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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

#481

Post by robbedpeter »

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…

There are two primary factors driving virus evolution - not killing the host and defeating the host's immune system. Killing the host, at least with humans, is an evolutionary dead end, since we go out of our way to quarantine the body and destroy or permanently confine it.

In humans, viruses typically evolve to be less severe and more infectious over time.

There's significant evidence that omicron is less severe. At some point we should see an equilibrium reached with the coronaviruses, and the hope is that it'll be as mild as seasonal colds. Omicron could be a significant leap in that direction.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-hea...

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

#482

Post by landemva »

mikeyouse wrote: post #385
landemva wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NIH report says it does.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ 'Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad-spectrum antiparasitic agent with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).'

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

#483

Post by b9a2cab5 »

alex-korr wrote: post #475

Prediction - nerds will drum up any FUD related to omicron to postpone return to the office. I am seeing it in my company already - in the today's tech virtual townhall "omicron is going to hit hard, so why go back to the office in Jan" was the most upvoted comment in the stream.

Nobody wants to pay Bay Area rent to live next to drug addicts and piss smelling sidewalks.

Everyone I know in tech that was in SF has moved out of SF.

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

#484

Post by spookthesunset »

sjg007 wrote: post #448
spookthesunset wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor is irrational panic

Reality exists somewhere in the middle where we work together on rational mitigation strategies.

We have mitigation strategies. Vaccines. We've had them for a year. Anybody can get them. Boosters even. You can even mix & match your preferred make & model at this point!

We don't need any further mitigation strategies. Vaccines were the only real mitigation strategy we ever had.

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

#485

Post by BoxOfRain »

chimprich wrote: post #413
BoxOfRain wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear training running full steam. Enragement is engagement, and how better to enrage people than scaring everyone out of their wits and politicising everything as far as humanly possible? I'm certainly no COVID denier nor vaccine sceptic, though to me it's astonishing how little discussion has happened around the fact that everyone from some randomer's blog to…

The evidence of the past year or two suggests otherwise. For the first few months of 2020, media outlets were constantly downplaying the threat of pandemic. They consistently under-reported the risk. "Should we be worried? No! The threat is remote!" What also sells papers (or attracts eyeballs) is giving people an impression of superiority: "look at all those ridiculous other people panicking!" There's also the gener…

>For the first few months of 2020, media outlets were constantly downplaying the threat of pandemic. They consistently under-reported the risk. "Should we be worried? No! The threat is remote!"

This hasn't been my experience, in fact the British government's SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) was advising the government to lean on the press in order to increase 'the perceived level of personal threat' early in the pandemic[1]. I really do think the use of behavioural psychology to encourage compliance with government policy is one of the lesser-discussed aspects of the pandemic that future historians will correctly give more importance to than we did at the time. In all honesty this isn't so much a criticism of how the British government acted during the pandemic but how it acts in general. This institutional bent towards the manipulative is partially what led us into the unmitigated disaster that is the War on Terror in my opinion, consent for which largely stemmed from a state of fear among the general public made worse by poor journalistic norms.

>Another angle is making people feel good: "everything is fine, don't worry about anything!"

I've not seen a single bit of serious journalism along those lines, it's either been 'COVID is going to kill us all and it's the plaguebearing hordes of the unvaccinated who are to blame' or 'The government is turning totalitarian and it's the fault of out-of-touch bureaucrats that need to be removed' (the article I linked is very much a member of that species). I've come across very little in the way of sober analysis, almost every piece of journalism I've come across on the topic carries some kind of moral judgement against $group in it. The point I'm making is that moral judgement sells and feels good to dole out to people you don't like, but it also robs us of a little humanity every time we do it.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit...

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

#486

Post by smaryjerry »

renaudg wrote: post #370
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.

> The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. No, this scenario wouldn't be good news at all. Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an exponential worsening. In other words, the reduced risk of an infected person getting into hospital is dwarfed by the exponential inc…

That would make sense but been the originally strains did not overwhelm hospitals. New York has the highest and craziest number of cases and deaths at the beginning and didn’t put one person onto the ship that was provided for temporary beds. Hospitals did not run out of beds and now the biggest problem is running out of staff, the same as every industry. At our local hospital all of the nurses quit for better, higher paying jobs. We’re running at less hospital labor than even pre pandemic, aren’t building new hospitals, and the highest peaks in cases and deaths were while the strictest lockdowns and mask mandates were already in place. There is complete fear overload and yet all attempts at preventing spread, even vaccines, have failed. They reduce symptoms but do not stop the spread. That’s how contagious this virus is, without any symptoms whatsoever people are spreading the virus, even with masks on, and limits on how close they can be to people. We now have vaccines, we have even pills that have been approved, we also know healthy lifestyle fights against it, yet we are still in a 2 year long “state of emergency.” Letting it rip through is not an option we can choose, it will happen regardless of what we do.

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

#487

Post by newsbinator »

DarknessFalls wrote: post #445
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.

It's so good in fact, it makes me wonder if this was the Wuhan Virology lab's penance act.

There's no particular reason to believe this. It's just as likely as "space aliens did it" at this point, until there's more evidence in any given direction.

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

#488

Post by johnchristopher »

lb0 wrote: post #455
chimprich wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence of the past year or two suggests otherwise. For the first few months of 2020, media outlets were constantly downplaying the threat of pandemic. They consistently under-reported the risk. "Should we be worried? No! The threat is remote!" What also sells papers (or attracts eyeballs) is giving people an impression of superiority: "look at all those ridiculous other people panicking!" There's also the gener…

I agree, its strange the different bubbles we live in, but none of my news sources didn't have the "Omicron likely weaker" headline?!

Mine had. Not less than 24hours before the story emerged. Which result in 2 things: loss of trust in public authorities public faces ("omicron is a christmas gift !") and loss of trust in the scientific public faces ("omicron may be milder").

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

#489

Post by Barrin92 »

thedorkknight wrote: post #451
thaumasiotes wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same selection pressure that applies to every other disease. Symptoms make you less likely to spread. Fatalities make you much less likely to spread. Most of the diseases you carry are completely asymptomatic. This is why island populations all get sick when a ship comes in.

Don't most covid deaths happen after you're no longer infectious? I thought a lot of that was from the cytokine storm. But to the other commenter's point, if omicron DID get a more deadly variant that kills you after you've already infected other people due to presymptomatic spread, then why would that variant be likely to die out? It's already reproduced before killing the host

it's overall less likely to reproduce because we take measures against covid collectively. What spreads more unhindered, covid or the common cold?

A disease that spreads before it's symptomatic may not face negative selection pressure for some individuals, but on the aggregate people wear masks, avoid contact, even entered lockdowns, are more likely to obtain vaccination, and so on.

There's a stronger behavioral response to a more deadly covid than there is to one that is entirely harmless. It's not just death that reduces rates of transmission, and it's not just sick or symptomatic people who avoid contact.

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

#490

Post by spookthesunset »

Spivak wrote: post #308
furyofantares wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> recipe for year three of this crap

Only in places that continue to consider covid the only problem society should focus on. It might be hard for some to imagine but we cannot continue to put the world on hold for exactly one specific form of illness.

For one thing, we've created a pandemic of untreated mental illness. All these people I see walking their dogs at night on a rainy day alone on the street wearing a mask with foggy glasses are gonna have a hard time getting over this... All the people who haven't left their house in two years are gonna need some help. People have lost their minds and it is gonna take a while to heal.

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