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

Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

covid19.colorado.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 703 posts

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#141

Post by TylerE »

monological wrote: post #113
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.

But now we’ll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.

I've been watching over both my parents the past week. Both Omicron cases.

"Very mild" is... not accurate. It hasn't hospitalized them, but even without quarantining, they'd be incapable of living anything like a normal life.

The common cold it most certainly IS NOT.

(Both are double vaxxed and boosted, btw)

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#142

Post by hitpointdrew »

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?

>Surely this is the end of the pandemic?

Yes, welcome to the endemic. Covid is here to stay, it doesn't matter if 100% of the world were vaccinated tommrow, covid would not go away. It doesn't matter if you get the vaccination or not, in your life time you WILL get covid (just like the flu, no one escapes it, you typically get the flu about every decade or so regardless of shots).

We need to just accept this and move back to "old normal".

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#143

Post by causality0 »

polski-g wrote: post #128
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.

You can also catch the cold over and over. 1 or 2 colds a year is pretty typical.

Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage that is potentially cumulative.

If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some serious damn consequences.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#144

Post by pier25 »

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.

> Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway.

Vaccines do not prevent contagion but reduce the chances of severe symptoms.

Also AFAIK vaccines do not lower transmission either.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#145

Post by swasheck »

GoldenMonkey wrote: post #79

In Colorado. Anecdotal, 6 ppl I know here all have covid. 3 of them had their boosters 2 weeks before hand. 1 unvaccinated. Was like a bad cold for all of them.

also in colorado. currently have O. the + tests from our (previously very cautious) friend groups are coming in rapidly. i was boosted in mid-novemeber. _physical_ symptoms feel like a bad cold (cough, congested head, sinus headaches) though i'm afebrile. the mental symptoms are definitely different/stronger. sleeplessness. auditory hallucinations. i'd say mental fog but i can't say that's not related to the sleeplessness.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#146

Post by cecilpl2 »

hereforphone wrote: post #29
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #4

omicron has solidly taken over Vancouver BC. Anecdotal evidence: in the past two years (except this past week) I have only known 1 person who got covid. In the past week I know over 20 people who have got covid. I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end of covid lockdowns. omicron is taking the world by storm and I wouldn't be surprised if the entire world gets it in the next few weeks.

Those 20 people are fine, right?

Also in Vancouver and similar numbers. I know at least 10 people who currently have COVID, including myself and my partner.

It's not mild for all. Two people in particular have been brutally sick for over a week. One spent three days in a self-described "fever dream".

I actually don't know whether I have it, since I'm asymptomatic and can't get a test. But the four other people at my dinner party all got symptoms and two tested positive.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#147

Post by clomond »

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?

Can't say that 'it is the end' yet - but given that pandemics end when there is no more 'room' for the virus to move through naive hosts (places to infect). The fact that Omicron is SO contagious means it will effectively find any pockets of 'fuel' in the adult human population in the coming weeks and months. Everyone will be exposed.

It is probably more accurate to say it is the likely start of the transition between 'pandemic' and 'endemic' phase. We say endemic as it LOOKS like the gap between coronavirus immunity length to viral instability (number of changes) is longer than for influenza. (T-cell response still very strong, original SARS patients almost 2 decades later have cross immunity to SARS-Cov-2, Omicron immunity effective against delta, etc) That said - it is VERY unlikely to be eradicable at this point due to its ability to infect so many different species and circulate and breed in the wild (more so than even influenza).

So new variants down the line in the coming years/decades is more likely (not different than swine flu, bird flu, etc pandemic risks in the recent past). But, if longer term immunity holds up - none of these will have anywhere near the impact given the absence of billions of naive hosts to burn through.

So if we call the transition from pandemic to endemic the end (likely, yes) - then probably.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#148

Post by kenjackson »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #68
akmarinov wrote: post #6

If it’s milder than Delta - then that’s good right? Or do the increased cases lead to more hospitalizations than Delta?

Here's a good take on it: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-latest-nhs-backlog-is-... > Professor Andrew Hayward, of University College London, earlier told Sky News that it is unlikely there will be a variant more severe than Omicron. He said: "This one will be hard to outcompete... given how successful it is." Professor Hayward added that for a "variant to stick", it needs to have "some advantage over the exist…

This doesn't make any sense, unless the variants directly compete against each other. But what we've seen with Omicron is that it can infect someone who just had Delta. So if there's a mutation that can infect someone that had Omicron, but is more severe that mutation can flourish, even if it is less transmissible than Omicron. It just flourishes in parallel.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#149

Post by tasty_freeze »

ipspam wrote: post #125
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?

Quoted post unavailable.

I assume you are referring to the "There is no federal solution to covid" quote. But it was in the context of talking to state governors and Biden saying a federal plan wasn't being forced on them -- that the primary work is done at the state level and the federal level is there to support it.

https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/05/save-ameri...

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#150

Post by CoastalCoder »

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 we know if a previous omicron infection helps confer immunity to future omicron infections?
Post reply on HN