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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

#921

Post by ajsnigrutin »

sjg007 wrote: post #819
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. Well, not me personally but a "five-member commission, namely, three doctors (neurologist, infectologist and vascular specialist), a pharmacologist and Zoran Simonovič, a representative of the epidemiological profession" has. https://www.gov.si/en/news/2021-11-30-expert-commission-conf... > Minister of Health, Janez Poklukar, the head of the regional unit of the Maribor National Institute of Public Health,…

I think the clinical guidance for younger women (<50) is that they get a two dose mRNA vaccine and not Janssen or AZ for this very reason.

Back when I was vaccinated, all four vaccines (pfeizer, moderna, jannsen and astrazeneca) were safe and good for everyone, but there were availability issues with pfeizer on one side, and on the other, jannsen needed only one dose, and you'd get your covid certificate faster (so one month sooner than with pfeizer, and that also means one month less of paying for tests and waiting in long lines every two days when these measures were implemented).

Soon after, astrazeneca was slowly pulled out due to a few deaths elsewhere (not in slovenia), then a wife of our diplomat died in belgium (jannsenn), and the media talked a lot about the hospital procedures, and how she could be saved... then this 20yo girl (from the report) died from jannsen, and we stopped using jannsen too, then scandinavian countries stoped using moderna due to heart issues in younger people, and we're down from 4 to 1 vaccine, with huge mandates that indirectly force you to get vaccinated. ...and the antivaxxers are just waiting for something bad to happen with pfeizer, to show they were right about safety issues.

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

#922

Post by blub »

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…

Meanwhile, the Biontech CEO thinks that a fourth booster may be needed. For all the agility of mRNA, the reality looks like we are indeed stuck with the original vaccines.

And I suspect that countries which want to implement mandatory vaccination like Austria and perhaps Germany will force people to get the now worthless first and nearly worthless second doses of the original vaccine, because anything else won't be available.

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

#923

Post by drited »

krona wrote: post #693
drited wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline says "with" and the first bullet point says "from". The first paragraph says "the first publicly confirmed death globally from the swiftly spreading strain"

And the next paragraph says "Britain gave no details on the death other than the person had been diagnosed in hospital." However I wasn't referring to the news article but actual statements from UK government ministers and health officials' failure to be specific when questioned. For all we know the person was hit by a bus.

If the person was hit by a bus or died from a cause other than Omicron then that would strengthen the point I was making in the post you replied to which was

>>doesn't this suggest that the case fatality rate is a lot lower (not marginally lower)?

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

#924

Post by 988747 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #564
988747 wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, wa…

>> We didn't beat flu. We still need vaccines every year.

Seriously? I thought flu vaccines were just a hipster thing: something you do to look cool, but they don't really matter much. In my country only 4% of people take them, and we don't have many flu-related deaths.

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

#925

Post by StanislavPetrov »

mikeyjk wrote: post #835
tekknik wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>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?

There's no "level of testing" except for time. The fact is that we won't know what the effects of these drugs are in 10 years until 10 years passes. We can run studies and make educated guesses about what might happen in the future but they are just that - guesses. Given the numbers from the latest study in Israel (the study that was touted as requiring the need for boosters), the odds of a double vaccinated person over 50 being hospitalized from Covid after their "immunity waned" was 2 in 10,000. The chance of death was 6 in 100,000. The chances for younger people are much lower. Given that, how much of an unknown risk is it worth taking for a "booster"? Just how much lower than 6 in 100,000 is that chance worth? Everything we do in life is a series of calculated risks. The people who want to take that risk now, or multiple times per year for the rest of their lives should be entitled to do so. But to pretend that this new, experimental mRna vaccine is risk free because we ran a few short-term trials is absurd on its face. To mandate people, let alone infants and small children who have virtually no risk, to take an endless series of these experimental shots is madness.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

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

#926

Post by somewhereoutth »

robbedpeter wrote: post #916
somewhereoutth wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No human virus is known to have evolved to become more contagious and less virulent. Zero. None. Unfortunately this is just a (comforting!) myth. Feel free to provide an example virus if you think I'm wrong!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111?wit... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-... https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.00694-10 Covid related links have saturated any searches on viruses in general, and the doom&gloom "reporting"is at the top. There are a lot of papers and examples of what I'm talking about, thoug…

SARS and HiV are certainly not examples where a human virus has evolved to become more contagious but less deadly. SARS was not contagious enough to escape our control efforts, and HiV is mitigated by our anti viral drugs.

Indeed it would be nice if a less severe strain out competed current COVID, but such a thing has never happened before (as far as we know) - and as you point out there is no selection pressure for mildness when death/disability occurs some weeks after the infection has been cleared.

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

#927

Post by somewhereoutth »

mrtnmcc wrote: post #820
somewhereoutth wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore SA got hit quite badly by Beta. Beta and Omicron are closer than either to Delta, so there may be some immune protection from the prior Beta wave. Beta never got established in Europe/US.

Interesting point hadn't heard made before. Did you notice this yourself or were there epidemiologist analysis on this?

I read it somewhere - sorry can't pull up a source right now, but it made sense to me. Purely speculation at this point of course, but perhaps some solid data will come in.

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

#928

Post by sterlind »

justinator wrote: post #764
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…

> I would imagine that a virus would eventually adapt/evolve to a point to where it co-exists harmoniously with the host organism. Well, how much of our own actual DNA is nothing but virus DNA that got stuck in there for nigh eternity? Answer: 8%.[0] [0] https://www.cshl.edu/the-non-human-living-inside-of-you/

DNA integration won't happen with COVID though, it's not a retrovirus so it stays as RNA. I dunno what coexisting looks like for such viruses - maybe like the common cold.

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

#929

Post by chiefalchemist »

kelnos wrote: post #690
chiefalchemist wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well, the narrative being disconnected from facts is a different conversation.

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

#930

Post by throwaway0a5e »

aantix wrote: post #168
ceejayoz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some NFL stadiums host 100k people. Would you go to a game if you knew 243 people were going to be randomly executed at it?

Would you attend the game if it were 11 people? Because that's what you do every time you drive. 11 crash fatalities per 100,000 people. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

>Because that's what you do every time you drive. 11 crash fatalities per 100,000 people

This is a ludicrous abuse of statistics. 11 fatalities per 100k people is 11 fatalities per 100k people's worth of trips. That is a few orders of magnitude less than executing 11 people out of every 100k who show up to a stadium.

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