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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

#301

Post by landemva »

roywiggins wrote: post #136
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…

We are maybe a couple months from Pfizer's new antiviral becoming widely available, and it will probably work for immune compromised people. There's also a recent EUA for a long-acting antibody PrEP injection that should help immune compromised people avoid infection in the first place. Both of these may be widely available in the US quite soon.

The unmentionable and ridiculously safe antiviral is available today. But Ivermectin is cheap so it must not be considered.

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

#302

Post by lukeasrodgers »

chinathrow wrote: post #268
calebm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How can a virus have a "strategy" when all which occurs are random mutations during replication? I wonder about this a lot.

It probably makes no sense to talk of a virus having a strategy. I don’t agree with all of his stuff but the point of Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance” is basically that attributing mental states to things is just a pragmatic matter. If it helps us understand virus behavior better to treat them as if they have strategies (which implies mentation), then we should do it. I don’t see how it would help at all here, though.

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

#304

Post by kenjackson »

dham wrote: post #289
kenjackson wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 80% of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are related to weight. Citation for this? I've never heard this at all.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...

OK, that says something slightly different. Because 42% of the US population is obese, even if Covid hospitalized completely at random you'd expect 42% of those admitted to be obese (not that obesity is the cause of 42% of admissions). They saw 50% admitted were obese. This implies that being obese increases the risk of hospitalization by ~20%.

But still useful data. Thanks.

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

#305

Post by HPsquared »

chinathrow wrote: post #268
calebm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How can a virus have a "strategy" when all which occurs are random mutations during replication? I wonder about this a lot.

It's similar to Dawkins' "selfish gene" analogy.

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

#306

Post by [deleted] »

qez wrote: post #223
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.

[deleted]

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

#307

Post by bla3 »

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 think it's not yet a given that omicron competes with delta. Since they're fairly different it's possible both strains can coexist.

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

#308

Post by Spivak »

furyofantares wrote: post #226
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.

Yeah, a highly infectious vaccine resistant strain spreading while the world opens up and people rely on the waning strength of their first two shots is pretty much a recipe for year three of this crap.

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

#309

Post by jessaustin »

ethbr0 wrote: post #186
dham wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There was a world war distracting resources.

WWI actually caused the epidemic. The first cases appeared in Kansas, and many doughboys were infected at Fort Riley before carrying the illness to Europe. Woodrow Wilson, who lied about staying out of the war until the day after his reelection, may have been the USA president who harmed the world the most.

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

#310

Post by patentatt »

laluser wrote: post #299
fbourque wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, as long as it is out there, it means it can continue to mutate.

But doesn't this demonstrate that the selective pressures tend toward higher contagiousness but less severe disease? So if there were a new variant, wouldn't it likely be just more of what makes this one favorable?
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