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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#441

Post by asah »

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.

-1, viruses are not sentient and are only given pressure to not kill their hosts if that reduces transmissability... which specifically doesn't apply for COVID, which is asymptomatically transmissable.

Re: Update on Omicron

#442

Post by supernovae »

maaand wrote: post #436
aetherspawn wrote: post #154

Ok, my 2 cents. This happened because there isn’t enough vaccines in third world countries. They can’t afford them. The moral of the story? It doesn’t matter if you 100% vaccinate your western country. We’re all in this together. When COVID spreads in Africa and makes a new strain, it may as well be on your own doorstep. The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’…

IIRC my biology lessons in high school, viruses mutate in order to escape from vaccines. Just like mosquitoes mutate and adapted to DDT, we created new chemicals and then mosquitoes adapted to them, under evolutionary pressure. So vaccinated populations are creating the pressure on the virus to mutate. And un-vaccinated population may get effected (irrespective of which version of virus they encounter at the time)..…

Viruses don't mutate to escape anything, evolution doesn't work that way. Viruses have short generation times and they replicate extraordinarily fast compared to what humans see in their lifetimes. Their fast replication allows the virus to experience mutations at a massive scale and mutations that increase its survival become dominent over time.

Those mutations absolutely require an unvaccinated population to thrive but more importantly, a population with a laissez fair attitude that allows the mutation to spread to other humans. If you do everything in your power to cut down the transmission and vaccinate yourself, we could have defeated this thing.

But nope.. and here we are.

Re: Update on Omicron

#443

Post by throwawaygh »

bhawks wrote: post #322
wallacoloo wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This post is a case-study in the self-awareness of conspiracy theorists.

Parent post posits a conspiracy theory, in the literal sense, without any evidence.

In fact, it's worse than that. The parent didn't even claim their theory is true! They just sort of throw it out there as a random-ass thought/hypothetical. They didn't say "X is happening and I have proof". Fuck, they didn't even say "X is happening"! They said "Consider the following conspiracy in which X is happening".

But, for some reason, you not only (a) latch onto this theory as if it were plausible without a shred of evidence, but then also (b) slander a large group of people on the basis of... what? One internet user's random-ass thought that sounds kinda-sorta right to you because it tickles the right neurons even though the original claimant not only doesn't provide evidence but doesn't even actually assert that their conspiracy theory is anything other than a random thought!

Your post is close to something like "People who believe in bat-shit-insane conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence tend to distrust the people who those conspiracy theories tell them not to trust".

Which... yeah, no shit. This is why people believe conspiracy theories. Because they are prone to believe bat-shit insane things about people they don't like, regardless of whether there's any rational or empirical justification for that belief. And, not only that, but they are prone to circular reasoning to justify these beliefs. You hit the nail on the head.

Re: Update on Omicron

#444

Post by supernovae »

rajup wrote: post #371
tshaddox wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to argue with you too hard, but I’m also in my 30s and you definitely downplay the “self-interest” angle more than I do. Indeed, I got my shots because I want to “do my part,” and I’m also not particularly worried about personally getting severely sick or dying. But I also just don’t want to get sick at all because getting sick sucks . That’s the same reason I’ve been getting yearly flu shots every year since col…

Mostly agree, but have you considered that perhaps falling sick once in a while allows your immune system to adapt and become more stronger? I mean vaccines have been around for all of 100-200 years...

You do realize that that vaccines are what teaches your immune system to combat diseases, right?

Your only "sick" because you didn't pro-actively teach your immune system to handle that flu.

Re: Update on Omicron

#445

Post by wallacoloo »

cglace wrote: post #353
bhawks wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A hypothetical situation is why people don’t trust experts?

a hypothetical occurrence to which there are adjacent real-world occurences. gain-of-function research being perhaps the most damning. if i was doing gain of function experiments, i would at least consider engineering a variant that squeezes out the more deadly ones.

it's not really that dissimilar a line of thinking to the people who want to use CRISPR to release genetically modified mosquitos with dominant traits that lead to eradication of the species as their new genes take over.

> A hypothetical situation is why people don’t trust experts?

it's the real-world occurrences which lead a person's theory of mind to believe that similar experts might feasibly pursue certain hypothetical occurrences. without the hypotheticals, it's mostly individuals who lose their credibility after doing specific things in the real world. but the hypotheticals allow that loss of credibility to spread from individual bad actors to whole groups.

Re: Update on Omicron

#446

Post by logicchains »

PostOnce wrote: post #349
harry8 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about vaccine hesitancy in Africa must be accompanied by why there's a certain amount of justification of it and it can be viewed as entirely rational, if also wholly undesirable. Included in that must be the USA's role in creating that problem. A couple of examples quickly turned up with a search engine of which there seem to be far, far too many. I can recall a few not here being reported over the past deca…

That's plausible, but it's not the whole picture. It may only partially explain some of the problem. We have, in the wealthy west, millions of vaccine-hesistant and vaccine-denialist people. I'm not just talking about poor or uneducated people, either. I personally know wealthy, educated, analytical people who have bought into the fearmongering and propaganda. I was shocked to find how deeply skeptical they were. I w…

>Watching the people around me has stirred in me many new questions.

Have you ever considered they might have a point? More and more data is coming out, like https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.107..., in the highest-impact cardiology journal, showing that the mRNA vaccines are not particularly "safe" by any reasonable interpretation of the word.

Re: Update on Omicron

#447

Post by fastball »

asah wrote: post #441
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.

-1, viruses are not sentient and are only given pressure to not kill their hosts if that reduces transmissability... which specifically doesn't apply for COVID, which is asymptomatically transmissable .

If you're dead you can't continue to transmit the virus, so lethality absolutely does decrease transmissibility. The fact that some people can be asymptomatic and contagious doesn't change that.

Re: Update on Omicron

#448

Post by bluGill »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #361
PostOnce wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's plausible, but it's not the whole picture. It may only partially explain some of the problem. We have, in the wealthy west, millions of vaccine-hesistant and vaccine-denialist people. I'm not just talking about poor or uneducated people, either. I personally know wealthy, educated, analytical people who have bought into the fearmongering and propaganda. I was shocked to find how deeply skeptical they were. I w…

Is the propaganda really that good? Or did they want to be skeptical to begin with?

They have been perfecting their message for years in the background. I've watched it start as a very left wing thing, then they discovered that the "freedom" message really resonated with the right wing libertarians about 10 years ago. They have been spreading in that crowd since.

Make no mistake, they don't care about you or right/left wing. It might be right wing this time around, but only because they are still looking for a message that will appeal to the left wing as strongly.

The biggest spreaders seem to have a supplement store. Follow the money often works very well.

Re: Update on Omicron

#449

Post by fastball »

exegete wrote: post #222
FPGAhacker wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Greek letter pronounced more like Kai. But, yes, the anglicized written form of the Greek letter looks like the anglicized written form of the Chinese leader’s name. And I agree, I’m sure it was skipped in the interest of not being antagonistic.

“Kai” (chi / χ) is a different Greek letter than “ksai” (xi / ξ).

Fair, but it still doesn't sound like the Chinese name ("shee")

Re: Update on Omicron

#450

Post by fastball »

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.

WHO was discredited at the very beginning of the pandemic when they said "nothing to worry about going on in China, we know because China says so".
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