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

211–220 of 1001 posts

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

#211

Post by peter422 »

dham wrote: post #180
Sargos wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Spanish Flu was over a hundred years ago and hit the world the same way Covid did even though there was no McDonald's or obesity epidemic back then.

Yes but Spanish Flu was really really bad. Affected everyone. Covid is not the Spanish Flu or even the Flu. The flu kills children and is indiscriminate. 80% of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are related to weight. We should have prioritized health and Vitamin D in April 2020. At that time it was clear it was mainly affecting overweight people. Of course even almost 2 years later people still don't think that…

And long covid? The two people I know who had longer term side effects were quite healthy.

Also by some definitions America is “mostly fat people” so your point is not that meaningful to begin with.

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

#212

Post by greedo »

sjwalter wrote: post #113
xyproto wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people in intensive care, though.

There always are. Average hospital staffing and resource levels mean at its minimum ICUs are at ~78% capacity. Come low vitamin-D season, January or February, most ICUs hit capacity every year. Google doesn't run its data centers at 5% capacity for the same reasons ICUs don't.

Sure. It's normal for hospitals to be delaying routine surgical procedures (where they make most of their money) due to not enough staff and beds. It's not just about ICU capacity, it's the overall hospital capacity. My small town has three primary hospitals, and all are seriously overloaded now.

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

#213

Post by rajup »

ceejayoz wrote: post #171
aantix wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you attend the game if it were 11 people? Because that's what you do every time you drive. 11 crash fatalities per 100,000 people. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

Driving has benefits. Getting infected with COVID does not.

Getting back to life with COVID with the appropriate amount of precautions and restrictions has benefits. Current hysteria and alarmism shows we are not there yet.

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

#214

Post by chki »

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.

Isn't that the only thing a mutation can change? What is mutating in the virus if it's not the DNA?

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

#215

Post by epgui »

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…

Biochemist here, you are spot on. I came here to say the same thing.

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

#216

Post by GeekyBear »

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…

> Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic?

I'm optimistic.

A version of Covid that is much more contagious, but less likely to be severe is a great way to get the immune system of the vaccine avoidant trained on how to recognize and fight Covid.

For those who have already been vaccinated, a mild breakthrough infection would serve the same function as a booster shot.

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

#217

Post by tyrfing »

34679 wrote: post #82

Omicron has been found in 38 countries and there are still no deaths caused by it. [1] The media are running with the story that the first death from Omicron just happened in the UK, but read Boris Johnson's quote: "Sadly at least one patient has now been confirmed to have died with Omicron," Johnson told reporters [2] This sounds batshit crazy, because it is, but in the UK, if you die from something unrelated while…

It won't be reported as an Omicron death unless it is sequenced, which excludes a vast amount of cases and lags cases by up to 2 weeks.

Initially reported Omicron cases in the US predate knowledge of Omicron, confirmed cases are from November, and today's story of 13% of samples in Washington state likely being Omicron is based on test data from a week ago.

0 or 1 deaths being reported so far as caused by Omicron is still consistent with "Omicron is roughly as bad as previous strains, and will result in a lot of excess deaths."

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

#218

Post by makomk »

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…

The current PCR tests detect three different regions of RNA that are expected to be relatively well conserved, so there's no single mutation that can cause PCR tests to not detect them and we'll hopefully get a substantial early warning that allows the tests to be adapted if they ever head in that direction. One of the three markers detected by some of the PCR tests is actually invalidated by Omicron and some other variants but it's likely either bad luck or the result of some other benefit this mutation gives the virus. In order to get much benefit the virus would basically have to dodge all the things the PCR tests check for at once and that's hard to evolve.

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

#219

Post by rajup »

notreallyserio wrote: post #83
capdeck wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would still call that a victory overall. Humanity declared victory over every single pathogen to date (eradicated, contained or seasonal) because we are still here and thriving. We should go on with our lives.

In the mean time we should do whatever we can to avoid filling hospitals to capacity.

Sounds good. 2 years on with enough vaccines and antiviral pills on the way if you still believe hospitals are "filled to capacity", I'd like what you're smoking.

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

#220

Post by in_cahoots »

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…

That article is so bad it might as well be misinformation. 79% of the people in the study were hospitalized, and the authors did not correct for this.
Post reply on HN