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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#461

Post by jakeinspace »

peter303 wrote: post #440
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’…

Another possibility is a super contagious variant that is much less deadly. Then it replaces its competitor. Perhaps become endemic like the common cold.

Although this would be a good outcome, my understanding is that the inherent mutation rate of the virus makes settling on a single variant or family of non-deadly variants unlikely. Even if a variant became endemic with a death rate of 0.05% for example, unless this mutation is at a near global optima in terms of transmissibility, I imagine it would be a precarious situation.

Re: Update on Omicron

#462

Post by brendoelfrendo »

logicchains wrote: post #446
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…

>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.

You should probably read the "Expression of Concern" that the AHA has already attached to that abstract (it's a link under the title); namely the part that says "...there is no data in the abstract regarding myocardial T-cell infiltration, there are no statistical analyses for significance provided, and the author is not clear that only anecdotal data was used." (They also mention the typographical errors, but I didn't put that at the forefront because that may be a formatting issue and not the researcher's fault.)

Also, and this is something I'm not clear on, but is this just an abstract? It doesn't seem like there's an associated paper or any data beyond what's mentioned there.

There's a few other issues, too; like, for example, they don't compare mRNA vaccine recipients to people who have recovered from COVID-19 (one would expect that a test that measures inflammation would see increased inflammation in both populations); or that, frankly, the PULS test the publishing doctor developed doesn't seem to explain how it turns a set of arbitrary biological markers into a score that correlates to risk of heart issues.

I would, at best, say that this abstract could be used to establish a hypothesis for a future study. On its own, it tells me basically nothing.

Re: Update on Omicron

#463

Post by JamesBarney »

HanShotFirst wrote: post #411
syshum wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, lets blame capitalism for all things. You do realize that capitalism created the vaccine in the first place? That with out capitalism you would have no vaccine to complain about people refusing to take? I really am tried to seeing capitalism blamed on all the worlds problem when it has been capitalism more than anything else that has brought both peace and prosperity to the world

I was shocked to discover, several months after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved in America and trumpeted as proof of the speed and efficacy of our modern, capitalist medical system... that the Sinopharm and Sputnik V vaccines were both released much earlier, and they actually work very well.

This was 100% a decision based on regulations. The first clinical trial for Pfizer was done in April of 2020, Sputnik was started in June. The difference was Pfizer went through far more and more time consuming clinical trials.

I don't know if you can blame FDA's risk adverse views on capitalism.

Re: Update on Omicron

#464

Post by raverbashing »

logicchains wrote: post #446
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…

>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.

And catching Covid is safe? Funny how you won't hear about the cardiac issues that Covid causes from the fringe crowd

But I'll add one thing, it's not only ignorance, it's straight up spite and sadism from the anti-vax crowd

Because they will take any BS and try to run it as far as they can with it. Including a 2001 paper like the one it was posted yesterday

Re: Update on Omicron

#465

Post by 1270018080 »

colordrops wrote: post #390
dadjoker wrote: post #229

Dr Angelique Coetzee, chairwoman of the South African Medical Association: “It’s all speculation at this stage. It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild,” she said. “Maybe two weeks from now I will have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing. So are we seriously worried? No. We are concerned and we watch what’s happening. But for now we’re saying, ‘OK: th…

If it turns out that it is indeed extremely mild, does not cause deaths, and an infection with it confers immunity to covid in general, shouldn't it be allowed to run like wildfire?

I don't think we can choose which variant infects people

Re: Update on Omicron

#466

Post by JamesBarney »

noahmasur wrote: post #421
nradov wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be a little confused about how vaccines work. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, vaccines aren't very effective in immunocompromised patients. Even those who are vaccinated are at risk of persistent infections (depending on their specific medical condition).

I think their point was that you need to have EVERYONE vaccinated in order to reduce spread and protect people for whom vaccines are ineffective.

If you're talking about herd immunity, you might not be as up to date on the newest variants. We could theoretically reach herd immunity against the original covid-19. But there was no practical way to get to herd immunity with delta without mandating three vaccine shots at gunpoint which would be about as popular as burning Medicare to the ground.

With Omikron herd immunity is impossible. 100% vaccinated population wouldn't get us there.

Re: Update on Omicron

#467

Post by boltzmann_brain »

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’…

> we’ll never get out of this.

what is flu

Re: Update on Omicron

#468

Post by karlicoss »

1270018080 wrote: post #465
colordrops wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it turns out that it is indeed extremely mild, does not cause deaths, and an infection with it confers immunity to covid in general, shouldn't it be allowed to run like wildfire?

I don't think we can choose which variant infects people

in addition it can probably mutate back up in terms of severity? although I believe geneticists have some framework to estimate/predict likelihood of that

Re: Update on Omicron

#469

Post by m4rtink »

colordrops wrote: post #390
dadjoker wrote: post #229

Dr Angelique Coetzee, chairwoman of the South African Medical Association: “It’s all speculation at this stage. It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild,” she said. “Maybe two weeks from now I will have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing. So are we seriously worried? No. We are concerned and we watch what’s happening. But for now we’re saying, ‘OK: th…

If it turns out that it is indeed extremely mild, does not cause deaths, and an infection with it confers immunity to covid in general, shouldn't it be allowed to run like wildfire?

Even if it really was like that, there are still good reasons for not allowing that - if there is still a chance it can kill people, there would still be considerable bodycount if it really is more transmissible and many people get infected at once (overloaded hospitals). Mild symphtoms also still don't say anything about possible long term damage that might only become aparent later. And lastly, infecting so many new hosts opens the possibility of creating a more deadly variants, just by pure chance, due to so much virus replication going on in the hosts.

Re: Update on Omicron

#470

Post by lifeformed »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #283
xg15 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there are Zero Covid strategies that work, see China or New Zealand. The problem is just that those measures are so drastic that many countries would probably not accept them. The goal in western countries is to get to the "endemic phase" of the infection - i.e. "live with the virus". That's all well and good, unfortunately this requires the disease to become significantly less deadly than it still is. We're…

The first and most important step in the New Zealand strategy is “be an island”. You need a lot of draconianism to make up for land borders.

Everyone says this because it makes sense at first glance, but does it really? Did the US get most of its infections from people driving over from Canada and Mexico? A virus from China or South Africa spreads by planes, not cars.
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