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Update on Omicron

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Re: Update on Omicron

#721

Post by op00to »

Bud wrote: post #680
marexv wrote: post #655

It is not going to stop... new variants, booster shots, masks, lock downs, tests for everyone everyday. Get over it. It's like airport security, once setup, the system is not going away and soon nobody will remember how life used to look like before all of it happened.

It actually differs from airport security in one crucial way: vaccination actually works, and it will continue to work. Airport security measures, at least the ones commonly discussed, the ones that spring up after 9/11, have zero effect these days, since the threats they were supposedly intended to combat were solved the moment cockpit doors were required to remain locked at all times. Vaccines work, boosters work,…

I advocate keeping all of these measures forever.

Before you flame me - I don't think they are to be used constantly, or all at the same time. They are all valuable tools to reducing the pain, suffering, and lost productivity of respiratory illnesses. I'd like to see universal masking in schools during flu season, for example. Limited group of people, limited time, but would happen every year. Maybe there's a trigger for a "bad" flu season.

It's insane to say we should not use things that work because they might be useful in the future. We just need to be smart about how we use all these interventions, WHICH WE ABSOLUTELY ARE.

Re: Update on Omicron

#722

Post by op00to »

scoopdewoop wrote: post #701
defensem3ch wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hundreds of millions of people will die from the... economy? what? no, i think you got this backwards. nobody is being choked by the invisible hand of the market.

> The coronavirus crisis will push more than a quarter of a billion people to the brink of starvation unless swift action is taken to provide food and humanitarian relief to the most at-risk regions, the UN and other experts have warned. > About 265 million people around the world are forecast to be facing acute food insecurity by the end of this year, a doubling of the 130 million estimated to suffer severe food sho…

Quit being a whiny brat while immediately changing the subject to avoid a weak argument, and maybe you'll get better engagement.

Re: Update on Omicron

#723

Post by datavirtue »

chimprich wrote: post #629
mpfundstein wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why should we trust this weird twitter account? where is this person even from? She/he says senior scientist? Of what?

She's a well-known commentator on the pandemic. She is/was involved in the development of the Moderna vaccine, verified by various media orgs. She's a credible commentator, but she tends to skew towards the positive end of the arguments. That thread is 3 days old, and there's a bit more evidence now that Omicron is spreading quite effectively.

Great thing to keep in mind for pandemics: what you learned three days ago might be very stale.

Re: Update on Omicron

#724

Post by incrudible »

chimprich wrote: post #690
incrudible wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (to my knowledge) largest study on community transmission finds ~10% reduction: https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publicati... There are many other studies that find no or modest reduction. We need to accept lower results as an upper bound to effectiveness, especially when it comes to how the average person uses masks, versus how a health care professional.

I had a quick scan of that paper and read "The results in all specifications are the same: we estimate a roughly 9% decline in symptomatic seroprevalence in the treatment group (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00]) for a 29 percentage point increase in mask wearing over 8 weeks." So when mask use increased 29%, symptom prevalence reduced by 9%? That doesn't seem quite the same argument as the one you'…

> So when mask use increased 29%, symptom prevalence reduced by 9%? That doesn't seem quite the same argument as the one you're making.

It is a real word example. It's not an increase of 29%, it's an absolute difference of 29%. Specifically, mask wearing in the intervention villages was 42%, in the control 13%. That is, in a hypothetical village where mask wearing approaches 100%, you might expect something like a 20-30% reduction, assuming a linear correlation. Again, that's not the real world.

> Why?

If an intervention is effective, the effect needs to reproduce. If it doesn't, the larger effect likely occurred by chance. Publication bias promotes positive results and inhibits negative or null results.

You have the same problem with all these COVID drugs. Remdesivir appeared to have an effect in early trials, now it's proven useless. Molnupiravir was initially report to be 50% effective, now it's down to 30%. At the other end of the aisle, you see that Ivermectin has many small studies showing remarkable effectiveness, but the larger ones show little to no effect.

If you apply scientific standards, you must apply them across the board. You must not let wishful thinking guide your decisions.

Re: Update on Omicron

#725

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

merpnderp wrote: post #650
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Masks have a very modest impact on transmission. Please stop propagating this BS. If someone positive coughs in your direction but wears an FFP2 mask on and so do you, then the chance of you getting infected is much lower. That's why it's mandatory in Austria and why healthcare workers wear them, not because it's fashionable but to limit the spread of airborne disease which COVID is one. Granted, Austria failed to c…

"Please stop propagating this BS." At least in the US hardly anyone has or uses FFP2 level masks (N95 here) and the government has not promoted them (except on the last page of the CDC page on masks with half a sentence saying they're better). And the data on cloth masks does show their effectiveness is much lower than initially advertised. If the parent was speaking about the US, then they weren't propagating BS, as…

> I assume it is because the government ran a massive ad campaign to get people to not wear them in the beginning.

They said the the same thing in Europe, in order to prevent opportunists from scalping them and the general population from hoarding them, so the healthcare workers would have access to them.

IMHO, intentionally deceiving the population in order to save masks for healthcare workers was a terribly short sighted move which cause more long term damage to the credibility of the governments when they pushed for compulsory mask wearing after the supply caught up. They could have been upfront about it and use every possible legal and gray-area channel to secure mask supplies before they could fall into the hands of opportunists, but instead, they chose to lie about it and treat everyone like dumb kids hoping people would fall for it.

They did the same thing again when Israel announced the protection of the Pfizer vaccine is wailing and a third dose is needed but the EU governments said that's not needed, and then backtracking on that statement a few months later and now making it mandatory.

Do you know the story of the boy who cried wolf? Yeah, this back-and-forth on the efficacy of masks and vaccines is exactly the ammunition Covid-deniers and anti-vaxxers needed and the useless governments just gave it to them on a silver platter.

Re: Update on Omicron

#726

Post by junon »

mathverse wrote: post #682
junon wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be sure to tell that to my neighbor who lost both of her parents and a sister to COVID before the vaccines were available. I'm sure she'll understand. If omicron is actually a breakthrough variant, I'm sure all the people who are about to die will also understand how hurt your feelings are. I'm merely pointing out the selfishness in your stance and how harmful it is to the overall efforts of the medical communit…

Medical community should not be the only one making decisions that have such a massive impact on society. >I'm merely pointing out the selfishness in your stance and how harmful it is to the overall efforts of the medical community. That's not bad faith. We've all had an absolutely shit time. You're not special. Why is your right keeping families separated not selfish?

> Medical community should not be the only one making decisions that have such a massive impact on society.

Perhaps not when it's economic, technological, wartime, etc. Sure. But when it comes to the healthcare of everyone (not just the individual), they absolutely should. The problem is that politicians seem to think they know more about healthcare than the experts do.

> Why is your right keeping families separated not selfish?

My family has been separated, too. By almost half the planet. Your victim appeal doesn't work here.

Re: Update on Omicron

#727

Post by blindmute »

xg15 wrote: post #535
logicchains wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The sole name on the paper is someone who sells psudoscience plant-based debunked theories that the majority of our health issues come from lectins A professional cardiologist with decades of experience who now runs his own cardiology practice. Do you feel you're more qualified to assess his qualifications than the editors of Circulation just because you read a wikipedia article? >psudoscience plant-based debunked t…

Yeah, I'm sorry, this is the classic pseudoscience narrative. Somehow everyone else is wrong because of except this one guy who somehow figured out the truth.

Trust the experts... No not those experts

Re: Update on Omicron

#728

Post by teekert »

incrudible wrote: post #586
namanaggarwal wrote: post #578

For those commenting that it's just common cold and about herd immunity, I think we should not miss out on overload on our medical system. This is what happened in India, due to high number of cases (even if mild) the medical infrastructure completely crashed under the load and lead to far more deaths than just a flu could have caused. Wear mask and stay indoors if possible

> Wear mask and stay indoors if possible For all we know about transmission, you should stay outdoors, if possible. If this isn't possible, maximize ventilation. Limit contacts in general. Masks have a very modest impact on transmission.

"maximize ventilation", have you seen the gas prices lately ;)

Re: Update on Omicron

#729

Post by rajup »

himinlomax wrote: post #545
rajup wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, for diseases we know and are actively fighting (how long was it before we got vaccines for COVID?). My point was that for unknown diseases you might be exposed to in the future you are probably (I say probably, because hey let's not kid ourselves we're all mostly speaking out of our a**s here :)) better off if you had been exposed to milder diseases beforehand.

Getting exposed to one disease does not help you fight another, or at least not any more than getting a vaccine not targeted at the second.

The number of studies suggesting people exposed to other coronaviruses (common cold etc) having possibly more immunity to COVID disagree with you. You seem to be absolutely sure it makes no difference. Care to back that up?

Re: Update on Omicron

#730

Post by Mordisquitos »

impendingchange wrote: post #646
pif wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold#Causes The common cold is an infection of the upper respiratory tract which can be caused by many different viruses. The most commonly implicated is a rhinovirus (30–80%), a type of picornavirus with 99 known serotypes. Other commonly implicated viruses include human coronaviruses (≈ 15%), influenza viruses (10–15%), adenoviruses (5%), human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV),…

Wiki's do not show HISTORICAL information. The definition of the Coronavirus in the AMA medical Encyclopedia textbook. https://www.bitchute.com/video/UvuXzdVwj3ed/ Proved right again.

Samuel Johnson's first dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, gave the definition of swan as “The ſwan is a large waterfowl, that has a long and very ſtranght neck, and is very white, excepting when it is young [...]”,

Following your logic, I have just proven that black swans do not exist.

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