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

491–500 of 1001 posts

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

#491

Post by earthbee »

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.

If a past infection with Delta doesn't protect against Omicron should we expect an infection by Omicron to protect against Delta or any future strains evolved from it?

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

#492

Post by wmock »

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.

completely agree with you - at this point, if we can coexist with covid, it'll hopefully become more and more like the common flu

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

#493

Post by AnthonBerg »

kevinpet wrote: post #276
simonh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we treat Covid before hospitalisation? I just caught it at the weekend and feeling pretty crappy. I'm not aware of any particular treatment I should be taking.

There's one approved drug that is probably effective against covid, Fluvoxamine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8633915/ Everyone knows Paxlovid is safe and effective too, but you aren't allowed to take it yet.

Fluoxetine as well: "Fluoxetine use is associated with improved survival of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia: A retrospective case-control study" – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34856085/

"Do the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Antidepressants Fluoxetine and Fluvoxamine Reduce Mortality Among Patients With COVID-19?" – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

"Mortality Risk Among Patients With COVID-19 Prescribed Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor Antidepressants" – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

"Mortality risk is confirmed to be significantly decreased among patients with #COVID-19 prescribed SSRI antidepressants, and particularly #fluoxetine, and fluoxetine or #fluvoxamine, in a large (n>80,000) US observational study." – https://twitter.com/HoertelN/status/1460309793558646785?s=20

Dr. Farid Jalali's track record on accuracy of statements on the pathophysiology is excellent. Here's a thread that outlines how and why SSRIs work to reduce illness in COVID: https://twitter.com/farid__jalali/status/1440876997182300169

Platelets and serotonin are involved in the disease. Serotonin tends to cause inflammation, clotting, and vasoconstriction. A significant feature of COVID-19 is elevated plasma serotonin. (Here's an almost random source for this: https://twitter.com/ivanajpavlovic/status/146071264917663334... ... another: https://twitter.com/__ice9/status/1345194722055385091 ... these are tweets, yes, but they link to papers.) Platelets have serotonin transporters and serotonin receptors. SARS-CoV-2 does a lot of things; One of the things it does is that it kills platelets by inducing necroptosis (source: https://twitter.com/DrKoupenova/status/1418558896390688776?s... ). This releases the serotonin inside them, causing other platelets to clot. SSRIs block platelets from picking up serotonin produced and secreted by enterochromaffin cells in the digestive tract; This is the source of the platelets' serotonin payload (more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterochromaffin_cell ). If an SSRI is taken early, platelets will have reduced serotonin payloads, which limits the serotonin-induced damage to the lung.

I had no idea about any of this until recently.

Another thing I had no idea about: Serotonin is metabolised by the lungs. https://twitter.com/ablative_sasha/status/144016208428566528... — and COVID-19 damages the lungs. It's a bad feedback loop involving way too much free serotonin.

There are other things at play but this is one of them. SSRIs work for a lot of patients, have a significant and confirmed benefit, and a mechanism of action that makes sense.

I've also seen pretty substantial claims / results that arginine, N-acetylcysteine, and melatonin seem to help. The best way to dig up those scientific results that do exist on it is actually to search Twitter for it. Try to find reliable-seeming scientists that are linking to actual papers and are careful in not suggesting too much.

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

#494

Post by Centmo »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #377
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.

>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…

Fix the incentives, fix the world.

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

#495

Post by Heliosmaster »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #485
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…

>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' e…

I think GP is referring to earlier than that: when Covid was in China and was starting to blow up in Italy

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

#496

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

dragontamer wrote: post #404
stickfigure wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly. It will happen eventually, and then covid will be just another common cold.

> It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. You know that Smallpox was in cows (aka: Cowpox), right? We still wiped it out. Smallpox, Measles, Polio. We've wiped out diseases before, and we can do it again if we so try. I'm frankly more flabbergasted that people don't even know the history of dis…

Those diseases could be (mostly) eradicated because they have incredibly effective vaccines - the CDC quotes 95% for smallpox, 97% for measles, 99-100% for polio. No currently known Covid vaccine is that effective and there's no obvious reason to expect future ones will be.

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

#497

Post by gilbetron »

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…

No one replying has a "serious level of knowledge", so instead, turn to sources that do (or report serious sources!)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-ev...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ (really good one)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7255208/

In short, we don't know and won't know until this is all "over" a few years in the future, at least.

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

#498

Post by jimmyearlcarter »

oceanplexian wrote: post #468
renaudg wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to prevent infection. The story has always been that it reduces symptoms and hospitalization, so there are plenty of opportunities for the disease to get “tickets” in the evolution lottery. Between that, the animal reservoirs (COVID can spread to different species), and the millions of people in undeveloped countries who will never get a vax, COVID was guaranteed…

The vaccine was initially sold as the tool to end the pandemic and get life back to 'normal'. The narrative has evolved to suit the deficiencies of the vaccine and keep profits from sinking.

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

#499

Post by ceejayoz »

smaryjerry wrote: post #486
renaudg wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, highe…

> didn’t put one person onto the ship that was provided for temporary beds

It wasn't for lack of need.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-u...

> But the reality has been different. A tangle of military protocols and bureaucratic hurdles has prevented the Comfort from accepting many patients at all.

> On top of its strict rules preventing people infected with the virus from coming on board, the Navy is also refusing to treat a host of other conditions. Guidelines disseminated to hospitals included a list of 49 medical conditions that would exclude a patient from admittance to the ship.

> Ambulances cannot take patients directly to the Comfort; they must first deliver patients to a city hospital for a lengthy evaluation — including a test for the virus — and then pick them up again for transport to the ship.

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

#500

Post by johnchristopher »

clairity wrote: post #433
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…

it’s worth always keeping in mind that the only dichotomy that matters in political economies is that between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else, not left-right, black-white, east-west, socialist-capitalist, or anything else. it’s been this way for all of human history past and will likely be so for the rest of it too. that’s a sober position to take, not a cynical one, as some might argue. the more dynamic o…

Your second paragraph assumes our governments have the means to do that. They don't. Which breaks the logic of your conclusion. And masks do add protection. Their political leverage is null. What is gained by authorities ? There's no advantages.

> if we were worried about public health, vaccination status wouldn’t be considered at all, only infection status.

Ww are worried. Infection status is considered. Vaccination status is considered. You are building a counter stance to drive a point that aims to minimize the covid problem.

You can fight reality with logic and interpretations and a different philosophical approach of the situation but facts don't care. Hospitals are regularly overwhelmed, people are dying when they shouldn't and the virus doesn't care about our psychotic or neurotic bouts. We know that if we do nothing it gets worse real fast.

Post reply on HN