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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

#561

Post by ceejayoz »

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

You're missing the point. If Delta kills, say, a million people, and Omicron only kills half a million people, but Omicron kills that halved amount in, say, 1/10th the time, Omicron is more likely to lead to overwhelmed hospitals.

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

#562

Post by moistly »

AlexandrB wrote: post #425
sokoloff wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, it seems like you have to weigh the lifetime risk of dying from COVID against the loss of life enjoyment and decide “We shouldn’t subject ourselves to another 1.25% of our lifetime of this (whatever “this” is) to lower the fatality rate from Y to X.” (If you’re lowering from 5% to 1%, that trade makes sense for even severe social restrictions. If you’re lowering it from 0.5% to 0.4%, that trade makes n…

I think it's better to consider some kind of "casualty rate" that includes long COVID, rather than just the "fatality rate". At the moment it's possible some people may never fully recover full function after contracting COVID even though they survive.

The people who never fully recover are orders of magnitude more expensive than the dead. The latter are a one-time cost in lost productivity and care expenses; the former are an on-going cost. Since we, collectively, are the ones who are going to pay via taxation, we should IMO be a hell of a lot more concerned about COVID’s long-term consequences.

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

#563

Post by engmgrmgr »

sjg007 wrote: post #554
drexlspivey wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

people are easily influenced by others who they admire, even if they have no idea what they’re talking about. athletes, politicians, investors, artists, etc.

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

#564

Post by johnchristopher »

988747 wrote: post #512
johnchristopher wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> No. Covid reeinfects. There's only a short-lived immunity. So let's Omicron, or any other mild variant spread, we'll get reinfected regularly, thus developing resistance to more malignant strains. That's how we beat flu, which, believe or not, was deadly in the past. Now we get millions of flu infections each year, but no one cares, because they are mild.

> we'll get reinfected regularly, thus developing resistance to more malignant strains.

Clearly not how it works and not what's happening.

We are not developing resistance to more malignant strains so far despite the virus and its variants spreading.

Plus, mild symptoms when contagious are not indicators for long term covid damages on organs. Want to take the risk ?

> That's how we beat flu, which, believe or not, was deadly in the past.

We didn't beat flu. We still need vaccines every year. Believe it or not, it's still deadly.

We have vaccines for Covid and it's still not enough to live like Covid is another flu.

> Now we get millions of flu infections each year, but no one cares, because they are mild.

Millions of covid infections. It's still not mild and way too soon to know if omicron is milder short term and milder long term. You are talking a distant hypothetical future. People were already saying that in january 2020. Didn't pan out. What's different now ? We got worse variants.

It's time public voices stop comparing covid to flu. Covid is way more contagious than the flu.

Flu patients in ICU don't need 7 or 8 nurses. It's a different beast and it hasn't yet taken every evolutionary paths it can take.

Letting it rip through the population hoping it magically build a resistance ? Eugenics and wishful thinking.

edit:

> we'll get reinfected regularly, thus developing resistance to more malignant strains

Omicron is telling us it doesn't care much about our previous wuhan/alpha/delta infections when we look at current numbers.

Reinfections can send you to the ICU and then you toss a coin if you make it for one more year. How many times do you want to take that risk ? Once a year ? Are you in your thirties ? Then when your are ~45 and the risk of getting in the ICU gets higher than now, will you still take the risk to get Covid this year thinking you are building a resistance ?

We don't build resistance to next year's flu when we age. If/Since covid will be seasonal/periodical and evolve it's likely we will regularly need boosters/new vaccines.

And considering its high transmission capabilities we will still need masks and other preventive measures.

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

#565

Post by deadbunny »

ShrigmaMale wrote: post #525
johnchristopher wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course there's a political advantage. It's something that forces everybody to visibly declare an affiliation with a side at all times in public. That will always be used for political advantage.

What nonsense the only ones that have made masks political is the right-wingers of the world for whatever convoluted "freedom" reasons they have come up with.

I don't wear a mask because of my political beliefs. I wear a mask due to the abundance of evidence that it helps prevent transmission. If you assume my political affiliation from that not only would you be wrong but you know what they say about assuming.

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

#566

Post by SergeAx »

vmception wrote: post #548

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-…

Yes, we need to know how severe the illness from this variant is.

It was never a question of transmission. When we got news from Norway where 120 vaccinated negative tested people came into the restaurant for a couple of hours and at least 60 of them came out with positive omicron test - it became clear that we are fucked. Also, news from South Africa, where two people were quarantined in a hotel their rooms was across the corridor, and virus got from one to another, despite they never get out, just opened the door to take food and make tests.

So it looks like everybody will have this variant in the next year, except maybe people in distant places. The question was how many will get seriously sick and how many of them will die. Looks like numbers will be lower than expected.

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

#568

Post by anoonmoose »

the_doctah wrote: post #407
MereInterest wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be interpreting "essential" as "essential for continued human existence", which is a pretty low bar. "Essential for maintaining public health", or "essential for preventing excess deaths" would be better interpretations. While vaccines are not essential for continued human existence, they are essential for maintaining public health and preventing excess deaths.

You could make the same argument for the common Flu.

I get the flu shot every year, to help reduce transmission and reduce the severity if I get it myself

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

#569

Post by skrebbel »

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…

> a bad cold or the flu

If Covid was only 40% worse than the flu and the cold, then this wouldn't have been a pandemic at all.

Also, one thing that possibly distorts this study is that a large amount of South Africans got only vaccinated in recent months. Given that the vaccine is most effective in the beginning, this might positively affect South Africans's resilience against Omicron and it's not clear yet (afaik) to what extent that skewed the stats.

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

#570

Post by jat850 »

hpoe wrote: post #555
sjg007 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It amazes me that there remains this misguided view that vaccination efficacy around protecting others is a binary mechanism. It's not. There is evidence of at least partial reduction in infection, not just outcome, by being vaccinated.

That's not including the nuanced aspect of it where being vaccinated reduces the severity and duration of symptomatic cases, which by nature reduces the likelihood simply based on time alone, of exposing others.

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