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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

#191

Post by jjk166 »

aantix wrote: post #103
jjk166 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoping it's mild is great. Betting your life it's mild is dumb.

243 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. ( https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality ). The death distributions are very clear. If you're healthy, betting that you would be OK is a very reasonable bet.

For context, the cancer death rate is 153 per 100,000 in the US, so about 60% of the risk from Covid. Am I living in constant fear of cancer? No. Am I taking reasonable precautions to avoid getting cancer? Yes.

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

#192

Post by fbourque »

roody15 wrote: post #175

This is honesty good news. The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear train running full steam. A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world.

Won't it contribute to more variants in the future if it spreads? But maybe we are past that point with other variants?

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

#193

Post by 323 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #37
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…

Sort of. Sometimes. Viruses evolve according to evolutionary pressures. I'm surprised we don't see Covid mutations that invalidate PCR tests - perhaps it's too soon, or even, who knows, maybe they are there and we don't know? The common trope is that if the virus is too deadly, then it doesn't have a chance to find new hosts. This is kind-of what happened to "SARS-1" - it tended to kill its hosts before they could pa…

> I'm surprised we don't see Covid mutations that invalidate PCR tests

The people who design the tests know which parts of the sequence are more likely to mutate, so they pick the more conserved parts. Also, most PCR tests check for 3 different parts of the sequence. Which is why Omicron can still be detected even if there is a mutation in one part checked by the test, since the other 2 parts still match (the so called S-gene-dropout).

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

#194

Post by ceejayoz »

mixedCase wrote: post #185
ceejayoz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving has benefits. Getting infected with COVID does not.

Except COVID is not the end goal here, it is living a full life in proximity to other human beings that comes with a risk of getting COVID. It is no different in purpose than driving for the most part.

There's a wide spectrum of precautions available. I traveled overseas recently, but I KN95 masked on the plane and tested before departure and on arrival. I felt like I was living a pretty full life in Bora Bora, while also taking steps to ensure the safety of myself and others around me.

Same thing with driving; we have a variety of safety precautions - quite a few of them mandatory - involved that help tilt the cost/benefit balance in our favor.

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

#195

Post by unmole »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #102
jatone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I havent seen any evidence covid is seasonal. it may become seasonal. but nothing in the past 2 years as indicated it is.

Just so other commenters can understand: are you saying that you haven't seen the charts with enormous spikes on them every time a place enters a cold season? Or that you find them to be uncompelling for some (as yet undisclosed) reason?

The second wave hit India at the height of summer. That outlier is big enough for me to be sceptical.

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

#196

Post by iso1631 »

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.

Given that surgical masks stop droplets from spreading as much (especially when you sneeze), and given that bugs spread via droplets, clearly they do something. You may argue on the level of that reduction, or that your right to go out in public without wearing a mask outweighs that reduction, but to just say "masks don't work" is disingenuous.

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

#197

Post by sjg007 »

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…

Huh? I would suggest you read: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz...

We don't actually have sterilizing vaccines for smallpox or polio either.

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

#198

Post by unmole »

tn890 wrote: post #71
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…

> 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.…

What were these people doing every flu season?

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

#199

Post by timr »

r00fus wrote: post #146
aantix wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

243 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. ( https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality ). The death distributions are very clear. If you're healthy, betting that you would be OK is a very reasonable bet.

Death is merely the most extreme outcome. Not dying doesn't mean you're OK. Long COVID is a big deal, and it apparently affects half of those who get COVID [1]. Furthermore, even double-vaxxed, while protected against hospitalization or death, are still at risk (reduced about 50%) for long COVID [2]. Until/unless Omicron has been proven to have less severe long covid symptoms, yeah I'm treating it with the same cauti…

> Long COVID is a big deal

Long Covid is not a defined term. It comprises everything from "post-hospitalization syndrome" -- which is something that has existed since long before Covid -- to "slight cough for a few weeks". If you're young (under 65) and otherwise healthy, you are highly unlikely to have anything more than a minor illness. Particularly after vaccination.

Here's a paper that might interest you:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

> In this cross-sectional analysis of 26,823 adults from the population-based French CONSTANCES cohort during the COVID-19 pandemic, self-reported COVID-19 infection was associated with most persistent physical symptoms, whereas laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection was associated only with [loss of smell].

In other words, in a large study out of France, the only "long covid symptom" actually correlated with SARS-CoV2 infection was loss of smell. All of the other various symptoms were associated with self-reported illness, but not confirmed illness.

This is a fairly strong argument that "long covid" is at least partly psychosomatic. We'd probably see this more clearly if the various "long covid" studies didn't rely exclusively on self-reporting of symptoms, and mix together all levels of illness.

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

#200

Post by ok123456 »

raphaelj wrote: post #14
richardatlarge wrote: post #2

Quote: 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.

Could it be because we just got slightly better at treating Covid before hospitalization?

In the vast majority of the hospitalized omicron cases in ZA, the finding was secondary and they were in the hospital for some unrelated cause.
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