Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

831–840 of 1001 posts

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

#831

Post by tekknik »

wombatmobile wrote: post #758
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…

> The mRNA vaccine technology is "agile". Yes and this means governments can quickly adapt to new variants by reformulating the vaccine, dumping old stock by "donating" it to developing nations, or dumping it, and buying new stock from big pharma. Since developing nations will always have far lower vaccination rates than first world countries, the virus will continue to mutate and proliferate outside of America and E…

> dumping old stock by "donating" it to developing nations

A primary complaint is that “rich nations” hoard vaccines. doesn’t this exacerbate this?

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

#832

Post by landemva »

vkou wrote: post #728
spookthesunset wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Don't even get started on how our response completely decimated the working class Odd that you say this, when every blue collar place around me is having trouble hiring staff. Between stimulus checks, rising wages, and becoming way pickier about which jobs they are taking, this is the sort of thing that I would expect the working class to do when they are doing better for themselves. You know what actually decimate…

'You know what actually decimates the working class?'

Is that theory or do you work a blue collar job?

I was in a work truck as 'critical infrastructure' and lived it. The company owners got richer AT HOME while we kept working. And then some layoffs after the pandemic forgivable loan calendar window expired.

I caught the 'rona earlier this year. I have a Dr. letter saying so. Now white collar woke-from-home wants me to keep them 'safe' by wearing a cloth mask and getting jabbed.

No. I no longer consent. Go fix your own machines.

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

#833

Post by naasking »

nikolay wrote: post #821
johnisgood wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before 2020, no mRNA technology platform (drug or vaccine) had been authorized for use in humans, so there was a risk of unknown effects.[79] The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic required faster production capability of mRNA vaccines, made them attractive to national health organisations, and led to debate about the type of initial authorization mRNA vaccines should get (including emergency use authorization or expanded acce…

No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!

Masks are nowhere near as effective as vaccines.

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

#834

Post by tekknik »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #824
marderfarker2 wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pharma probably learnt what worked for software: turn perpetual licenses into subscriptions. Chances are these “boosters” will become a quarterly occurrence, even when the virus pose little to no threat (to an already vaccinated person)

You mean like the flu virus? For which doctors say that we should get every year?

Yet the flu vaccine isn’t required and social pressured, and also isn’t experimental at all. So probably a huge difference right?

How many times has someone lost their job to not getting the flu vaccine?

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

#835

Post by mikeyjk »

tekknik wrote: post #828
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…

Yay, more injections of experimental vaccines!

What level of testing would make these vaccines non experimental in your mind, and what other vaccine do you know that has had that level of rigour applied? I'm genuinely curious

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

#836

Post by dbt00 »

tekknik wrote: post #828
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…

Yay, more injections of experimental vaccines!

Yay, fewer people dying of preventable diseases!

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

#837

Post by IAmGraydon »

jiggawatts wrote: post #802
bognition wrote: post #9

There are a few important bits here: First: "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." and second: "At the same time, the vaccine may offer 70 perce…

Just 29% lower is nothing . NOTHING. Of all people, the YC News crowd really ought to understand that O(exp(n)) overwhelms O(1) literally exponentially. Not figuratively. Literally. If a virus variant has a constant factor reduction in its side-effects, but a higher exponential factor in infectiousness, the latter will overwhelm the former in short order, and then continue to overwhelm it even more . Exponentially. L…

That was an incredibly verbose explanation for something very simple.

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

#838

Post by refytedy »

renaudg wrote: post #813
oneoff786 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consisten…

>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. Well, in typical Dunning-Krüger fashion you're lecturing us laymen about the wrong use of "exponential", but it seems that you are the la…

Not the original commenter and agree with your sentiment.

That said, from what we know about random graph models, once the transmission rate passes a certain threshold, the cumulative number of eventually infected individuals will NOT scale exponentially as the transmission rate increases.

You're speaking about initial growth rate though, not convergent size of the once-infected population, which is definitely exponential and relevant if you care about minimizing simultaneous hospitalizations.

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

#839

Post by spookthesunset »

johnchristopher wrote: post #795
josephcsible wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you want to punish people who managed to keep their job because you don't like the fact they are scared of covid ? Not GP, but one reason is that they're advocating for restrictions that have severe detrimental effects (loss of employment) on others, but not on themselves.

I haven't seen much on HN about such restrictions so I suppose something in the mainstream media does point to that or I have a bias. Do you have some examples ? Also, apparently, wearing a mask and getting vaccinated is already a giant no-no for some here so I'd like to know what restrictions are being advocated by who ? Surely it's not a `they` as in everyone though, right ?

I’m fully vaccinated, thanks. It is quite possible to be pro vaccine and extremely anti mask.

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

#840

Post by spookthesunset »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #801
spookthesunset wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why would I want a delivery person to wear a mask all day? And I prefer to check out my own groceries. A mask for cooking is probably a good idea in general.

> Why would I want a delivery person to wear a mask all day?

If you support these mask mandates you support fully vaccinated employees wearing masks 8 hours a day 40 hours a week. All nothing more than security theater to make the most fearful feel “safe” and provide an easy way for lazy government to look like they are “taking this serious”

Post reply on HN