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Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

covid19.colorado.gov

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Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#111

Post by chubot »

Bellend wrote: post #38

As someone else mentioned and I agree that I hope we are at the end of covid lockdown potential but is that realistic? 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 S…

As far as I understand that's not likely because the it would be maladaptive for the virus. If there were a really deadly variant in South Africa, then 1) it wouldn't spread as fast because viruses need live hosts to spread and 2) people would change their behavior before it reached the entire world.

That is, Omicron is mild so people likely didn't change their behavior too much. If you saw a lot of people around you going to the hospital, you would likely stop going out so much. (Some people knew many people going to the hospital during the pandemic; others saw none for years. The infection was very unevenly distributed. On HN I expect most people are remote workers and know few people getting infected.)

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#112

Post by gilbetron »

rocqua wrote: post #12

I thought that a second variant was essentially an independent stochastic process. If I have that right that suggests that, had Omicron not occurred Colorado would currently be Corona-free. I doubt that is true though. Maybe some of the people who now have Omicron would have gotten Delta later on? I don't see how one variant can truly extinguish another variant otherwise. But I am hoping someone here knows better tha…

Your bodies response to a virus makes it difficult for another virus to take hold, but not impossible. There's a lag in the body's immune response when a virus first is detected, and then another lag while the body builds up the defenders (antibodies and other things). So for someone to have multiple viruses at the same time, largely the exposure has to happen at the same time. The more different the viruses are, the more likely they can be in the body at the same time in a meaningful number. When an immune system is "all revved up", it is very hard for a few thousand virus cells to get exponential growth going needed.

Antibodies (and b-cells and t-cells) for Delta work ok enough against Omicron, and vice-versa. Since Omicron is spreading so fast, it is able to get to more bodies faster than Delta, so Delta has no where to go. Delta did the same to previous variants.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#113

Post by monological »

etchalon wrote: post #109
benjaminwootton wrote: post #103

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

I'm not sure if we can say it's "over". People were saying the same thing after the Delta waves started subsiding and behold … Omicron.

But now we’ll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#114

Post by nradov »

shmel wrote: post #88
CodeGlitch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a good take on it: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-latest-nhs-backlog-is-... > Professor Andrew Hayward, of University College London, earlier told Sky News that it is unlikely there will be a variant more severe than Omicron. He said: "This one will be hard to outcompete... given how successful it is." Professor Hayward added that for a "variant to stick", it needs to have "some advantage over the exist…

I remember 6 months ago some researchers also said that Delta was so contagious that it is very unlikely that even more contagious variant arises. Oh well, sometimes unlikely events happen.

Based on what we see in other viruses, the practical evolutionary upper limit on R0 for respiratory viruses appears to be about 18.

https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/what-is-r0/

Preliminary data on the Omicron variant indicates an R0 value in the 7 - 10 range. So SARS-CoV-2 might still have a little more room to evolve even higher contagiousness.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#115

Post by rafale »

etchalon wrote: post #109
benjaminwootton wrote: post #103

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

I'm not sure if we can say it's "over". People were saying the same thing after the Delta waves started subsiding and behold … Omicron.

It's hard to imagine a more transmissible covid variant for a layman such as myself. I wonder if microbiologists are able to model the maximum theoretical transmission Sars covid is capable of.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#116

Post by opwieurposiu »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #102
opwieurposiu wrote: post #91

There are 15k covid RNA in every ml of sewage coming out of boston right now. Figure 200l a day of sewage per person and that is a lot of covid. I would hold off on eating oysters for a bit. https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

That's not how viruses work. Early in the pandemic researchers swabbed lots of surfaces and while they were able to amplify COVID DNA from a bunch of the swabs, they were not able to successfully culture a single sample from any surface, which included the hospital room of a patient on a respirator where the virus would have been beyond abundant.

It's how norovirus works, and sometimes hepatitis too:

https://www.livescience.com/62485-how-does-norovirus-get-int...

Some harvesters will hold oysters in sterile water for a few days to clean them out (Depuration). This usually works but it is hard to know for sure if the one on your plate got this treatment or not.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#117

Post by tinus_hn »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #103

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

It at least is the end of managing the pandemic. Whether you want to or not, there is no locking down against this version.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#118

Post by causality0 »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #103

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#119

Post by systemvoltage »

time_to_smile wrote: post #104

I don't think it matters if omicron is ultimately worse or not, nobody cares anymore. I was out visiting a gym yesterday, in an area with sky rocketing cases, and no one was wearing masks. They talked multiple times about how much they cared about health, without even a hint of irony. I was initially put off, but realized that this is just the world we're in. In two weeks we'll find out if the calculus of lower death…

I have a feeling we are gonna want more things to worry about. Done with the pandemic? Let’s latch on to something to make sure 1) You have no kids 2) We keep increasing the power of the government measures 3) Equality meaning we stoop to the lowest level, not bring up the baseline 4) Keep eroding the standard of living.

Even if we are a space faring civilization, these people will make it uncool to “pollute” space or would be against fusion power if we are able. I can already see progressives against SpaceX.

No optimism for you!

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#120

Post by rixrax »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #103

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

I guess it depends on a few things:

- how long the immunity gained from having recovered from Omicron lasts

- how well that immunity protects against other current (and future) variants of covid

- what kind of new strains of covid appears in next several months / years that may replace Omicron

- how many people we are able to get vaccinated globally

- advances in new and better vaccines becoming available (complete with antiviral pills etc)

And probably quite a few other factors that weren't on top of my layman head...

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