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

891–900 of 1001 posts

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

#891

Post by 015a »

heavyset_go wrote: post #737
parasense wrote: post #698

I would imagine that a virus would eventually adapt/evolve to a point to where it co-exists harmoniously with the host organism. I've heard somewhere that herpes simplex virus used to have terrible symptoms, like genital blisters, but over the years the most common variant has no symptoms, and most people have no idea they have it.... and a huge proportion of human have it. I would imagine all viral contagions would…

Viral evolution can go down that path, provided there are selection pressures that select for weaker viruses. Viral evolution can also not follow that path at all. Evolution doesn't have a chosen path, and it doesn't have an end-goal. Evolution is the name that we give to the effect that chance has on genetics. The selection pressure that can select for weaker viral variants is the rapid and widespread deaths of vira…

Yes; and additionally, there's non-sterilizing vaccine immunity at play. If the vaccines are highly effective at keeping people alive, but less effective at teaching the immune system to sterilize it as quickly as possible, that removes some evolutionary pressure which would naturally kill off more lethal mutations. In other words, a more lethal "viral payload" mutation could have its lethality kept in check by vaccines which are good at targeting the spike protein, until a second mutation comes around on that spike protein which better escapes the vaccines; or, simply, until it transmits to a population that is undervaccinated or has waning natural or vaccinated immunity and isn't getting revaccinated.

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

#892

Post by stjohnswarts »

vkou wrote: post #647
willcipriano wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

some countries are making that happen. They are making people who refuse to get vaccinted pay for their hospitalization rather than it being free. The USA should definitely do the same thing.

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

#893

Post by hanselot »

jacobolus wrote: post #865
nikolay wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

There have been a few (I at least found one case study in the literature, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34664804/ ) people to have died from vaccine-related myocarditis, but my impression from skimming a handful of relevant review papers and news articles is that the vast majority of vaccine-related myocarditis cases were mild and temporary, and that those were still extremely rare among vaccine recipients. By comp…

Save millions of lives? I imagine all the unvaccinated Africans not dying of Covid are to be thankful too?

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

#894

Post by mrtksn »

spookthesunset wrote: post #797
mrtksn wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that your level of fear is irrelevant from virus perspective? Sars-cov-2 doesn’t care about your feelings. We will eventually move on, the idea is to do it with least damage possible. People moved on from the plague, the black death ve will move on. It’s just doesn’t need to lose so many people in the name of conspiracy theories and inconvenience. The handling of the situation is different everywher…

> Do you understand that your level of fear is irrelevant from virus perspective? Sars-cov-2 doesn’t care about your feelings. The way you talk scares me more than the virus. It is so authoritarian and creepy. So many of my tech worker colleagues talk the same way. It’s abuse. People that talk your way are the kinds of people that commit grave atrocities in the name of some cause you are 100% bought into. You do not…

The virus can’t have feelings, it’s not even a living thing and will not react to your courage. If that’s authoritarian so be it, the meaning of the word must have changed.

You know what’s part of the nature? lions, crocodiles and sharks and yet I’m not going to let them eat me. Earthquakes are natural too and you build accordingly, actually the evil governments even implemented building codes for it. 20 years ago I survived an earthquake that wiped out the neighbourhood because the previous governments couldn't bother to be evil and authoritarian over building standards.

What's up with this obsession with naturalism and personification of events?

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

#895

Post by isignal »

wombatmobile wrote: post #845
tekknik wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dumping old stock by "donating" it to developing nations A primary complaint is that “rich nations” hoard vaccines. doesn’t this exacerbate this?

If rich nations paid for poor nations to reach 95%+ vaccination levels, the virus would be tamed for everyone's benefit. With the prevailing scheme, in which rich nations fund high vax levels domestically, and allow poor nations to languish, the virus is always going to have reservoirs around the world in which it can mutate, thereby requiring new rounds of vaccination in the rich countries periodically. The total co…

This is incorrect, cost of vaccines is not the only bottleneck. For example, India is currently manufacturing more vaccines than can can be sold to other countries. The bottleneck is apparently people on ground to get shots into arms.

Most of the developed countries also used mRNA vaccines which needed low temperature refrigeration. Such facilities are cost prohibitive in poorer countries.

Beyond all this, there’s a significant worldwide population of vaccine skeptics who will not take free vaccines at their doorstep if available.

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

#896

Post by stjohnswarts »

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-…

The virus can only modify the spike protein so much before the spike protein won't work to infiltrate cells any longer and go extinct. It appears that the body is forgetting how to make antibodies rather quickly the vaccines are still pretty effective even against omicron if relatively recent or a booster has happened.

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

#897

Post by hanselot »

kyleblarson wrote: post #729
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…

Moderna CEO equity sales for the last couple years. Nothing to see here, no reason to distrust them pushing endless boosters: https://finance.yahoo.com/screener/insider/BANCEL%20STEPHANE...

Point out something about pharma and immediately the shills appear to rebuke and distract. I hate this world so much. I hope these pharma reps all die. Every single one.

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

#898

Post by stjohnswarts »

mchusma wrote: post #695

Omicron doesn't change fundamentally where we were with Delta. Its infection enough that everyone will get it. Vaccines protect you (they are banned for kids under 5). Pfizer's treatment (Paxlovid) is a very effective cure (currently banned). The death rate for vaccinated individuals is extremely low, at its current rate its about 26 per 100,000. The flu killed 24 per 100,000 in california. We are at the endgame. The…

we don't know yet that omicron won't help more than it hurts if catching it helps with future infections, say delta comes around to those who aren't yet vaccinated

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

#899

Post by DarylZero »

SailingSperm wrote: post #735
HPsquared wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true on an individual level too: someone who is very sick will stay at home, but someone with a mild head cold will still go out. There's going to be a negative correlation between severity and something like "velocity" of infected persons.

Which begs the question of the long term utility and effect of symptom suppressing vaccines (that don't prevent transmission). If a virus that would make make you very sick is contracted by someone who's vaccinated - They will now be in the 2nd category you describe ~'Sick, but not sick enough to stop them going out' -- They're now giving mobility to that virus that it would have otherwise not had (If they weren't va…

Vaccines don't suppress symptoms. They prevent symptoms by decreasing the viral load. They prevent transmission in the same way.

No, not _all_ transmission. Neither _all_ symptoms.

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

#900

Post by katbyte »

wombatmobile wrote: post #845
tekknik wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dumping old stock by "donating" it to developing nations A primary complaint is that “rich nations” hoard vaccines. doesn’t this exacerbate this?

If rich nations paid for poor nations to reach 95%+ vaccination levels, the virus would be tamed for everyone's benefit. With the prevailing scheme, in which rich nations fund high vax levels domestically, and allow poor nations to languish, the virus is always going to have reservoirs around the world in which it can mutate, thereby requiring new rounds of vaccination in the rich countries periodically. The total co…

Some rich nations are having a hard time achieving 70%, 60% and so forth in many areas and vaccine availability and cost are not the limiting factor.
Post reply on HN