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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

#541

Post by [deleted] »

015a wrote: post #443
34679 wrote: post #82

Omicron has been found in 38 countries and there are still no deaths caused by it. [1] The media are running with the story that the first death from Omicron just happened in the UK, but read Boris Johnson's quote: "Sadly at least one patient has now been confirmed to have died with Omicron," Johnson told reporters [2] This sounds batshit crazy, because it is, but in the UK, if you die from something unrelated while…

This is an unfortunate reality of this pandemic; the vast majority of deaths, even with Delta and the OG, were among those people with pre-existing conditions, including the most common: obesity and related disorders like type-2 diabetes. I think Boris' statement is accurate, but you're right; our reaction to it needs to be taken in context. The media and government will talk non-stop about vaccination and treatments…

[deleted]

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

#542

Post by romwell »

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…

All I ask in response to this comment is that if you do get COVID, please post somewhere on HN so that you could be properly nominated for the Herman Cain award[1].

Thank you in advance.

[1]https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

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

#543

Post by sjg007 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #484
sjg007 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The medical and scientific consensus is that vaccines alone are not enough.

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

#544

Post by drexlspivey »

snarf21 wrote: post #388
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…

It is most likely pretty close to the final strain, viral mutations are optimizing for high transmission and low severity (to not kill the host and maximize infections) and this one is pretty close to the global maximum.

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

#545

Post by spookthesunset »

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.

> nerds will drum up any FUD related to omicron to postpone return to the office.

And push for mask mandates that require people with jobs at stores and stuff to continue wearing their mask 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week until forever. "It's just a piece of cloth" say all the privileged tech workers typing from their cozy home office. If tech workers had to wear masks their entire workday, I bet most of them would be screaming to get rid of them. Instead the force all the (mostly vaccinated) "servant class" that brings them deliveries, makes their food, and checks out their groceries to wear some nasty mask all day and when these tech workers are called back into the office "but still wear masks" they all scream about it and continue to work from home. ... because wearing a mask for an entire workday absolutely sucks.

Our response to this virus requires a hell of a lot of privilege when you really start thinking hard about it. Don't even get started on how our response completely decimated the working class and transfered massive amounts of wealth in to the pockets of some of the richest people in the world. But hey! We are saving grandma!

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

#546

Post by kansface »

sjg007 wrote: post #202
iso1631 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how Scotland, which kept a mask mandate, and England, which dropped it, affected cases. From start to end of October, cases per 100k, 7 day average Glasgow -- 300->220 Edinburgh -- 210->250 Manchester -- 290->220 Birmingham -- 250->280 4 similar cities, two with mask mandates, two without. And smaller ones Aberdeen -- 267->330 Southampton -- 300->410 Perth -- 320->260 Hereford -- 290->580 So there ma…

There are plenty of scientific studies showing that masks work.

Obviously, the material a mask is made from stops medium sized particles from flowing through some highish percentage of the time. No good faith actor is disputing that. Studies don't control for real world usage, actual public adoption, actual masks, etc. They also do not control for changes in behavior that we'd expect to occur contemporaneously to the time periods mask mandates are adopted (ie, during spikes in infection). When infections go up, I personally stop going places where lots of people congregate - a huge percentage of people change their behavior in ways that are both germane and impossible to track in response to perceived risk. They also do not or can not control for the differences in behavior in the societies that can actually adopt and enforce mask mandates in the first place; ie, a city that refuses a mandate in the face of a spike has citizens that are more risk tolerate (or something) as compared to eg SF.

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

#547

Post by spookthesunset »

sjg007 wrote: post #291
mrtksn wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at well vaccinated populations like UK or Spain and then look at not well vaccinated like Bulgaria to see if it holds. Unfortunately, in Bulgaria you see that the size of the deaths wave still follows the size of the infection wave. The “no vulnerable people to die are left” hypothesis doesn’t hold. Those who survived survived because they were lucky, careful or vaccinated. It’s not true that the virus burn…

The UK has basically indicated that it is going to be bad and are relying on boosting before the new year to blunt the impact. If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming..

> If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming..

If they lock down again, they'll lock down every single winter from here on out. Lockdowns in a post-vaccine world are complete madness.

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

#548

Post by vmception »

Out of curiosity, do we really require these studies? Like it is good to have more and more sources, but wouldn't the expected outcome to be the following:

- vaccines that replicated the spike protein will be less effective since omicron has a modified spike protein, because the immune system only was trained to notice the spike protein and not the payload

- naturally induced immunity from prior exposure to Sars-Cov-2 will be more effective because the body made immunity to the payload alongside the total viral shape

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

#549

Post by dragontamer »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #496
dragontamer wrote: post #404

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. 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.

Its all relative.

Measles is 3x more infectious than even Delta.

Current vaccines are 95% effective against the original strain, 60% vs Delta, unknown vs Omicron.

You boost the vaccine however, and you're back to 90% efficacy vs Delta, and like 75% vs Omicron.

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

#550

Post by sjg007 »

hpoe wrote: post #530
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…

I've heard that but then why do people say we need to get vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable members of society if the vaccine isn't actually slowing the spread and doesn't prevent infection? EDIT: To be clear I already had COVID and didn't have any serious symptoms so the argument about a hospital bed doesn't necessarily apply to me. Beyond that I actually got vaccinated, my question centers around the dispar…

It's called being a decent human being and also the vaccine protects you as well.
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