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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

#681

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#682

Post by [deleted] »

boringg wrote: post #21

I have a question for anyone who has a serious level of knowledge on virus evolution: As viruses evolve over time is there any correlation to severity - do they have trade offs as they evolve? I am hoping that it would be some kind of trade off that the virus makes in that it can spread more easily but not be as severe (I understand that it is unlikely nature requires a trade-off). I ask as my concern is that while t…

[deleted]

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

#683

Post by oneoff786 »

stnmtn wrote: post #674
oneoff786 wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took it to mean you’re claiming growth is exponential or nearly exponential until it nears 100% like a sigmoid function. But that’s wrong. Growth stalls out much much earlier. It’s just not right to call disease spread exponential.

In a math classroom, you are right. But when we're in a context of talking about the disease on an internet forum, you are being needlessly pedantic and extremely nitpick-y if you expect people to describe the ways infections grows as "similar to a sigmoid function" rathan than the well-understood and extremely common "exponential growth" term.

I don’t really care if you say sigmoid when you mean exponential, my point is that both of those are wrong. People shudder in fear of the phrase “exponential” but disease does not spread exponentially. It never does. That’s a laymen fairy tail and it does a great deal of harm in understanding the disease.

Exponential is not well understood. People don’t know what it means, as evidenced by the fact that they consistently use it incorrectly.

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

#684

Post by sjg007 »

jack_pp wrote: post #616
jat850 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want sources I will find them, but there are studied and not simply anecdotal instances of multiple infections of covid, yes. The outcomes range somewhat across the board from subsequent risks of severe infection or death, in a way that resembles vaccination.

It seems it is rare : https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfe... . Also found a recent CDC study on this : https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm... . However, from said study : "First, reinfection was not confirmed through whole genome sequencing, which would be necessary to definitively prove that the reinfection was caused from a distinct virus relative to the first infec…

Reinfection has been well established all over the place. You can identify it via PCR, you don't need to sequence it.

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

#685

Post by sjg007 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #547
sjg007 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dunno, masks seem pretty effective as are capacity limits. That and rapid testing before gathering seems like a pretty good plan.

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

#686

Post by jack_pp »

sjg007 wrote: post #684
jack_pp wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems it is rare : https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfe... . Also found a recent CDC study on this : https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm... . However, from said study : "First, reinfection was not confirmed through whole genome sequencing, which would be necessary to definitively prove that the reinfection was caused from a distinct virus relative to the first infec…

Reinfection has been well established all over the place. You can identify it via PCR, you don't need to sequence it.

PCR has false positives. Also I came with sources, you didn't provide any.

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

#687

Post by paddez »

cknoxrun wrote: post #665
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…

Your question caused a likely ludicrous and unoriginal idea to pop into my head - I wonder if it would be possible to purposefully engineer and release a mutated form of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 that demonstrates the ability to replace more dangerous strains, but causes only mild symptoms? Essentially to accelerate a process that we hope to see happen naturally.

I guess, that's ultimately the idea of vaccines.

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

#688

Post by kelnos »

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?

> if we both agree the vaccine doesn't reduce infectivity

I don't agree with that, and I don't believe the currently available data does, either.

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

#689

Post by vimy »

liber8 wrote: post #679
Animats wrote: post #676

Moderna is working on a vaccine targeting the Omicron variant for 2022.[1] The mRNA vaccine technology is "agile". There's a workflow from sequencing a virus to generating a candidate vaccine. It only took two days to generate the original COVID-19 vaccine. It's the clinical testing in small, then large groups that's the time consuming part. Also, the inhaled vaccines are entering clinical testing.[2] It's not like w…

According to reports, the original BioNTech vaccine was developed in a matter of hours: https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-biontech-vaccine-desi... Moderna's was done in two days.

Which makes me wonder why it takes so long this time?

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

#690

Post by kelnos »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #584
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…

> The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to prevent infection. In the USA? Yes, they were. There was no mention of a future need for boosters. There was a simple promise of safety, and for things to return to normal.

Literally everything I read about vaccine efficacy said that the metrics they tracked were about reducing the incidence of symptoms and serious disease. They didn't even test people in the clinical trials for COVID unless they started showing symptoms.

Now, certainly, some media outlets may have been irresponsibly or ignorantly misinterpreting all this and pushing the narrative that it would make everyone immune. But that's not the CDC or WHO's fault.

> There was no mention of a future need for boosters.

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Things change.

> There was a simple promise of safety, and for things to return to normal.

You must have been reading some really watered-down news, and not actually reading what public health officials were saying.

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