Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by rajup » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #181

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…

> Would you be willing to accept mask mandates in perpetuity? I think it depends on location. In key environments like public transport and supermarkets and other spaces that everyone needs to be able to access it seems reasonable to me that we might keep them for at least a 5-10 year horizon if that proves necessary. It just doesn't seem like a big deal to wear a mask, and it would cut down on the need for more rest…

No thanks.

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

#222

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #201

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…

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

Your solution is a good one and makes logical sense but do you think that this pandemic is going to end? It shows no signs of abating currently and the new variant is even more communicable. How does one determine when the pandemic has ended, what is the benchmark? Covid will always be with us going forward. your solution also involves kids wearing masks in school for potentially years and years. I noticed a massive difference in behavior with my youngest kid during his year of wearing a mask in school and after the mandate went away. He went from a reserved almost sad little kid when I picked him up each day back to his prior outgoing happy self after a few weeks. Obviously my experience is anecdotal but I have spoken with other parents that observed the same.

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

#223

Post by qez » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

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.

This isn't good news. The title says it's more resistant to the vaccine. That is the worst possible thing.

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

#224

Post by calebm » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

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.

I agree. Maybe COVID has changed to be more cooperative with humanity (it's a good strategy for parasites to not kill their hosts).

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

#225

Post by kingkawn » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

It remains to be seen if the reduction in severity is offset by the increase in infectiousness.

Just as an example, if a new virus is only 1/2 as deadly but 3x as infectious the mortality rate would climb by 50%.

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

#226

Post by furyofantares » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

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.

A vaccine resistant strains is extremely bad news; if it's less severe that would be good, but that remains to be seen while it's obvious now that vaccines are less good against it.

We should be pressuring our governments to make paxlovid legal and to encourage work on Omicron boosters, rather than pretending this is good news.

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

#227

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

Depends on what you consider reasonable. Per this study [0] NYC had, as of June 2020, about 100 deaths under age 65 from people without comorbidities. During the same time period there were about 200,000 cases. This made the chance of a healthy person dying from COVID about 1 in 2000.

Given the option, I'm not taking that bet. I wouldn't play Russian roulette even with a 2000-bullet revolver. Especially when there are pretty simple steps I can take to further minimize the risk.

(It would be nice to have more-- and updated-- data than this. If anyone is aware of a source, I'd love to know about it)

That's also discounting other (and possibly not yet known) complications from getting COVID. There might not be much of any, but we it will be some time before we know that so I wouldn't discount that factor in my risk analysis.

Serious measure to mitigate transmission rates still seems like a very reasonable practice, even for healthy people.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7327471/

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

#228

Post by oldstatsstudent » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

Did anyone notice the comparison of vaccine-based immunity to natural immunity in the findings within the source PR [0]? With a little work, you can compare them.

If we convert the measure used in finding 2 (relative risk of reinfection) to finding 1's (relative protection), then the study found that natural immunity from Delta variant gives 60% protection against Omicron; roughly double the vaccine's protection.

Unfortunately, no stat was given for natural immunity's protection against hospitalization.

From finding 1: individuals who received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had 33% protection against infection, relative to the unvaccinated

From finding 2: People who were infected with COVID-19 in South Africa’s third (Delta) wave face a 40% relative risk of reinfection with Omicron

Am I reading this right? Wonder why they used different metrics?

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

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

#229

Post by soperj » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #120

wokwokwok wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting something to be true does not make it true. Even if it turns up to actually be true , the fact that so many people want it to be true is an excellent reason to be cautious in how you look at things here, because that is causing a lot of people to say things that haven’t been proven to be true. The evidence so far looks like cause to be cautiously optimistic, but when the people giving out that evidence say “i…

Don't all viruses become more mild over time? Even Ebola gets much less lethal towards the end of an outbreak as it evolves to preserve its habitat. Small pox is a possible counter ecample it seems like it was pretty lethal for millennia.

How's that going with Aids?

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

#230

Post by systemvoltage » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #97

systemvoltage wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just because our economy cannot withstand further lockdowns and restrictions doesn't mean that the normalization of COVID is any more excusable. It just means we failed.

To take this to extreme: We’ve failed to solve deaths. We should have solutions to aging and indefinite life.

Since we have 100% death ratio, show us your health history along with your verifiable ID. We are the ministry of Truth and Safety.

In all seriousness: We need to push back on robbing of civil liberties. No one cared to check for flu vaccine. It should be the same for COVID now that it’s getting weaker and it won’t end forever.