371–380 of 703 posts
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Our savior Omicron. The ultimate vaccinator. Nature finally had mercy on us.
i wonder what countries like China and New Zealand who are taking a zero COVID approach are going to do. COVID is endemic in the rest of the world except for those places where it doesn't exist at all? I don't see that working.
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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.
Correct. I know several people who are vaccinated yet caught Covid twice. The principle thing to keep in mind, - vaccination is a risk reducer on severity of infection. Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention. - and on that point not getting into the hospital is important. From a management standpoint, we've got to insure demand for hospital resources does not dwarf those same resources. That's the key managemen…
What on earth? Yes they did, all along.
December 2020:
> Fauci Predicts U.S. Could See Signs Of Herd Immunity By Late March Or Early April
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1...
> "I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity."
Talking about herd immunity is definitely saying immunity, and doesn't make sense unless the vaccine prevented transmission.
Then, May 2021:
> Masks off? Fauci confirms ‘extremely low’ risk of transmission, infection for vaccinated
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-extreme...
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If something's a one a million event, happening billions of times per day, it'll happen pretty much constantly. This one, omicron, seems to mostly infect nasal passages and upper respiratory tract. The next, maybe after spending 2 years spreading across all the weasels of upper winchester county, may affect the lungs again. This is a lottery that's less fun to play... (edited for clarity)
Yeah, sure. Who knows what viruses could be spreading and mutating amongst those weasels. It's not like SARS-CoV-2 is the first, and it won't be the last. But when you say > This is a lottery that's less fun to play How exactly do you propose not playing? Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life? We're eventually going to have to start treating Covid the same as we've always treated "the flu" and it defin…
Very few places did lockdowns at any point so I wouldn’t expect that to start now, butthe ones which did were successful in breaking spread. It doesn’t need to be continuous, but it’s clearly effective for preventing huge spikes.
Similarly, we’d save lives and billions of dollars if we established the same social norms which some Asian countries have about wearing masks when you’re symptomatic. It doesn’t need anything like 100% compliance or time to be useful – we appear to have lost an entire strain of influenza this way.
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It's mild for non-vaccinated South Africans as well. The same still applies as always: Vaccinate the risk groups.
Yet the unvaccinated are still overwhelmingly more likely to wind up requiring hospital care than the vaccinated.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD, has a nice substack from perspective of an epidemiologist. Two notable recent Omicron posts on that substack: The potentially scary aspects: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa... The potentially good news: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/there-is-good... Obviously it is still early, but imo those 2 posts give a decent lay of the land.
" We can easily see that in many graphs, but my favorite is below from New York City, showing a clear distinction in hospitalizations among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated people " I don't see this as much here in Ontario. Among the vaccinated as of today there is a 10.10/100k hospitalization status vs 16/100k for the unvaccinated (and 11.9 for one-dose). The hospitalization rate among the vaccinated is climbing…
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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.
You say "over and over" but Omicron is the first variant that actually evades immunity (both natural and vaccine-induced) in a meaningful way. What we don't know is the level of immunity that an Omicron infection will provide. It could actually confer immunity to both itself and previous variants, which would effectively end the pandemic.
But immunity is analogue. A strong, specific, antibody response can prevent infection. A T-cell response can stop infection turning into severe illness and death. Variants can evade antibodies somewhat easily, but find it much harder to evade T-cells. Antibody levels wane in weeks or months (although memory B-cells remain), T-cells remain active for years or decades.
If you had COVID last winter, then there would be a good chance of you getting it again this winter, even if it was the exact same strain. But you'd be much less likely to die of it.
So when does the pandemic "end"? What is a "pandemic"? If tens of percent of the population are catching every winter, but few are dying, is that still a pandemic?
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Hospitals can be unavoidable if you're unlucky and get hurt. Grocery stores, too, but you can minimize your trips. But the other ones? Totally voluntary and avoidable. The public health guidance around COVID has been atrocious, even as scientists learn more about how the disease spreads indoors. We're going to probably need to change our "indoor event" focused culture if we want to have any hope of getting this behin…
> inconvenient to people Certainly. But why is it inconvenient to people? We don't really discuss personal issues in the public space, so I'm forced to use my own examples. My grandma is in her late 80s and soon will be 90. She's had brain cancer decades ago, recovered, but maybe that's finally catching up to her. Our family pretty much murmurs about it behind her back, but her sharp mind simply isn't as sharp as it…
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> inconvenient to people Certainly. But why is it inconvenient to people? We don't really discuss personal issues in the public space, so I'm forced to use my own examples. My grandma is in her late 80s and soon will be 90. She's had brain cancer decades ago, recovered, but maybe that's finally catching up to her. Our family pretty much murmurs about it behind her back, but her sharp mind simply isn't as sharp as it…
There's no reason at all in your comment on reasons to make your parties indoor, instead of outdoor like the GP said. It's like you are replying to a different comment.
Realistically speaking, the party is going to be at a house of one of her children, or grand-children.
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An "outdoor" party these days is a closed tent anyway with heaters. Its practically an indoor party with the same air-flow issues except much much more expensive. Do you think I haven't looked into this?
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?
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i wonder what countries like China and New Zealand who are taking a zero COVID approach are going to do. COVID is endemic in the rest of the world except for those places where it doesn't exist at all? I don't see that working.
Are they still doing zero Covid now?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/china/xian-covid-outbreak-loc...