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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

#201

Post by sjg007 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #98
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.…

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…

Just wear a mask in indoor public places until the pandemic is over.

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

#202

Post by sjg007 »

iso1631 wrote: post #187
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…

It's interesting how Scotland, which kept a mask mandate, and England, which dropped it, affected cases. From start to end of October, cases per 100k, 7 day average Glasgow -- 300->220 Edinburgh -- 210->250 Manchester -- 290->220 Birmingham -- 250->280 4 similar cities, two with mask mandates, two without. And smaller ones Aberdeen -- 267->330 Southampton -- 300->410 Perth -- 320->260 Hereford -- 290->580 So there ma…

There are plenty of scientific studies showing that masks work.

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

#203

Post by 323 »

stef25 wrote: post #155

Is the "less severe" part just from a roll of the dice? I wonder what's the likelihood of something more severe / extremely severe appearing in the next few years. Be it a variant of Covid, or something new altogether. That should be the main take-away from this whole thing ... there needs to better healthcare, even in the "strongest" of countries. A comment here a few days ago really drove that point home. Germany,…

> I wonder what's the likelihood of something more severe / extremely severe appearing in the next few years

We already know one such thing - bird flu (H5N1 - 50% mortality). Luckily it doesn't pass from one human to another. But scientists already built a version that presumably can (gain-of-function):

> (2019) Controversial lab studies that modify bird flu viruses in ways that could make them more risky to humans will soon resume after being on hold for more than 4 years. ScienceInsider has learned that last year, a U.S. government review panel quietly approved experiments proposed by two labs that were previously considered so dangerous that federal officials had imposed an unusual top-down moratorium on such research.

https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-controvers...

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

#204

Post by ok123456 »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #153
ceejayoz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prolonging the inevitable" still has a benefit for hospital capacity. If every uninfected person went and got it tomorrow, it wouldn't be pretty. I'm still wearing my KN95 to busy indoor places in part because it's been nice not getting colds/flus for the last two years, too.

I can still remember my boss telling people with a cold to take a DayQuil and power through their workday. I really hope that mentality never comes back.

It never went away if you were a non-exempt employee.

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

#205

Post by sjg007 »

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…

Also the 20% increase in child hospitalizations is no joke.

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

#206

Post by rich_sasha »

dtech wrote: post #151
rich_sasha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 PCR tests for RNA or DNA, that's not something a mutation can change. I don't know for Covid, but usually a PCR test targets something fundamental & stable. That might need to be updated with new variants.

They test for particular fragments, not the whole thin. 3 fragments usually in the UK.

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

#207

Post by jjk166 »

fer wrote: post #134
jjk166 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish Flu did evolve to become more mild. All modern seasonal flu variants are descended from it.

Eventually. But as it appeared it was more virulent than its immediate ancestors.

Eventually in this case being approximately 18-24 months from the first wave, which coincidentally is very close to where we are in the current pandemic.

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

#208

Post by coolspot »

jatone wrote: post #46
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…

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

Have you seen infection/death charts? It peaks in winter and at its minimum in summer.

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

#209

Post by CountDrewku »

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.

> I will keep wearing my N95 to all the dirty looks I keep getting and boost as much as the boosts are there.

The masks have never been about protecting yourself but have at it. I don't care what you do just stop forcing your attitude on everyone else. At this point you're just trying to make a statement, not protect anyone.

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

#210

Post by rkk3 »

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…

At a certain point we accept the tradeoffs and get on with it. A few hundred thousand people die of the flu every year. So what? It's tragic, but that is life.
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