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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#321

Post by heavyset_go »

azangru wrote: post #148
koheripbal wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a novice interpretation of the data. Most early cases are recorded as mild. Severe cases and hospitalizations lag infections by 2-3 weeks, and deaths lag by 2-3 months. It's frankly irresponsible to report this factoid without that caveat.

> Severe cases and hospitalizations lag infections by 2-3 weeks The starting point in this case would be symptoms onset, surely? First samples were taken on November 14; the median time between the onset of symptoms and hospitalization is 5-10 days; patients have been followed since November 18 [0]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrican-doctor-says-pa...

Symptom onset precedes hospitalization by several weeks in the average case that requires hospitalization.

Re: Update on Omicron

#322

Post by bhawks »

wallacoloo wrote: post #320
yufeng66 wrote: post #285

The omicron variant could be a blessing in disguise if the early stories on how it is less deadly checks out. That means people refuse to get the vaccine shot will be infected with the omicron variant with relatively low consequence and get immunity that way. Btw this is how it suppose to work. The virus has no incentive to kill its host. The variant that is fast spreading and less deadly eventually wins out.

this makes me think that there’s got to be at least some people in power who believe that engineering and releasing a more transmissible but less deadly variant is a prudent way to respond to this pandemic. i wonder how many people are working on this right now.

Yes nothing could possibly go wrong with this strategy.

This is an example of one of the reasons why there is growing distrust of experts.

Re: Update on Omicron

#323

Post by jeromegv »

dxbydt wrote: post #273
ant6n wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is garbage, full of randomly picked data points, not accounting for other variables, blatant misinterpretations and convenient omissions. Anti-vaxxers love posting it.

The authors haven’t done any questionable transforms of the dataset - its literally the whitehouse dataset as a scatterplot. How is it garbage ?

You can’t compare developing countries that barely test anyone with Portugal which has strong and robust testing. Likely that tons of infections get untested so to prove that vaccine don’t work just because some other country with lower vaccination has less cases makes absolutely no sense. Any epidemiologist knows that and this is why this garbage analysis.

What you do is that you compare within the same country where conditions are similar. It’s the same everywhere, virus spread more and leads to more deaths and hospital cases among the unvaccinated.

Re: Update on Omicron

#324

Post by gus_massa »

LasersGoPew wrote: post #237
samwillis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows that as a Virus mutates and evolves they tend towards more transmissibility but lower morality rate. There is a high chance Covid-19 will flow the same path. That’s not to say that a more deadly variant won’t appear it almost certainly will (or has already) but it is unlikely to become the dominant variant.

The current vaccines don't prevent infection, reinfection, or transmission -- which eliminates much of the selective pressure for lower mortality. We could end up with a situation where everyone alive on earth is vaccinated, carries the virus, receives regular boosters, and anyone who isn't or who misses a few boosters, faces certain death. Similar to Marek’s disease in chickens.

I'm not sure, but I think the problem is that nobody cares enough about chicken to develop a better vaccine. How much would it cost? Can someone here pay for it so we can remove that scary story in Wikipedia?

Re: Update on Omicron

#325

Post by navaati »

flerovium wrote: post #268
DeusExMachina wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to eradicate covid everywhere, simultaneously or otherwise. It's now widely accepted that the virus continues to circulate even in vaccinated people. Besides, you are not even going to vaccinate 100% of any western country, let alone all of them or the entire world. Milder mutation are what is actually going to make the virus endemic, like it happened to the Spanish flu. Reports from the South African…

This is a misconception: it is not known that the virus will become less deadly over time; in fact, there is good reason to believe that it may become more deadly because virulence is positively associated with tramissibility. https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/will-covid-19-evolve-be-mo...

So what happened to Spanish Flu ?

Re: Update on Omicron

#326

Post by zzzeek »

thelittleone wrote: post #313
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid is currently endemic in New Zealand. Delta spreads too fast for their old strategies to work, and Omicron looks to be substantially worse.

Omicron might spread faster but we dont know yet. The doctor in SA who first treated people infected with omicron says synptoms are far less severe for example, no loss of taste or smell and no hospitilization. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrican-doctor-says-pa...

per the linked article here these were students who are young, so would not be expected to have severe symptoms:

> Initial reported infections were among university students—younger individuals who tend to have more mild disease—but understanding the level of severity of the Omicron variant will take days to several weeks.

Re: Update on Omicron

#327

Post by sudosysgen »

MadeThisToReply wrote: post #60
0des wrote: post #56

When did it get renamed to "Omicron"? Also, dammit, now it's a thing, and it's got its own little soundbite-able name instead of "B.1.1.529".

They skipped the Greek letter "Xi"; no prizes for guessing why.

Because the WHO has a long-standing policy not to name disease after names.

Re: Update on Omicron

#328

Post by edmcnulty101 »

dunco wrote: post #293
Hermel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the virus could ever be stopped with today's vaccines, even if everyone was vaccinated. Data from fully or almost fully vaccinated countries clearly show that this doesn't eliminate the virus. It of course helps, but we have to depart from the idea that the "zero covid" strategies work.

Define "work". Countries that pursued zero covid largely avoided hospital overcrowding and massive amounts of preventable death. It might never have been possible to actually zero covid out to extinction, but it was possible to be close to zero for long enough to get everyone vaccinated. Millions of lives have likely been saved because of these strategies. "zero covid" is still the right strategy for a disease for wh…

>> Countries that pursued zero covid largely avoided hospital overcrowding and massive amounts of preventable death

So did countries that didn't.

Re: Update on Omicron

#329

Post by wallacoloo »

dnautics wrote: post #289
enlyth wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This answer does not address the why, only the 'did it happen'. Like other commenters have said, Nu was skipped because it sounded too similar to "New", and Xi was skipped because of Xi Jinping. It's not a conspiracy, it's to avoid political controversy, before someone starts a flamewar on here.

it's not a conspiracy, but it is lamesauce that the WHO said "it's a common surname" when Mu is a more common surname than Xi. They should have just said "it's the surname of a world leader" for honesty and transparency. Instead, they just discredited themselves.

seriously. i get that it’s different organizations doing the naming here, but if the average person actually cared about name conflicts, we wouldn’t still be naming hurricanes after common first names.

it’s 100% because of a single, notable person being impacted. maybe more conscientious naming IS a thing we should be doing, but we should make that change because of an organic desire for it — not because of a single prominent figure being offended.

Re: Update on Omicron

#330

Post by YZF »

mattrighetti wrote: post #234
ant6n wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is garbage, full of randomly picked data points, not accounting for other variables, blatant misinterpretations and convenient omissions. Anti-vaxxers love posting it.

Can you elaborate more on that? Legitimate question, I came across this a couple days ago on some other thread here on HN.

Can you think of some issues with this study? legitimate question.

Looking at one data point here. Israel. The data point pretty much represents the peak of the wave caused by the Delta variant. The story in Israel goes that the vaccines worked so well against the previous variants that the entire country went back to normal. But with 60% of the population vaccinated and Delta the effective R number is easily over 1 when there's no other measures in place. Once Israel introduced some new measures (and booster shots), most of the measures are around limits to not-vaccinated people btw, their case rate went down by a factor of 20!

So what does this tell us about vaccines, covid, and this "study"?

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