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

washingtonpost.com

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

#121

Post by adventured »

marpstar wrote: post #65
panarky wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long, and COVID is clearly not driving us to extinction.

> It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long

It's not a miracle or anything close to that level of implied bafflement (devoid of being able to explain it rationally). We're excellent survivors overall, and a lot more than that. We're very skilled at resource utilization, we're relatively talented at conceptual thinking, we're competent tool builders on a planet ripe for it, we possess the ability to plan far ahead and understand consequences numerous steps out, we have memory capabilities that are quite effective across most of our lifetimes, most of our species is not particularly violent and is generally good natured & friendly (only a very small fraction of the population will ever commit serious acts of violence), we function quite well together in groups/tribes/cities/nations (compounded, shared outcomes), and so on. It's not particularly complicated, despite the doomsayers that will never stop existing amongst us (their mentality says more about them than it does the human race).

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

#122

Post by lisper »

rajin444 wrote: post #74
panarky wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> How do you reconcile this with the human race existing for so long?

For a disease to make us go extinct it would have to be highly transmissible and have a fatality rate of close to 100%. Anything less than that, and evolution will produce a generation of humans that are resistant to (or otherwise able to protect themselves from) the disease, and from there the population will replenish itself. The great plague had a fatality rate of 30% and it didn't even come close to threatening our existence as a specie. (In fact, the resulting redistribution of wealth arguably contributed to the advent of the renaissance.)

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

#123

Post by QuarterReptile »

simonh wrote: post #64
exabrial wrote: post #49

IIRC, this was predicted, which is hopeful and good thing. I remember reading an article last summer that generally diseases become less severe over time.

Generally, statistically yes, but not always. Most of the people that died in the Spanish Flu epidemic died in the second wave, a year after the first. A couple of years after that and less dangerous variants came to dominate but there was huge devastation before that came about.

>but not always

Nonetheless, in your example it did. At extreme cost, though that was already understood when you said Spanish Flu.

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

#124

Post by tannisphere4 »

zzzeek wrote: post #27

cue the "it's just the flu!" army. on this end, I do not want covid at all, straight up. I will keep wearing my N95 to all the dirty looks I keep getting and boost as much as the boosts are there.

But would you also engage in these behaviors if you couldn't go online and A) project action onto an "army" that neither exists or has occurred; and B) gain social prestige by allying with a dominant narrative?

The question isn't intended to be rude, or suggesting your motives are tarnished. Just a query into the extent online projection (and presumptions about it) affect our choices. Note also that I am distinguishing between your stated choices and the choices themselves.

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

#125

Post by tn890 »

AustinDev wrote: post #85
tn890 wrote: post #71

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. 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.…

This may come off wrong but... COVID is not the first virus. Immunosuppressed people for all of human history have been falling victim to the common cold, the flu and other infections most humans can deal with safely. You can't stop the world economy and the benefit that brings to the majority of society to save a fraction of a percentage point of the population that is Immunocompromised.

Wearing a mask in a supermarket does not "stop the world economy". Americans are borderline insane with the mask mandate

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

#126

Post by roywiggins »

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…

It won't join smallpox because it has lots of animal reservoirs.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/health/covid-deer-animals/ind...

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

#127

Post by sjwalter »

bognition wrote: post #9

There are a few important bits here: First: "The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020." and second: "At the same time, the vaccine may offer 70 perce…

> Yes the vaccine does improve outcomes BUT the hospitalization rate for unvaccinated people is still lower with Omicron than previous variants.

Why "BUT"? Shouldn't the second part be, uh, a good thing?

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

#128

Post by ineedasername »

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…

The study adjusted for vaccine status [0] but was still comparing things to the initial wave in 2020, which is strange and I would like to know their justification for that.

For a bit more of an apples-to-apples comparison they should be comparing omicron hospitalization & fatality rates to those of non-omicron variants over the same period of time. It doesn't look like they've done that, and I'm not aware of a study that has systematically done this (yet).

It would certainly be a holiday-season gift if we shifted to a more virulent but less serious variant, but I'll hold out for a bit more information before I completely buy into that narrative. That can be difficult: people want to believe some good news here. Heck, my initial gut reaction was to push back against your objections but my career has trained me to resist that sort of thing. It won't be good for the erosion of trust in the media if they've jumped the gun on this and Omicron doesn't turn out the way we hope it will.

https://www.discovery.co.za/corporate/news-room

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

#129

Post by bagels »

azekai wrote: post #75
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…

>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…

Is it possible for one to be developed?

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

#130

Post by mitigating »

sjwalter wrote: post #111
wonderwonder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a state where mask mandates are essentially gone. Very few people wear masks here and they are not required in schools so only ~5% of kids are wearing them at my children's elementary school. Everything seems pretty good so far, no marked rise in cases and almost no cases in my kids school over the last year, maybe 25 total, all mild. I am in no way saying masks don't work, in fact I think that they do. Wit…

> I am in no way saying masks don't work, in fact I think that they do. This is still so hilarious to me. It's pretty obvious that some masks work, that is, n95 or whatever actual respirator masks. It's pretty obvious that other masks don't work at all, that is, 99.99% of masks worn by the public at large.

" It's pretty obvious that other masks don't work at all"

So a N95 mask works and covering your mouth with a bandana has no effect at all? Not even 10%?

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