[HN Gopher] Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
___________________________________________________________________
Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
Author : shrubble
Score : 237 points
Date : 2022-01-06 08:16 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (covid19.colorado.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (covid19.colorado.gov)
| openasocket wrote:
| I'd love to see a numbers breakdown estimating the impact Omicron
| would have on the US if we had a nearly complete (say 90%)
| vaccination rate. How many infections would we be seeing, how
| many hospitalizations, how many people in the ICU? How much would
| this strain our healthcare system? And how would that compare
| with, say, the flu?
| xkbarkar wrote:
| Iceland is 92% vaccinated double and I think 60% of them
| triple. Half the famn population is in isoliation because of
| infection. Feel free to check their covid stats in covid.is (
| they have an english version ). Most hospitalized are fully
| vaccinated ( 2 or 3 ) Most serious cases are unvaccinated,
| HOWEVER. Out of 34 hospitalized with c19 6 were patients in
| cardiology that got infected in the hospital and had to be
| tranferred to c19. Authorities have not wanted to comment if
| any of the serious c19 cases came from people who were already
| seriously ill, already hospitalized and not vaccinated due to
| that. Since the ICU numbers are so small, this significance is
| easily skewed. Much less hospitalizations than the models
| predicted.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| Id like to add. C19 severity has a very clear link to
| obesity, Iceland is one of europes most obese peoples. If
| omicron is not filling the iceland c19 ward ( I think we are
| up to 30 patiens out of thousands of active cases ). then I
| think this wave will pass as more of a scare than anything
| else. It certainly disproves the usefulness of vaccine
| passports. But that particular science is of course not
| followed.
|
| Sigh
| denton-scratch wrote:
| That article doesn't seem to say anything about "100%
| prevalence".
| ostenning wrote:
| What are covid hospitalization rates for children currently?
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| There are 15k covid RNA in every ml of sewage coming out of
| boston right now. Figure 200l a day of sewage per person and that
| is a lot of covid. I would hold off on eating oysters for a bit.
|
| https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
| ed_balls wrote:
| > I would hold off on eating oysters for a bit.
|
| why? RNA detected != active virus. e.g. in room temperature,
| virus can survive the maximum of 5 days (on plastic 3 days,
| cardboard 24h). It's an impossible vector of transmission.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| I think that bit was meant as a joke
| tpmx wrote:
| Lobster consumption aside, those graphs show an insane increase
| compared to previous waves.
| cwt137 wrote:
| Most people are relying on arbitrary testing to figure out how
| many people are infected. I think this totally under reporting
| number of infections because the whole population is not tested
| on a regular basis. To get an accurate picture of people are
| infected, you have to look at whole populations.
|
| One whole population group to study to get a better
| understanding of how bad this wave is is to look at the cruise
| line industry. Everyone has to get tested, and thus you are
| studying a whole population. According to a recent CDC report
| [1], between Nov 30 - Dec 14 of 2021, 162 cases were reported
| on cruise ships. Then the next two weeks 5013 cases were
| reported. This is roughly a 30x increase!
|
| If you look at the NY Times infections chart[2], in the same
| time period, their 7 day average only went up like 3x. This is
| grossly under reporting of infections.
|
| The sewage chart looks at a whole population and it is easy to
| see the increase in infection is more in the 30x scale than it
| is the 3x scale.
|
| Be safe out there everybody. If you look at whole population
| groups, Covid is way more infectious than what a lot of news
| media outlets and their data would tell you.
|
| 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/30/us-cdc-says-people-should-
| av... 2.
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c...
|
| This sewage report is about a whole population and it is clear
| to see infections many more times higher than what a lot of
| news agencies are reporting.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'd be surprised if coronavirus can infect non-mammals. I don't
| think there's been any scientific evidence of this. For the
| reports of contaminated fish and what not, it's suspected the
| contamination happened on the supply chain (e.g. someone at a
| fish packing plant coughed on food.)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That's not how viruses work.
|
| Early in the pandemic researchers swabbed lots of surfaces and
| while they were able to amplify COVID DNA from a bunch of the
| swabs, they were not able to successfully culture a single
| sample from any surface, which included the hospital room of a
| patient on a respirator where the virus would have been beyond
| abundant.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| It's how norovirus works, and sometimes hepatitis too:
|
| https://www.livescience.com/62485-how-does-norovirus-get-
| int...
|
| Some harvesters will hold oysters in sterile water for a few
| days to clean them out (Depuration). This usually works but
| it is hard to know for sure if the one on your plate got this
| treatment or not.
| numpad0 wrote:
| You should not be eating that oyster raw if you are not
| sure, and that only applies to norovirus which is resistant
| to mild disinfectants(e.g. ethanol)
| nradov wrote:
| The CDC publishes a weekly chart showing the proportions of
| circulating variants for the US as a whole. The Delta variant had
| previously driven most other variants near extinction, and now
| Omicron is doing the same to Delta.
|
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#circulatingVariant...
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's a potentially misleading visualization. Delta can be
| steady rolling even if its share falls from 100% to 5%, as it
| apparently has, if the denominator has increased by the same
| factor.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Variants disaggregated by locality within US:
|
| https://outbreak.info/
| awb wrote:
| Many of the first infected in SA previously had Delta. I
| haven't seen anyone suggesting that contracting Omicron gives
| you natural immunity to Delta.
|
| Here are some links saying you can get both:
|
| https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/omicron-delta-en...
|
| https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1543522/can-you-...
|
| https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25678686...
| nradov wrote:
| You can get infected with both, but there is still a
| significant level of cellular immunity across all common
| variants.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1
| awb wrote:
| For someone not well versed in virology, can you please
| explain what that means?
|
| How do you get infected with significant levels of cellular
| immunity? And does that mean the infection is less severe?
| nradov wrote:
| There are multiple components to the immune system. For
| some viruses like measles, prior infection or vaccination
| usually triggers production of sterilizing antibodies
| which block subsequent infections in most patients. That
| isn't really the case for COVID-19. However the immune
| system also contains memory cells which can ramp up
| defenses more quickly during reinfections. The targets
| for those defenses are mostly the same across all SARS-
| CoV-2 variants.
|
| I have oversimplified this explanation to keep the
| comment short. If you'd like to really understand what's
| going on I recommend this panel discussion by a group of
| leading physicians; it's long but worth a listen.
|
| https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8
| bagacrap wrote:
| if natural immunity derived from omicron doesn't protect you
| against Delta then why is there no more Delta in Colorado (as
| per TFA)?
| rafale wrote:
| Our savior Omicron. The ultimate vaccinator. Nature finally had
| mercy on us.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i wonder what countries like China and New Zealand who are
| taking a zero COVID approach are going to do. COVID is
| endemic in the rest of the world except for those places
| where it doesn't exist at all? I don't see that working.
| soperj wrote:
| New Zealand isn't doing Covid Zero any more since October.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Are they still doing zero Covid now?
| nradov wrote:
| China is still pursuing a zero COVID policy. Personally I
| think that's bad policy, but they're sticking to it.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/china/xian-covid-outbreak-
| loc...
| mullingitover wrote:
| Omicron isn't significantly more contagious than Delta for
| the unvaccinated, however. It's just that the vaccinated can
| spread omicron, so anyone who wasn't vaccinated and managed
| to dodge infection for this long is now in nightmare-level
| difficulty when it comes to remaining uninfected.
| nradov wrote:
| Omicron appears to be significantly more contagious than
| Delta for everyone including the unvaccinated.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-
| 2...
| mullingitover wrote:
| There's a preprint for a study of 12,000 households in
| Denmark that seems to offer evidence to the contrary[1].
| Take my earlier claim with a grain of salt, I'm not an
| epidemiologist, but this is what an epidemiologist told
| me.
|
| > Surprisingly, we observed no significant difference
| between the SAR of Omicron versus Delta among
| unvaccinated individuals (Table 3). This indicates that
| the increased transmissibility of the Omicron VOC
| primarily can be ascribed to immune evasion rather than
| an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility. If
| this observation can be confirmed by independent studies,
| it has important ramifications for the understanding of
| the current challenges for control of the epidemic
|
| [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21
| 268278v...
| politician wrote:
| Too bad they skipped a letter in naming it; it would've been
| some good PR for China.
|
| https://www.rapidtables.com/math/symbols/greek_alphabet.html
| [deleted]
| slavik81 wrote:
| December 27th was the first day I personally knew a Canadian that
| had caught COVID. Today, I know of three independent outbreaks
| among my friends and even more at work.
|
| The Alberta active case rate looks like a vertical line [1], and
| that's even after recently switching mostly to take-home test
| kits that don't get reported in these numbers. In my group of
| friends, 6/7 tested with take-home kits.
|
| [1]:
| https://twitter.com/ByMatthewBlack/status/147886170257374003...
| dqpb wrote:
| It's amazing how China has apparently been almost untouched by
| the pandemic since end of March 2020.
| rocqua wrote:
| I thought that a second variant was essentially an independent
| stochastic process. If I have that right that suggests that, had
| Omicron not occurred Colorado would currently be Corona-free.
|
| I doubt that is true though. Maybe some of the people who now
| have Omicron would have gotten Delta later on? I don't see how
| one variant can truly extinguish another variant otherwise. But I
| am hoping someone here knows better than me.
| c-fe wrote:
| How do you see them as independent stochastic processes?
| Assuming one person can only be infected with 1 variant at a
| time, then they are not independent, instead they would be
| negatively correlated since the more people have omikron the
| less people can get delta. If instead one person can have more
| than 1 variant at a time, and they are really independent, then
| your conclusion is incorrect since a 100% prevalance of omikron
| would not imply a 0% prevalance of other variants.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| There's something I don't understand: why can't we be
| infected with different variants at the same time ? And does
| it extend to viruses (eg: can't get infected with flu if
| currently fighting measles) ?
|
| I read someone in Israel got `flurona`, flu + covid
| (https://www.timesofisrael.com/flurona-israel-records-its-
| fir...).
| zmmmmm wrote:
| well, at least with the different coronavirus strains, they
| are similar enough that getting one is effectively like an
| immunisation against all the other strains. Now you could
| _probably_ get two strains simultaneously if you were
| independently infected separately by both at the same time.
| Delta, however, isn 't quite common enough for that to be
| likely I think.
| m0llusk wrote:
| There are multiple factors involved. The extremely high rate of
| spread of Omicron does a lot to bring it to the top. More
| subtle is the difference between immunity generated by each.
| That is, it appears that vaccinations and post infection
| immunity from Delta are little help against Omicron infections,
| but post Omicron immunity is highly effective against Delta.
| This appears to be related primarily to differences in the
| spike protein.
| rsynnott wrote:
| If having had omicron is reasonably protective against
| contracting delta in the short term, then this works. For now.
| Who knows how long any acquired immunity holds up.
|
| Delta did pretty much eliminate prior variants in many parts of
| the world.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Your bodies response to a virus makes it difficult for another
| virus to take hold, but not impossible. There's a lag in the
| body's immune response when a virus first is detected, and then
| another lag while the body builds up the defenders (antibodies
| and other things). So for someone to have multiple viruses at
| the same time, largely the exposure has to happen at the same
| time. The more different the viruses are, the more likely they
| can be in the body at the same time in a meaningful number.
| When an immune system is "all revved up", it is very hard for a
| few thousand virus cells to get exponential growth going
| needed.
|
| Antibodies (and b-cells and t-cells) for Delta work ok enough
| against Omicron, and vice-versa. Since Omicron is spreading so
| fast, it is able to get to more bodies faster than Delta, so
| Delta has no where to go. Delta did the same to previous
| variants.
| troyvit wrote:
| People seem to see this as another sign that the pandemic is
| either getting worse or almost over. I just see it as another
| reason not to use Tableau.
| GoldenMonkey wrote:
| In Colorado. Anecdotal, 6 ppl I know here all have covid. 3 of
| them had their boosters 2 weeks before hand. 1 unvaccinated. Was
| like a bad cold for all of them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| swasheck wrote:
| also in colorado. currently have O. the + tests from our
| (previously very cautious) friend groups are coming in rapidly.
| i was boosted in mid-novemeber. _physical_ symptoms feel like a
| bad cold (cough, congested head, sinus headaches) though i'm
| afebrile. the mental symptoms are definitely
| different/stronger. sleeplessness. auditory hallucinations. i'd
| say mental fog but i can't say that's not related to the
| sleeplessness.
| frebord wrote:
| I'm now 10 days clear of the last obvious symptoms - but I've
| been having major trouble focusing since the end of the
| Holiday and not sure if due to covid or not.
| bigyellow wrote:
| sroussey wrote:
| My friends without the vaccine that got Covid are dead, and the
| one that did get the vaccine are alive.
| empressplay wrote:
| That's incredibly unlucky! I know several people who got
| Covid pre-vaccine (including myself) and we're all still
| alive. Although it wasn't exactly a party and most of us
| (including myself) have been vaccinated since so we could be
| fairly certain we wouldn't get it again.
| Taywee wrote:
| The vaccines were never purported to be 100% effective, and all
| the data and information was clear that they had lower
| effectiveness against Delta, and even lower against Omicron.
|
| If people told you that the vaccines would lower your chances
| of contracting every known major variant and lower your chances
| of a serious illness, they were right. If they told you that
| the vaccines were guaranteed to completely prevent every
| variant of the virus, they were lying to you. If you heard the
| former but interpreted it as the latter, that's on you.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Is it just me or are we getting a lot of new(ish) accounts
| posting blatant COVID misinformation and/or flamebait lately?
| mperham wrote:
| The metrics presentation on the page are very misleading. The use
| of color is confusing (red generally means bad or getting worse,
| green means good or getting better). The up/down arrows are
| seemingly red or blue arbitrarily. Why are the four rows each
| colored differently? Just a bizarre UI.
|
| If you have to present data to a user, please read a book by
| Edward Tufte first. His books will change your entire
| perspective, e.g.
|
| https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
| frebord wrote:
| The spread is so fast, all charts now look insane and would be
| terrifying if not for the mild symptoms.
|
| I wonder if it is possible for a virus to wipe itself out by
| spreading so quickly that it ends up with very few left to
| infect, assuming it doesn't mutate enough in time.
| listless wrote:
| Everyone in my house had COVID in September and now we all have
| it again. Vaccinated, boosted, prior infection - none of it
| matters when it comes to avoiding the virus. I think we're at the
| point where the virus is part of life and the best we can do is
| get back to living.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i don't know why the parent was modded down. It seems to me the
| governments are beginning to change the narrative to "the virus
| is part of life and the best we can do is get back to living.".
| Marazan wrote:
| Omicron has probably saved Florida (andnother southern states)
| from a horrendous Delta winter wave.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I'm skeptical. The 2020 Winter wave started in October. But
| cases were decreasing of flat Oct. and Nov. with barely any
| mitigations in place. There was some sign of an increase in
| very late nov. and early december. Whether that is an early
| sign of a wave, a thanksgiving bump, or signs of Omicron
| spreading, it's hard to tell.
|
| But it Florida and the South had a high degree of immunity to
| delta even pre omicron.
| yeswecatan wrote:
| I have no idea how to read this website. Could someone break this
| down for me?
| callumprentice wrote:
| Can anyone point me to a reliable source that explains in
| layman's terms why one cancels out the other and it's not
| possible to have both (say) delta and omicron at once.
|
| Somewhat tongue in cheek, but since cancellation seems to be the
| case, could we not create a version that was 100x more
| transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in
| Australia aside ;)
| hogrider wrote:
| Just a no sources comment: you can get confection of the flu
| and covid or any variant with any other variant at the same
| time. It's just over time one variant out competes the others
| because it's more fit.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Dumb question that's been vaguely nagging at me: If a host
| can have both at the same time, in what sense are they
| competing? There are plenty of cells to infect in a
| particular host aren't there?
| regularfry wrote:
| They're competing to infect the next hosts in the chain.
| With two present, the one that can get itself passed on
| more often wins overall.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Ah, so you can contract both viruses but are only likely
| to pass one on? Do you know why that is?
| regularfry wrote:
| They have different transmission probabilities. Omicron
| has far more presence in the upper respiratory tract.
| It's just a numbers game, they're not competing in any
| active sense.
| omnicognate wrote:
| In that case I don't understand the "omicron will
| outcompete other variants" thing I keep reading about. If
| they don't interact wouldn't the progress of one variant
| be unaffected by the presence of another?
| Imnimo wrote:
| I think you're correct - if Omicron and Delta provided no
| cross-immunity, there would be no competition, and they
| would just continue on their own trajectories as if the
| other didn't exist.
|
| But, I think that's not actually the case. Omicron
| infection does provide some immunity against Delta. See
| this preliminary report from South Africa, for example:
| https://www.ahri.org/omicron-infection-enhances-
| neutralising...
|
| I'm not an expert (so take this next part with a very
| large grain of salt), but I would guess that someone with
| an active Omicron infection (and so swarming with
| antibodies) would get the biggest immunity boost against
| Delta. So if Omicron is everywhere, Delta runs out of
| infectable hosts. In principle, it could even go extinct
| - if that were to happen, it wouldn't matter so much if
| Omicron-induced immunity wanes, there would be no Delta
| left once the shields are down.
| davesque wrote:
| I think it's because Omicron spreads more quickly and confers
| some immunity towards Delta. So before Delta has had a chance
| to infect a given person, they've probably already gotten some
| immunity from Omicron.
| jbeam wrote:
| Exponential growth. Lets say that there is one delta infection
| and one omicron infection in the population. Each delta
| infection causes two more people to be infected, while each
| omicron infection causes three more people to be infected.
|
| The growth of a single delta infection: 1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 8 -> 16
| -> 32 -> 64
|
| Versus a single omicron infection: 1 -> 3 -> 9 -> 27 -> 81 ->
| 243 -> 729
|
| Omicron started out as 50% of the cases and over 6 reinfection
| cycles became 90% of the cases. Delta just can't keep up. These
| are made up numbers but that is the general idea.
| callumprentice wrote:
| Nod - that explains why omicron grew so quickly but why, in
| doing so, does delta not persist?
| convolvatron wrote:
| i assume that the immunity you get from having O helps damp
| down cases of D
| nostromo wrote:
| To actually answer the question: because immunity from one
| transfers to the other.
|
| Omicron is basically a self-administering vaccine that is
| preventing Delta from spreading as easily.
| nathanyz wrote:
| I love this self-administering vaccine as it so elegantly
| explains the answer to the parent's question.
|
| BUT, it is so elegant that you just provided fuel for the
| new conspiracy theory of how government forced us to get
| vaccinated by creating this crazy new variant in a lab
| that would essentially spread the vaccine without our
| permission. Just waiting for that to start bubbling up
| from the fringes ;)
| brahadeesh wrote:
| Unfortunately, things don't need to be one way or the
| other for conspiracy theorists to spin it the way they
| want to.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It does persist, all else remaining the same, but since it
| is so much less infectious it will go extinct if and when
| anything makes a dent in Omicron. Dents including
| lockdowns, increased vaccination, changes in public
| behavior or eventual immunity.
| _greim_ wrote:
| IIRC there was a study showing Omicron antibodies are effective
| against previous variants, but not vice versa.
|
| [edit] I think this is where I heard that. Feel free to judge
| for yourself how reliable the source is.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYLbJ0H8zdc
| gpm wrote:
| > could we not create a version that was 100x more
| transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in
| Australia aside ;)
|
| You overestimate our abilities to make viruses that do what we
| want, let alone to make viruses that do what we want and won't
| evolve into viruses that do what we don't want after being
| released into the wild.
|
| This is also basically saying "can't we make a transmissible
| vaccine", and as much as I like vaccine mandates, I think there
| would be significant ethical issues with that.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I feel like I recall at least one worm that somebody released
| that would infect servers, patch the vulnerability that it
| used to get in, infect other vulnerable servers, then delete
| itself.
| [deleted]
| tkahnoski wrote:
| A bit of a sidebar this was basically the plot of The Last
| Ship. With infrastructure of the world crumbling how do you
| distribute immunity without the manufacturing infrastructure.
|
| So yeah I'd put it in a 'last ditch Hail Mary to save the
| world' type of plan...
| shrubble wrote:
| I can't easily link to the last chart at the bottom of the page,
| which shows all the variants.
|
| However it does seem to be the case that omicron is taking over
| in Colorado USA...
| akira2501 wrote:
| The CDC publishes this data as well.
|
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportion...
| [deleted]
| dheera wrote:
| What does 100% prevalence mean? 100% of people are at least
| silent carriers?
| [deleted]
| lsaferite wrote:
| Based on the chart it's 100% of the positive tests being
| Omnicron.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| If the studies suggesting that Omicron antibodies help protect
| against the Delta variant, and Omicron seems much more mild in
| comparison - looks like we're seeing an actual possibility of an
| end to the pandemic (at least to the point where we deal with
| COVID like we do with cold and flu season instead of shutting
| down the world).
| Bellend wrote:
| As someone else mentioned and I agree that I hope we are at the
| end of covid lockdown potential but is that realistic?
|
| Is it pure luck that Omicron is more transmissible but apparently
| less severe than Delta? What is to stop the next variant being
| more transmissible than Omicron but 10 times more deadly?
|
| I know news outlets are really bad for clickbait titles, but I
| read yesterday that a new variant was detected in South France in
| the last few days? When will the carnival end and what does it
| mean?
| hedgehog wrote:
| It's pretty much pure luck that Omicron isn't more severe than
| Delta, and it's not clear that it's a lot less severe though
| that'll be clear in the data in another month. I suspect in 20
| years this thing will look more like measles in that high
| levels of vaccination starting in childhood + rapid response on
| outbreaks will make it a negligible risk at a personal level.
| Who knows though, anyone promising certainty is probably trying
| to sell you something.
| [deleted]
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It depends whether it confers immunity to other variants, and
| how long it lasts.
|
| If it's good at that, it is so transmissible that quickly
| everyone will get it (the fabled "herd immunity") and new
| variants, unless they break the mould, won't have a large
| enough population of o sustain themselves in.
|
| Otherwise, maybe we'll enter into some kind of equilibrium,
| where there's enough of not-terrible Omicron to keep everyone
| "topped up", equivalent to permanently high vaccination levels.
|
| Or, none of our happens and as you say, the next variant is
| more transmissible and more deadly, and we're screwed again.
|
| Re France, new variants pop up all the time, if it's the same
| one I read about, there's no indication that it's special right
| now so for now I'd say clickbait.
| chubot wrote:
| As far as I understand that's not likely because the it would
| be maladaptive for the virus. If there were a really deadly
| variant in South Africa, then 1) it wouldn't spread as fast
| because viruses need live hosts to spread and 2) people would
| change their behavior before it reached the entire world.
|
| That is, Omicron is mild so people likely didn't change their
| behavior too much. If you saw a lot of people around you going
| to the hospital, you would likely stop going out so much. (Some
| people knew many people going to the hospital during the
| pandemic; others saw none for years. The infection was very
| unevenly distributed. On HN I expect most people are remote
| workers and know few people getting infected.)
| nayuki wrote:
| My province has a nice data presentation too:
| https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashboard/
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Serious question. If Omicron was the initial variant of Covid 19,
| would we have seen shut downs and the level of global response we
| did? Is the thought it's only this level of mildness because of
| vaccination rates?
|
| My gut is that the answer would be yes because this variant
| targets children more effectively.
| bagacrap wrote:
| define "targets". Transmissibility or actual harm? Children are
| at no more risk of harm from this variant than any other AFAIK.
| ecf wrote:
| Is this the part in Plague Inc where the virus infects everyone
| and then mutates into a 99% chance of death monster?
| gz5 wrote:
| Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD, has a nice substack from
| perspective of an epidemiologist. Two notable recent Omicron
| posts on that substack:
|
| The potentially scary aspects:
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
|
| The potentially good news:
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/there-is-good...
|
| Obviously it is still early, but imo those 2 posts give a decent
| lay of the land.
| zpeti wrote:
| Just a thought after reading the good news - ok this is great
| for the US and the west where there is decent vaccination.
|
| What the hell is going to happen with the omicron spread in
| countries with hardly any vaccination? I mean if it really is
| like measles, this could be terrible.
| barney54 wrote:
| Countries like South Africa? Steep increase in cases and now
| a steep fall in cases. Some increased deaths, but nothing
| like delta or alpha.
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-
| afri...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Plus, to preemptively address any assumptions that Dr Jetelina
| may have an optimistic bias, compare her " _There is good news_
| " article from 5th January, which is based on what we now know,
| with her article from 26th November when Omicron (initially
| called "Nu") was first detected: " _New Concerning Variant:
| B.1.1.529_ "
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concernin...
|
| At the time, little was known about this new variant except
| that it was _extremely_ different from all that we had seen
| before, which would very likely result in escape from prior
| immunity, and may even lead to more severe disease (or not?).
| The only definitive silver lining that she found at the time
| was that 1) the variant could be quickly detected with PCR
| thanks to its S-gene deletion, 2) it was detected early thanks
| to South Africa, and 3) vaccines could be quickly adapted if
| necessary, thanks to mRNA vaccine technology. However, in all
| other regards, the variant was still very concerning.
|
| In other words, do take her cautious optimism seriously. She's
| not a wishful thinker. Rather, she is a specialist in the field
| who works with the data as it becomes available and knows how
| to interpret it
| selimthegrim wrote:
| There are S-gene silent Omicron subvariants in France (not
| sure if it is the same as the more concerning variant
| recently)
| bengale wrote:
| Yeah I've consistently found her writing to be good. She's
| one of the primary sources I use for keeping up to date with
| what's going on with covid.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Thanks for this, just in those two blog posts she answered many
| lingering questions I had about how omicron has been changing
| things. the SEOd google results are always a flood of
| incomplete or speculative information when I try to find
| answers to covid questions so this is a dream come true.
|
| If anyone has any other sources like this that can find and
| interpret good data for covid I'd love to hear about them.
| bengale wrote:
| I've also found this blog to be useful:
| https://thezvi.substack.com
| harpersealtako wrote:
| Calling zvi's blog "useful" is an understatement, he's
| practically a lesser deity of covid-19 modeling.
| toolz wrote:
| I think thought-leaders and experts could use a whole lot
| less deification right now.
| tharne wrote:
| > I think thought-leaders and experts could use a whole
| lot less deification right now
|
| I'm not sure that's possible - the experts are more or
| less screaming into the wind at this point. The WHO and
| the CDC have been reduced to punchlines by liberals and
| conservatives alike. IMHO this scorn is well-deserved.
| spurgu wrote:
| What are the "scary aspects" of that article? That Omicron is
| highly transmissible forcing people to take time off work?
| CPLX wrote:
| I'm not a big fan of this new trend of some random Twitter
| personality suddenly becoming the go-to source of information
| on COVID.
|
| Granted, it seems true that she's actually an epidemiologist,
| though not unusually notable as an assistant professor at a
| mainstream state school. As far as I know she doesn't have
| unusual access to information, or a hands on role, she's
| drawing from public sources and doing analysis.
|
| Which, is fine. But what makes me nervous about this trend is
| that she's now like almost a household name. She's built a
| personal brand around this image as being the up to the minute
| source of information, and the audience she's developed has a
| certain profile. They're basically looking for someone to tell
| them how bad everything is and how scary everything looks,
| backing it up with details so her audience can feel smart when
| they relay all this info to their friends.
|
| The minute that COVID isn't actually something to worry about
| her audience is gone and she goes back to being a random
| obscure civilian.
|
| Which is an incentive structure that makes me pretty sure I
| know what she'll be posting tomorrow, and a week from now, and
| so on.
|
| I realize the mainstream news media isn't any better. But
| still, it's an odd new development that people are mostly
| seeking out the level of fear/concern they want in their news
| rather than the other way around.
| paganel wrote:
| If it matters almost the same thing has been happening in my
| country (Romania), only that around these parts of the world
| we have FB as a replacement for Twitter.
|
| I personally regard it as a coping mechanism for the people
| that follow these newly created Covid personalities, the bad
| thing is that in most of the cases the mainstream media copy-
| pastes those posts/messages and presents them as the truth,
| even though there are many devils hidden in the statistical
| details most of the time.
| timr wrote:
| From her "scary" post:
|
| > In certain jurisdictions, though, we've met or exceeded last
| winter's hospitalization peak. We can see this in many states
| in the Northeast, including New York.
|
| When presented with a new source, I tend to judge people based
| on their perspectives on things I know about. This one is a
| case study in being misleading, while not _technically_ lying.
| New York state has only "met" last winter's hospitalization
| peak if you look at trend lines. If you look at
| hospitalizations per day, we clearly haven't. Also, of course,
| "last winter's peak" was not really any sort of stress for the
| hospital system at all (compare to the spring 2020 wave, which
| was), and it happened at a time when things were _much_ more
| restricted than they are now:
|
| https://covid-19.direct/state/36
|
| The statement is _more_ correct for NYC data, where hospitals
| have exceeded last winter 's peak on a trend-line and per-day
| basis:
|
| https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.pag...
|
| ...but it's still misleading, because again, this is a fraction
| of previous waves in NYC, but also, a lot of these
| hospitalizations are going to ERs for _testing_. Government
| officials are pleading people to stop going to the hospital for
| trivial things:
|
| https://twitter.com/MarkLevineNYC/status/1478353835793997827
|
| I don't know if she is intentionally trying to mislead, or just
| doesn't have a good handle on the data, but this is the sort of
| thing that makes me skeptical of a person's other claims.
| sterlind wrote:
| > But it's still misleading, because a lot of these
| hospitalizations are going to ERs for testing.
|
| I don't think this is correct. Going to the ER is not the
| same as being admitted to the hospital. From everything I've
| read, ER visits are _not_ counted as hospitalizations
| anywhere.
| timr wrote:
| Yes, they are. They count anyone admitted to a hospital in
| NYC, at any time, for any duration:
|
| https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-
| data/blob/ced762b25...
|
| > Hospitalization counts reflect the total number of people
| with COVID-19 ever admitted to a hospital, not the number
| of people currently admitted.
|
| If you go to the ER and make it to a treatment area, you're
| admitted. These are bright-line distinctions. Nobody is
| making judgment calls on the data ("did this person
| _really_ get admitted, or is it just someone in the ER for
| an hour? Let me look at the chart! ") at this level of
| analysis.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Really? Is this a NYC thing? Any hospital I've ever been
| in has considered the ER an outpatient service, and you
| are only admitted to the hospital if they transfer you
| from the ER to inpatient care. Do they consider other
| outpatient services, like, say, yearly physicals, an
| admission as well?
| timr wrote:
| I can't speak to outpatient services, but hospitals
| report this data, and make the call. The government
| doesn't do it -- which is what you'd expect. It's hard
| and slow to make case-by-case judgment calls when you're
| far from the source data. Hospitals, in turn, don't spend
| any more time than is absolutely required making these
| kinds of classifications, unless someone makes them do
| it.
|
| It would not surprise me at all to find that other
| cities/states have the same thing happening.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| _" We can easily see that in many graphs, but my favorite is
| below from New York City, showing a clear distinction in
| hospitalizations among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated
| people_ "
|
| I don't see this as much here in Ontario. Among the vaccinated
| as of today there is a 10.10/100k hospitalization status vs
| 16/100k for the unvaccinated (and 11.9 for one-dose). The
| hospitalization rate among the vaccinated is climbing quickly.
| Yes, there's still a gap, but yikes.
|
| ICU is better, though, with a 0.76/100k rate for the vaccinated
| vs 4.74/100k for the unvaccinated.
|
| This may have to do with different hospitalization and testing
| criterion, I don't know. But hospitalization here is in full
| exponential growth and not just among the unvaccinated.
|
| Obviously being vaccinated is still far preferable. I have had
| 3 doses (1 AstraZeneca and 2 Pfizer) FWIW.
| radioactivist wrote:
| The Ontario science table dashboard has the hospitalization
| ratio for unvaccinated to vaccinated still at 5:1. Where are
| you getting that these rates have become nearly equal?
|
| edit: sorry had that written backwards
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Ontario science table dashboard has the hospitalization
| ratio for vaccinated to unvaccinated still at 5:1. Where
| are you getting that these rates have become nearly equal?
|
| If the rates are the same, and 5/6 people are vaccinated,
| we would expect 5/6 people admitted to the hospital to be
| vaccinated. In fact, 5/6 people are vaccinated in the 12-40
| age cohort, with older (and more vulnerable) populations
| having at least 9/10 people vaccinated and quickly going to
| 19+/20. Therefore, vaccines prevent hospitalizations, as
| the average of all adults is greater than 5/6.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You're misunderstanding. The dashboard is per Capita (so
| you don't need to account for the stuff you're
| describing), and shows 5x lower rate of vaccinated people
| hospitalized (and 10x lower ventilated). A far cry from
| the ~1.5x rate mentioned by ggp
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Edit: It was a series of errors. Please check out
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29830131
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Corrections: My above post was written in response to the
| unedited version of the GP post, which stated the 5:1
| ratio was vaccinated:unvaccinated (and implied it was
| based on total numbers). Apparently, since I posted it
| was edited (and corrected) to say it was 5:1 ratio of
| unvaccinated to vaccinated (and based on per capita.)
| This makes far more sense and also makes my reply look
| insane.
|
| I take GP at their word that there were just errors in
| writing their post. But it does leave a weird artifact
| out there that I cannot fix.
| radioactivist wrote:
| Yes, reading your post made me realize I typed it wrong
| -- sorry again!
| gpm wrote:
| Link, for those who are looking for the (science table)
| source: https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashboard/
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Mind sharing the data you're looking at from Ontario?
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| Alberta does a nice job breaking vaxxed VS Unvaxxed down by
| age group:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Actj5Tf
|
| https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-
| statistics.htm...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| My guess is that this speaks more to the cheapness of
| hospitals in Canada and the greater likelihood to go to a
| hospital with a lesser case of COVID. For instance, you quote
| a 7.6% rate of the vaccinated moving from the hospital to the
| ICU and a 29.6% rate of the unvaccinated moving from the
| hospital to the ICU. Meanwhile, the US blended average seems
| to be around 30% (eyeballing the data.) That could be because
| the unvaccinated are an overwhelming percentage of the
| admitted (it's the same rate), or it could be because there
| is a higher bar to go to the hospital at all for either
| class.
| specialp wrote:
| This data from NYC has been supplanted and updated for all of
| NYS: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-
| data
|
| This still shows a greater than 10x difference in outcomes.
| Additionally, the "unvacccinated" population includes people
| naturally vaccinated by virtue of having a previous case.
|
| It could very well evolve into a form that is mild enough and
| different enough from the vaccine spike that brings the
| unvaccinated and vaccinated hospitalization rates to
| convergence. Respiratory illnesses in general harm the
| elderly and immunocompromised disproportionately. But if that
| becomes the end game where COVID is still circulating,
| vaccines are no longer as effective at preventing serious
| illness, because the general severity has gone down, that is
| also a good outcome as it is what we have always lived with.
|
| Colds and flus have always killed 10s of thousands a year.
| COVID killed many more because it was particularly severe.
| Just as the flu of 1918 is still with us today in a less
| harmful form (H1N1) This virus has a global reservoir and
| will never run its course entirely before mutating again most
| likely. Just like colds and flus before it.
| clairity wrote:
| > "COVID killed many more because it was particularly
| severe."
|
| no. covid is novel, not appreciably more severe, and that's
| where mortality rates are coming from. it's following the
| dynamics of the many cold and flu viruses that came before
| it. we just happen to be at the beginning of the dynamics
| rather than at relative steady-state (e.g., 'endemic'),
| which is where most other viruses are at.
|
| this inability to reason cogently about steady-state vs.
| dynamic aspects of systems is absolutely rampant across
| media, politics, and casual conversation, and must be a
| named fallacy at this point, though i don't know that name
| offhand.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| It is? Care to source some data on these 'dynamics'?
|
| You are engaging on wishful thinking I'm afraid - wishful
| thinking that is even now still killing hundreds of
| thousands. Perhaps there is a name for that too.
| Animats wrote:
| _" Additionally, the "unvacccinated" population includes
| people naturally vaccinated by virtue of having a previous
| case."_
|
| Only if it's recent. How recent isn't clear yet. Somewhere
| in the > 90 days, < 1 year range, it seems.[1] As of last
| summer, about 1% of COVID cases were known re-
| infections.[1] Most repeat cases seem to involve two
| different variants.[2] Whether people who had previous
| variants are showing up infected with the omicron variant
| doesn't appear to be published yet.
|
| [1] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/why-
| covid-19-vaccines-offe...
|
| [2]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8604456/
| ceras wrote:
| Simpson's Paradox applies here: once you slice by age, the
| data tells a different story. Even when vaccines are highly
| effective, the confounding factor that gets lost when you
| aggregate across ages is that the most vulnerable (the
| elderly) are also the most vaccinated.
|
| I highly recommend anybody concerned about hospitalization
| among the vaccinated read this post. It's about Delta
| hospitalizations in Israel 2021, but we should expect the
| same effect from Omicron and across countries:
| https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-
| can-...
| anewguy9000 wrote:
| ontario still conflates anyone hospitalized for anything
| testing positive for covid, with anyone hospitalized _from_
| covid; this alone could explain the discrepancy between a
| hospital bed and icu. lies damned lies and statistics...
| acdha wrote:
| It's not that simple: yes, if someone gets in a car crash
| it's probably not COVID but there are many cases where
| someone had a manageable condition that was disrupted by
| COVID -- not 100% fault but not 0%, and a big problem for
| hospital capacity.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| Counterpoint; My mum nearly died of Covid, six weeks in
| hospital, four of which were in ICU. On leaving we
| discovered she no longer had epilepsy.
| djb_hackernews wrote:
| Uh...What?
| cthalupa wrote:
| This is the sort of extraordinary claim that requires
| extraordinary evidence to support it, and there are many
| potential confounding factors.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| What sort of evidence would satisfy you?
| labster wrote:
| If this is true, I hope she is in contact with an
| epilepsy researcher or three.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Yes, surprisingly few outlets show this, but it would have
| been crucial in showing vaccines work.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You have to normalize by age.
|
| Unvaccinated people in Canada are overwhelmingly very very
| young, in Quebec most of them are too young to be vaccinated.
|
| That's why they don't get hospitalized as much :)
|
| Lies, damned lies, and statistics!
| cosmiccrisp wrote:
| I want to lookup data on the average age of unvaxed
| patients currently in the ICU but so far have not found
| any.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's not the metric you should look for (at least you
| don't need to). You should look at the average age of
| unvaccinated people. That way you can estimate the prior
| probability of infection.
|
| You can go here: https://health-
| infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-cover...
|
| From that, you can figure out that there are more people
| unvaccinated under 12 years old, than in the entire rest
| of the population, by a large margins - out of 7.6
| million people without full vaccination, 2.9 million are
| between 5 and 11 years old, and 1.9 million people are
| under 5 years old.
|
| So out of the 7.6 million people who aren't fully
| vaccinated, 4.8 million are under 12 years old!
|
| And from 2.8 million remaining, 430k of those are under
| 18, and 1.0 million are under 30.
|
| From this, we can figure out that the pre-vaccine
| hospitalization risk for the unvaccinated population is
| much, much lower than for the normal population.
|
| This is without taking into account health status, of
| course!
|
| Quebec publishes age-ajusted hospitalization rates per
| vaccine status, the latest number is a 7.7x odds ratio,
| which would be even worse for the ICU : https://mobile.tw
| itter.com/sante_qc/status/14791225681667481...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Comparing the rates only makes sense if one believes the risk
| is distributed equally among the two populations. However,
| the most vulnerable are the most likely to be vaccinated, and
| the least vulnerable are the most likely to be unvaccinated,
| so the vaccine could still be very effective even if the
| rates of hospitalization are equal, or even worse for the
| vaccinated population.
| clcaev wrote:
| Don't forget about long covid. My covid infection was mostly gone
| in 3 days; yet 7 days after that I'm in the ER for peripheral
| neuropathy. Several days later I am still here with perhaps
| permanent loss of function. There are a few other youngsters like
| me with covid complications on the neurology floor, most with
| less than 2 comorbidities. Oh yea, the ER was packed, 6h to
| triage.
| redanddead wrote:
| Wasn't there some kind of anticoagulant therapy that helped
| persons with long covid? it was posted here yesterday I think
| damontal wrote:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357428572_Combined_.
| ..
| aarongray wrote:
| Sorry to hear about your peripheral neuropathy. Check out some
| of the treatments for dysautonomia. There are some cutting edge
| treatments that have been developed over the past few years,
| they just haven't become mainstream knowledge or trickled down
| to the medical schools yet.
|
| The two most effective approaches are using neuroplasticity
| exercises to retrain the limbic system (cheap, but time
| consuming - an hour a day for 6 months): https://ansrewire.com/
| https://retrainingthebrain.com/
|
| Or doing microcurrent neurofeedback (costs ~$150 a session, do
| one session a week for a couple months):
| https://microcurrentneurofeedback.com/
|
| Essentially you have got to get the brain producing the proper
| amount and type of brain waves again, and then once you have
| that, slowly work back into exercising while trying to avoid
| triggers and push / crash cycles.
| cheeze wrote:
| Were you vaccinated when you caught it? Hope your body recovers
| over time friend.
| ptx wrote:
| > _we have plenty of N95's in supply. We also have KN95s for
| kids._
|
| Are they buying Chinese masks for the kids? Or is there an
| American "for kids" N95 standard that creates a name collision
| with the Chinese KN95 standard?
| luhn wrote:
| NIOSH (the agency behind the N95 standard) has not approved any
| type of facemask for children, so any "N95 for kids" mask would
| be counterfeit.
| wffurr wrote:
| The child-size masks I have for my three year old are all KF94s
| from Korea.
|
| https://bonafidemasks.com/childrens-face-masks/ lists small-
| size KN95s from China and an uncertified mask from an N95
| manufacturer.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+
| cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on
| top of everyone who has already had it. It's as though nobody is
| ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is
| nearly finished.
|
| Or am I missing something?
| awb wrote:
| It doesn't appear to be competing with COVID as much as
| supplementing it.
|
| https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25678686...
|
| Omicron is infecting fully vaccinated people and those with
| previous infection. In the early cases detected in SA, many had
| already had COVID and/or Delta.
|
| It would be amazing if an Omicron infection produced antibodies
| that fought off COVID & Delta, as that could rapidly bring
| relief to the pandemic, but I haven't seen that suggested
| anywhere yet.
|
| If it's largely immune to the vaccine and doesn't produce
| antibodies against COVID/Delta, we might as well label it a new
| disease instead of a variant.
|
| Luckily it seems to be incredibly mild. I wonder if we had such
| robust data on the common cold of it would look similar to
| Omicron.
| barbs wrote:
| > It would be amazing if an Omicron infection produced
| antibodies that fought off COVID & Delta, as that could
| rapidly bring relief to the pandemic, but I haven't seen that
| suggested anywhere yet.
|
| There has been a study that suggests Omicron infection
| provides protection against previous variants. This
| correlates with data from the UK that suggests Omicron is
| displacing Delta.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYLbJ0H8zdc (link to study in
| description).
| lamontcg wrote:
| You're thinking about it all wrong. Omicron and Delta are the
| same virus, and there's not particularly any good data that
| Omicron is less intrinsically virulent than Delta.
|
| Omicron infects those who are unboosted, and likely reinfects
| a lot of the population that is >6 months recovered from
| prior single infection.
|
| It is all about the fact that Omicron infects people who
| already have T-cells and aren't immunologically naive. The
| way out of the pandemic is our memory B-cells and T-cells.
| awb wrote:
| > It is all about the fact that Omicron infects people who
| already have T-cells and aren't immunologically naive. The
| way out of the pandemic is our memory B-cells and T-cells.
|
| What does immunologically naive mean? And how do B-cells
| and T-cells help us get out of the pandemic?
|
| Trying to learn as much as possible, thanks.
| jatone wrote:
| not a biologist, but my current understanding:
|
| immunologically naive means that your body has no prior
| exposure to a virus (or its variants). basically it means
| it has NFC how to deal with it. so it basically has to
| brute force its way to a defense against the strain.
|
| This is why you saw people with early covid cases having
| their immune system go haywire and a lot of the
| treatments for covid focused on dampening the immune
| system to prevent it from killing the patient.
|
| once you've seen a virus and its variants a few times
| your body has 'remembers' strategies on how to fight the
| virus. and launches those strategies against it.
| sometimes depending on the mutations those strategies are
| less effective (omicron) and your body has to create new
| strategies.
|
| B-cells and T-cells are how the body store and deploy
| these strategies.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| The actual elephant in the room is that covid is never truly
| going away without an actual vaccine / cure.
| dgellow wrote:
| There is no way to know when it will end.
| dokem wrote:
| The gov and media are never going to straight up tell us the
| pandemic is over. We have to take our way of life back and let
| big bro silently move on to something else.
| umvi wrote:
| > Surely this is the end of the pandemic?
|
| Depends on if politicians believe they can lift restrictions
| without negatively reflecting their career or not. There's a
| lot of Twitter mobs out there promoting "extreme caution" that
| will tank your political career if you aren't catering enough
| to their caution-comfort-level.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It at least is the end of managing the pandemic. Whether you
| want to or not, there is no locking down against this version.
| causality0 wrote:
| You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife
| is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the
| start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks
| ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive
| mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old
| one burns out.
| coding123 wrote:
| Here's a thought experiment. Compare the reddit "the button"
| with Covid staying with us. Even with only 1 person at a time
| trying to hit the button it stayed alive for 3 months. And
| that's with people trying to keep it alive, 24x7 - just
| enough people to keep it going. Enough people being
| interested in getting a low time and staying with it.
|
| With covid, it's just automatic, but you just need 1 foolish
| move between 2 people, and there's no server making sure only
| one person gets it at a time, it's totally a distributed
| network. And the timeout, instead of being 60 seconds, it's 2
| maybe 3 weeks (perhaps a lot longer - we don't REALLY know).
|
| The thought experiment here is that if we TRY to keep
| something alive that's actually kinda hard to and it lasts 3
| months, how is covid EVER going to end?
| [deleted]
| spurgu wrote:
| I have omicron right now (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty
| much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold
| (certainly wouldn't call it "battling omicron"). I have
| _zero_ problems with getting this each year.
| throwhauser wrote:
| Every year you'll be a year older though, which eventually
| results in being in a different (higher) risk category.
| spurgu wrote:
| Sure, and at some point I might even consider flu shots.
| So what?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But this means, that we can reopen everything, let young
| people "live", and target the efforts towards old people
| (and other risk groups).
|
| Atleast here in slovenia, most of the mandates affect
| mostly the young and healthy... yes, theoretically
| neither 20yo bobby nor his grandpa can enter nightclubs,
| due to them being closed, but with such data, we could
| reopen nightclubs, let bobby party and do all the stupid
| stuff we were free to do at 20yo, and focus the effort at
| grandpa, so he gets vaccinated, gets the masks, has
| somone bring him food, so he doesnt have to go to the
| stores, subsidize a plan for a smartphone to encourage
| more videoconferencing instead of live visits, give out
| free tests at home, to detect the infection early, etc.
| spurgu wrote:
| You're describing a sanity of focused protection which
| should've been in place since day one, but for some
| reason policymakers instead lost their minds. :| At least
| now with Omicron they will slowly realize that lockdowns
| make no sense. Right? _Right?_ (looking at Finland and
| crying, my home country recently having gone into full
| lockdown mode for no good reason other than _case
| numbers_ )
| shrikant wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| Both my wife and I (double vaxxed for 5 months, not boosted
| yet although were just about to do so) caught Omicron-
| flavoured Covid in the lead-up to Christmas and it wiped us
| out each for 2-3 days each, with a combination of fatigue,
| aches, fever, and violent coughing. Certainly worse than
| any cold or flu we've had up until that point.
|
| I still have a pretty nasty cough and a throat
| inflammation.
|
| Aren't anecdotes fun?
| spurgu wrote:
| > Aren't anecdotes fun?
|
| Anecdotes was precisely the reason why I posted it. See
| whom I'm replying to.
| steelstraw wrote:
| Congratulations. You haven't had a bad cold or flu
| before. It's not uncommon for the flu to knock someone
| out for a good week. Or for a cold to leave a lingering
| cough for weeks.
| uhtred wrote:
| You are the gatekeeper on feeling sick, now?
| jsight wrote:
| No, but he's fundamentally right. The symptoms described
| are no worse than a moderate flu.
| throwaway64643 wrote:
| People forget that it knocks so many people down at once
| in a short time, and with quarantine rules in force. It
| is more contagious than flu/cold. Imagine what would
| happen every year in winter if this becomes the new
| normal.
| abletonlive wrote:
| Pointless post. We could ask the same of you.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| We've been under threat of lockdown, under lockdown, or
| under restrictions for ~2 years now.
|
| It's understandable that some are very concerned after or
| about getting sick but many of us, for our own sanity and
| psychological health, need to move on.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Caught a bad flu in late 2018. Lingered for two months.
| Cough so bad, I dislocated a rib. Had X-rays taken, and
| everything. Took about a year for the the rib to stop
| slipping whenever I exerted myself. In the end, it was a
| period of discomfort that set me back a spell, but which
| I ultimately got over. Probably wouldn't try to shut down
| society over it, or use it as proof that people should
| fear the flu. Just that sometimes you get sicker than
| usual.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > It's not uncommon for the flu to knock someone out for
| a good week.
|
| This is why it has a vaccine. That prevents it, prevent
| seriousness of symptoms, and deaths. (yet a large percent
| of the population doesn't get it, and so 50k us citizens
| die each year)
| dougmwne wrote:
| It's terrible to feel terrible, but getting over the
| worst part of Covid in 3 days is an enormous improvement
| from how unvaccinated people fared in the initial waves.
| Even for people not hospitalized, they dealt with
| pneumonia and shortness of breath for weeks. I think we
| can celebrate the progress we are making in reducing the
| average severity of this disease and there are more tools
| coming soon with Pfizer's new pill and newer multivalent
| vaccines.
| shrikant wrote:
| Yeah absolutely, I count ourselves reasonably lucky that
| we only caught the disease after vaccinations.
|
| I have absolutely non-zero desire to go through this
| every year, unlike my parent commenter though.
|
| Would I be of a similar opinion as parent if I had a
| similarly asymptomatic-to-mild case? I don't know for
| sure, but I would hope not, because I wouldn't want to
| draw conclusions or base policy from just my anecdotal
| experience.
|
| Other replies to me appear needlessly partisan jibes: I
| neither said nor implied anything about continued
| lockdowns and any such inference is pure projection.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| By saying "I don't want to experience this every year"
| without any caveats, there is an implication we should do
| something to prevent it. Especially given the broader
| context of the pandemic thus far. Surely you can see how
| many readers might feel that implication.
| slibhb wrote:
| > I have absolutely non-zero desire to go through this
| every year, unlike my parent commenter though.
|
| Many people get sick every year or every other year.
| Their illness is like you described: 2-3 days of being
| "knocked out" and about a week to fully recover.
|
| It's not that I "desire" to go through that every year or
| two, it's just life. I expect that's why people responded
| incredulously to your post: for them, getting sick
| occasionally is normal.
| markkanof wrote:
| Your parent commenter wasn't saying that they have a
| desire to get this every year, just that if the worst
| case outcome is getting what they had every year, they
| would find that an acceptable trade-off for getting
| society back to normal.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Your comment makes it out like everyone with Covid had
| pnuemonia and shortness of breath for weeks, when really
| it was a small minority.
| rlpb wrote:
| According to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59895598,
| over 500,000 people in the UK are still suffering health
| issues _a year after catching Covid_ , and nearly 900,000
| are still suffering after 12 weeks. The UK population is
| around 70 million, so that's around 1% of the entire
| population. If you take into the fact that many people in
| the UK have managed to not catch it at all yet, or
| exclude children who suffer far less (if at all), then
| the percentage would be higher.
|
| I don't think 1% is "a small minority".
| dougmwne wrote:
| According to the CDC, 30% to 40% of symptomatic people
| get shortness of breath, which is a significant share.
| That is a signal that the infection has reached the lower
| respiratory system.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-
| setting...
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Had I reported to the CDC (I didn't), I would have
| reported that I woke up in the middle of the night unable
| to take a deep breath, went nearly immediately back to
| sleep, and was free of all symptoms the next day. This
| would have counted toward the total (had I reported), and
| such counting needs a wider perspective before such
| things as say, creating lockdown policies based on these
| figures.
| perydell wrote:
| I am curious how you know it was Omicron. Was it
| sequenced and they told you that?
| peder wrote:
| This is one of the most privileged takes I've ever read.
| OH GOOD HEAVENS. You were sick for a whole 2-3 days. Best
| lockdown the country to avoid what most people experience
| 1+ times per year.
| jollybean wrote:
| ? It's killed 800 000 people.
|
| The 'privileged' comment is 'I got COVID it was just like
| a cold, I can do this every year ... so there's no more
| pandemic'.
|
| Conflating their personal anecdote with the range of
| outcomes.
|
| For now, we're still in a pandemic. Hopefully it will get
| better.
| lovecg wrote:
| Omicron didn't kill 800 000 people. There's also vastly
| more immunity (whether through vaccines or previous
| infections). Let's wait and see but there's hope it's a
| different, milder disease.
| thomasmg wrote:
| (You are right of course. With the data we have now, we
| are quite certain that Omicron is much milder. Hopefully
| no lockdown is needed.)
|
| But, personally, I would like to avoid getting Omicron,
| as long term effects are still unclear: does "long
| Omicron" exist, does it affect vaccinated, and if yes how
| common and severe is it. There are some recent news about
| long Covid: it could be micro-clots.
| parthdesai wrote:
| so the answer is to stay locked down and screw over small
| businesses and tons of workers every winter because a
| subset of people have harsher symptoms?
| lukifer wrote:
| Every policy has tradeoffs. We could save around 20,000
| lives per year (in the US) with a simple policy change:
| just cap all speed limits at 45 mph.
|
| I think it's a fair critique that some lockdown measures
| go too far (particularly those with low efficacy, or
| "safety theater"), but it's more helpful to take about
| specifics, rather than "lockdowns good" or "lockdowns
| bad".
|
| At some point (and maybe it's now?), we'll need to shift
| our thinking from "pandemic" to "endemic". COVID is going
| to be with us from now on, and will start to look more
| like flu season (viruses tend to evolve to be less deadly
| over time). And I don't say that to trivialize it; COVID
| has given me much greater awareness of the impact of the
| seasonal flu on the elderly and the immuno-compromised.
| parthdesai wrote:
| I agree, that is my point is exactly. At a certain point,
| we need to learn to live with it. Majority of us on HN
| are in an extremely privileged position where we can WFH
| and infact for a lot of us, pandemic led to more savings.
| But that is not the case for an average person out there.
| There are families out there have been ruined financially
| for life because their business had to shut down. Kids
| very much might have life long repercussions from the
| school shut down. At a certain we have to take all this
| into account before just initiating a province wide
| lockdown every winter (which is what is happening in the
| country I live in, Canada).
| gilbetron wrote:
| That sounds like a fairly typical cold, maybe edging to
| "bad" in my experience. I'm double vaxxed plus a booster
| about 1 month ago, and currently have Omicron. I have
| roughly the same experience as you, although less on the
| coughing, which is odd because I usually get a lot more
| coughing with colds.
| uhtred wrote:
| > That sounds like a fairly typical cold
|
| No, it doesn't. I've never felt "wiped out" from a
| typical cold.
| drusepth wrote:
| I regularly feel "wiped out" from a typical cold, often
| for 4+ days in a row.
|
| This whole thread is full of anecdotes from people
| implicitly claiming that their experience applies to
| everyone, when in reality everyone's going to have
| different experiences with everything from colds to
| covid. Unfortunately, the latter has a much higher
| prevalence of seriously-worse side-effects (long-haul,
| ageusia, anosmia, death, etc) compared to the former.
| technothrasher wrote:
| My 15 yo son got Covid about three weeks ago, symptoms
| matched what the parent poster described, including
| feeling "wiped out". Oh wait, no he didn't. Testing all
| came back negative. Diagnosis from his pediatrician:
| common cold.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Ah, yeah, you're right. It was probably just the cold
| that myself, my son, and my wife got after being exposed
| to someone that had symptomatic, PCR tested Covid. I'm
| sure it was just a coincidence that we then all three
| tested positive for covid.
| sanderjd wrote:
| FWIW: To me, it sounded like an atypical cold or a
| typical flu. I've been "wiped out" by colds before,
| though rarely, and I'm always "wiped out" by flus, though
| I catch them a lot less often than once a year.
| atwebb wrote:
| Whew, I'm similar and it tanked me for about a week. I
| could feel every joint in my body and breathing was a
| conscientious decision for a few days due to the
| pain/discomfort. It has subsided a bit (and my family
| wasn't hit as hard) but I have 0 interest in experiencing
| it again. Currently hoping it doesn't impact me long term
| since I like to stay active.
| phonypc wrote:
| Hmmm... mild symptoms after being vaccinated. It's almost
| like the vaccine worked or something. How weird.
| [deleted]
| JPKab wrote:
| My brother had mild symptoms after being unvaccinated. So
| did my kids. So did my neighbors whose kids play at my
| house all the time.
|
| So did the vast majority of South Africans who aren't
| vaccinated.
|
| I push the vaccine onto all my high-risk family members.
| I recommend it to anybody as a tool to introduce your
| immune system to the virus.
|
| But let's be honest about this:
|
| The vaccines in circulation were created to stop the
| Alpha variant. The immune system response is too targeted
| to antigens on the spike protein that are no longer
| present in the newly evolved, vaccine escaping variants.
| The vaccine is a useful tool for mitigating severe
| disease, but it's an outdated vaccine for a variant that
| no longer exists. Just like the a flu shot for the wrong
| strain tends to have some positive benefit when you catch
| a mismatched strain via some cross immunity, that's what
| we get from this vaccine. And guess what? We get it from
| infection induced immunity as well.
| MrMan wrote:
| an honest, but wrong, take in your final paragraph.
| HNDen21 wrote:
| I have 5 people in the house, 1 vaccinated, 4 not.. the
| ones that were not had a 2 day fever... the one
| vaccinated (me) had no fever but just a cough for 3-4
| days. All in all just like a mild flu
| twox2 wrote:
| Anecdotal stories don't paint an accurate picture. I live
| in NYC and had Covid xmas week. It was ROUGH. (I'm double
| jabbed.) I also know unvaxxed people (0 shots) that just
| had a little sniffle and bounced back in 2 days. I also
| know of a seemingly healthy young lady that tested
| positive and died 3 days later.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > Anecdotal stories don't paint an accurate picture
|
| You would have thought that after 800,000+ deaths in the
| US people would have learned the importance of
| understanding statistics when dealing with these issues,
| especially on a place like HN, but pandemic has melted
| people's brains and now people are arguing anecdotes
| about what constitutes a "bad cold" and a "mild flu".
|
| The funny part is that it doesn't really matter because
| it's not like we get to collectively vote whether the
| pandemic will end or not. It's pretty clear that, even
| given how extremely contagious omicron is, people don't
| care as much as the used to about a seasonal flu.
|
| Even supposing covid sticks around and becomes "only" as
| bad as the flu, 10 years ago if your said it was fine to
| double the annual cases of flu and flu death people would
| have said that was insane.
|
| Sadly if people haven't learned to reason about these
| problems correctly now, it means they very likely never
| will.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > 10 years ago if your said it was fine to double the
| annual cases of flu and flu death people would have said
| that was insane.
|
| And if you told them that things like lockdowns and
| vaccine mandates were still in effect at that point,
| they'd say that was insane too.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > vaccine mandates were still in effect at that point,
| they'd say that was insane too.
|
| No, that one is particularly weird right now. Vaccines
| are essentially mandated for many parts of life, and have
| been for my entire life. At multiple points throughout my
| development I've had to get required vaccines to do
| things. I had never even heard of antivaxxers until my
| late 20s. They used to be laughed at as an insane fringe
| group on HN.
|
| Nobody in 2011 would have thought it was weird that
| vaccines would be mandated. I suspect if I predicted on
| HN that there would be strong resistance to a vaccine in
| the event of a global pandemic people would have laughed
| at me as ridiculous.
|
| People don't like vaccines because they don't like the
| reality we're in and they strangely think resisting
| wearing masks and resisting vaccines somehow makes it
| less real. Unfortunately it has made things much worse.
| spurgu wrote:
| 4-5 months..... even against Delta that would've been
| close to 50% efficacy. With Omicron probably non-
| existent.
|
| Also, see most of South Africa.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also
| experience mild symptoms. It's almost like you've got an
| unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!"
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's almost like hospitalization statistics might just
| back this assertion up with actual irrefutable data.
| [deleted]
| dwaltrip wrote:
| For crying out loud... Go look up the frickin statistics.
| The vaccines are very effective.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Yeah we have this thing called a clinical trial. I
| volunteered in it. Did you?
| stormbrew wrote:
| > Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact)
| also experience mild symptoms.
|
| This is true of essentially all diseases except some very
| very rare exceptions that also tend to burn out very
| quickly. That's just how disease spread works, mild cases
| help the virus propagate. It's not like the virus is a
| mustache twirling villain that wants to murder you, it
| takes a fairly specific balance to obtain long term
| survival.
|
| > It's almost like you've got an unfalsifiable way to
| always say "it worked!"
|
| There's plenty of evidence to support the idea that "it
| works", and actually quite a lot of evidence to
| contradict the idea that "it doesn't work". Severe
| outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita, in people
| who are not vaccinated. The only way you get to any other
| conclusion is if you just plain don't trust any evidence
| presented, in which case there is literally nothing that
| is falsifiable for you and you may as well believe
| covid-19 is evil unicorns or something.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > Severe outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita,
| in people who are not vaccinated.
|
| With omicron? I have not seen any data to support that.
| dahinds wrote:
| https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220105/hospitalization-
| omi...
|
| "The data suggests that three doses of vaccine provided
| an estimated 68% drop in the risk of being hospitalized
| with Omicron compared with people who were unvaccinated."
| stormbrew wrote:
| I mean, it's pretty early to be drawing conclusions about
| this with omicron. Especially since it hit right as
| people in most of the vaccinated world were hitting 5-6mo
| since their second shots. That doesn't mean it's
| "unfalsifiable" it just means it hasn't been yet.
|
| That said, I don't think the null hypothesis is suddenly
| "vaccines do nothing" for some reason. It's clear enough
| it _spreads_ more easily but that doesn 't suddenly
| invalidate all prior assumptions about the vaccines'
| effectiveness against severe outcomes.
|
| Edit: I'm very happy to be proven wrong about this but I
| feel like people should direct some of these replies more
| to the person I was replying to? I'm not the one who
| thinks vaccines do nothing here. :P
| MrMan wrote:
| its not early, omicron is declining already in places it
| hit a few weeks ago
| spurgu wrote:
| > I mean, it's pretty early to be drawing conclusions
| about this with omicron.
|
| No it's not. Late November was too early. In mid-December
| we could start drawing conclusions. At this point things
| are becoming quite clear - we see similar trends
| everywhere, not just South Africa.
| JPKab wrote:
| It's only too early if, like our public health
| authorities, you are too bigoted and self-important to
| trust South African medical scientists because they
| aren't from a mostly white country. That's my take on why
| the CDC ignored their scientists, as did the media.
|
| From the very beginning, the South African medical
| authorities were screaming that this variant was
| producing far fewer hospitalizations OVERALL (despite
| higher case numbers) than the delta/alpha did.
|
| But because they are a third world country, and the news
| media in the West is biased towards bad news, they chose
| to treat this positive data as suspect. It the SA
| scientists had talked about how horrible it was, they
| would have taken it as gospel.
|
| Those of us who were looking at the data knew otherwise.
| MrMan wrote:
| agreed
| [deleted]
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Yet it is predominantly the unvaccinated who are
| overwhelming hospitals with more severe cases. In NYC it
| is something like 15x difference -- 30 per 100000
| unvaccinated versus 2 per 100000 vaccinated people wind
| up requiring hospital care. Those may be small numbers,
| but with omicron clearly being both more contagious and
| evading prior immunity it rapidly becomes problematic.
| virgilp wrote:
| Well you can look at this: https://cdn.substack.com/image
| /fetch/w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q...
|
| (it's recent data, from NY, so - likely a lot of omicron)
| jollybean wrote:
| "Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also
| experience mild symptoms. It's almost like you've got an
| unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!""
|
| Yes, it's called 'Science'.
|
| The vaccine absolutely helps to reduce symptoms,
| hospitalizations and death, even 5 months in.
|
| There are millions of Omicron cases around the world
| measure up against various vaccinated and unvaccinated
| populations.
| beebmam wrote:
| When you look at individuals, you'll never be able to
| truly say any treatment "worked" with certainty for
| virtually anything. It's same with nearly all medical
| treatments. Humans, very often, get better on their own
| with time, and time can't ever be rewinded to test the
| alternative.
|
| The way we know a medical treatment works is by looking
| at large scale data, controlling for variables,
| understanding mechanisms of action, and by approaching
| this science in good faith and not cherry picking data to
| fit one's own conclusions. There's a concept known as
| "Number Needed to Treat" that is probably relevant to
| your concerns here.
|
| Vaccinations have historically been extremely effective
| for many diseases, and COVID is no exception. It's
| accurate to say (most) "COVID vaccines are highly
| effective at preventing severe disease caused by the
| SARS-CoV-2 viruses". Omicron is so new that it's hard to
| be certain of anything regarding it right now, but we'll
| have a better picture in a few weeks. I do know that
| we're seeing many hospitals get overwhelmed across the US
| currently, and many medical workers are out sick with a
| COVID infection.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I have some skeptical family members who like to talk
| about 3rd party anecdotes. "A nurse told me she saw blah
| blah blah happen". As you say, stories like this are not
| a way to know a thing, but I can't get them to
| understand.
|
| It's like we rolled a die once, and it came up 6, and now
| we're all forming our own special opinions on whether or
| not the die is fair. We just can't know. Of course, if
| someone rolled the dice 30,000 times and reported what
| they found, that would be great (wink wink).
|
| Instead of using Calc 1 as a filter course, we should use
| Statistics instead.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| That's the point. It's often a mild cold for the
| vaccinated
| spurgu wrote:
| It's mild for non-vaccinated South Africans as well.
|
| The same still applies as always: Vaccinate the risk
| groups.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Yet the unvaccinated are still overwhelmingly more likely
| to wind up requiring hospital care than the vaccinated.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| The seronaive are. The unvaccinated with a prior
| infection are unlikely to require hospital care:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2108120
| mullingitover wrote:
| SA had very high numbers of previous infections, so there
| was a ton of pre-existing immunity.
| spurgu wrote:
| Which some would see as a partial argument against
| lockdowns.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Comparing death rates in Australia, which actually did
| pretty major lockdowns, to South Africa[1], I don't know
| that this is a great argument against them. South Africa
| definitely paid for that infection-based immunity in
| human lives.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-
| data-explor...
| spurgu wrote:
| Of course heavy and complete lockdowns are effective (at
| delaying the spread of the virus) - if no one is in
| contact with anyone else there's no way for the virus to
| spread. A more apt comparison would be made between
| countries/states with slight or "normal/average" lockdown
| to ones without, but that's very difficult to do in
| practice. And then measure the financial and societal
| impacts (which is also difficult/impossible).
| the_doctah wrote:
| So if everyone gets Omicron, we will have a ton of pre-
| existing immunity?
| mullingitover wrote:
| We already have a great deal of pre-existing immunity.
| The big question we're answering right now is whether
| vaccine-based immunity (which we have more of in AU, UK,
| and the US) is as robust as immunity from infection (main
| source of immunity in SA). It's still too early to say
| with certainty, but it's looking like the vaccines are
| working if you're not immunocompromised.
| lovecg wrote:
| Seems that we don't have much choice in the matter so we
| will find out pretty soon. That wouldn't be the worst
| outcome.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| Granted this still needs peer review...but you may want to
| look into this:
|
| https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1
|
| I hope your recovery goes well and you truly have zero
| issues.
| swader999 wrote:
| That's pretty terrifying.
| rblatz wrote:
| Eventually it's going to do what all other viruses have
| done. Mutate into another flu or common cold. We already
| have l seasonal coronavirus outbreaks. We call it cold
| and flu season; except it's numerous coronaviruses and
| influenza viruses and one or two "win" that year.
| lovecg wrote:
| Some part mutation, some part immunization so that future
| infections are milder. In the absence of perfect
| vaccination this involves killing millions of people.
| Let's not forget about this.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Remember all the articles claiming covid gave you brain
| damage? What ever happened to that?
| kadoban wrote:
| There was some initial fear that anosmia might be related
| to brain damage (since basically ruled out I believe).
|
| One of the common long covid symptoms is "brain fog"
| though. Which I _think_ is probably metabolic or
| circulatory or something, but definitely affects the
| brain whatever the actual cause is.
| CharlesW wrote:
| What happened is that we have a better understanding of
| the _kind_ of brain damage it does, and _how_ it does it.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's not a high percentage of cases. But there are
| significant number of people reporting long-term issues
| with brain fog post-covid. Whether that's actually caused
| by a brain issue I don't know. But it certainly seems to
| be able to effect your ability to think.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Not very hard to find the current, best understanding of
| the phenomenon:
|
| https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Current-Research/Coronavirus-
| and-N...
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Compare the nih link above to the hysteria from here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27975514
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| That also covers only previous, more virulent variants.
| Omicron does not seem to infect areas outside of upper
| respiratory so it is a tad overzealous to spread such
| fear over a preprint of a different variant. It would be
| like comparing a mild flu strain to H1N1 original.
| [deleted]
| spurgu wrote:
| Keep up the fear-mongering... I'm healthy, I'm not
| worried about that at all. Neither am I afraid of
| drowning while boating.
| jmspring wrote:
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| You realize that in the United States, the so called
| "freedumb idiots" are not the bulk of the unvaccinated
| right? And you also must realize that Omicron did not
| start among a population of "freedumb idiots" right?
|
| Leave the straw man out of this, disease is not a
| reflection of character.
| nradov wrote:
| I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by
| getting vaccinated, but the current thinking is that new
| variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised
| patients who experience prolonged infections. The
| vaccines aren't very effective for them.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-
| variants-ma...
|
| It's also possible for new variants to evolve in animal
| hosts, then spread back to humans.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/some-experts-suggest-
| omi...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The vaccines would (probably) have been effective on
| whoever gave the immunocompromised patient the disease,
| though.
|
| It's not all about the individual.
| nradov wrote:
| Unfortunately there will be no significant herd immunity
| effect to protect the immunocompromised. They will all be
| exposed.
|
| The main benefit of vaccines is in reducing symptom
| severity. They only produce a limited and temporary
| reduction in transmission risk.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-
| immu...
| chana_masala wrote:
| Vaccines can drive mutations, too. I don't know if that's
| the case here but it's been seen with other pathogens and
| vaccines
| causality0 wrote:
| I'm happy it's not a battle for you, but it is for my wife.
| spurgu wrote:
| I'm sorry about your wife, hope she gets through it fine.
|
| It's mainly that you provided a personal anecdote in one
| direction and I found it prudent to provide one in the
| other direction - one that echoes everything we've seen
| so far, cases skyrocketing, hospitalization rates barely
| nudging.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Motivated anecdotes aren't prudent or useful. We know
| from the 2ish years of this we've had so far that the
| dynamics are tricky to pick apart. For example when young
| low-risk people are out at bars (very high exposure) and
| older or higher risk people stay home what happens is the
| hospitalizations lag because it takes some time for the
| first group to get sick, infect the second, and then some
| of those people to go on to the hospital. On the other
| hand older people are much more vaccinated so the
| relative risk between the groups will likely be different
| from previous waves.
|
| That aside, hospitalizations are going up faster than
| they have at any point prior so not sure where your
| "barely nudging" comes from.
| JPKab wrote:
| I hope your wife is ok. Unfortunately, infection with
| Omicron is inevitable and not preventable, without living
| in a bubble. It's too infectious, and the vaccine, unlike
| with previous variants, does basically nothing to stop
| transmission. Combine that with an R0 equivalent to
| measles, and avoiding infection was never possible. She
| probably took every precaution she could reasonably take,
| and still got infected. That was my experience as well.
|
| Statistically, people who are healthy and vaxxed
| developing severe symptoms from Omicron are outliers.
| That is no comfort to you, and I can assure you I know
| how you feel on that front when people like me tell you
| the stats. My mother-in-law suffered a very rare
| (statistically) adverse event from her second Pfizer shot
| in May, which killed her. She was in her early 60s, and
| healthy, but suffered cardiac arrest 3 hours after her
| second shot, in the midst of a fever. It was an
| exceedingly rare event, but it was no comfort to us to be
| told that.
| r00fus wrote:
| > (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from
| that) and it's just like a common cold
|
| So you have milder symptoms because you're vaxxed.
| spurgu wrote:
| I'll let you know how I feel when I get it "unvaxxed" the
| next time, since I decided months ago already against
| getting a booster.
|
| It also sounds like you're not aware of a) the vaning
| efficacy of the vaccine or b) how little it does against
| Omicron.
| JPKab wrote:
| Coloradan here:
|
| I have Omicron. Already caught the virus in February 2021,
| good old OG Alpha Covid, which resulted in mild symptoms and
| loss of sense of smell for 7 months.
|
| My only symptom is a mild runny nose, nothing else. I WISH I
| had colds this mild. We have a new virus that is endemic in
| humanity. We can choose to accept it, protect the vulnerable
| like we do with flu, and get on with our lives. Or we can
| continue to allow the news media to enervate us with non-stop
| panic, and choose existing over living, while fucking over
| kids to protect older adults.
|
| My father is a rabid viewer of MSNBC, lacks mathematical or
| critical thinking skills, and doesn't read much. The result
| is he has been in a constant panic since the virus hit, and
| has isolated himself from family in a manner that has been
| detrimental to his health. This despite being vaxxed,
| boosted, and recovered from a mild post vax delta
| breakthrough infection. He still thinks the virus can kill
| him, and cancelled Christmas Eve plans for 5 of us to go to
| his house. The media has polluted his brain with irrational
| fear. His shitty physician (where I grew up is a dirt poor
| rural county, and the MDs there are the dumbest i've ever
| met) told him that "there is no natural immunity to COVID, it
| doesn't exist." Utter nonsense. As if my immune system (I
| wasn't eligible for the vaccine in Feb 21) fought, then
| cleared the virus from my body with some mysterious,
| unidentifiable mechanism that is completely unrelated to how
| it clears other viruses.... just unbelievable.
|
| The virus was deadly because it was novel. It ceases to be
| novel when your immune system acquires memory T-cells, even
| if you no longer have active antibodies present. If you are
| old enough, or have a deteriorated immune system, the lag of
| producing new antibodies can be very problematic with the
| other strains of COVID, which is why boosters are so crucial
| for high-risk groups.
|
| The data is now this:
|
| People in their 70s who are VACCINATED have a lower death
| rate from Omicron than they do from flu. (If they aren't
| vaxxed, this is obviously not the case.)
|
| See the New York Times, which is a very hawkish paper on
| COVID, for that specific stat:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/briefing/omicron-risk-
| mil...
|
| FWIW, David Leonhart is one of the only journalists at the
| NYT who seems to be remotely literate in data and statistics
| writing about COVID. That newsroom is essentially filled with
| people who haven't studied math since high school, despite
| their degrees from Columbia/Yale/Harvard journalism schools.
| And boy does it show.
| polski-g wrote:
| You can also catch the cold over and over.
|
| 1 or 2 colds a year is pretty typical.
| antidaily wrote:
| Or crabs. Not me, a buddy of mine.
| causality0 wrote:
| Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a
| cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay
| up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the
| 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage
| that is potentially cumulative.
|
| If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some
| serious damn consequences.
| pikma wrote:
| Actually my wife had a bad cold this summer and she
| coughed so hard during the night that we had to take her
| to the ER and she was lacking oxygen (not sure by how
| much). She is otherwise healthy in her early 30s, though
| she was pregnant, which might have made it worse. It
| surprised me, I always thought that colds were harmless.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > though she was pregnant, which might have made it
| worse.
|
| Being pregnant does dampen the immune system.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Yeah, they're really not. I was a paramedic about 10
| years ago. Every winter I'd see colds or influenza kill
| people. (Or at least, initiate convalescence and
| subsequent rapid death from related issues within a few
| weeks.) Always though, those were people who were either
| very old or had COPD (a lung disease). It's a common way
| that people go out actually. A cold leads to
| weakness/stress leads to pneuomonia/UTI's/sepsis and then
| death.
| smt88 wrote:
| Colds kill thousands of people every year and some may
| have lifelong effects, such as neurological impairment or
| heart damage.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The death rate isn't the same for your 1st case of covid
| and your nth case.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Is there even a single confirmed death from Omicron yet?
| I've heard of a couple but they turned out to be fake.
|
| This is a highly dynamic situation. Omicron is not alpha
| or even delta.
| EA wrote:
| An unvaccinated man with underlying health conditions
| died in Texas mid December after testing positive for the
| COVID-19 omicron variant, officials in Houston said,
| marking what is believed to be the first death linked to
| the strain in the U.S.
|
| https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021
| 122...
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Your article perfectly illustrates my point. It says
| Omicron is 3/4 of the cases and that this one person
| MIGHT have died from it, but it's unclear and may be due
| to his other health conditions.
|
| Let's just assume it was Omicron that killed this guy.
| All signs point to Omicron being less deadly than the
| common cold.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| There are yes. On another note "28-day average case
| fatality rate in South Africa, the likely origin of the
| Omicron variant, tumbled in the past six weeks from 8% to
| 0.2%" from WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/omicron-
| variant-may-end-up-savi...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| But are most of those issues with naive subjects? Once
| everybody is vaccinated or has had it once, the extreme
| reactions should drop way off.
| nradov wrote:
| The common cold is not one disease. There are hundreds of
| different viruses which all cause similar cold symptoms,
| including four other coronaviruses.
|
| https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-
| guide/common_cold_ca...
| makeworld wrote:
| Yep, especially Omicron.
|
| > This is the first evidence to show us that the rate of
| reinfection with Omicron is high--3 times higher than Delta.
| In other words, infection-induced immunity is not doing a
| great job at stopping Omicron.
|
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-
| updat...
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Do you know what was the test that distinguished omicron from
| delta? Asking because my local county health department seems
| lacking in that technology.
| hanoz wrote:
| Are the unvaccinated catching it over and over again? That
| seems to me a vanishingly rare occurrence, admittedly within
| a rapidly shrinking set of people. It would be interesting to
| get some figures for this, hopefully without being lynched
| for asking the question.
| verdverm wrote:
| From what I understand, Covid is endemic and we should
| expect new seasonal variations each year like the flu and
| common cold
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| There were many stats, showing most of people with omicron
| being vaccinated (above the vaccination rate). I never
| found the methodology behind it, because if they only
| tested travellers to eg. africa for omicron, then sure,
| probably all of them were vaccinated, if they did
| randomized testings, they you'd expect at worst (vaccines
| don't work) the same percentage un/vaccinated as in the
| general population, or at best, vastly more unvaccinated
| infected.
|
| > hopefully without being lynched for asking the question
|
| Somehow this is a sad reality of social media and the
| current 'situation'... asking anything is seen as
| "provocative", and there are many things happening that
| would require more rigid questioning and better answers.
| jonpalmisc wrote:
| Personal anecdote, sample size of 1: I know an unvaccinated
| person who has had it 3 times. Not immunocompromised,
| otherwise healthy.
| hanoz wrote:
| _> sample size of 1_
|
| The only unvaccinated person you know who has had it, has
| had it three times?
| beamatronic wrote:
| Were they at least 6-9 months apart, or closer to a year?
| jonpalmisc wrote:
| First two infections were closer to 3-4 months IIRC,
| third was probably ~6 months.
| lovecg wrote:
| How did the severity compare across the three cases if
| you know?
| miriam_catira wrote:
| Another small sample size for you: I know one family that's
| not vaccinated - both children are too young either way.
| Both parents and older child have caught it twice, about a
| year apart. Youngest is still nursing, and has not caught
| it. Dad and son are fine, but the Mom has an "annoying
| lingering cough" as she put it. But both times it wasn't
| worse than the flu for any of them, so in their case they
| see it as "we got lucky" but no one has any underlying
| conditions that would have caused complications.
| scrubs wrote:
| Correct. I know several people who are vaccinated yet caught
| Covid twice. The principle thing to keep in mind,
|
| - vaccination is a risk reducer on severity of infection.
| Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention.
|
| - and on that point not getting into the hospital is
| important. From a management standpoint, we've got to insure
| demand for hospital resources does not dwarf those same
| resources. That's _the key management function_ here.
| simonsarris wrote:
| > Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention.
|
| What on earth? Yes they did, all along.
|
| December 2020:
|
| > Fauci Predicts U.S. Could See Signs Of Herd Immunity By
| Late March Or Early April
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
| updates/2020/1...
|
| > "I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you
| start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to
| 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that
| blanket of herd immunity."
|
| Talking about herd _immunity_ is definitely saying
| immunity, and doesn 't make sense unless the vaccine
| prevented transmission.
|
| Then, May 2021:
|
| > Masks off? Fauci confirms 'extremely low' risk of
| transmission, infection for vaccinated
|
| https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-
| extreme...
| scrubs wrote:
| Yah, ok, I blew it. Vaccinations will trend towards
| immunity.
| passivate wrote:
| Almost all Covid related predictions have been incorrect,
| and the ones that seem correct, are only so at the
| surface level and require mental gymnastics. The
| pathology of the disease simply isn't well understood at
| this point, and the new mutations make it a moving
| target. I don't personally like Fauci, but he is a victim
| of being conscripted as the Chief Covid Prognosticator by
| the media. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of science
| to believe a person can give guarantees on an emerging
| pathogen like that.
| drusepth wrote:
| To be fair, nowhere in the US (that I'm aware of) is
| close to the % population vaccinated numbers necessary
| for a semblance herd immunity. According to the CDC, only
| 62% of the US is fully vaccinated, with only 35% of those
| also having had a booster.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Different variants mean different efficacy for vaccines,
| particularly regarding infection. The existing vaccines
| could very well have led to "signs of herd immunity" had
| the variants not taken hold.
| conradfr wrote:
| It's amazing how we can rewrite history so fast. The
| number of times I see on Twitter people from different
| countries saying the same things, first it was "nobody
| ever said this vaccine will be 90% efficient against
| getting covid", then "nobody ever said the vaccine reduce
| transmission", and now it's "the vaccines have always be
| only to reduce ICU stays".
|
| (I am vaccinated btw)
| Izkata wrote:
| It's more like people are realizing what the original
| claims from Nov 2020 were instead of blindly trusting
| politicians. Pfizer and Moderna _only_ checked for
| symptomatic covid in those trials and never made claims
| about infection /transmission. That was all assumptions
| people were making over 2021.
| javagram wrote:
| back in early 2021 I remember the media, especially the
| "MSM," warning that the vaccines weren't guaranteed to
| prevent transmission, and commentators arguing that the
| media were scaremongering and we should be secure in
| feeling the vaccines do prevent all infection and
| transmission. E.g.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/opinion/covid-
| vaccines-tr... "Many scientists are reluctant to say with
| certainty that the vaccines prevent transmission of the
| virus from one person to another. [. . .] There should be
| more data within the next couple of months. Until then,
| precautionary measures like masking and distancing in the
| presence of unvaccinated people will remain important."
|
| FWIW, it seems like those commentators who were actually
| right until Delta emerged. Looking at graph of Covid
| cases in the USA for example we were on track to low case
| levels until July, then the Delta variant began to break
| through in vaccinated individuals and the epidemic grew
| in size again.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Looking at graph of Covid cases in the USA for example
| we were on track to low case levels until July
|
| Gotta compare 2021 to the the curves from 2020 though:
| It's the same shape with different magnitude. Looks more
| like that drop in the spring and early summer was more
| because it's seasonal than anything else, which we
| misattributed to the vaccines.
| deeviant wrote:
| The epidemic ends when the unusually high threat of serious
| illness or death ends, though, right?
|
| If we get to the point where people aren't dying of covid at
| a significantly higher rate as any of the other "usual
| suspects", does that not mean it's over? It looks like
| between the vaccinated and just about everybody else that is
| about to or already has gotten covid, we're must may arrive
| at the point where covid is a just another thing on the list
| of seasons ailments.
| dehrmann wrote:
| But even after mutations, the next time you catch it,
| symptoms will likely be a lot less severe than the first. At
| that point, we can stop tracking it and write it off as a
| variant of the common cold.
| jaywalk wrote:
| You say "over and over" but Omicron is the first variant that
| actually evades immunity (both natural and vaccine-induced)
| in a meaningful way. What we don't know is the level of
| immunity that an Omicron infection will provide. It could
| actually confer immunity to both itself and previous
| variants, which _would_ effectively end the pandemic.
| twic wrote:
| I think everyone in this thread is applying a binary model
| of immunity - either you are immune or you aren't, either a
| variant escapes or it doesn't.
|
| But immunity is analogue. A strong, specific, antibody
| response can prevent infection. A T-cell response can stop
| infection turning into severe illness and death. Variants
| can evade antibodies somewhat easily, but find it much
| harder to evade T-cells. Antibody levels wane in weeks or
| months (although memory B-cells remain), T-cells remain
| active for years or decades.
|
| If you had COVID last winter, then there would be a good
| chance of you getting it again this winter, even if it was
| the exact same strain. But you'd be much less likely to die
| of it.
|
| So when does the pandemic "end"? What is a "pandemic"? If
| tens of percent of the population are catching every
| winter, but few are dying, is that still a pandemic?
| empressplay wrote:
| Nope, then it's endemic
| cduzz wrote:
| If something's a one a million event, happening billions of
| times per day, it'll happen pretty much constantly.
|
| This one, omicron, seems to mostly infect nasal passages
| and upper respiratory tract. The next, maybe after spending
| 2 years spreading across all the weasels of upper
| winchester county, may affect the lungs again.
|
| This is a lottery that's less fun to play...
|
| (edited for clarity)
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yeah, sure. Who knows what viruses could be spreading and
| mutating amongst those weasels. It's not like SARS-CoV-2
| is the first, and it won't be the last. But when you say
|
| > This is a lottery that's less fun to play
|
| How exactly do you propose not playing? Lockdowns, social
| distancing, masking, etc. for life? We're eventually
| going to have to start treating Covid the same as we've
| always treated "the flu" and it definitely appears that
| once Omicron has run through the population, we'll have
| reached the time to do that.
| lovecg wrote:
| Banning certain high risk/low reward research would be a
| start.
| cduzz wrote:
| I believe the idiom is "the horse left the barn"
|
| There are a number of things going on in the world that
| fall into the "really bad" category of both thing and
| trend of thing.
|
| There's space in between bland acceptance and
| incapacitating terror. At the very least have an honest,
| clear eyed view of where the risk bars are going, and it
| isn't in a good direction.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life?
|
| If you can't handle these things as a part of your life
| you're really not going to like what climate change
| brings to the relatively near future.
|
| But you don't have to worry about arguing in forums,
| you've already won. Nobody respects lockdown, and never
| really did, even at the highest rate of infections I see
| people wearing masks beneath their noses, crammed next to
| people in airports. After omicron I can't imagine anyone
| caring at all even if we double our current death count.
|
| Covid is here, it will stick around forever, it will
| probably be notably worse than the flu for years to come.
| But in a few more years that will seem like a quaint
| thing to worry about.
| acdha wrote:
| > Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life?
|
| Very few places did lockdowns at any point so I wouldn't
| expect that to start now, butthe ones which did were
| successful in breaking spread. It doesn't need to be
| continuous, but it's clearly effective for preventing
| huge spikes.
|
| Similarly, we'd save lives and billions of dollars if we
| established the same social norms which some Asian
| countries have about wearing masks when you're
| symptomatic. It doesn't need anything like 100%
| compliance or time to be useful - we appear to have lost
| an entire strain of influenza this way.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > Very few places did lockdowns at any point
|
| This is some grade-a gaslighting, plenty of countries had
| long brutal lockdowns where no-one was allowed outside
| unless it was "essential".
|
| > butthe ones which did were successful in breaking
| spread.
|
| No. Many of those places had worse outcomes than places
| that _didn 't_ do any sort of lockdown.
|
| (When I say lockdown I mean stay-at-home orders. Do you
| have a different definition?)
| nradov wrote:
| Actually prior infection by previous variants appear to
| still provide a significant level of cellular immunity
| against Omicron. There will always be some rare outliers
| who have a rough time but most reinfection cases will
| experience milder symptoms because their immune systems are
| already primed to respond.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1
| pier25 wrote:
| > Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it
| anyway.
|
| Vaccines do not prevent contagion but reduce the chances of
| severe symptoms.
|
| Also AFAIK vaccines do not lower transmission either.
| pavon wrote:
| In general, vaccines do lower transmission, by decreasing
| the viral load and duration of infection. Of course when
| you are dealing with a mutation that the vaccine has low
| effectiveness against, that is all out the window.
| EA wrote:
| The vaccine also reduces the symptoms of the virus and so
| a carrier of the virus may seem well but actually
| transfer the virus to someone else as they are less
| likely to quarantine if they are not tested or showing
| symptoms.
|
| The vaccine also gives one a sense of protection from
| infection and so they are more likely to attend mass
| gatherings. where the virus can be transferred.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| If a vaccine reduces your cough/oozing orifice severity,
| wouldn't that reduce transmission?
| gopalv wrote:
| > wouldn't that reduce transmission?
|
| Lowered symptoms on droplets would be better, but a lot
| of in-person workplaces have a "do you have a fever?"
| check before they issue you any sick leave.
|
| Not having a fever and looking like a mild cold in winter
| would cause at least my cousin's employer to ask her to
| come in and wear a mask at work (manufacturing, so she
| wears a P100 respirator anyway).
| pier25 wrote:
| Technically yes, but see this comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29826355
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Exactly, and that comment is why mask usage in public is
| still important. The two-pronged approach of masking and
| vaccination was always going to be our best way out of
| this, and nothing about Omicron fundamentally changes
| that.
|
| Try not to get sick. If you do get sick, don't spread it.
| If you do spread it, try to spread less of it. Defense in
| depth.
| lovecg wrote:
| This is the "not wearing a bike helmet will make car
| drivers around you more careful" level argument. Let's
| see some hard data please.
| pier25 wrote:
| Obviously it's way too early to have hard data on this
| matter.
|
| But the WHO has been warning about this for months.
|
| > _We cannot say this clearly enough: even if you are
| vaccinated, continue to take precautions to prevent
| becoming infected yourself, and to infecting someone else
| who could die._
|
| > _In many countries and communities, we are concerned
| about a false sense of security that vaccines have ended
| the pandemic, and that people who are vaccinated do not
| need to take any other precautions._
|
| https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-
| dir...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| "battling Omicron"
|
| Can you give us some indication of how severe your symptoms
| are? Mostly we're hearing that if you've been vaccinated
| and/or you've had covid in the past that omicron is
| relatively mild.
| causality0 wrote:
| Muscle aches, chest pain, headache, and severe coughing
| fits that won't let her sleep and scare me when I hear them
| from the other room. After being awake for two days and one
| of them dropping her blood oxygen to 87 I made her go to
| the emergency room where they gave her prescription cough
| medicine that finally let her sleep.
|
| Omicron is less dangerous than Delta. It's still dangerous.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Sorry to hear about your troubles. Everyone is shouting
| in the media (including here) Omicron is upper tract
| instead of lower so I had hoped you wouldn't get oxygen
| drops that low or lung related chest pains. Maybe I
| misunderstood what these things mean although some
| renowned newspapers here explained it like that.
| rajup wrote:
| Wait 87 SpO2?! I'm pretty sure that's the point at which
| you would be on a ventilator? Not sure what sleep has to
| do with SpO2 and it seems criminally negligent for the
| emergency room to just send your wife off with just a
| cough medicine..
| nradov wrote:
| An SpO2 of 92% or lower is considered severe. In most
| cases the patient should be hospitalized.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n677
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Do we know if a previous _omicron_ infection helps confer
| immunity to future omicron infections?
| spurgu wrote:
| If past history is any indicator, then yes.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| We can't know that because it hasn't been around long
| enough. But as far as taking a bayesian prior, I'd start by
| assuming yes except in rare cases and correct your model as
| evidence comes in.
|
| I'd guess that because, for the most part, that's how the
| previous variants behaved. Relatively robust immunity, with
| subsequent infections generally being rare and more mild.
| Since Omicron has a lot of mutations on the spike protein
| which is the primary antibody target, it has greater immune
| escape potential because the antibodies don't fit as well.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > ... preliminary evidence WHO based their recommendation
| on earlier this week: People who have previously had
| COVID-19 could become reinfected more easily with Omicron.
|
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-
| updat...
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I will say beforehand that I'm heavily pro-vaccination and
| reducing risks regarding covid. Do we know at this point what
| are the hospitalization rates of omicron compared to the flu?
| p.s. I hope your wife gets better soon.
| causality0 wrote:
| Numbers are still changing but the current stat is one
| percent hospitalization rate for Omicron. This year's flu
| has a hospitalization rate almost twice as high as last
| year's, at 1.4 in 100,000 or 0.0014%.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Is that vaccinated in both cases or overall?
| causality0 wrote:
| Overall for the infected regardless of vaccine status.
| devin wrote:
| And Delta was something like 6% IIRC?
| virgilp wrote:
| This can't be right.
|
| > For the week ending Dec. 18, 1,265 lab-confirmed flu
| patients were hospitalized, up from the week prior. The
| cumulative hospitalization rate was 1.4 per 100,000
| population as of Dec. 18, nearly double the overall
| cumulative hospitalization rate reported during the
| 2020-21 season. 3
|
| I think you're comparing hospitalization rate per
| population vs. hospitalization per infected persons. If
| we look at the recent data and do some estimation, that's
| about 50k new hospitalzed for 3M new omicron cases, which
| is 0.016 or 10 times the flu; this sounds more
| reasonable.
| rixrax wrote:
| I guess it depends on a few things:
|
| - how long the immunity gained from having recovered from
| Omicron lasts
|
| - how well that immunity protects against other current (and
| future) variants of covid
|
| - what kind of new strains of covid appears in next several
| months / years that may replace Omicron
|
| - how many people we are able to get vaccinated globally
|
| - advances in new and better vaccines becoming available
| (complete with antiviral pills etc)
|
| And probably quite a few other factors that weren't on top of
| my layman head...
| spurgu wrote:
| Also:
|
| - how much/long the media keeps the fear drum pounding
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Media fear drum has no effect on whether my local hospital
| is overwhelmed. Everybody can make their own decisions, as
| long as hospitals are good.
| spurgu wrote:
| > Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as
| hospitals are good.
|
| Wait. "Everyone can make their own decisions"? And those
| decisions are completely rational, not affected at all by
| what the media is saying? I would argue the complete
| opposite.
|
| Why are you trying to bend the argument into hospital
| capacity? Is your argument that if hospital capacity is
| under threat then it's ok for the media and government to
| lie and instill baseless fear into people, solely as a
| means of a) scaring them into staying at home (to
| minimize the spread of the virus) and b) to demonize
| unvaccinated people?
|
| One would think that transparency and honesty would work
| better than bullshitting people.
| supperburg wrote:
| Yeah and nobody mentions that our hospitals were already
| stretched to their limit before Covid because they are
| for-profit corporations. They should have had capacity
| for a pandemic because everyone knew there would be one.
| It's poor planning, not Covid. They will add capacity and
| then what will your argument be?
| jatone wrote:
| you can't add capacity to a system that requires highly
| trained specialists on a dime. hospital capacity is very
| much limited by how much it is used on a day to day
| basis, regardless of pandemic status.
|
| what you suggest simply will never be an effective
| strategy.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Everyone should be able to make their own decisions
| anyway. Hospitals are some arbitrator of decision making
| and hosptial admission due to covid is collapsing. Stop
| fear mongering this isn't Facebook.
| gromitss wrote:
| isaacremuant wrote:
| It's not the end if governments keep playing covid theater
| games.
|
| In Europe they definitely will with increased surveillance and
| digital IDs that have proven to do nothing to stop covid (as
| initially portrayed), but that won't stop govs from pushing
| them onwards and dehumanising any group who doesn't want to
| comply with their coercive measures.
|
| It's an interesting time for people who really value freedom
| and human rights.
| steelstraw wrote:
| It's been over ever since the vaccines became widely available.
| After vaccination many of us went back to normal and haven't
| looked back. Huge bureaucracies just take a long time to change
| course and some simply refuse to recognize that it's endemic
| for whatever reasons.
| neogodless wrote:
| > A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has
| spread across a large region, for instance multiple
| continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of
| individuals.
|
| > An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large
| number of people in a given population within a short period
| of time
|
| In no way has "rapid spread of infection disease across
| multiple continents" ended. The past few weeks should make
| that a bit more clear. Being vaccinated reduces the negative
| effects of infection, and may also reduce infectiousness and
| spread, but it didn't end the pandemic.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But does it matter? If omicron becomes the "new flu" (or
| "the new cold") for the young and healthy, and with
| vaccines even for old and weak, do we have to call it a
| "pandemic" anymore?
|
| I mean... did we have a "cold pandemic" or a "flu pandemic"
| before 2020? I'm pretty sure most of the planet had a cold
| every winter, and we just lived with it. Same with the
| flu... risk-groups died, and noone bothered the young with
| it, we just called it "normal life".
| neogodless wrote:
| > In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic in
| a population when that infection is constantly maintained
| at a baseline level in a geographic area without external
| inputs.
|
| > A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of
| infected individuals is not a pandemic.
|
| The cold and flu are "stable" albeit seasonal. While we
| might expect that outcome for variations of the SARS-
| CoV-2 virus, we're not there yet. A rapidly exploding
| number of infections is not a stable number of infected
| individuals.
|
| At any rate, some people getting vaccinated and choosing
| to live as if the infections do not exist does not "end
| the pandemic."
| wallacoloo wrote:
| it's nice to believe, but a lot of our ability to return to
| normal requires these bureaucracies to be on board. it
| doesn't matter that you individually are comfortable sending
| your kid to school, that school's not going to be open if the
| consensus and bureaucracies are against you.
|
| somehow we failed to coordinate the back-to-normal in my
| region when the vaccines arrived. this seems like the next
| best opportunity to admit that we're ready to lift
| restrictions, so here's hoping we can keep the majority on
| board this time.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I don't know. Anecdotal but I know a lot of people who had
| prior strains (many even vaccinated) who have gotten it. The
| numbers are so high that natural immunity from previous
| strains/vaccines seems to be very low.
|
| If delta or OG Covid didn't do much about omicron, I don't
| think we can assume omicron will do much about some future
| variant.
| throw8932894 wrote:
| I read article from Israel. It wrote: "severe covid cases are
| low, but flu season just started". Pandemic will finish at
| spring, and hopefully will not start next winter.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Of course it'll start again the next winter... as will the
| cold season and flu season.
|
| The only question here is, will there be lockdowns, mandates,
| masks and vaccine passports, or will we finally give up,
| focus on the risk groups, and let the young and healthy live
| their normal lives.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Depends on hospitals. If the health care system starts
| getting overwhelmed, expect restrictions. If not, then
| probably not.
| ipspam wrote:
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I'm no fan of Biden but let's be clear that this transcends
| administrations. Trump put Fauci on TV every day, Trump
| granted billions to big pharma. Just like Biden takes the
| fall for dumb wars started by Bush and Obama, he'll take the
| fall for Trumps dumb fight against COVID.
|
| The problem is that we have institutions like the Fed and the
| CDC and WHO that have been proven completely incompetent when
| power is deferred to them. They panicked and now we pay the
| price.
| passivate wrote:
| >the Fed and the CDC and WHO that have been proven
| completely incompetent when power is deferred to them.
|
| I'm curious what criteria you used to make that assessment?
| Also, I don't know what you mean by "power" being deferred
| to them. What extra power was given?
| throw10920 wrote:
| You might make some valid points, but it's really hard to see
| them when you don't cite sources, and when you deliberately
| use inflammatory language like "cronies" - and that's against
| the spirit of HN anyway.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I assume you are referring to the "There is no federal
| solution to covid" quote. But it was in the context of
| talking to state governors and Biden saying a federal plan
| wasn't being forced on them -- that the primary work is done
| at the state level and the federal level is there to support
| it.
|
| https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/05/save-
| ameri...
| nradov wrote:
| Apparently in October 2020 Joe Biden believed that there
| was a federal solution to COVID. What has changed since
| then?
|
| "We're eight months into this pandemic, and Donald Trump
| still doesn't have a plan to get this virus under control.
|
| I do."
|
| https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1316894374500962305
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I can't speak for him, and obviously tweets are short
| enough they can't contain it either. But apparently the
| plan was (a) to use federal funds and manpower to get
| vaccines spread as widely as possible. There was an early
| goals of 100M doses in the first 100 days, which was met,
| and another goal was set and met [1]. Another factor was
| sending the message: this isn't a "Democrat hoax", that
| it is real, is killing people, the vaccines are safe and
| certainly much safer than getting covid. I say that has
| been accomplished.
|
| On the other hand, there is a large contingent of people
| and talking heads who have tried their hardest to spread
| fear and misinformation. We are still at something like
| 60% inoculated, and many doses of the vaccine ended up
| going bad or were shipped overseas because not enough
| people trust the vaccine.
|
| Third, there is no way to prevent novel variants from
| causing new problems, other than getting the old variants
| under control to reduce the vast pool of variant
| breeders.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/56901183
|
| [EDIT] Also, your terse "he claimed there was a federal
| solution" is also subject to debate. He said he had a
| plan, but that doesn't mean the plan was a federal-only
| solution.
| nradov wrote:
| So what you're saying is that Biden's plan was
| essentially the same as Trump's plan, which also focused
| on using federal funds and manpower to produce and
| distribute vaccines as widely and rapidly as possible.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Omicron evades the "natural immunity" that people were getting
| a hard on for. That explains a lot (not all) of the massive
| fitness it has - it can infect people that previously had Covid
| infections again.
| unmole wrote:
| Does it only evade natural immunity and not that imparted by
| vaccines?
| nradov wrote:
| Immunity is a spectrum, not a binary condition. Infection by
| previous variants appears to still provide a significant
| level of durable cellular immunity against Omicron.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1
| dheera wrote:
| What does 100% prevalence mean? 100% of people are at least
| silent carriers?
| nradov wrote:
| It means that among recent PCR test confirmed cases, 100% of
| patients were infected with the Omicron variant rather than
| Delta or some older variant. The number of asymptomatic
| carriers is unknown and probably large, but can't possibly be
| anywhere near 100% of the populace.
| jakear wrote:
| Yes, COVID is finished in much the same way the Spanish flu is
| finished. Derivatives of it come up and smack us every winter
| but life goes on.
| bedhead wrote:
| What you're missing is that we're eventually (arguably right
| now) going to be referring to colds and other weak mutations of
| COVID as "COVID" still, and by virtue of still calling it COVID
| and still having these COVID dashboards, it's _never_ ending.
| There is no end, it is a new normal for millions. Too many
| people 's brains short circuited, too many people got anchored
| to March 2020.
| rhino369 wrote:
| >Or am I missing something?
|
| The possibility that a new variant arises that substantially
| evades both Delta and Omicron immunity.
|
| But it will probably turn endemic after this. There won't be
| any virgin hosts anymore.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| It's just politicians trying to save face at this point.
| Trillions of dollars lost and total debasement of western
| currencies was all to arrive at the natural solution to a virus
| that was destined to become endemic from the very start: let it
| play out.
|
| Two administrations, one from both parties. Same fed chair.
| Same people at the CDC and WHO. It's not partisan. It's
| institutional failure.
| swader999 wrote:
| More like corporate capture imo.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I think this is a good take.
| pmoleri wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. Vaccine was a success, it saved
| millions of lives. What's becoming endemic is a less deadly
| variant, otherwise we would be back to square 0, confinement
| and developing a new vaccine. So, instead of calling it a
| failure I would call it success with a lucky ending, if
| everything continues like this of course.
| collias wrote:
| It's not a lucky ending as much as it is the inevitable
| ending. Virus evolution tends toward becoming more
| contagious and less deadly. We've known this for a long
| time, and we have no reason to believe that this virus
| would be any different.
|
| If viruses tended toward becoming more deadly as they
| became closer to being endemic, humanity (or any animal)
| would not have lasted very long.
| butterisgood wrote:
| Yes it is now endemic.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >Surely this is the end of the pandemic?
|
| Yes, welcome to the endemic. Covid is here to stay, it doesn't
| matter if 100% of the world were vaccinated tommrow, covid
| would not go away. It doesn't matter if you get the vaccination
| or not, in your life time you WILL get covid (just like the
| flu, no one escapes it, you typically get the flu about every
| decade or so regardless of shots).
|
| We need to just accept this and move back to "old normal".
| gromitss wrote:
| stefan_ wrote:
| You have a rather crucial misunderstanding. There are lots of
| endemic viruses; that is part of why we vaccinate new humans
| against so many of them.
| swader999 wrote:
| Not ones that mutate this efficiently. Flu is the only
| example and we typically only manage to get high
| percentages of the vulnerable with it. This is what we want
| with these types of virus otherwise you risk Mariks
| scenario. (See the poultry industry issues)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Most of those viruses are actually very deadly, and most of
| those vaccines actually make you not-get-it-at-all.
|
| The only comparable virus is the flu, and the vaccine is
| equally shitty [0] as the covid vaccines are.
|
| Death rates for young and (currently healthy) people are
| very very low (lower than traffic deaths in my country,
| much lower than suicides), and they are the most affected
| by the lockdowns. By reopening and focusing on risk groups
| we could finally start living normally again.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effecti
| venes...
| babypuncher wrote:
| 800,000 dead americans in less than two years sounds
| pretty deadly to me
| abduhl wrote:
| Yes, but that's because you've only started listening to
| people talk about the number of dead folks recently. 800k
| isn't nothing but it's not exactly earth shattering.
| swader999 wrote:
| So can we just do away with the show your passports nonsense
| then? Think of the tax that adds up every establishment.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Yes, your local jurisdiction can. Many of us have never had
| such a requirement.
| swader999 wrote:
| Well if I can't change my jurisdiction, I just may have
| to change my jurisdiction.
| elif wrote:
| I think that may be a completely rational perspective from
| within the United States... however, from the perspective of
| countries with effective containment strategies, that sounds
| prematurely defeatist, and also ignores the vast good that
| comes from containing spread for mutagenic purposes.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| What effective containment strategies? Pretty much every
| country's strategies have completely collapsed due to
| Omicron.
|
| Australia currently has a wildly exponential growth of
| cases and _twice_ the number of daily cases /capita
| compared to Sweden, to take two countries at each end of
| the "containment" spectrum. And that's despite Australia
| being in the middle of summer, despite Australia being
| isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and despite
| Australia having more restrictions than Sweden _right now_.
|
| It's all hubris. We have way less control over the spread
| than we like to think.
| paganel wrote:
| > What effective containment strategies?
|
| I think NZ and especially China are the only ones left. I
| think NZ has relaxed its restrictions about 2-3 months
| ago and to be honest I'm a little surprised they haven't
| yet followed Australia's path with the exponential number
| of Omicron cases, but imo the very big question remains
| China, I have no idea why they plan to handle this going
| forward.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| I don't trust a single number or report coming out of
| China. The official numbers show a couple of thousand
| dead. No way.
|
| Dictatorships usually make examples of
| individuals/groups/regions to make everyone else fall in
| line. The virus however doesn't give a shit about the
| wishes of authoritarian regimes, which is why making an
| example of a region or a city and forcing millions of
| people to stay indoors, doesn't stop the spread
| elsewhere. It's a virus, not a rebellion.
|
| I'm assuming China has always had a low level spread that
| could be hidden, because their demographics make it a
| non-issue. However, I'm guessing Omicron is creating such
| massive spread that regional officials can't deny reality
| any longer, and the lockdowns are some kind of desperate
| last-ditch attempt to save face.
| koyote wrote:
| > Australia having more restrictions than Sweden right
| now.
|
| Do you have a source for that? Most Australian states
| have little to no restrictions at the moment bar mask
| mandates indoors. If I googled correctly, Sweden only
| allows seated customers in bars, restaurants and events
| as well as limits to events?
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Most Australian states still have mandatory qr-code
| checkins for everything, police are still chasing people
| fleeing the "voluntary" quarantine at Howard Springs, and
| still fining people not wearing face masks. And some
| still have restrictions that are stricter than what
| Sweden currently has:
|
| https://www.covid-19.sa.gov.au/restrictions-and-
| responsibili...
|
| The other restrictions are of course coming back, despite
| promises to the contrary:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/live/2022/jan/07/...
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-06/covid-
| restrictions-ti...
| lamontcg wrote:
| > the vast good that comes from containing spread for
| mutagenic purposes.
|
| We're never getting a T-cell escape mutant that
| dramatically increases the risk of hospitalization/death in
| the vaccinated/recovered.
|
| There's really very little to worry about variants if your
| vaxxed and boosted.
|
| Experts still don't have any idea how intrinsically
| virulent Omicron is, and it may be every bit as
| intrinsically virulent as Delta was (there's lots of issues
| with the TMPRSS2 studies in mice, while the dominant effect
| is that Omicron is an escape mutant and is reinfecting and
| infecting the vaccinated).
|
| The lower hospitalization rate of the Omicron wave can be
| explained entirely by human immunity. The properties of the
| virus are likely much less important than the headlines
| indicate, which suggests the the slow process of the human
| race building up immunity is going to grind on and future
| waves will be less and less effectively virulent (although
| it seems like human emotions are really attracted to the
| idea that the virus is changing to become less virulent and
| that seems to be driving emotional acceptance that the
| pandemic is winding down).
| paganel wrote:
| > wave can be explained entirely by human immunity.
|
| It's also the fact that, to put it bluntly, many of the
| people who were the most susceptible to be sent into ICU
| or to die because of Covid have already had that happen
| to them. Not sure if that scenario is included in the
| definition of "herd immunity", to be honest, just wanted
| to point that (cynical) truth out.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It will be very interesting to see how containment
| countries adapt to the future, where global eradication
| simply isn't possible. Perhaps there will be a sterilizing
| vaccine that makes it worth it in the end.
|
| My heart goes out to those impacted by containment
| strategies. I was talking with someone from NZ or AU (I
| forget), who hasn't been able to go home an see his wife in
| two Christmases.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Old normal will not return until our hospitals are also back
| to normal
| tjr225 wrote:
| Our daughter had a fever for four days over the holidays.
| We literally could not even get into see a pediatrician or
| an urgent care. There was nothing available.
|
| If a minor cold is enough to cripple our healthcare system,
| you have to wonder if maybe there is some other reason our
| hospitals aren't able(or willing) to go back to normal.
|
| I spend thousands of dollars on health INSURANCE every
| year. If I go to the ER it still costs me over $2k. The
| last time I went to the ER, I didn't even see a doctor
| ONCE.
| guimplen wrote:
| Don't be so selfish. Insurance lawyer or manager cannot
| make his lambo buy itself.
| zucked wrote:
| I, too, think that Omicron is the beginning of the transition
| back to "normal" with Covid becoming endemic. _Everyone_ is
| going to be exposed to Omicron if they haven 't already.
|
| I expect that for the next year or two, boosters will be
| recommended as a yearly "flu shot" to give you a decent
| chance of being minimally affected if exposed. Omicron will
| continue to be the dominate strain, finding hosts in both the
| vaccinated and unvaccinated. The difference will be that we
| will have a myriad tools at our disposal to prevent serious
| illness and treat it when it does happen.
| supperburg wrote:
| The pandemic will truly end when therapeutics are mature. My
| liberal relatives become visibly upset when just the concept of
| therapeutics is brought up. Thanks liberal dogma/media...
| kuroguro wrote:
| I really hope so. The hospitalizations usually lag behind case
| detection AFAIK, so there might still be some damage to watch
| out for.
| rytcio wrote:
| People have been talking about how hospitalization numbers
| are lagged since before Thanksgiving. It's been almost two
| months. It's time to stop hoping for doom and gloom and
| accept that it's over.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _People have been talking about how hospitalization
| numbers are lagged since before Thanksgiving_
|
| People have been saying that since 2020, but if you're
| talking about the current variant, omicron wasn't even
| given the omicron designation until the day after
| Thanksgiving.
| archagon wrote:
| It is quite offensive to suggest that anyone is "hoping for
| doom and gloom."
| etchalon wrote:
| I'm not sure if we can say it's "over". People were saying the
| same thing after the Delta waves started subsiding and behold
| ... Omicron.
| monological wrote:
| But now we'll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and
| highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.
| etchalon wrote:
| There's no reason to believe that we'll achieve herd
| immunity to anything beyond Omicron. There's a reason Flu
| vaccines are a thing you get every year, even if you've had
| the flu.
| nradov wrote:
| There will be no real herd immunity effect to protect those
| who lack immunity. Instead virtually everyone is just going
| to get infected, and most survivors will retain cellular
| immunity which gives them significant protection against
| severe symptoms during later reinfections.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-
| immu...
|
| Fortunately the current vaccines and other therapies are
| pretty effective at preventing deaths.
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| There's no guarantee of that. Omicron seems to be
| exceptionally capable of infecting both those who had the
| current vaccines and/or previous variants.
|
| Maybe Omicron provides immunity to Rho (or whatever is
| coming), but it may provide no protection to Sigma.
| TylerE wrote:
| I've been watching over both my parents the past week. Both
| Omicron cases.
|
| "Very mild" is... not accurate. It hasn't hospitalized
| them, but even without quarantining, they'd be incapable of
| living anything like a normal life.
|
| The common cold it most certainly IS NOT.
|
| (Both are double vaxxed and boosted, btw)
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Very mild is exceptionally accurate. It's a nothing
| burger even for unvaccinated people.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Then why are our hospitals overloaded with covid
| patients?
| slickrick216 wrote:
| They aren't
| pikma wrote:
| Was it worse than a flu for them, or roughly similar?
| TylerE wrote:
| Normal flu for my dad, a bit worse than that from mom.
| She basically hasn't gotten out of bed for about 8 days
| except to use the bathroom.
| pikma wrote:
| Gee, 8 days is a _lot_ , yeah that feels like worse than
| a flu. I hope they both feel better soon.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| How old are they?
| TylerE wrote:
| Early 70s, but in good health generally
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I hope they feel better soon.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Keep in mind, that between the "like the flu" and "mild"
| designator, folks are dismissing the severity of Omicron.
| But we must keep in mind that "mild" is in reference to
| "severe" which entails death and ground glass lungs.
| smileysteve wrote:
| The pandemic has taught me how little people care about
| words;
|
| "Asymptomatic" now means "just a low grade fever", or "a
| cough that didn't take me to the hospital"
|
| "Allergies" now means "I can barely breathe no matter
| what environment and I'm tired like I'm taking Claritin,
| just ignore the color of my sputum or my cough."
|
| "It's just the cold or flu" now means "I'm just sick for
| a week, and I should definitely socialize like normal"
| rafale wrote:
| It's hard to imagine a more transmissible covid variant for a
| layman such as myself. I wonder if microbiologists are able
| to model the maximum theoretical transmission Sars covid is
| capable of.
| nradov wrote:
| I don't think we can model it accurately, but we can look
| to other viruses as examples. The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron
| variant is still only about half as contagious as measles.
|
| https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/what-is-r0/
| lamontcg wrote:
| And Omicron is an order of magnitude less virulent on
| hospitalization/deaths per infection basis.
|
| The pandemic is never going to be "over" on a case basis, and
| the virus is never going away, spread will never be zero,
| variants will always keep happening for decades.
|
| Omicron is telling you that its going to be time soon to
| start thinking about this virus more like a normal cold/flu
| virus based on its impact.
| clomond wrote:
| Can't say that 'it is the end' yet - but given that pandemics
| end when there is no more 'room' for the virus to move through
| naive hosts (places to infect). The fact that Omicron is SO
| contagious means it will effectively find any pockets of 'fuel'
| in the adult human population in the coming weeks and months.
| Everyone will be exposed.
|
| It is probably more accurate to say it is the likely start of
| the transition between 'pandemic' and 'endemic' phase. We say
| endemic as it LOOKS like the gap between coronavirus immunity
| length to viral instability (number of changes) is longer than
| for influenza. (T-cell response still very strong, original
| SARS patients almost 2 decades later have cross immunity to
| SARS-Cov-2, Omicron immunity effective against delta, etc) That
| said - it is VERY unlikely to be eradicable at this point due
| to its ability to infect so many different species and
| circulate and breed in the wild (more so than even influenza).
|
| So new variants down the line in the coming years/decades is
| more likely (not different than swine flu, bird flu, etc
| pandemic risks in the recent past). But, if longer term
| immunity holds up - none of these will have anywhere near the
| impact given the absence of billions of naive hosts to burn
| through.
|
| So if we call the transition from pandemic to endemic the end
| (likely, yes) - then probably.
| _greim_ wrote:
| As far as I can tell, there ends up being no practical
| difference between "the pandemic is over" and "this virus will
| be in circulation forever". People use one phrase or the other
| to emphasize different concerns.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I think people don't think of "the pandemic" as a state of
| having virus around us, but as a bigger political picture of
| lockdowns, mandates, vaccine passports, travel limits,
| mandatory testing, masks and all that.
|
| If omicron means we'll all get it in the next few months, and
| (for the 99.x% survivors) that means that covid is "just
| another cold/flu", we can stop with the "pandemic"
| (political), and live as we did before 2020. Old people will
| need vaccines and boosters and all that (as they did for the
| flu before 2020), and young people can finally live a normal
| life again.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| I don't think it matters if omicron is ultimately worse or not,
| nobody cares anymore. I was out visiting a gym yesterday, in an
| area with sky rocketing cases, and no one was wearing masks. They
| talked multiple times about how much they cared about health,
| without even a hint of irony. I was initially put off, but
| realized that this is just the world we're in.
|
| In two weeks we'll find out if the calculus of lower death rate x
| higher case count means anything, but even if it turns out to be
| a complete disaster with record deaths, I just don't see anyone
| caring.
|
| Pandemic is done after omicron no matter what. We already largely
| ignore deaths from climate change (which depending on your
| calculations can easily be as high globally as covid), we don't
| even speculate on deaths from environmental pollution. Covid is
| just another environmental hazard that we will accept like any
| other.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| Nobody cared ever. At my school every year everyone takes off
| their masks and wears them improperly all the time. At the
| beach and mall every year it's still constantly full of
| hundreds of people with less than 1 meter space in between. At
| restaurants they don't do anything different than normal except
| put a mask on while ordering. They could just make something at
| home instead of being lazy and spreading COVID.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I have a feeling we are gonna want more things to worry about.
| Done with the pandemic? Let's latch on to something to make
| sure 1) You have no kids 2) We keep increasing the power of the
| government measures 3) Equality meaning we stoop to the lowest
| level, not bring up the baseline 4) Keep eroding the standard
| of living.
|
| Even if we are a space faring civilization, these people will
| make it uncool to "pollute" space or would be against fusion
| power if we are able. I can already see progressives against
| SpaceX.
|
| No optimism for you!
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > No optimism for you!
|
| This is a weird observation to make. Optimism is by far the
| dominant ideology in our society and has been for well over
| 300 or so years.
|
| Even currently when you browse mainstream media news postings
| the vast majority of the articles focus on how mild omicron
| is and how people should get to back to work.
|
| I'll agree that the media makes plenty of money pedaling
| _anxiety_ but real pessimism is nearly forbidden in
| everything from mainstream media to academic philosophy
| (seriously, Schopenhauer is basically it and he 's much more
| of a buddhist than a true pessimist, the majority of German
| pessimist thinker remain untranslated in English).
|
| Reacting to any observation of concerning data as "against
| optimism!" speaks more to a prevalence of hard denial than
| the rise of true pessimism.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I live in Berkeley and this is basically 90% of the people
| I meet, see and interact with. Btw they're also almost all
| vegetarian and Soylent drinkers. I felt awkward having a
| sausage pizza yesterday with a friend. So my observations
| are at the very lease factual in my area, pretty sure
| factual across the Democratic Party. Progressivism isn't
| what it used to be (Obama era).
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > vegetarian and Soylent drinkers.
|
| How does this contradict optimism? They're doing these
| things because they believe this will lead to a brighter,
| better future. Just because they disagree with your path
| to get there doesn't mean they are pessimists.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I wasn't speaking about optimism, but just the general
| culture here. I am fine with vegetarianism or whatever,
| but making me feel awkward and imposing that on others is
| bothersome. "I feel like eating meat is immoral"... while
| I am eating a sausage pizza. I should clarify, he wasn't
| a proper friend, just a co-worker.
|
| They don't want a brighter future. That's the message I
| am getting. In some ways that's pessimism, no?
|
| One more anecdote - I had a someone from work come over
| to help me for moving furniture. He goes "Why do you want
| to have kids? Do you really want to bring them into this
| world?". It's this pervasive sense of pessimissm that
| emanates from this culture. I am pretty convinced.
| tedkz wrote:
| [deleted]
| spuz wrote:
| You can see a similar chart for the entire country (or other
| countries) here:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-variants-area?count...
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| omicron has solidly taken over Vancouver BC. Anecdotal evidence:
| in the past two years (except this past week) I have only known 1
| person who got covid. In the past week I know over 20 people who
| have got covid.
|
| I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end of covid
| lockdowns. omicron is taking the world by storm and I wouldn't be
| surprised if the entire world gets it in the next few weeks.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| +1, I work in a small, fully remote company, and up until the
| past 2 weeks, I know of only one colleague who had been
| infected. 5 people were out last week because of COVID. 5
| people who live in different states.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I still know no one in Germany who ever had covid, only one
| person in the US and one in South Africa (who also died from
| it), so I'm not sure about that.
| tsywke44 wrote:
| Yes, it's called a filter bubble. Covid was extremely easy to
| avoid pre-Omicron even without vaccines if you don't go to
| nightclubs and don't work in an office and have no kids.
| dragontamer wrote:
| But what about weddings? Church? Hospitals?
|
| Even during the lockdown, a family friend of mine needed to
| go to a hospital for an unrelated issue, and that's when a
| nurse from there passed COVID19 to him. Then he passed
| COVID19 to his father. He was 35, no kids, didn't work in
| an office. Still got COVID19 and spread it with deadly
| results. Etc. etc.
|
| Church, Weddings, Thanksgiving / Christmas / New Years,
| Birthday parties and other social events? Choir practice?
| Indoor sports like basketball or racketball? Gyms?
| Restaurants?
|
| --------
|
| There's a lot of social interactions between people when
| you start counting them up.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Hospitals can be unavoidable if you're unlucky and get
| hurt. Grocery stores, too, but you can minimize your
| trips. But the other ones? Totally voluntary and
| avoidable. The public health guidance around COVID has
| been atrocious, even as scientists learn more about how
| the disease spreads indoors. We're going to probably need
| to change our "indoor event" focused culture if we want
| to have any hope of getting this behind us, but it's
| unlikely to happen because it's inconvenient to people
| and there's seemingly no way to enforce a mandate. And
| heaven forbid people temporarily inconvenience themselves
| to stop a deadly pandemic!
| Thlom wrote:
| The thing is you can't stop it. So that leaves the
| question, should we stop all social gatherings for the
| foreseeable future and lock ourselves in our homes?
| dragontamer wrote:
| > inconvenient to people
|
| Certainly. But why is it inconvenient to people? We don't
| really discuss personal issues in the public space, so
| I'm forced to use my own examples.
|
| My grandma is in her late 80s and soon will be 90. She's
| had brain cancer decades ago, recovered, but maybe that's
| finally catching up to her. Our family pretty much
| murmurs about it behind her back, but her sharp mind
| simply isn't as sharp as it used to be. Every year is a
| diminishing of her memory, her ability to focus, her
| ability to hold discussions and interact with us.
|
| To the point where she's pretty much locked herself
| inside her own house (we're worried about her but she
| refuses to live with any of her children) in most
| situations.
|
| So what does this have to do with parties? Well, parties
| are one of the only ways we can manage to draw her out of
| her house and interact with us.
|
| ---------
|
| I can't imagine that I'm the only one who is dealing with
| the diminishing mental abilities of an elderly
| grandparent (or parent). But my grandma's extreme
| stubbornness and pride makes this entire exercise more
| difficult.
|
| Now sure, maybe we do have to worry about COVID19 killing
| her. But on the other hand, her lack of socialization and
| isolationism is another issue that our family struggles
| to find a balance with. That certainly can't be healthy
| either, and arguably the social part takes priority at
| this point.
|
| Furthermore: COVID19 has vaccines and booster-vaccines to
| mitigate that particular disease. But we don't really
| have a "Treatment" for the social isolation she's put
| herself into, or general aging issues as her mental state
| deteriorates over the near future.
|
| Frankly, this is probably signs that she's on her last
| legs. Its something we will have to come to terms with as
| a family, but hosting parties where she can still see us
| (even in this state, before she gets worse) is a
| priority.
|
| ---------
|
| Yes. Its "inconvenient" to cut out the yearly parties out
| of our life. And I'm sure other people have similar
| stories about why _THIS_ Thanksgiving / Christmas was
| like no other, and why it was very important to meet up
| again.
|
| ----------
|
| Don't get me wrong. I'm largely pro-lockdown, and pro-
| mask, pro-vaccine. But you cannot underestimate the
| importance of social interactions or family, especially
| since we all are in different circumstances. Sickness and
| health changes the calculus in many ways.
|
| I didn't share this story last year, because I felt like
| the lockdowns were a needed step (pre-vaccine). But this
| year, I'm speaking towards opening up again and relying
| upon the vaccine to keep us safe. Perhaps its two-faced
| for me to take different stances just one year apart, but
| things really have changed and pushed my calculus towards
| the other way. After losing Thanksgiving/Christmas 2020,
| people are aching to see family again. And 2021 has
| vaccines, dexamethasone, monoclonal antibodies and the
| Pfizer pill. We've cut the death rate by 80%+ on
| treatment alone and vaccines can cut it by 90%+.
|
| 2021 is just not the same year as 2020.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's no reason at all in your comment on reasons to
| make your parties indoor, instead of outdoor like the GP
| said. It's like you are replying to a different comment.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Would you have a late 80s great-grandmother outside in
| the cold? Its 30F right now and I'm not even in a cold
| part of the country. I got some buddies out in the mid-
| west that are in 0F weather and -20F wind chill.
|
| Realistically speaking, the party is going to be at a
| house of one of her children, or grand-children.
|
| -------
|
| An "outdoor" party these days is a closed tent anyway
| with heaters. Its practically an indoor party with the
| same air-flow issues except much much more expensive. Do
| you think I haven't looked into this?
| pessimizer wrote:
| The specific cases of people experiencing dementia has
| not only been noted during the covid-19 era, but also
| evidence shows that dementia patients have experienced a
| huge number of excess deaths. I'm personally sure my
| grandfather was one; he'd had it for years, and it pretty
| much sat at a steady state for years, while family was
| interacting with him enough to periodically jumpstart his
| mind back into lucidity. The decline after lockdown was
| precipitous.
|
| That disease doesn't somehow make in-person interactions
| with family and friends unavoidable, though, when people
| don't have the disease. The fact that people with
| dementia requiring stimulation to stave off decline are
| also members of families doesn't magically make all
| interactions with family members medically necessary.
|
| I generally agree with your conclusions about the change
| in circumstances, but I personally limit in-person social
| activities to a small circle of people who are also
| limiting in-person social activities precisely _because_
| I want to continue visiting my grandmother without
| killing her.
| nradov wrote:
| There's no need to change our indoor event focused
| culture. Now that we have vaccines and other improved
| therapies we can just accept the risk and move on. In
| fact, outside the HN bubble people in some states already
| did that months ago.
|
| We're not all watching the same movie.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > In fact, outside the HN bubble people in some states
| already did that months ago.
|
| The issue, and this remains true today, is that hospital
| space is filling up fast (and did fill up in those states
| months ago).
|
| A discussion must take place about balancing our
| individual social needs with the needs of our public
| health system. There was a train-derailment in Montana in
| 2021, and COVID19 filled up their hospitals so much that
| the injured needed to be driven 2+ hours away to look for
| hospital space / treatment.
|
| Is that the kind of community you want to be a part of?
| Where your nearby doctors and nurses are not accepting
| any of the injured train passengers due to the
| overwhelming COVID19 case numbers?
|
| -----------
|
| We definitely need to do our part as individuals to
| minimize the damage we cause to our hospital systems.
|
| ------
|
| There's something to be said that "Yes, this tradeoff is
| worthwhile but only for the end-of-year parties". Vs
| overwhelming your hospital space just to "own the libs"
| when no major parties / social events are even happening
| in the middle of August.
| bsaul wrote:
| died from omikron ?
| Semaphor wrote:
| Nah, covid in general. Clarified.
|
| edit: Please don't downvote the user, it was a relevant
| question and I only clarified my comment afterwards.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Semaphor wrote:
| I live here and know many ;) But in the north, we generally
| made it through it better (recent club openings with mass
| infections notwithstanding, I do not know people who go to
| mega-clubs during a pandemic).
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| If I compare it with Belgium it's cases are better but
| deaths is relatively worse to the other stat, which is
| kinda weird. Unless they don't test much.
|
| But Belgium also overcounts deaths ( should be /2 when I
| checked in 2020), which means any untested death is
| counted as COVID. Most people don't seem to be aware of
| that.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/belgiums-coronavirus-overcounting-
| cont...
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
| updates/2020/0...
| _Microft wrote:
| This is a very disingenious take, don't you think?
|
| I am also German with an average social circle as I would
| say. Until the end of last year, I just knew of one case of
| Covid among all of them. Since then, a few families got it
| - most of them via kindergarten.
|
| Say what you want about our Covid response but from my
| point of view we made it fairly well through the pandemic
| so far.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| I also live in Germany, and similar experience. I rarely
| know people who have been infected with Covid, and none
| with Omicron. Omicron is also a bit delayed in Germany
| (which is good).
| reitoei wrote:
| I live in Ireland and I know at least 100 people who have
| had covid, including my wife, father, mother and 2
| sisters.
|
| Omicron is prevalent here right now.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I think you know more people who have had it than I know
| in total.
| reitoei wrote:
| Everyone knows everyone in Ireland. It's a blessing and a
| curse.
| sdze wrote:
| Germans are notoriously ,,under-tested"
| Semaphor wrote:
| My sister recently had her PCR anniversary of 100 tests.
| OTOH, I'm at 2 quick tests and one PCR, but I work from
| home and only leave for stores.
|
| Not sure about the under-tested in general, all the
| public testing stations were always super busy.
| gjs278 wrote:
| reitoei wrote:
| I didn't know that. Is that because of access to PCR
| testing services or a "head in the sand" attitude?
|
| We're in a situation now where our PCR test system has
| pretty much fallen apart.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It appears to be infeasible to stop omicron through non-extreme
| lockdown measures. What I'm not yet clear on is:
|
| - to what extent does recovering from Omicron prevent Delta?
|
| - how long does that immunity last?
|
| We probably _are_ going to have to live with this, but I 'm not
| sure many countries have caught up to the healthcare staffing
| implications of that.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| > to what extent does recovering from Omicron prevent Delta?'
|
| If Omicron is reaching 100% prevalence in so many locations,
| I wonder if Delta will not be as much of a threat anymore? It
| seems like there haven't been any infections with older
| variants for a long time now.
| soperj wrote:
| Omicron evolved from Beta, which had pretty much bottomed
| out in the human population. They believe it evolved in
| mice. Just because Delta is disappearing in the human
| population doesn't mean it's gone.
| robocat wrote:
| > They believe it evolved in mice.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34954396/
|
| https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/01/coronavirus-
| omi...
| [deleted]
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| >I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end of
| covid lockdowns.
|
| Me too, I think at this point further lockdowns would be akin
| to trying to stop a freight train with your shins: futile and
| extremely painful.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Last night on NPR there was a scientist cautioning people who
| think this means the end because it'll burn itself out.
|
| His point was that nobody predicted delta, and nobody predicted
| omicron. There's no telling how serious the next variant will
| be (and arguably there's much greater chance of a variant given
| how many people are getting infected.)
| politician wrote:
| Wasn't the point of Dr. Strangelove a warning against
| excessive worrying about a theoretical future viz a viz the
| mine shaft gap?
| teachrdan wrote:
| ...the missile gap?
| bc4m wrote:
| Mineshaft!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y
| hereforphone wrote:
| Those 20 people are fine, right?
| mojzu wrote:
| Anecdotally from the people I know who've got covid since
| omicron was identified, none have had to go to hospital (all
| are double vaccinated, some had booster), but it can still be
| a rough few days/week while ill and some are still
| coughing/feeling overly tired a few weeks later
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| yes, all mild cough which resolved in a day or two
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Also in Vancouver and similar numbers. I know at least 10
| people who currently have COVID, including myself and my
| partner.
|
| It's not mild for all. Two people in particular have been
| brutally sick for over a week. One spent three days in a
| self-described "fever dream".
|
| I actually don't know whether I have it, since I'm
| asymptomatic and can't get a test. But the four other people
| at my dinner party all got symptoms and two tested positive.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| 13 people in my immediate circle got it in the last 7 days. A
| few had 2 days of fever, a few a slight cough, a few sore
| throats. Everybody is fine now.
| yumraj wrote:
| Question: what does "100% prevalence" mean in this context?
| sorry, it's not clear.
| usea wrote:
| They take samples, randomly sequence some, and use those to
| estimate the proportion of different variants. Apparently 100%
| of them were omicron in the week of 12/26/2021
| [deleted]
| loktarogar wrote:
| all cases are omicron - at least, all sequenced samples came
| back as omicron
| [deleted]
| wallacoloo wrote:
| yeah, kind of confusing. "omicron at 100% prevalence,
| Colorado" is easily mistaken as "100% of the population of
| Colorado has/had omicron".
| akmarinov wrote:
| If it's milder than Delta - then that's good right?
|
| Or do the increased cases lead to more hospitalizations than
| Delta?
| christkv wrote:
| This guy is a uk health professional who go through the numbers
| in a easy to understand way.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfZ62aWf6pk
|
| It very much looks like Omnicron is an upper respiratory
| infection vs previous variants that are lower respiratory
| infections.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| So far in the UK hospitalisations are increasing, but not
| dramatically so. There's also brouhaha about how London (where
| the wave is the worst) is at its peak, or already on the way
| down.
|
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
|
| [bear in mind, the hospitalisation number is not quite what it
| seems. It is "people in hospital who happen to have Covid", not
| "people who got Covid so bad they need to be hospitalised". So
| if you have asymptomatic Covid and a broken leg, you count for
| this purpose. Still, you do require the whole Covid-safe
| theatre, medical staff in PPE so it's also not like "meh
| doesn't matter"]
| aorth wrote:
| According to your link there's definitely a bump in hospital
| admissions. Only time will tell how high that bump goes.
| Let's play it safe and reserve judgement just a little
| longer...
|
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=.
| ..
| mprovost wrote:
| The "peak" in London last week (if it really was the peak)
| had 1 in 10 people infected. Those are huge numbers, even if
| most people don't need hospitalisation.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Yes, I was speaking specifically about hospitalisation
| only.
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| Hm, that's [that 'bear in mind'] correct:
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/about-data#daily-
| and...
|
| Just wanted to check that since (at at least one London
| hospital) they're on different wards (as in, even discounting
| that obviously you don't want 'broken leg with covid' on a
| general 'broken bones' ward with neg/query patients) so seems
| odd to me they'd report data like that vs. those needing
| treatment for it.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| My understanding is, there's a fair few people at hospital
| with "bad Covid" who aren't in Intensive Care. For example,
| if you have steroids and Remdesivir given to you, you
| already need to be hospitalised.
|
| So there's at least three categories: people with really
| bad Covid, people with Covid bad enough they can't be at
| home, but not (at the time) awful, and people who don't
| suffer with Covid at all but could infect others, and
| something else is wrong with them.
|
| I think they are all challenging to the healthcare system
| in different ways. Ultimately, if you project a complex
| situation onto R^1, it can't be too accurate.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yeah, at the one I'm familiar with it's (as far as I know
| and not necessarily limited to) may-need-intensive-care;
| intensive-care; out-of-intensive-care; and isolation (the
| covid+, but only there for the broken leg example).
|
| > Ultimately, if you project a complex situation onto
| R^1, it can't be too accurate.
|
| Absolutely, and it's all too easy to make 'obvious'
| armchair policy..! I was just a bit surprised since my
| assumption would be it counted the relevant wards (if it
| were up to me, I think that would be the first three;
| only not the isolation-but-there-for-something-else).
| sebow wrote:
| hogrider wrote:
| It's still largely the same severity of the original Wuhan
| variant tho. It's the people getting immunity that's lowered
| mortality.
| ostenning wrote:
| Hospitalizations are down 70%, yet in South Africa only 26%
| of the population is vaccinated, this goes to show that
| Omicron is less severe than the original variant.
|
| The reason for this is Omicron replicates mainly in the upper
| respiratory areas and does not invade vital organs. This is
| also why its so contagious.
| rocqua wrote:
| Scary thing is. Milder disease is a constant factor improvement
| in hospitalization. But faster spreading (higher R value) is an
| exponential worsening in hospitalization.
|
| It's probably better to have a 50% hospitalization rate and an
| R value of 0.8 than a 5% hospitalization rate and an R value of
| 2. After 3 'generations' of spreading the second situation
| already has more hospitalizations.
| parkingrift wrote:
| > It's probably better to have a 50% hospitalization rate and
| an R value of 0.8 than a 5% hospitalization rate and an R
| value of 2. After 3 'generations' of spreading the second
| situation already has more hospitalizations.
|
| Sure, but those aren't the only choices. Over the last 30
| days the daily case average has increased by 500%. During
| that same time the daily average hospitalized has risen 100%.
|
| And the test positivity rate has increased to almost 30%,
| which implies an almost comical undercount in actual cases.
|
| The contagiousness and severity are diverging in an
| extraordinary way. We're likely undercounting cases by 1/5 or
| 1/10th.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Unknown cases don't use up ICU and hospital beds and don't
| result in deaths, so who cares?
| parkingrift wrote:
| It's pretty important to determine actual severity rates.
| ianhawes wrote:
| The testing positivity rate is relatively useless at this
| point. For example, in my State, there is no way to report
| a positive test from a rapid result. Only PCR tests
| administered by a medical professional are considered valid
| for statistical purposes, even though the government is
| giving out free rapid tests.
| parkingrift wrote:
| I don't think it's useless. I think it's a pretty good
| indication that there are many multiples of actual cases
| for every confirmed case. If covid cases have risen
| 5,000% in 30 days, but hospitalizations have only risen
| 100%, that's an extraordinarily positive outcome.
| thomaslord wrote:
| This is for good reason. Rapid tests are substantially
| less sensitive and often give false negatives, especially
| for asymptomatic cases. There are also a lot of rapid "at
| home" tests out there that have high false positive
| rates, so even if non-PCR tests were added to the data
| the only reasonable approach would be to still require
| them to be administered by a medical professional to make
| sure the test is correctly administered and that the test
| itself is relatively high quality.
| rhino369 wrote:
| An R value of .8 would quickly go extinct.
| tomp wrote:
| Maybe but "exponential growth" is a conspiracy theory
| promoted by epidemiologists. In reality, growth follows the
| S-curve, so a milder, faster spreading disease will also
| saturate the population (flatten the S-curve) much sooner, so
| overall the impact will be much less.
| cinntaile wrote:
| A conspiracy theory lol. When they talk about exponential
| growth, they are talking about an R0 > 1. Yes, after some
| point it drops under 1 and flattens out because there are
| fewer and fewer people to infect.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| I've seen this argument elsewhere and I don't get it. From
| my understanding the limitation on exponential growth, the
| flattening of the top part of the S-curve, comes from total
| population. There is no one left to infect, basically.
|
| If the rising part of the S-curve is steep, that means
| people get infected within a shorter timespan and a
| corresponding higher load on hospital beds and healthcare
| personnel, which is what we are trying to avoid with the
| lockdowns.
|
| What am I missing?
|
| Also, calling exponential growth a 'conspiracy theory'
| seems unnecessary
| [deleted]
| _Microft wrote:
| You want to keep the number of cases in a range that the
| health care system still can deal with. Reaching the the
| flat part of an S-curve (i.e. infecting everyone as fast as
| possible) is NOT desirable because that leads to many cases
| in very short term.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| That what I hope for. It looks like uk is like this. But
| is USA like this?
| nradov wrote:
| The CDC has estimated the overall hospitalization rate since
| the start of the pandemic at about 5%. Now with vaccines and
| other improved outpatient therapies the hospitalization rate
| is dropping.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd...
|
| The Omicron variant R0 value appears to be somewhere in the 7
| - 10 range.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2.
| ..
| ror_shubham wrote:
| Its milder than Delta but way more transmissible. The more
| people get this, more will be the chances of a new variant
| which can be more deadly/transmissible.
| codeulike wrote:
| But we're seeing evidence that Omicron provides some immunity
| from the more dangerous strains like Delta.
|
| If we're worried about Omicron mutating to become more
| deadly, why aren't we worried about the other human
| coronaviruses doing the same? 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1 that
| have been around for ages?
|
| There's nothing magic about Omicron, its just a repsiratory
| virus thats relatively new to humans so there's not so much
| population immunity. And looks like we're rapidly getting
| exposed to it, so its about to lose its advantage.
| sroussey wrote:
| > 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1 that have been around for ages
|
| They can only insert themselves into specific cells (acidic
| ones in lungs, nose, throat, stomach) and thus are
| respiratory viruses.
|
| SARS-Cov-2 can insert into most cells of your body and
| loves the organs like the heart, brain, testes, lungs, etc.
|
| It is airborne like a cold but can damage your brain and
| heart where a cold cannot.
| Gigachad wrote:
| If this is all so likely and rapid, why does this not happen
| constantly every single year? Why did it take so long for one
| particular virus to leak when it seems like with so many
| humans we should see some super virus come up constantly.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It does happen from time to time, but it's usually not
| _quite_ right. In the last couple of decades, there've been
| at least four or five pandemic false alarms, mostly flu
| variants. In the event, none of them quite made it. But now
| that covid _has_ made it, minor variations on the already-
| very-dangerous-thing can be a big problem.
| trhway wrote:
| >Why did it take so long for one particular virus to leak
|
| why long? The EcoAlliance's gain-of-function (with the
| "Human Subjects Included" checked) NIH grant for Wuhan
| started in 2014, the human-specific DNA modifications of
| the virus were described in the EcoAlliance's 2018 DARPA
| grant proposal, and in the end of 2019 - voila!
|
| With regard to omicron - we may be also witnessing the
| continuation of the same magic of the fast "gain-of-
| function" by the virus :
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-
| pharmaceuticals/...
|
| "By inserting this particular snippet into itself, Omicron
| might be making itself look "more human," which would help
| it evade attack by the human immune system, said Venky
| Soundararajan of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data
| analytics firm nference, who led the study posted on
| Thursday on the website OSF Preprints.
|
| This could mean the virus transmits more easily, while only
| causing mild or asymptomatic disease."
| xg15 wrote:
| I guess you're alluding to the "lab leak" theory. I can't
| say I know how serious it should be taken, but just this:
| If this really _was_ a lab leak and China knows something
| we don 't know, then I'd be _really_ scared of their
| current behaviour of locking down entire agglomerations
| over two-digit numbers of mostly asymptomatic cases.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Very serious. Check out this article. Title not
| representative . Can skip first 10-20% if wanted.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/how-dr-fauci-other-officials-
| withhe...
| xg15 wrote:
| It's a good article, as far as I can tell - in particular
| as actually presents some evidence for reasonable
| assumptions. Though to be fair, it was known before that
| GoF research was conducted in the WIV (I believe) and
| there is not yet any evidence that the research actually
| resulted in _this_ virus.
|
| What's new to me though is how deep the involvement of US
| entities apparently was and how close to SARS-CoV-2
| territory the whole endeavour came. So in this case,
| absence of evidence is definitely not evidence of
| absence.
|
| Also that one of the drivers of shutting down the lab-
| leak theory was apparently _commissioning the WIV to do
| GoF research!_ (Though I still wonder what all the
| _other_ scientists supporting that editorial were doing.)
|
| If those FOIA papers will be used for more investigations
| in the near future, thing should definitely become
| interesting.
| prox wrote:
| It's possible, but most coronaviruses do not seem to have
| followed this in the past, nor flu-based viruses. More deadly
| variants usually don't win it from less deadly in a selection
| process.
|
| However it is important as the WHO recommends to do way more
| to export vaccines to countries that need it. Not just
| developed countries to prevent the chance of new variants.
| djrogers wrote:
| > the WHO recommends to do way more to export vaccines to
| countries that need it.
|
| My understanding is that in many of those countries, the
| vaccine is readily available, but people don't want to take
| it for various reasons.
| kansface wrote:
| I don't think this logic is correct. Viruses can not become
| infinitely transmissible/deadly; clearly there is an upper
| ceiling. Second, people gain immunity after infection. We'd
| expect the first variant that infects most people to win,
| effectively closing the door behind it.
| monksy wrote:
| No...@ that's good right
|
| Fewer % hospitalizations, but you have a much larger population
| getting it in a shorter amount of time.
|
| When hospitals get oveerwhelmed you're going to get a knock
| down effect on non-covid issues where medical attention is
| needed but cannot be provided.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Here's a good take on it:
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-latest-nhs-backlog-is-...
|
| > Professor Andrew Hayward, of University College London,
| earlier told Sky News that it is unlikely there will be a
| variant more severe than Omicron.
|
| He said: "This one will be hard to outcompete... given how
| successful it is."
|
| Professor Hayward added that for a "variant to stick", it needs
| to have "some advantage over the existing variant and that
| advantage needs to be really in terms of increased
| transmissibility or escape from immunity".
|
| He said: "There's no advantage to the virus itself becoming
| more severe."
| rsynnott wrote:
| One thing that gives me pause here; at one time people were
| saying that _Delta_ would be very hard to outcompete, given
| how infectious it is.
|
| Something as infectious as Omicron but with better immune
| escape would presumably do very well, even once the Omicron
| waves pass.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > He said: "There's no advantage to the virus itself becoming
| more severe."
|
| I thought the virus doesn't care about becoming more or less
| sever since its transmission capability is all that matters
| to it and symptoms are hidden (thus increasing transmission
| between individuals) in the first days of infection and
| that's what evolution is driving him to be: more
| transmissible.
|
| The fact symptoms appear sooner than delta seems to be a step
| backward for the virus in terms of efficacy and it's
| compensated by being way way way more virulent.
|
| What am I getting wrong here ?
|
| Also:
|
| Omicron could as well have been more severe (and the jury is
| still out on long covid anyway). If there's another variant
| less virulent but compensated by hiding symptoms longer...
| then this would take over omicron and this variant could as
| well be more severe.
|
| Is that totally out of the realm of possibilities ?
|
| My regular joe thinking tells me that we can only be sure of
| the direction it's going to take when spring comes. 2021 had
| 5 vocs, it's only the first days of January.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Stats for symptom onset delay need to be disaggregated by
| vaccination status. Search text for "Kato" here:
|
| https://thezvi.substack.com/p/omicron-post-12
| spuz wrote:
| Yes, I believe the high transmissibility before symptoms
| appear is the most beneficial trait to Omicron. However, if
| a variant appeared with exactly the same traits except that
| it was 10x more deadly, then a lot more people would be
| taking it more seriously, self-isolating and driving down
| infections. From an evolutionary perspective, there is an
| incentive for the virus to become milder rather than more
| deadly because of how the news of a deadly virus changes
| human behaviour.
| bayesianbot wrote:
| But future human actions do not put evolutionary pressure
| on the virus. First the possible new variant emerges, our
| actions come later.
| nawgz wrote:
| It's not like strains of the virus are made by
| intelligent design. The point is that Omicron became
| dominant because people due to a lot of factors, its high
| transmissibility and people's disinterest in quarantining
| among them. If Omicron 2.0 came out with the same
| transmissibility, but a notably higher lethality,
| people's interest in quarantining would have increased
| significantly, which could have prevented Omicron
| becoming the dominant strain in spite of its increased
| transmissibility.
| shmel wrote:
| I remember 6 months ago some researchers also said that Delta
| was so contagious that it is very unlikely that even more
| contagious variant arises. Oh well, sometimes unlikely events
| happen.
| nradov wrote:
| Based on what we see in other viruses, the practical
| evolutionary upper limit on R0 for respiratory viruses
| appears to be about 18.
|
| https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/what-is-r0/
|
| Preliminary data on the Omicron variant indicates an R0
| value in the 7 - 10 range. So SARS-CoV-2 might still have a
| little more room to evolve even higher contagiousness.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-
| 2...
| kenjackson wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense, unless the variants directly
| compete against each other. But what we've seen with Omicron
| is that it can infect someone who just had Delta. So if
| there's a mutation that can infect someone that had Omicron,
| but is more severe that mutation can flourish, even if it is
| less transmissible than Omicron. It just flourishes in
| parallel.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They do directly compete, this s Is why delta is shrinking
| in these places.
| rattray wrote:
| Anecdotally, the hospital my partner works at has been
| frantically converting almost all of their floors to covid
| floors due to the influx of patients. But, few require
| ICU/ventilator.
|
| So yes it's bad/dangerous in that hospitals may fill to
| overflowing and struggle to treat covid or non-covid patients,
| but not bad in that Omicron is directly killing more people
| than Delta et al.
| dehrmann wrote:
| With all the restrictions over the past two years, have we been
| selecting for hyper-contagious strains?
| convolvatron wrote:
| yes. would letting the original strains run amok freely have
| been better? I guess more people would have died, but it would
| have been over sooner.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Death counts are also hard to compare because earlier
| variants already killed a lot of high-risk people.
|
| Would we rather have a widespread epidemic we know less about
| and can control or a less deadly one we have treatments for,
| but have limited control over? It's hard to say. It'll be
| interesting to see what happens with omicron in China where
| they're trying their hardest to control it.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Some places have been pretty close to "let it run amok", ie
| indifference by the population and government, widespread
| antivax sentiment, etc. I'm talking about places like
| Bulgaria, Russia, etc. They have seen around 0.75% of the
| population die.
|
| Letting the original run freely would have likely cost at
| least 1% of the population, plus the long covid, lack of
| treatment for other conditions etc.
| intrasight wrote:
| I am reminded of "Don't Look Up" scene:
|
| It is going to happen. Exactly. 99.78% to be exact.
|
| Oh, great. Okay, so it's not 100%.
|
| Well, scientists never like to say 100%.
| asdfsd234234444 wrote:
| aside: that movie was absolutely terrible and cringey
| romaniv wrote:
| I highly recommend everyone here to watch these two cannels for
| Covid news and analysis:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/Campbellteaching
|
| https://odysee.com/@DrMobeenSyed:1
|
| The first one is a bit more user-friendly, the second one goes
| more in-depth into mechanics and research, but neither peddle
| fear or moralism. There is actually quite a bit of positive news
| lately:
|
| Omicron uses two different ways to enter cells. This is part of
| why it's so transmissible, but it's also why it is less severe:
| https://odysee.com/@DrMobeenSyed:1/omicron-science-is-differ...
|
| Omicron generates some immunity for Delta, so it is likely to
| displace Delta entirely:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYLbJ0H8zdc
|
| Most Omicron hospitalization are accidental so far:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2VgBm9pTI
| hereforphone wrote:
| I've been traveling internationally over the past couple of day.
| Every person seems to have the sniffles, or to be coughing. I
| haven't noticed this since covid began, presumably because the
| masks, sanitizer use, and social distancing have kept the cold
| and flu down.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| This was said in some Covid HN threads 1.5+ years ago when
| Covid began. We know now it was mostly people noticing stuff
| they didn't notice before. Likely the same case here
| throwntoday wrote:
| Went to a new years party in California and a dozen of us got
| stuffy noses and a small cough. Test came back negative.
| Haven't had a cold in so long I had almost forgotten what they
| were.
|
| Before getting the results I had assumed this was the mutation
| everyone would get as we leave the pandemic with a natural
| immunity to this weak strain.
| samwillis wrote:
| Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is
| ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat,
| headache, nasal congestion, cough) but "isn't Codiv". My whole
| family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten
| cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren't bed
| bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one
| at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyway.
|
| We know _a lot_ of people who have had this experience in the
| last month. Most people seem to have had this cold or Covid
| recently.
|
| Now, I am suspicious that something is going on here. I have a
| suspicion that the LFTs are not testing positive for relatively
| mild Omicron. The LFTs procedure here, which we followed, has
| been to only swab the nose (they changed it maybe over the
| summer?) but I have seen many anecdotal reports over the last
| week of people who tested negative (LFT) with just a nasal swab
| but positive if they swabbed their throats. This potentially
| ties in with reports that Omicron mostly affects the throat
| whereas Delta affects the back of the nose. I have seen no
| official studies.
|
| It would not surprise me if we find out in a few weeks/months
| that nasal LFTs have a very high false negative rate with
| Omicron.
|
| Edit:
|
| Just found this about a small study suggesting exactly what I
| am suspicious of:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/health/covid-rapid-test-o...
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.04.22268770v...
| invalidusernam3 wrote:
| One of my friends tested positive for covid yesterday (via
| PCR test). He suspected he might have covid so he had been
| doing LFTs in the days leading up but kept coming up
| negative. Out of interest he did an LFT after he got his
| positive PCR and, surprise surprise, negative.
|
| Obviously this is very anecdotal and speculative, but like
| you said, I wonder if LFTs don't pick up this strain of the
| virus as well as previous, and if that is what is causing the
| numbers to be so high since I would imagine it is how most
| people test.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| The official guidence is that LFT are only to be used if you
| DO NOT have symptoms. If you have symptoms you should instead
| be getting a PCR (lab) test.
|
| Official guidence:
|
| > There are different tests you can get to check if you have
| coronavirus (COVID-19). The test you need depends on why
| you're getting tested.
|
| > The 2 main tests are:
|
| > PCR tests - mainly for people with symptoms, they're sent
| to a lab to be checked
|
| > rapid lateral flow tests - only for people who do not have
| symptoms, they give a quick result using a device similar to
| a pregnancy test
|
| > Both tests are free.
|
| Source: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-
| covid-19/testing/g...
| shmel wrote:
| Well, the symptoms according to the NHS are fever, cough
| and loss of smell/taste. If you have runny nose and sore
| throat, you don't have coronavirus symptoms. Technically.
| So you take a LFT, right?
| doubled112 wrote:
| It confuses me how different the rules and "truths" are
| all over the world.
|
| At least when I caught Delta I had a sore throat and a
| runny nose to start. That was it for a couple of days.
|
| There was an outbreak in my children's school so the
| family went to get tested.
|
| It was only after that I got a cough and fever (and
| positive result). It wasn't until about day five I
| noticed I couldn't smell.
|
| Public health where I'm at says basically everything is a
| possible Coronavirus symptom. They list headache, sore
| throat, runny/stuffy nose, congestion, fatigue, muscle
| aches, nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea, inability to
| smell, and pink eye.
| samwillis wrote:
| That was my interpretation.
| Bellend wrote:
| I had this and so did my friend and we live across the
| country. The same symptoms at different times. It was as you
| describe and my cough was terrible, unlike previous colds or
| chest infections. I coughed for about 40 hours straight and
| didn't sleep. I tested myself multiple times.
|
| I found it strange that I am boosted, masked, and sanitized,
| plus I am isolated as I am an unpaid carer for a family
| member with poor health and I managed to catch the bloody
| cold!
|
| It seemed suspect to me as well but of course, anecdotal.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Same experience and suspicions here with December being
| miserable for the household but no positive LFTs (around 3
| each) or PCR (one each). Wife still has a sore throat every
| night, weeks later, and mine lasted weeks too, which is
| unlike any cold we've had previously.
| slavik81 wrote:
| Michael Mina explains it this way:
|
| > Rapid tests do work with omicron. "But why are some people
| staying negative in the first days they have symptoms??" This
| is expected. Symptoms don't = contagious virus This is
| literally a reflection of the fact that vaccines are doing
| their job!
|
| https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/14720244576403947.
| ..
|
| There's a nice diagram with additional information there, and
| further discussion on other possible factors contributing to
| the results we're seeing.
| VirologyThrow wrote:
| Mina's tweets are all over the place, and mostly
| speculation. It's also strange that he's arguing that the
| vaccines are working in one breath, and then basically
| telling people to retest daily if possible and go into
| isolation the minute they think they're going to sneeze in
| another breath.
|
| The cold is a minor annoyance to most people's immune
| system, as almost everyone has prior exposure to cold-
| causing viruses, but colds still manage to spread. We don't
| test obsessively or quarantine for "the cold."
|
| If "Symptoms don't = contagious virus", how in the world is
| the virus spreading at such a blistering pace? Is Mina
| suggesting that literally everyone is getting this thing,
| including in highly vaccinated populations, by magic?
| Occam's razor, combined with basic knowledge about how
| respiratory viruses work, tells us that people who have
| symptoms are very likely contagious. They might also be
| contagious before noticeable symptoms arise, and as they
| subside.
|
| As for viral loads, with Delta, research found that
| vaccinated individuals were capable of having viral loads
| as high as unvaccinated individuals[1]. Until there's data
| about the viral loads with Omicron, it seems dubious for
| Mina to suggest that the reports of rapid tests failing to
| pick up omicron infections are related to low viral loads.
|
| Instead, Mina's 5th tweet _is_ worth paying attention to:
|
| https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1472388051146264
| 5...
|
| There is a lot of chatter about how people are getting
| positive rapid tests when they swab their throats instead
| of their nasal passages. It's anecdotal at this point, but
| if we're going to engage in speculation, this seems a much
| more valid form of inquiry.
|
| The vaccines are very effective at reducing the risk of
| hospitalization and death, and Omicron seems more mild to
| begin with. It is very effective at spreading in vaccinated
| populations, which isn't surprising given that the
| decreasing size of the SARS-CoV-2 naive population means
| that the virus is now under pressure to select for immune
| escape. It's strange to me that a "Epidemiologist,
| Immunologist, Physician" would tweet as if he didn't know
| this.
|
| [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2074
| kolp wrote:
| There's a recent study(0) that suggests that saliva tests are
| more reliable than nasal swabs for detection of Omicron
| variants, whereas the inverse was true for the Delta variant.
|
| (0) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.212682
| 46v...
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| I stay inside most of the time and don't really go out or
| travel or anything. Only time I leave the house is to walk the
| dog.
|
| It does seem like that past month or so I've been hearing
| constant sniffling, coughing, and sneezing as I walk around the
| neighborhood.
| capableweb wrote:
| Just stating the obvious (but not necessarily true): could be
| that before covid you never really never thought about others
| sniffles/coughing, but now after covid, everyone who behave
| "sick" becomes noticeable. I certainly noticed this in myself.
| joelbondurant1 wrote:
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Just giving my 2 cents. Got boosted 3 weeks ago. Now I have
| covid. Everything is fine, feels like the least ill i ever was
| from anything. But I wanted to state that omnicron is a beast. I
| did wear a ffp2 mask with nearly every social contact and if we
| didnt wear mask we would test ourself. I am sure I got it from
| the streets from people passing by. That said I am in the french
| alps and it was vacation time here.
|
| And until now it was rare to know someone who has covid .... Now
| it feels like people who dont have it are getting rare
|
| I hope so much this is the entrypoint for an endemic situation
| gbjw wrote:
| Your anecdote makes me wonder if the Omicron variant is largely
| spreading through aerosols and eyes. See (commentary from May
| 2021): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS26
| 66-5....
| zucked wrote:
| Similar story - boosted mid Nov. Travelled over Christmas. Have
| been wearing K95 masks as properly as I can as often as I can
| when out in public. No real symptoms to speak of, but took a
| PCR just to be sure. Bing! Positive.
|
| Not sure from where I got it, but the contagiousness of Omicron
| is impressive.
| bleuchase wrote:
| > Now I have covid. Everything is fine, feels like the least
| ill i ever was from anything. But I wanted to state that
| omnicron is a beast.
|
| So you're the least ill you've ever been from anything but it's
| also "a beast"?
| contravariant wrote:
| Why are you hoping for Covid to become endemic?
| betterunix2 wrote:
| At this point that is the best case. COVID zero is a pipe
| dream, there are just too many vaccine refusers and too many
| people refusing to do anything to avoid spreading the virus.
| If COVID follows the typical evolutionary pattern of viruses
| and becomes less dangerous, we can get back to normal life --
| the question is how long that will take.
| contravariant wrote:
| I'm not sure what basis you have for assuming it will
| _evolve_ to be less dangerous, Since it still leaves most
| of its host alive I can 't think of a mechanism that would
| prevent it from staying equally deadly, except of course
| that most of the population will have some degree of
| immunity.
|
| This pandemic will inevitably end, after which Covid-19 may
| stay endemic, but Covid-19 becoming endemic and the
| pandemic ending aren't really the same thing and frankly
| aren't really causally related so to me it seems weird to
| express hope for the endemic to begin rather than the
| pandemic to end.
|
| Anyway, we'll need to ride out this last wave first. I'd
| say _hopefully_ last, but we may end up hoping it wasn 't.
| Regardless let's hope it at least burns itself out in the
| process as opposed to smouldering for ever.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| It is still more dangerous than the other endemic
| coronaviruses that cause the common cold. In general the
| selection pressure on viruses (and other parasites) is to
| be less disruptive to the lives of their hosts -- not
| just being less deadly, but also not incapacitating hosts
| for extended periods of time. How long it takes for a
| virus to become endemic-without-ill-effects can vary
| widely, but the hope here is that COVID19 will do so
| quickly, becoming "just another common cold" within
| another year or two.
| fragmede wrote:
| > typical evolutionary pattern of viruses and becomes less
| dangerous
|
| Wishful thinking (that I hope comes true). Ebola got more
| lethal, not less.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Ebola is not endemic to humans. It is not lethal to the
| bat species in which it is endemic.
| [deleted]
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Honestly I hope that one day it is gone for good but until
| then an endemic situation would be somehow better than a
| pandemic one. I didnt say that clearly and hoping for a,
| also, bad situation is not the best thing to whish for but
| after 2 years of pandemic I am whishing for something less
| bad....
| the_doctah wrote:
| It's more of an acceptance of reality than a hope, I think.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| yes exactly ... the worst part about growing up....
| mikotodomo wrote:
| Maybe it's time to start taking the wear 2 masks advice
| seriously.
| [deleted]
| mapme wrote:
| Better to go with N100 mask or heavy duty respirator if you
| truly wanted to ramp up protection. https://www.grainger.com/
| product/6AD97?ef_id=Cj0KCQiAw9qOBhC...
| makeworld wrote:
| As I understand it, wearing two masks was only recommended
| for those wearing surgical or cloth. If your wear an N95 or
| equivalent you only need the one.
| [deleted]
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| I'll give my two cents then. People are probably not gonna like
| it here but I think alternative perspective is important.
|
| I got vaccinated in June 2021 and haven't been following any
| restrictions or rules for the last ~10mo. No masks (unless
| forced or asked), haven't limited human contact, haven't
| stopped seeing Grandma, etc. I have traveled extensively in the
| past four months, including to two foreign countries. I
| nominally live in the epicenter of the new outbreak in NYC
| which accounts for the lion's share of cases as of this writing
| (unless something drastically changed in the past day).
|
| I have not gotten COVID-19. [0] If I did, it was a very mild
| case that gave no symptoms.
|
| I was in contact with people who had COVID-19 on Christmas and
| New Year's Eve (both tested positive after the fact, they did
| not know prior). I got tested December 23rd for a flight,
| results were negative. I got tested yesterday, results were
| negative. I feel great though I had a bad cold on the ~27th
| which I think was from traveling and not COVID specific given I
| tested negative twice.
|
| [0]: I had a very bad, vaguely defined flu back in January 2020
| that knocked me out for a week that may have been an early
| COVID-19 case. But everybody says this and then their antibody
| tests show up negative. I haven't gotten antibody tests to
| confirm and given that I'm vaccinated it's likely they'd show
| up positive for that anyway.
| [deleted]
| makeworld wrote:
| For anyone wondering: FFP2 is equivalent to an N95.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFP_standards#FFP2_mask
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