Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado • Hacker News Board

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#301

Post by nradov » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

rafale wrote: post #115

etchalon wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think we can model it accurately, but we can look to other viruses as examples. The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is still only about half as contagious as measles.

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

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#302

Post by virgilp » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #194

phonypc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... mild symptoms after being vaccinated. It's almost like the vaccine worked or something. How weird.

Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also experience mild symptoms. It's almost like you've got an unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!"

Well you can look at this: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q...

(it's recent data, from NY, so - likely a lot of omicron)

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#303

Post by doubled112 » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

shmel wrote: post #82

oakesm9 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official guidence is that LFT are only to be used if you DO NOT have symptoms. If you have symptoms you should instead be getting a PCR (lab) test. Official guidence: > There are different tests you can get to check if you have coronavirus (COVID-19). The test you need depends on why you're getting tested. > The 2 main tests are: > PCR tests – mainly for people with symptoms, they're sent to a lab to be checked >…

Well, the symptoms according to the NHS are fever, cough and loss of smell/taste. If you have runny nose and sore throat, you don't have coronavirus symptoms. Technically. So you take a LFT, right?

It confuses me how different the rules and "truths" are all over the world.

At least when I caught Delta I had a sore throat and a runny nose to start. That was it for a couple of days.

There was an outbreak in my children's school so the family went to get tested.

It was only after that I got a cough and fever (and positive result). It wasn't until about day five I noticed I couldn't smell.

Public health where I'm at says basically everything is a possible Coronavirus symptom. They list headache, sore throat, runny/stuffy nose, congestion, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea, inability to smell, and pink eye.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#304

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #131

callumprentice wrote: post #123

Can anyone point me to a reliable source that explains in layman's terms why one cancels out the other and it's not possible to have both (say) delta and omicron at once. Somewhat tongue in cheek, but since cancellation seems to be the case, could we not create a version that was 100x more transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in Australia aside ;)

> could we not create a version that was 100x more transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in Australia aside ;) You overestimate our abilities to make viruses that do what we want, let alone to make viruses that do what we want and won't evolve into viruses that do what we don't want after being released into the wild. This is also basically saying "can't we make a transmissible vaccine", and as…

[deleted]

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#305

Post by bratwurst3000 » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #172

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #152

Just giving my 2 cents. Got boosted 3 weeks ago. Now I have covid. Everything is fine, feels like the least ill i ever was from anything. But I wanted to state that omnicron is a beast. I did wear a ffp2 mask with nearly every social contact and if we didnt wear mask we would test ourself. I am sure I got it from the streets from people passing by. That said I am in the french alps and it was vacation time here. And…

Why are you hoping for Covid to become endemic?

Honestly I hope that one day it is gone for good but until then an endemic situation would be somehow better than a pandemic one. I didnt say that clearly and hoping for a, also, bad situation is not the best thing to whish for but after 2 years of pandemic I am whishing for something less bad….

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#306

Post by nostromo » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

callumprentice wrote: post #252

jbeam wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential growth. Lets say that there is one delta infection and one omicron infection in the population. Each delta infection causes two more people to be infected, while each omicron infection causes three more people to be infected. The growth of a single delta infection: 1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 8 -> 16 -> 32 -> 64 Versus a single omicron infection: 1 -> 3 -> 9 -> 27 -> 81 -> 243 -> 729 Omicron started out as 50% of the…

Nod - that explains why omicron grew so quickly but why, in doing so, does delta not persist?

To actually answer the question: because immunity from one transfers to the other.

Omicron is basically a self-administering vaccine that is preventing Delta from spreading as easily.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#307

Post by makeworld » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #118

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.

Yep, especially Omicron.

> This is the first evidence to show us that the rate of reinfection with Omicron is high—3 times higher than Delta. In other words, infection-induced immunity is not doing a great job at stopping Omicron.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#308

Post by tkahnoski » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #131

callumprentice wrote: post #123

Can anyone point me to a reliable source that explains in layman's terms why one cancels out the other and it's not possible to have both (say) delta and omicron at once. Somewhat tongue in cheek, but since cancellation seems to be the case, could we not create a version that was 100x more transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in Australia aside ;)

> could we not create a version that was 100x more transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in Australia aside ;) You overestimate our abilities to make viruses that do what we want, let alone to make viruses that do what we want and won't evolve into viruses that do what we don't want after being released into the wild. This is also basically saying "can't we make a transmissible vaccine", and as…

A bit of a sidebar this was basically the plot of The Last Ship. With infrastructure of the world crumbling how do you distribute immunity without the manufacturing infrastructure.

So yeah I'd put it in a 'last ditch Hail Mary to save the world' type of plan...

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#309

Post by bedhead » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

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?

What you're missing is that we're eventually (arguably right now) going to be referring to colds and other weak mutations of COVID as "COVID" still, and by virtue of still calling it COVID and still having these COVID dashboards, it's never ending. There is no end, it is a new normal for millions. Too many people's brains short circuited, too many people got anchored to March 2020.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#310

Post by convolvatron » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #243

With all the restrictions over the past two years, have we been selecting for hyper-contagious strains?

yes. would letting the original strains run amok freely have been better? I guess more people would have died, but it would have been over sooner.