Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by nostoc » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #312

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realise that mutation is not something the species can consciously control? How could the virus have mutated to become milder to suit the social response if the society, as it stands today, is continuing to do what they previously did..?

There's likely millions of virus variants out there already. Some will evolve to become much more contagious and most won't do much of anything. When a more severe variant starts dominating and everyone goes inside and stops spreading it that makes the more severe variant die out. As it dies out, and people go outside, variants that are milder will thrive because people won't lockdown as easily. This can repeat forev…

Except "Everybody goes inside and stops spreading" is not something that is unique to a variant of concern.

When everybody goes inside, all the variants stop spreading. The pressure is the same on every variants, so there's no source of evolutionary advantages on any variants.

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

#552

Post by oxymoran » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

“ The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020.”

29% LOWER THAN OG COVID

In other words, a bad cold or the flu. This is possibly our way out of this mess if it can become the dominant strain, why are we still peddling fear about omnicron instead of hope?

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

#553

Post by jonnycomputer » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

crummy wrote: post #521

Heliosmaster wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like this: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe...

But at the time the risk was still small, because the virus was mostly not in the US yet. Article doesn't say the risk will remain small in the future, does it?

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

#554

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #544

snarf21 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do people parrot this nonsense?

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

#555

Post by hpoe » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #550

hpoe wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well I got COVID before the vaccine came out and am not in a high risk group, so I'm not really that worried about me.

But you say it is being a decent human being, but I am confused if we both agree the vaccine doesn't reduce infectivity then why would me getting it change anything for anyone else, since we know it doesn't protect others?

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

#556

Post by rbartelme » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

"Less severe" as in less hospitalizations and death. The long-term effects of comorbidities are still being hashed out. A fair amount of the literature surrounding pulmonary megakaryocytes, platelets, and covid, is pretty alarming.

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

#557

Post by spookthesunset » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #543

spookthesunset wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you imagine a company where lawyers had complete control over product development and the entire company designed their goods around whatever the lawyers said? Every square inch of the product would be covered in legal disclaimers, everything would have foam padding on the corners, and the box it came in would have you sign a 40 page document before you could even open it. I have no clue how the actual product might function but whatever it does, there is no way its failure would result in a lawsuit; which means it probably doesn't work very well at all.

Sometimes I feel this is what people want when they say we should be listening to "medical and scientific" people. They want us to build society around the advice of exactly one profession to the exclusion of everything else.

It takes way more than just a very narrow expert to run a society. For two years we've handed the keys over to exactly one form of expert and completely ignored every other form of expertise.

These "medical and scientific" folks you talk of can yell "not enough" until they run out of air but that doesn't mean we should listen to them. Of course they are gonna say "it isn't enough"! That is their job! That doesn't mean we should to listen to their advice.

It may come as a surprise to some people but at some point you have to move on from covid no matter what these "experts" say. There are vastly more problems with the world than one specific form of illness.

This blind adherence to a small set of "medical experts" is completely myopic and is resulting in a cure that is much worse than covid ever was. We've had a vaccine for a year. You can mix & match boosters at this point. Party is over. Covid is here to stay. Move on, people.

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

#558

Post by engmgrmgr » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #544

snarf21 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Evolution isn’t programmed, it’s a function of survival. If there’s a highly infectious virus with a huge lead time to develop deadly symptoms, that’s more than enough to spread “optimally”

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

#559

Post by jedimastert » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

oxymoran wrote: post #552

“ The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020.” 29% LOWER THAN OG COVID In other words, a bad cold or the flu. This is possibly our way out of this mess…

If we peddle hope in the wrong way, it'll give people an excuse to not get the vaccine or the boosters.

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

#560

Post by inciampati » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #536

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…

> 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

The problem is that (higher) exponential growth will cause many more hospitalizations to happen in a much shorter time interval. That can make the wave more deadly even if the virus is somewhat milder.