Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado • Hacker News Board

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#511

Post by drusepth » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:36 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #372

scrubs wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention. 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 ha…

To be fair, nowhere in the US (that I'm aware of) is close to the % population vaccinated numbers necessary for a semblance herd immunity. According to the CDC, only 62% of the US is fully vaccinated, with only 35% of those also having had a booster.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#512

Post by guimplen » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:36 PM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #473

babypuncher wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old normal will not return until our hospitals are also back to normal

Our daughter had a fever for four days over the holidays. We literally could not even get into see a pediatrician or an urgent care. There was nothing available. If a minor cold is enough to cripple our healthcare system, you have to wonder if maybe there is some other reason our hospitals aren't able(or willing) to go back to normal. I spend thousands of dollars on health INSURANCE every year. If I go to the ER it s…

Don't be so selfish. Insurance lawyer or manager cannot make his lambo buy itself.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#513

Post by supperburg » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:37 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #481

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media fear drum has no effect on whether my local hospital is overwhelmed. Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as hospitals are good.

> Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as hospitals are good. Wait. "Everyone can make their own decisions"? And those decisions are completely rational, not affected at all by what the media is saying? I would argue the complete opposite. Why are you trying to bend the argument into hospital capacity? Is your argument that if hospital capacity is under threat then it's ok for the media and government to l…

Yeah and nobody mentions that our hospitals were already stretched to their limit before Covid because they are for-profit corporations. They should have had capacity for a pandemic because everyone knew there would be one. It’s poor planning, not Covid. They will add capacity and then what will your argument be?

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#514

Post by CPLX » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:37 PM UTC

gz5 wrote: post #84

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.

I'm not a big fan of this new trend of some random Twitter personality suddenly becoming the go-to source of information on COVID.

Granted, it seems true that she's actually an epidemiologist, though not unusually notable as an assistant professor at a mainstream state school. As far as I know she doesn't have unusual access to information, or a hands on role, she's drawing from public sources and doing analysis.

Which, is fine. But what makes me nervous about this trend is that she's now like almost a household name. She's built a personal brand around this image as being the up to the minute source of information, and the audience she's developed has a certain profile. They're basically looking for someone to tell them how bad everything is and how scary everything looks, backing it up with details so her audience can feel smart when they relay all this info to their friends.

The minute that COVID isn't actually something to worry about her audience is gone and she goes back to being a random obscure civilian.

Which is an incentive structure that makes me pretty sure I know what she'll be posting tomorrow, and a week from now, and so on.

I realize the mainstream news media isn't any better. But still, it's an odd new development that people are mostly seeking out the level of fear/concern they want in their news rather than the other way around.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#515

Post by everybodyknows » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:41 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.

Do you know what was the test that distinguished omicron from delta? Asking because my local county health department seems lacking in that technology.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#516

Post by timr » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

gz5 wrote: post #84

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.

From her "scary" post:

> In certain jurisdictions, though, we’ve met or exceeded last winter’s hospitalization peak. We can see this in many states in the Northeast, including New York.

When presented with a new source, I tend to judge people based on their perspectives on things I know about. This one is a case study in being misleading, while not technically lying. New York state has only "met" last winter's hospitalization peak if you look at trend lines. If you look at hospitalizations per day, we clearly haven't. Also, of course, "last winter's peak" was not really any sort of stress for the hospital system at all (compare to the spring 2020 wave, which was), and it happened at a time when things were much more restricted than they are now:

https://covid-19.direct/state/36

The statement is more correct for NYC data, where hospitals have exceeded last winter's peak on a trend-line and per-day basis:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.pag...

...but it's still misleading, because again, this is a fraction of previous waves in NYC, but also, a lot of these hospitalizations are going to ERs for testing. Government officials are pleading people to stop going to the hospital for trivial things:

https://twitter.com/MarkLevineNYC/status/1478353835793997827

I don't know if she is intentionally trying to mislead, or just doesn't have a good handle on the data, but this is the sort of thing that makes me skeptical of a person's other claims.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#517

Post by abduhl » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

babypuncher wrote: post #436

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those viruses are actually very deadly, and most of those vaccines actually make you not-get-it-at-all. The only comparable virus is the flu, and the vaccine is equally shitty [0] as the covid vaccines are. Death rates for young and (currently healthy) people are very very low (lower than traffic deaths in my country, much lower than suicides), and they are the most affected by the lockdowns. By reopening and…

800,000 dead americans in less than two years sounds pretty deadly to me

Yes, but that’s because you’ve only started listening to people talk about the number of dead folks recently. 800k isn't nothing but it’s not exactly earth shattering.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#518

Post by soperj » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #435

pjc50 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be infeasible to stop omicron through non-extreme lockdown measures. What I'm not yet clear on is: - to what extent does recovering from Omicron prevent Delta? - how long does that immunity last? We probably are going to have to live with this, but I'm not sure many countries have caught up to the healthcare staffing implications of that.

> to what extent does recovering from Omicron prevent Delta?' If Omicron is reaching 100% prevalence in so many locations, I wonder if Delta will not be as much of a threat anymore? It seems like there haven't been any infections with older variants for a long time now.

Omicron evolved from Beta, which had pretty much bottomed out in the human population. They believe it evolved in mice. Just because Delta is disappearing in the human population doesn't mean it's gone.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#519

Post by everybodyknows » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #150

causality0 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do we know if a previous omicron infection helps confer immunity to future omicron infections?

> ... preliminary evidence WHO based their recommendation on earlier this week: People who have previously had COVID-19 could become reinfected more easily with Omicron.

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

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#520

Post by passivate » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #163

ipspam wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I’m no fan of Biden but let’s be clear that this transcends administrations. Trump put Fauci on TV every day, Trump granted billions to big pharma. Just like Biden takes the fall for dumb wars started by Bush and Obama, he’ll take the fall for Trumps dumb fight against COVID. The problem is that we have institutions like the Fed and the CDC and WHO that have been proven completely incompetent when power is deferred t…

>the Fed and the CDC and WHO that have been proven completely incompetent when power is deferred to them.

I'm curious what criteria you used to make that assessment? Also, I don't know what you mean by "power" being deferred to them. What extra power was given?