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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

#381

Post by chimprich »

native_samples wrote: post #378
romwell wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed You mean succeeded ? As in, prevented many people from dying, and forced the virus to mutate into Omicron, which is far less dangerous.

Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised as being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only 6 months ago, no longer provide any protection at all. As for the vaccines forcing mutation, SA is only 25% vaccinated so that doesn't work. Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge. There just isn't good enough data on vaccine deaths to judge t…

> Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge

Please don't post this nonsense on HN. There's ample evidence for vaccines saving the lives of millions.

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

#382

Post by MereInterest »

manwe150 wrote: post #361
chimprich wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes observed with this variant so far are because of immunity generated by vaccines and prior infections. The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a fanta…

Well, logically speaking, we never needed vaccines, since some percentage of the human race will survive COVID regardless. The question always was just whether you can improve your own odds of staying healthy. And so far that data seems to have been strongly in favor of vaccination of yourself and those around you, with further increased benefit demonstrated from opting for a booster shot. But still never being essen…

You seem to be interpreting "essential" as "essential for continued human existence", which is a pretty low bar. "Essential for maintaining public health", or "essential for preventing excess deaths" would be better interpretations. While vaccines are not essential for continued human existence, they are essential for maintaining public health and preventing excess deaths.

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

#383

Post by gmadsen »

manwe150 wrote: post #361
chimprich wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes observed with this variant so far are because of immunity generated by vaccines and prior infections. The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a fanta…

Well, logically speaking, we never needed vaccines, since some percentage of the human race will survive COVID regardless. The question always was just whether you can improve your own odds of staying healthy. And so far that data seems to have been strongly in favor of vaccination of yourself and those around you, with further increased benefit demonstrated from opting for a booster shot. But still never being essen…

I don't think that was the question? It was how to not overload hospitals and create a safer environment for those in the population most at risk. Thus healthy young adults getting vaccinated to reduce the rate of spread

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

#384

Post by clairity »

kenjackson wrote: post #290
jonathanstrange wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That risk is an order of magnitude lower. Moreover, you're not taking that risk "...every time you drive". That risk is much lower, of course, given that most people drive more than once a year.

Correct. It is about 1 death per 100 million miles driven per the table given by the other commenter. Those are actually much better odds than I was expecting!

that doesn’t mean it takes you driving 100m miles to die; that’s a population level statistic. your lifetime chances of death by car is 1 in 100.

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

#385

Post by mikeyouse »

landemva wrote: post #301
roywiggins wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If only it worked at all, that'd be a great option.

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

#386

Post by [deleted] »

chimprich wrote: post #334
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 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. There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes observed with this variant so far are because of immunity generated by vaccines and prior infections. The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a fanta…

[deleted]

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

#387

Post by defaultprimate »

mikeyouse wrote: post #380
roywiggins wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm not qualified to evaluate a study like this, but between Science and "el gato malo" published on Substack, I think I'm going to have to go with Science on this one, pending some recognized expert in the field with a human name saying otherwise.

The author of the study that the bad cat is trying to discredit wrote a long, persuasive rebuttal to the simplistic critiques he's been reading on Tyler Cowen's blog; https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/11/ja... They saw a significant reduction in covid presence in communities with more masking -- even though total masking was still only 40% in those communities -- which is very much in line with a…

It doesn't address the primary criticisms of the bad cat, and you should really read the comments on the article you linked, as well as they meta-analyses I provided on mask effectiveness when it comes to respiratory illnesses in healthcare and community settings.

They don't work, at all, across decades of research and dozens of studies. They're not going to magically start working for COVID when they haven't worked for the flu or any other respiratory virus in the past.

>forever to protect people in medical settings.

Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.

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

#388

Post by snarf21 »

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 some final strain so let's all hurry up and get it. The more people that get any variant increases the likelihood of new variants and we don't get to pick what they do. We need to stop thinking about this as a pandemic that will end and start thinking about it as an endemic disease that is never going away. Soon, you'll be getting your annual covid shot along with your flu shot. It is going to continue to kill immuno-compromised people for a very long time. Our lungs are definitely our weak spot (just look at the elderly mortality rates for pneumonia, 20-30%).

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

#389

Post by sokoloff »

fullshark wrote: post #335
Spivak wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At this point I'm expecting this crap to be a thing until we have a winter of excess deaths at or below Pre-Covid levels. Once that is observed I think people will finally move on. It sounds like this is still going to result in deaths, so I am now expecting year three of this crap. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... I think eventually that winter will come, but the process will be gradua…

At some point, it seems like you have to weigh the lifetime risk of dying from COVID against the loss of life enjoyment and decide “We shouldn’t subject ourselves to another 1.25% of our lifetime of this (whatever “this” is) to lower the fatality rate from Y to X.” (If you’re lowering from 5% to 1%, that trade makes sense for even severe social restrictions. If you’re lowering it from 0.5% to 0.4%, that trade makes no sense for anything beyond the very mildest of restrictions.)

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

#390

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

GeekyBear wrote: post #339
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big question is whether the disease is genuinely milder, or whether the mild cases are just a consequence of the virus infecting people who are partially immune (due to the immune escape properties). We’ll learn the answer in a few weeks when the strain has had a chance to infect the old and unwell and we will see if the hospitalizations and deaths increase.

>The big question is whether the disease is genuinely milder, or whether the mild cases are just a consequence of the virus infecting people who are partially immune The initial data says that even though South Africa has a much lower vaccination rate, omicron is mild. From today: > lack of high death and hospitalization rates, despite the fact that Omicron has spread at breakneck speed across the country and account…

One of the issues of fast spread is that hospitalizations and deaths lag behind infections for a few weeks.

If you don't correct for it, it's easy to see "10x as many cases but few deaths" just because cases went up so quickly that deaths didn't start yet. Of course, this can be corrected for, and I'd expect a good study to do so - but I would NOT trust a typical news article to make the distinction, nor would I trust it to skip the temptation to misinterpret the study for a more interesting headline.

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