51–60 of 703 posts
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?
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.
Before getting the results I had assumed this was the mutation everyone would get as we leave the pandemic with a natural immunity to this weak strain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Maybe but “exponential growth” is a conspiracy theory promoted by epidemiologists. In reality, growth follows the S-curve, so a milder, faster spreading disease will also saturate the population (flatten the S-curve) much sooner, so overall the impact will be much less.
If the rising part of the S-curve is steep, that means people get infected within a shorter timespan and a corresponding higher load on hospital beds and healthcare personnel, which is what we are trying to avoid with the lockdowns.
What am I missing?
Also, calling exponential growth a 'conspiracy theory' seems unnecessary
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.
Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat, headache, nasal congestion, cough) but “isn’t Codiv”. My whole family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren’t bed bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyw…
> Rapid tests do work with omicron. "But why are some people staying negative in the first days they have symptoms??" This is expected. Symptoms don't = contagious virus This is literally a reflection of the fact that vaccines are doing their job!
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/14720244576403947...
There's a nice diagram with additional information there, and further discussion on other possible factors contributing to the results we're seeing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Maybe but “exponential growth” is a conspiracy theory promoted by epidemiologists. In reality, growth follows the S-curve, so a milder, faster spreading disease will also saturate the population (flatten the S-curve) much sooner, so overall the impact will be much less.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So far in the UK hospitalisations are increasing, but not dramatically so. There's also brouhaha about how London (where the wave is the worst) is at its peak, or already on the way down. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ [bear in mind, the hospitalisation number is not quite what it seems. It is "people in hospital who happen to have Covid", not "people who got Covid so bad they need to be hospitalised". So if you ha…
The "peak" in London last week (if it really was the peak) had 1 in 10 people infected. Those are huge numbers, even if most people don't need hospitalisation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I live in Ireland and I know at least 100 people who have had covid, including my wife, father, mother and 2 sisters. Omicron is prevalent here right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat, headache, nasal congestion, cough) but “isn’t Codiv”. My whole family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren’t bed bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyw…
Michael Mina explains it this way: > Rapid tests do work with omicron. "But why are some people staying negative in the first days they have symptoms??" This is expected. Symptoms don't = contagious virus This is literally a reflection of the fact that vaccines are doing their job! https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/14720244576403947... There's a nice diagram with additional information there, and further dis…
The cold is a minor annoyance to most people's immune system, as almost everyone has prior exposure to cold-causing viruses, but colds still manage to spread. We don't test obsessively or quarantine for "the cold."
If "Symptoms don't = contagious virus", how in the world is the virus spreading at such a blistering pace? Is Mina suggesting that literally everyone is getting this thing, including in highly vaccinated populations, by magic? Occam's razor, combined with basic knowledge about how respiratory viruses work, tells us that people who have symptoms are very likely contagious. They might also be contagious before noticeable symptoms arise, and as they subside.
As for viral loads, with Delta, research found that vaccinated individuals were capable of having viral loads as high as unvaccinated individuals[1]. Until there's data about the viral loads with Omicron, it seems dubious for Mina to suggest that the reports of rapid tests failing to pick up omicron infections are related to low viral loads.
Instead, Mina's 5th tweet is worth paying attention to:
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/14723880511462645...
There is a lot of chatter about how people are getting positive rapid tests when they swab their throats instead of their nasal passages. It's anecdotal at this point, but if we're going to engage in speculation, this seems a much more valid form of inquiry.
The vaccines are very effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and death, and Omicron seems more mild to begin with. It is very effective at spreading in vaccinated populations, which isn't surprising given that the decreasing size of the SARS-CoV-2 naive population means that the virus is now under pressure to select for immune escape. It's strange to me that a "Epidemiologist, Immunologist, Physician" would tweet as if he didn't know this.
Question: what does "100% prevalence" mean in this context? sorry, it's not clear.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Ireland and I know at least 100 people who have had covid, including my wife, father, mother and 2 sisters. Omicron is prevalent here right now.
I think you know more people who have had it than I know in total.