Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 515 posts

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

#141

Post by gentleman11 »

destitude wrote: post #17
gentleman11 wrote: post #6

There was a brief spike in daily new cases that was extremely high, then it lowered. It will take more than a day or two to know if it is truly subsiding as fast as it’s growing, and what the meaning of that spike was, so this seems premature. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-afri...

"case counts" are also a really bad way for measuring. Media likes to use it because they love sensationalizing things but if we already know this is a "mild" variant with little to no increase in hospitalizations then using "case counts" is really poor unit of measurement.

All the reports about how severe omicron is say they are preliminary. It’s just more jumping of the gun by news agencies. We’ll know more in a week or two

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

#142

Post by pvarangot »

postalrat wrote: post #126
pvarangot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Brain cells don't "want" either.

Nope but we can attribute properties to a group of brain cells that we can call a "human" the property of "wanting" without implanting incorrect analogies that, so far and according to our understanding of consciousness, don't impair the collective spread of the best knowledge we have about how "human" works. If you really literally think COVID wants something you are probably delusional or your understanding of what's a virus is like below high-school level.

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

#143

Post by orblivion »

ufo wrote: post #80
voxadam wrote: post #14

Am I the only one who reads these less than scientific articles as much more than wishful thinking? I mean, I hope this pandemic comes to a close as much as anyone but so many of the recent news articles about the omicron variant being our collective way out of this pandemic seem a bit premature. I understand the theory that viruses become more contagious and less deadly over time but is there an real, peer reviewed…

And that theory about viruses becoming less deadly isn't an universal rule in the first place. For example, smallpox and measles never got less deadly. In many cases, the virus becoming less deadly is because the population acquired immunity from vaccinations or previous infection, not because the virus evolved that way. In the case of covid, one important thing to consider is that people are the most infectious befo…

I wonder if there's extra selective pressure among relatively smart creatures like us. Supposing there's a really nasty disease that manifests after a week, and we're contagious for a few days before. Eventually we'll get wind of it and start being more careful. If it's a less nasty virus, we just won't care enough and let it spread.

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

#144

Post by anonred »

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...

Genuine question as I haven’t been following COVID news closely. What’s the hospitalization rate and long term effects from Omicron COVID? Do we have sufficient data to suggest that it’s milder than Delta etc?

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

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...

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by arn »

wholinator2 wrote: post #111
arn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other related factor is omicron is more likely (than other variants) to infect someone who has been vaccinated or previously exposed to covid. So the number of infected low risk individuals is higher, than with previous strains. The denominator is higher than if, let’s say, delta was let loose in the same population at the same time.

To clarify, omicron is more likely to infect vaccinated or exposed individuals _than the other variants_. NOT omicron is more likely to infect vaccinated people than non-vaccinated people. The wording startled me until I understood the intended meaning.

Correct. Will clarify.

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

#147

Post by patcon »

Even ignoring deaths, "long COVID" is still a very real unknown: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-medic...

As I understand, we don't know much about whether omicron has worse, same, or better outcomes in relation to long-term consequences and persistent symptoms. Pls do share if you've heard otherwise

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

#148

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

Yeah, I've found nightlife tends to adhere to mask usage much less.

It's not necessarily correlated with age either. We went out to eat at a bar-like place that mostly 50-somethings go to. Most people didn't have a mask, even if they were just hanging around the bar doing nothing.

I think some of it is a self selection process. People that think the virus isn't a big deal are more likely to not care about masks, go to these places, and I would bet also not be vaccinated.

My wife and I have discussed this a lot. We are much more likely to do things with people that are taking it seriously but still have a social life, than people that never thought it was a big deal - the latter are much more likely to be taking absolutely zero precautions.

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

#149

Post by hammock »

volkse wrote: post #42
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...

It has been discussed many times before - the issue with the SA data is that 80% of the population have been exposed to the virus (either had it or have been vaccinated) so the deaths not budging there can be very misleading for countries with lower vaccination rates.

Wait, natural immunity is real?

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

#150

Post by codazoda »

galgalesh wrote: post #110
phnofive wrote: post #2

https://archive.md/WJXml

After opening this url on my phone, it waits three seconds and then shows me a scam ad scaring me into purchasing a fake android cleaner app.

Same for me. Full page add, no way to close.
Post reply on HN