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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

#531

Post by spookthesunset »

jaywalk wrote: post #508
spookthesunset wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe build more hospitals? I mean, in march of 2020 we expressly locked down to build up healthcare capacity. Where is it?

It's almost completely a staffing issue at this point. Good thing we fired a bunch of healthcare workers because they didn't want to get vaccinated!

> It's almost completely a staffing issue at this point

So these politicians should treat this like an emergency and drive dumptrucks of money up to healthcare staff not working and get them back. Get nursing students. Do whatever it takes. Think outside of the box. This is supposed to be an emergency, is it not?

I mean, if it was an emergency and healthcare was truly an issue, why aren't those hospital tents and hospital ships docked in the harbor of every major city? "Lack of staff" is just an excuse in an emergency. You work around it. Make it happen. It's an emergency, right?

And if it isn't an emergency, why are we mandating anything at all? Shouldn't we all be going about our lives like we did prior to march 2020? If it isn't an emergency why are governments still using emergency powers to push mandates onto citizens instead of actually dealing with hospital shortages?

None of this makes any sense at all when you really start thinking about it. Absolutely none of it... Never did, never will...

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

#532

Post by jjk166 »

chimprich wrote: post #371
jjk166 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish Flu did evolve to become more mild. All modern seasonal flu variants are descended from it.

> Spanish Flu did evolve to become more mild That doesn't make sense. We have seen regular waves of flu, some being more pathogenic than others. There has not been a "direction" of flu strains becoming milder. So-called Spanish flu came after weaker strains. > All modern seasonal flu variants are descended from it. I don't think this makes sense either. The more serious strains of flu we've had in recent decades have…

Certainly there is variability, evolution is fundamentally a random walk, but no strain since 1918 has come close to that one's severity, and the genes causing cytokine storms in infected individuals, which was why that strain was so deadly, seems to have been quickly lost. Subsequent strains that were highly virulent seem to have evolved new mechanisms.

Viruses can pick up genes from lateral gene transfer. Basically in the process of copying their own genetic material while replicating, they might inadvertently copy some extra genetic material that was just lying around in the host cell, and it gets incorporated into their genetic code, producing recombinant strains. Further, just as animal strains can jump into humans, human strains can jump into animals. So for example in 1968 the H3N2 flu lineage started in birds, jumped to humans where it recombined with 1918's H1N1 making human H3N2, and then jumped into pigs to make Porcine H3N2. Indeed there's evidence that H1N1 started out as an avian strain that jumped to humans and swine around the same time, but this is still an open academic debate.

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

#533

Post by ShrigmaMale »

johnchristopher wrote: post #476
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. No. Covid reeinfects. There's only a short-lived immunity. Covid is not a cold. If it doesn't get your the first or the second or the third time it will get you the 15th time. Long term damage is not getting enough attention. In decades maybe we get a mild covid. > Way too many co…

Waiting decades with government policies in place and altered behavior is not a realistic option. Most people would rather risk infection over the long term.

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

#534

Post by bagacrap »

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…

there really can't be an "exponential" increase in the number of cases, whatever that means, given that there's a hard upper bound which is the number of hosts.

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

#535

Post by stnmtn »

bagacrap wrote: post #534
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…

there really can't be an "exponential" increase in the number of cases, whatever that means, given that there's a hard upper bound which is the number of hosts.

While technically correct, you and I both know what they meant by exponential. Sure, there's a limit, but if we're looking at function that is exponential until it reaches an inflection point where there's simply less hosts to infect than possible...

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

#536

Post by drexlspivey »

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…

> Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an exponential worsening.

No it's not, if delta infected say 1b humans and omicron infects 4b humans deaths can easily be offset by a lower fatality rate

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

#537

Post by dTal »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #234
aantix wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those (likely) aren't your odds. Without knowing your specific background, your numbers are probably much less. E.g. ages 0-17, there's been 644 deaths. Across a cohort with ~75,000,000 people. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...

Assuming that OP is a teenager or toddler...I guess that could be called "passive-aggressive optimism."

And I've had a HN account for over 8 years... precocious little scamp aren't I!

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

#538

Post by jonnycomputer »

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.

Yes, the best case scenario might be an extremely mild disease that gives everyone natural immunity to more virulent strains. But half as deadly with twice transmission rate is kind of a wash, in the short term right?

But if R > 1, eventually everyone gets it and has their lottery ticket drawn, so increased transmissibility just speeds that process up (unflattens the curve). With the vaccines, R was I think its a little early to be making confident predictions. Lots of potential confounds, e.g. while hospitalization rates have been lower in South Africa, I believe that the demographics have skewed younger than in previous waves too.

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

#539

Post by rndmio »

foobiekr wrote: post #527
oceanplexian wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn’t true, and the lack of testing during the phase 3 trials to see if there were non-symptomatic cases was a deliberate design choice to avoid answering that question. I’m all in on vaccination, but let’s not rewrite history.

That’s not completely true either. The UK phase 3 trial of the AZ vaccine included weekly testing to catch asymptomatic cases.

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

#540

Post by jonnycomputer »

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 vaccines may not have been advertised as that, since the evidence during development for that was marginal. but recent evidence suggests that it does prevent infection. unfortunately, less true with omicron.
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