Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 1001 posts

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#71

Post by tn890 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #19
ufo wrote: post #13

The title is misleading. It is possible that Omicron is just as severe and that the effect in the study is because a large percentage of the population had some immunity from a previous infection or vaccine. > South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of South Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to previous infection. We don’t think it’s a…

I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk. Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? To me, the news that we may be replacing COVID with a less severe strain is some of the best news of the year. COVID clearly isn't going away at this…

> I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk.

You are forgetting about the most vulnerable group of all: immunosuppressed people.

They cannot mount a sufficient immune response, in severe immunosuppression like after a transplant event months or years after. In some cases the covid mortality for these people can approach 40% for young adults.

We have to be mindful of people like this when thinking about dropping mask mandates and such. Or "whoever's not vaccinated dies of their own fault". Not 100% true.

We as a society must protect those most vulnerable.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#72

Post by julianozen »

boringg wrote: post #21

I have a question for anyone who has a serious level of knowledge on virus evolution: As viruses evolve over time is there any correlation to severity - do they have trade offs as they evolve? I am hoping that it would be some kind of trade off that the virus makes in that it can spread more easily but not be as severe (I understand that it is unlikely nature requires a trade-off). I ask as my concern is that while t…

I am not a professional.

I have been basing a lot of my virus information from Tomas Pueyo. Here is my source:

https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-omicron-qu...

In this article he clarified that generally viruses that spread more are less severe (as killing the host makes it tougher to spread). The asymptotic nature of Covid sort of broke this assumption because Covid can lie dormant in someone for a week before the person shows severe illness

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#73

Post by fabian2k »

The data on severity is still difficult to transfer across countries. What seems reasonably certain is that vaccinations and previous infections do protect reasonably well against hospitalization and death. It is still not clear how the unvaccinated and not infected will fare.

And the speed of this variant is enormous. We're seeing a doubling time between 2 to 3 days in several countries like Denmark or the UK. That is far faster than any previous variant.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#74

Post by rajin444 »

panarky wrote: post #60
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk. Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? To me, the news that we may be replacing COVID with a less severe strain is some of the best news of the year. COVID clearly isn't going away at this…

> a little optimistic? Sure, for this immediate wave [more transmissible less virulent] is better than [more transmissible more virulent]. But that's awfully myopic. What happens after that? Since mutation rate is a function of the number of viral particles, and more transmission means many more hosts incubating many more particles, we should expect to see more new variants, faster. So the probability just went up th…

How do you reconcile this with the human race existing for so long? I guess you could make the argument global travel has changed things, but I’m not sure.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#75

Post by azekai »

ljm wrote: post #42
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk. Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? To me, the news that we may be replacing COVID with a less severe strain is some of the best news of the year. COVID clearly isn't going away at this…

> COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all means try to replace it with something weaker! Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it within a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join Smallpox and Polio though. That said, we've accepted an annual winter uptick in flu infections and we just tell people most vulnerable to get their…

>Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it within a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join Smallpox and Polio though.

We would have to completely redesign our current method of vaccination, then. We do not have a sterilizing vaccine for COVID (like we did for smallpox and polio). The current vaccines all use spike proteins to prepare a body's antibodies against the main infection tool of the COVID virus. This method indirectly prevents the virus from efficiently infecting cells in vaccinated hosts, but it does not and cannot eradicate the virus.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#76

Post by gjm11 »

SippinLean wrote: post #66
ufo wrote: post #13

The title is misleading. It is possible that Omicron is just as severe and that the effect in the study is because a large percentage of the population had some immunity from a previous infection or vaccine. > South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of South Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to previous infection. We don’t think it’s a…

> For individuals who have had COVID-19 previously, the risk of reinfection with Omicron is significantly higher, relative to prior variants. https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room

Doesn't e.g. "a 73% relative risk of reinfection" mean being 0.73x as likely to be infected?

These numbers show (as one would expect) that prior infection makes you less likely to get Omicron, and that prior infection with more recent strains does so more effectively. (Which might be because they're more Omicron-like, or because the infection was more recent. I'm guessing more the latter.)

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#77

Post by wayfarer1291 »

boringg wrote: post #21

I have a question for anyone who has a serious level of knowledge on virus evolution: As viruses evolve over time is there any correlation to severity - do they have trade offs as they evolve? I am hoping that it would be some kind of trade off that the virus makes in that it can spread more easily but not be as severe (I understand that it is unlikely nature requires a trade-off). I ask as my concern is that while t…

Not necessarily. Smallpox was around for a very long time till we vaccinated our way out of it. Same with polio.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#78

Post by cableshaft »

zamfi wrote: post #67
cableshaft wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that makes Covid-19 a bit different from other viruses that have trended towards milder infections is its long incubation time (while still being infectious). So it can already spread pretty easily even if it's killing those people, and thus there's not a lot of darwinian pressure to become milder. It might still trend towards that over time, but it will probably be slower at it than other viruses, and thus…

That’s only one pressure driving viral evolution. Another pressure is social response to infection: so far, the predominant response to a more-virulent or more-lethal strain has been lockdown and/or other behavioral change, see: delta in India. On the flip side, a variant that causes milder symptoms is less likely to cause the same social response, which allows the virus to spread more widely. This may (may!) be what…

I'd say that's normally true, but there's not a ton of lockdowns with even Delta right now, so while I agree that it probably isn't going to get worse, there's still not a ton of pressure from social response as it is right now for it to get milder (maybe you could argue pressure from vaccines I guess).

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#79

Post by systemvoltage »

kiba wrote: post #52
ljm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all means try to replace it with something weaker! Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it within a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join Smallpox and Polio though. That said, we've accepted an annual winter uptick in flu infections and we just tell people most vulnerable to get their…

That said, we've accepted an annual winter uptick in flu infections and we just tell people most vulnerable to get their yearly flu jab; less vulnerable folks can stay at home for a bit and manage the symptoms. If that's what we have to do for covid every winter then so be it. Accepted? I would call that normalizing as well. According to an estimate, about 290,000 to 650,000 globally died of the flu each year.[1] Nor…

If it means more lockdowns and more restrictions, more government powers; absolutely normalize COVID. We have given up enough.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#80

Post by the-dude »

loourr wrote: post #70

Yes. Covid will continue to mutate to become more contagious and less deadly. This is the natural progression of endemic viruses, they don't want to kill their hosts and they want to spread.

Viruses have no agency, will or desires.
Post reply on HN