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I still know no one in Germany who ever had covid, only one person in the US and one in South Africa (who also died from it), so I’m not sure about that.
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If it’s milder than Delta - then that’s good right? Or do the increased cases lead to more hospitalizations than Delta?
It very much looks like Omnicron is an upper respiratory infection vs previous variants that are lower respiratory infections.
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I still know no one in Germany who ever had covid, only one person in the US and one in South Africa (who also died from it), so I’m not sure about that.
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I still know no one in Germany who ever had covid, only one person in the US and one in South Africa (who also died from it), so I’m not sure about that.
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I am also German with an average social circle as I would say. Until the end of last year, I just knew of one case of Covid among all of them. Since then, a few families got it - most of them via kindergarten.
Say what you want about our Covid response but from my point of view we made it fairly well through the pandemic so far.
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I also live in Germany, and similar experience. I rarely know people who have been infected with Covid, and none with Omicron. Omicron is also a bit delayed in Germany (which is good).
Omicron is prevalent here right now.
omicron has solidly taken over Vancouver BC. Anecdotal evidence: in the past two years (except this past week) I have only known 1 person who got covid. In the past week I know over 20 people who have got covid. I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end of covid lockdowns. omicron is taking the world by storm and I wouldn't be surprised if the entire world gets it in the next few weeks.
Those 20 people are fine, right?
If it’s milder than Delta - then that’s good right? Or do the increased cases lead to more hospitalizations than Delta?
Its milder than Delta but way more transmissible. The more people get this, more will be the chances of a new variant which can be more deadly/transmissible.
If we're worried about Omicron mutating to become more deadly, why aren't we worried about the other human coronaviruses doing the same? 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1 that have been around for ages?
There's nothing magic about Omicron, its just a repsiratory virus thats relatively new to humans so there's not so much population immunity. And looks like we're rapidly getting exposed to it, so its about to lose its advantage.
Is it pure luck that Omicron is more transmissible but apparently less severe than Delta? What is to stop the next variant being more transmissible than Omicron but 10 times more deadly?
I know news outlets are really bad for clickbait titles, but I read yesterday that a new variant was detected in South France in the last few days? When will the carnival end and what does it mean?
I've been traveling internationally over the past couple of day. Every person seems to have the sniffles, or to be coughing. I haven't noticed this since covid began, presumably because the masks, sanitizer use, and social distancing have kept the cold and flu down.
We know a lot of people who have had this experience in the last month. Most people seem to have had this cold or Covid recently.
Now, I am suspicious that something is going on here. I have a suspicion that the LFTs are not testing positive for relatively mild Omicron. The LFTs procedure here, which we followed, has been to only swab the nose (they changed it maybe over the summer?) but I have seen many anecdotal reports over the last week of people who tested negative (LFT) with just a nasal swab but positive if they swabbed their throats. This potentially ties in with reports that Omicron mostly affects the throat whereas Delta affects the back of the nose. I have seen no official studies.
It would not surprise me if we find out in a few weeks/months that nasal LFTs have a very high false negative rate with Omicron.
Edit:
Just found this about a small study suggesting exactly what I am suspicious of:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/health/covid-rapid-test-o...
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.04.22268770v...
If it’s milder than Delta - then that’s good right? Or do the increased cases lead to more hospitalizations than Delta?
Scary thing is. Milder disease is a constant factor improvement in hospitalization. But faster spreading (higher R value) is an exponential worsening in hospitalization. It's probably better to have a 50% hospitalization rate and an R value of 0.8 than a 5% hospitalization rate and an R value of 2. After 3 'generations' of spreading the second situation already has more hospitalizations.