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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

#641

Post by chki »

sangnoir wrote: post #477
eloff wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I found out about this early perhaps due to my South African family who sent me this doctors analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vI4XczqZ8 It could be excellent news. It sounds more virulent than delta, so should displace it given enough time, and much less dangerous. If this holds up, countries are doing the exact wrong thing by banning travel from South Africa. The thing to do would be to open trave…

> The sooner you replace delta with omicron in a country, should this continue to hold up, the better. You think you want that, but this also increases the chances of Omicron evolving into something worse, like picking up genetic fragments from a haemorrhagic virus, or being able to cross the blood-brain barrier. The 2nd wave of the Spanish flu was deadlier than the first: being infected by an earlier variant doesn't…

Making COVID extinct is unfortunately not a reasonable scenario. There will be animal reservoirs, high vaccination rates are difficult to achieve for most countries, long-term lockdowns will be hard to enforce if you're not China.

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

#642

Post by nostrademons »

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…

COVID is about 10x more lethal than flu across all age ranges, so if this is 29% lower than the original strain, it's still 7x more deadly than flu.

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

#643

Post by wonnage »

JudasGoat wrote: post #636

I am going to go against the grain here and ask someone more knowledgeable than myself if the large number of changes in this variant is typical in virus evolution? Because as an outsider, it appears to me that studying the history of past pandemics would present a road map as to what must be modified to attenuate the damage potential in a virus. I suppose my question really is, why are we chancing GOF research, if n…

Influenza viruses mutate enough to require new vaccines every year, coronaviruses tend to mutate less frequently but this is offset by the number of hosts with Covid

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

#644

Post by oneoff786 »

aqme28 wrote: post #583
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…

Or more simply, 5x as contagious but 1/2 as deadly? That's still a lot more deaths.

No it’s not. Contagion spread is logarithmic, and has obvious upper bounds. E.g. about a third of the us has gotten Covid. 5x contagious does not give you 166% of the population infected. Nor does it give you 100%. Probably not even 90%. I would bet no more than 50% over the next year.

Half as deadly on the other hand is a big deal. It’s not just deaths, it’s also hospitalizations. If you imagine the bell curve of outcomes, the deaths are the small tail on the right and the hospitalizations are the fatter bit on the right. If you get to move everything to the left a bit, you remove the biggest chunk of the population from getting hospitalized in the first place.

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

#645

Post by beebmam »

JudasGoat wrote: post #636

I am going to go against the grain here and ask someone more knowledgeable than myself if the large number of changes in this variant is typical in virus evolution? Because as an outsider, it appears to me that studying the history of past pandemics would present a road map as to what must be modified to attenuate the damage potential in a virus. I suppose my question really is, why are we chancing GOF research, if n…

Thank you for your question.

There are virologists and immunologists currently exploring the mutation-space of SARS-CoV-2 for nearly all potential mutations that produce a viable virus capable of infecting human cells. Based on that mutation-space, they're trying to determine if a vaccine regime can exist which can counter all possible mutations of SARS-CoV-2. So far, it looks like it's possible.

Here's a presentation about the work being done at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIcaSqQFrX0

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

#646

Post by Sitio »

JudasGoat wrote: post #636

I am going to go against the grain here and ask someone more knowledgeable than myself if the large number of changes in this variant is typical in virus evolution? Because as an outsider, it appears to me that studying the history of past pandemics would present a road map as to what must be modified to attenuate the damage potential in a virus. I suppose my question really is, why are we chancing GOF research, if n…

What do you mean by studying past pandemics?

We did not had that many and I'm not sure but I assume COVID is one of the most studied ones.

Due to our modern technology and the high capital damage.

Certain predictions were expected through pref pandemics like expecting COVID becoming 'normal' like the common cold.

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

#647

Post by vkou »

willcipriano wrote: post #622
jedimastert wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you lie, or omit the truth and get caught, they will never listen to anything you say ever again.

I wish the antivaxx/snake oil/it's just the flu folks were held to that standard.

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

#648

Post by jimmaswell »

ceejayoz wrote: post #561
drexlspivey wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I wish they would just triage unvaccinated people below everyone else so hospital capacity would stop being a problem.

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

#649

Post by beebmam »

wonnage wrote: post #643
JudasGoat wrote: post #636

I am going to go against the grain here and ask someone more knowledgeable than myself if the large number of changes in this variant is typical in virus evolution? Because as an outsider, it appears to me that studying the history of past pandemics would present a road map as to what must be modified to attenuate the damage potential in a virus. I suppose my question really is, why are we chancing GOF research, if n…

Influenza viruses mutate enough to require new vaccines every year, coronaviruses tend to mutate less frequently but this is offset by the number of hosts with Covid

There are currently trials in the US for a universal influenza vaccine which will counter most possible mutations of the influenza virus: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-c...

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

#650

Post by chki »

ok123456 wrote: post #321
bla3 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not yet a given that omicron competes with delta. Since they're fairly different it's possible both strains can coexist.

Data shows otherwise. In ZA over 85% of cases are omicron from not existing last month.

This is unclear at the moment, see also https://mobile.twitter.com/trvrb/status/1470420216232374281
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