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

washingtonpost.com

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

#151

Post by kevinmchugh »

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…

I'm not surprised those who choose to go to karaoke don't wear masks

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

#152

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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?

>What exactly are they waiting on?

Public opinion.

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

#153

Post by dontblink »

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?

Normalcy. Right now everything is taken with an abundance of caution. Once stabilization occurs, normalcy will return (even if it's changed).

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

#154

Post by yosito »

barbs wrote: post #41
yosito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw some charts out of South Africa today showing that deaths are starting to rise with a three week delay. I'm optimistic that Omicron is less severe, but it's also possible that it's just taking a little longer than expected to start killing people.

Do you have a link for those charts?

I can't find the ones I saw before, but the OWID charts show that deaths in South Africa are still rising, and Omicron case counts just started rising 3 weeks ago, so I'm still holding my breath. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

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

#155

Post by richarme »

cpncrunch wrote: post #55
volkse wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Similar situation in Denmark as well. Huge number of omicron infections, but deaths haven't budged and number of covid patients in hospitals are actually decreasing.

Your comment is factually untrue. 17 people died yesterday. Didn't have this high number of deaths since last winter before vaccines, and from the chart deaths seems to have increased 10-fold compared to a month or two ago. I'd like to see a source for your claim that numbers in hospitals are decreasing.

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

#157

Post by sokoloff »

howinteresting wrote: post #77
GDC7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Let's look at years of life lost, then, shall we? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3 > YLL in heavily affected countries are 2–9 times the average seasonal influenza And that is after all the societal changes to deal with the disease. I personally think that YLL of 2-9x the flu after mitigations clearly justified the mitigations.

It's fascinating to me that a multiple of 2-9x the median flu in YLL (after mitigations) in only a few countries "clearly justifies" the quite disruptive mitigations. I look at the same measures (and I'm implicitly estimating that the non-vaccine mitigations were around 50% effective) and conclude that the mitigations [excluding vaccines] were, in retrospect, probably not justified for as long and as impactful as they were on daily routines.

They were (IMO) justified early on when vaccines were not available and when we knew a lot less about the effective treatment regimens.

Imagine a reliable oracle tells you: "The flu season in 2025 will be 10x as bad as the typical flu season." Is that cause to shut down restaurants, bars, close offices, schools, and universities, shutdown borders, etc, etc. for 12 months to make it only 5x as bad? For me, that's cause to make sure I get the flu vaccine that year, wash my hands a little more, not go to work if I'm ill, and pet my dog.

Some jackass tried unsuccessfully to light his shoes on fire and 20 years later we're still taking our shoes off at the airport. I hope we have a more threat-appropriate response over the long-run here.

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

#160

Post by SamPatt »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #152
toolz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>What exactly are they waiting on? Public opinion.

Imagine running an organization based on public opinion, especially an opinion so wide as the whole internet.

Groupthink is so dangerous.

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