventually we'll get wind of it and start
| being more careful. If it's a less nasty virus, we just won't
| care enough and let it spread.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| It does seem to be true of respiratory viruses though.
| Asiatic flu is still around, probably HCoV-OC43, now a nearly
| harmless common cold virus. Spanish flu is still dangerous
| like all flus, but not the killer that it was.
|
| It would be odd if this is the one, the permanently deadly
| respiratory virus that just never gives humanity a break, for
| ever and ever.
| ufo wrote:
| But is HCoV-OC43 harmless because the virus became less
| deadly, or because everyone has immunity from being
| infected by it when they were still children?
| thelittleone wrote:
| It has been really interesting to observe the hysteria. From the
| moment they chose the name Omicron, which sounds like a nemesis
| in a Transformers movie. But more in observing how friends and
| family back home latch on to the media (which they remain
| constantly plugged into). The repetition of buzzwords and how
| enthusiastically they talked about booster shots now being 5
| months instead of 6. I don't know anything at all about the
| medical realities, but can see loud and clear, more than ever how
| people's mental states are manipulated by media.
| tedsanders wrote:
| For what it's worth, I have observed zero hysteria. Took a
| flight last week out of California. Airport was packed. Plane
| was packed. No one was really distancing. People wore masks,
| but were pretty chill about it. Most masks looked to cloth or
| surgical, rather than tight-fitting (K)N95. People took masks
| off to eat. An old guy kept pulling his down each time he
| talked to his friend. Some kids ran around without masks and
| the parents didn't care. No one was hysterical. No one was
| shaming people without masks. And this is in a world with a
| million Americans dead and a new highly contagious variant
| spreading around the world.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| I've basically given up on trying to figure out what the right
| response is to Omicron. I've seen moved on to trying to figure
| out the hidden incentives of the hysterics and the covid deniers.
| I've since regretted moving on from the first intractable
| problem.
| polote wrote:
| Why do people still care about covid ? Vax your old people, stop
| getting tested and live like before.
|
| The faster we get everyone infected the faster old people who
| didn't get vaxxed will either recover or die and after that the
| ones who die we can't do anything for them.
|
| Trump was right (by chance) all along, that's just some kind of
| flu, the only difference is that it's the first time our body
| sees it.
| foepys wrote:
| Because hospital capacity is limited and despite what you might
| want, people will still be admitted to the hospital when they
| caught covid.
|
| In Germany some hospitals are postponing "planned operations"
| and as much as this sound like no big deal, every operations
| that is not an emergency is "planned" so this affects cancer
| removals as well. People are dying of cancer because covid
| patients saturate ICU beds.
| metadat wrote:
| > Live like before
|
| The people I know who have been doing this have all contracted
| covid at this point, unless they are a recluse who doesn't go
| outside.
| umvi wrote:
| Pretty much everyone will contract covid at some point, just
| like common colds, influenza, etc. You can't expect to never
| get sick the rest of your life, can you?
| Karsteski wrote:
| I get the impression that a lot of people honestly believe
| this. It's comical to see. People wearing masks outside, or
| while they're locked in a tiny metal box with their family.
| I've resigned to keeping to myself and my small group of
| friends for the next few years. Just doing mainly outdoor
| and private activities, as I refuse to wear a shitty cloth
| mask for an indefinite period of time everywhere I go
| ryanobjc wrote:
| The flu has been feared throughout history, as it is... frankly
| quite deadly at times. Now a days we have excellent flu
| monitoring, and flu shots, and have been able to manage it,
| also at great cost. But to dismiss the flu, and covid-19 as
| "nbd" is... not the kind of analytical strength I am expecting
| on HN. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
|
| At the time of the breakout of Covid-19 in Jan/Feb 2020, the
| reports on the ground in Wuhan and Italy were pointing to a
| catastrophic failure of healthcare systems leading to
| significantly enhanced death rates, CFR of 10% or so was being
| observed in Wuhan. Yes, everyone knew that not everyone was
| being tested, but having 10% of everyone you tested died...
| well that ain't good. And China has a powerful government and
| can mobilize resources when they feel like it. Witness the
| building of hospitals in Wuhan in 10 days. Turns out they were
| probably more like convalescent centers, but they were fighting
| the multi-generational housing problem where younger sick
| people would get their parents/grandparents sick (who lived
| with them, and weren't able to isolate in their
| apartment/houses).
|
| Back then, people noted "if we do this right, then we will be
| accused of over-reaction", and sure enough that is what we are
| seeing. Fun fact: by the time the first lockdowns in SF/bay
| area were announced, domestic flights were down... 97%. All
| major conferences had been cancelled. Tech companies were
| already allowing/requiring WFH. If that seems like an
| overreaction, imagine if Google Search went down in spring
| 2020... that isn't an impossible situation, after all if staff
| were spreading covid to each other readily without being aware
| and having a 1% death rate as a result... that is devastating.
| The notion that life would have been fine if we just ignored it
| is kinda nuts considering we had 800,000 deaths to date, and
| yet our mask effort resulted in the extinction of a strain of
| the flu, and reducing the pediatric flu deaths from 200 -> 1.
| Yet still 800,000 deaths.
| smm11 wrote:
| In other news, heart disease is still the number one killer in
| the US.
| awb wrote:
| You could go down the rabbit hole and say that misinformation,
| poor decision making, logical fallacies, mental health issues,
| etc. are the actual catalysts.
|
| My point is that COVID and heart disease are largely
| preventable at an individual level if you have ability to eat
| healthy foods and take the vaccine and/or practice social
| distancing.
| nradov wrote:
| You can't seriously expect people to continue to practice
| social distancing. That is absurd.
| awb wrote:
| You're right, social distancing is no more realistic for
| many people than maintaining a healthy diet and exercise
| routine. My point is that we have tools to stop these
| diseases, we just view using these tools as worse than
| getting the disease.
| umanwizard wrote:
| But this contradicts your earlier comment where you
| attributed it to poor decision making, misinformation,
| and so on.
|
| If one indeed puts greater value on "not indefinitely
| social distancing" than on "a slightly decreased risk of
| death or serious complications from Covid", then the
| decision not to continue social distancing _is a good
| one_.
| LandR wrote:
| If Omicron is less severe, will an Omicron infection likely
| provide immunity against delta?
| hammock wrote:
| Yes
| hourislate wrote:
| I was at Costco this morning (DFW) buying a big hunk of Prime Rib
| for Christmas Day dinner. No one either knows or cares anymore.
| I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes but I'm
| starting to feel weird considering no one else is wearing a mask
| anymore, not even the folks who look like they got one foot in
| the grave already.
|
| Omicron is already so yesterday it isn't even a memory.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| I find it mind-boggling that a person could live through nearly
| 2 years of this pandemic and still not understand how
| hospitalizations lag cases and deaths lag hospitalizations by a
| number of weeks. I'm optimistic about Omicron, but I'm not
| going to pretend I don't know the pattern we have seen over and
| over and over again.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > hospitalizations lag cases and deaths lag hospitalizations
|
| Why aren't you upset with your governments for not making
| this a non-issue? You gave them 2 years to figure it out and
| all I hear are excuses like "you can't just spin up new
| staff". Bullshit. These governments have virtually unlimited
| resources to build healthcare capacity to deal with covid. If
| there was a will to do so, they could have built capacity
| specific for covid that includes proper staffing.
|
| The fact that entire regions of 17 million people get thrown
| into month-long lockdowns and asked to cancel christmas
| because the region can only support like 400 people in the
| ICU is a travesty.
|
| People should be furious with their governments continuing to
| blame the public for "possible healthcare collapses". We paid
| with 2 years of our short-ass lives waiting for them to fix
| capacity issues. There are zero excuses.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Where are you? Everyone where I am in Southern California still
| wears a mask inside.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I'm in San Francisco and it depends on the event. For
| example: - Infected Mushroom in the Midway:
| hardly anyone wearing masks, irregardless of if they are
| drinking or not - Chvrches in the Civic
| Auditorium: most people wearing masks, maybe 20% of the
| audience unmasked. Even people with drinks mostly just
| removing it drinking and putting it back on. -
| Spiderman in the AMC Kabuki: mostly everyone wearing masks
| - Karaoke bar in Japantown after Spiderman: no one wearing
| masks, not even the barman and the owner of the bar that were
| of course not drinking
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yeah, I've found nightlife tends to adhere to mask usage
| much less.
|
| It's not necessarily correlated with age either. We went
| out to eat at a bar-like place that mostly 50-somethings go
| to. Most people didn't have a mask, even if they were just
| hanging around the bar doing nothing.
|
| I think some of it is a self selection process. People that
| think the virus isn't a big deal are more likely to not
| care about masks, go to these places, and I would bet also
| not be vaccinated.
|
| My wife and I have discussed this a lot. We are much more
| likely to do things with people that are taking it
| seriously but still have a social life, than people that
| never thought it was a big deal - the latter are much more
| likely to be taking absolutely zero precautions.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I'm not surprised those who choose to go to karaoke don't
| wear masks
| hourislate wrote:
| I'm in DFW
| cwkoss wrote:
| Even leaving aside covid concerns, I'd love for sanitizer
| stations and mask wearing in grocery stores to become the new
| normal. I don't want the general public sneezing on my food -
| especially during flu season.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| do you not wash your food before consuming it or something?
| cwkoss wrote:
| I wash produce, but not the lids of cans, rims of bottles,
| or packaging that could transfer germs to my hands right
| before I'm about to eat.
|
| Do you wash your hands between when touch a bottle of salad
| dressing, and before you eat?
| aantix wrote:
| If I have to choose a time to stop masking, between now and
| my death, I'm not going to choose my death.
|
| I will stop wearing one much sooner. I hate the muffled
| voices. I can't see anyone smile. It's dehumanizing.
| cwkoss wrote:
| > I hate the muffled voices. I can't see anyone smile.
|
| Grocery stores are not for socializing. I don't want randos
| to try to start a conversation with me beyond asking quick
| questions.
| boplicity wrote:
| This is so regional; and it has little to do with the local
| death rate, unfortunately. Where I'm located, deaths are
| relatively low, and people have no problem masking up. In other
| places, such as Arizona, lots of people are still dying, and
| masking is also relatively rare. It's cultural and/or
| political, in many regions, as opposed to based on need/risk.
| snet0 wrote:
| I wonder if the disposition towards following health advice
| is in some way causally connected to the reduction in death
| rate...
| massysett wrote:
| This varies a lot by region. Where I live, everyone wears masks
| in Costco - I'd attribute this to the government mandate, but
| people did not stop wearing them even when the mandate was
| lifted. They have also closed the schools again.
| Karsteski wrote:
| > I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes
|
| Real talk, wth is going on in your head...
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