South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew • Hacker News Board

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#131

Post by babyshake » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

pvarangot wrote: post #75

randomopining wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virus just wants to replicate and spread as much as possible. Sometimes the side effect of this is death etc. If this one spreads super fast, has generally more mild effects... it will ramp up faster, infect all, and may get more severe so that it can last longer in the host and spread more. But the combo of high infectiousness and more mild side effects might be a net negative for this one. If we get a good amount o…

Viruses don't "want", anthropomorphizing COVID like media headlines do is a bit of a "language virus" in and of itself that makes global understanding of what's going on more difficult. AFAIK the virus mutates randomly, and we just see more of the more infectious and less deathly (in the short and mid-term) variants because those are the ones that spread faster and successfully among humans, but attributing even coll…

Is it not reasonable to use the word "want" in reference to natural selection tending to optimize for something?

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#132

Post by Marazan » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

Weekly deaths have doubled 3 weeks in a row.

Yes from a low base, but they have still done multiple doublings.

Fortunately they are on track to only rise 50% this week.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#133

Post by oneoff786 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #116

oneoff786 wrote: post #54

I’ve been tanking some downvotes for the past few days for saying this. Disease spread is only exponential for a brief initial period. It is not a good mental or even general model for how disease spreads. We have two years of observational covid data that shows this to be true. Spread slows down rapidly long before reaching 100%. People hear “5x as infectious” and reason that due to the nature of exponential models,…

It's a bit silly to go "it's less severe" based on death statistics when after two years of Corona waves, there are plain less individuals around for it to kill.

Death of the vulnerable is a thing, which I referenced, but it’s a relatively minor factor compared to vaccinations and immunity build up from past infections. Most people who would die from covid if they caught it did not catch it.

I think it’s a bit silly to fixate on the base stats of the virus rather than it’s actually efficacy against the human population.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#134

Post by BikiniPrince » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #120

toolz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Africa is well under average vaccination rate globally. Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the virus? Of course they've been exposed to the virus, that's exactly why it's interesting to see how their deaths follow cases. There's no indication that the first world, with much higher vaccination rates won't fare better than South Africa, which seems to be faring exceptionally well relative to other c…

He means they were already exposed to another variant so they have some immunity. That immunity may very well work better than the vaccines on omicron - I don’t think we’re far enough in to it to have a great idea of that yet.

They have something like 23% vaccination rate. It is about as raw as it is going to get.

My friends who have it now indicate it is very mild.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#135

Post by martin938 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

globalise83 wrote: post #56

nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

Germany has been running at 500 deaths per day from Delta for several weeks ( https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/de ). The evidence from the UK is that Omicron overtakes Delta in just a few days ( https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... ). As the most recent research in the UK suggests ( https://www.politico.eu/article/omicron-variant-coronavirus-... ), and the data in the parent comm…

No post body was provided.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#136

Post by arghnoname » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #92

vmception wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, if any major US markets reintroduce restrictions, I’ll move back to one of them just to vote the governor and health director out in favor of some hardcore health gambler like De Santis. I played along, now they’re done. edit: the responder assumed something that wasn’t said, and then wrote an essay about something thats not happening and an example from Mississippi. Maybe to save time from having a natural f…

> I’ll move back to one of them just to vote the governor and health director out. Am I correctly understanding that you intend to move to a different region for the sole purpose of voting against restrictions that otherwise would not apply to you? You’re literally trying to be a problematic immigrant. I remember when I was in college a bunch of people did exactly this. They registered for residency in the state sole…

Jurisdictions set their own rules for time of residency before being allowed to vote (e.g., registration X days before an election, Y days of the past Z days in the district, etc). Some people do decide where to live based on political considerations. If they are voting in accordance to the rules set by the relevant jurisdictions, I don't see a problem. This happens on "both sides."

I will note that it's easier to break the rules and commit voter fraud when you can vote by mail. In person voting at least requires that you be physically present on Election Day. I moved to California and got voting materials from whence I came. I did not elect to commit voter fraud and vote, but I could have pretty easily.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#137

Post by kelnos » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

That graph is pretty impossible to read; I can't draw any conclusions from that.

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#138

Post by joshuahedlund » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

cdrini wrote: post #64

nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

That chart is misleading; the rise/spike in deaths is always delayed from the rise/spike in cases. It does seem like Omicron is less deadly than Delta. The big concern is that because it's so significantly more contagious, that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to overwhelm hospitals. Sources: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Larry Brilliant (W…

> because it's so significantly more contagious, that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to overwhelm hospitals.

This is a legitimate theoretical concern, however empirically it looks like South Africa's hospitalizations are peaking at slightly more than half their previous wave, with deaths on pace to peak even lower[1][2]

[1]https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1473642495095496704 [2]https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covi...

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#139

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

pvarangot wrote: post #102

cortesoft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you? Everyone where I am in Southern California still wears a mask inside.

I'm in San Francisco and it depends on the event. For example: - Infected Mushroom in the Midway: hardly anyone wearing masks, irregardless of if they are drinking or not - Chvrches in the Civic Auditorium: most people wearing masks, maybe 20% of the audience unmasked. Even people with drinks mostly just removing it drinking and putting it back on. - Spiderman in the AMC Kabuki: mostly everyone wearing masks - Karaok…

[deleted]

Re: South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew

#140

Post by tjs8rj » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

toolz wrote: post #125

nostromo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad it's more contagious than Delta, because Delta is much worse than Omicron. Sure, I'd rather we didn't have Covid at all, but that's not been a realistic option for quite some time now.

I can't wait until public opinion seems to catch on to the fact that we will never eliminate covid. It blows my mind that we see 100% vaccinated universities going back to online-only learning. What exactly are they waiting on?

This is what a liability state looks like. Nobody gets sued for following the CDC, that same CDC that says you should never eat raw sushi or rare steak