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

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

#221

Post by davidw »

spookthesunset wrote: post #207
davidw wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly are they waiting on? The thing that needs to not happen is filling up hospitals. People died where I live because they could not get access to 'elective' surgery due to the medical system being slammed during the most recent Delta wave. Once that's not a factor, things will start getting more normal.

If hospital capacity is such a concern, why has there been just about zero effort in spinning up some kind of capacity to deal with Covid? Wasn't that the entire rationale of these lockdowns in the first place? To build capacity for covid? Like, it's been 2 years. We shouldn't be doing any of these restrictions at all. We should be angry at our governments wasting 2 years of our non-refundable time on this earth whil…

A lot of it is finding the people, beyond the physical space. You can't just 'spin up' nurses like AWS instances. They're in short supply right now, and many are feeling burned out. There's a post going around about a doctor who got assaulted by deranged family members of a man who died. Don't know if it's real, but a lot of people were saying they've experienced similar and are just done with it.

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

#222

Post by Johnny555 »

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?

Probably waiting on hospitals to be fully staffed and less busy.

My sibling moved from being a pedatric nurse to a non-patient care position (not at a hospital). She'd been nearly permanently removed from her pediatric role and moved to be on the front lines for COVID care for over a year with no relief in sight. She spent 2 years in Iraq and said that this is much more tiring and exasperating since she's treating people that largely could have avoided being in the hospital at all.

Her hospital has been cancelling elective procedures, so everyone is suffering from the COVID wave.

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

#223

Post by dpark »

vmception wrote: post #191
dpark wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You specifically mentioned “any major US markets”. Are you admitting to voter fraud now?

> I’ll move back to one of them You’re reading what you want to read, it was worded specifically and intentionally Its not any one of them, its the one that I am registered to vote in.

You literally said any.

But I’m still stuck on why. What is the point in getting yourself involved in something that doesn’t affect you personally? Why is it worth getting yourself involved with someone else’s self governance?

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

#224

Post by spookthesunset »

davidw wrote: post #221
spookthesunset wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If hospital capacity is such a concern, why has there been just about zero effort in spinning up some kind of capacity to deal with Covid? Wasn't that the entire rationale of these lockdowns in the first place? To build capacity for covid? Like, it's been 2 years. We shouldn't be doing any of these restrictions at all. We should be angry at our governments wasting 2 years of our non-refundable time on this earth whil…

A lot of it is finding the people, beyond the physical space. You can't just 'spin up' nurses like AWS instances. They're in short supply right now, and many are feeling burned out. There's a post going around about a doctor who got assaulted by deranged family members of a man who died. Don't know if it's real, but a lot of people were saying they've experienced similar and are just done with it.

When you have virtually unlimited resources you can do almost anything you want. You just have to think outside of the box. If this truly was an emergency, we'd have found a way to staff covid ICU's. Dunno how because it ain't my expertise at all, but there would be a way.

We managed to build giant ships in like 3 or 6 months in WWII. I'm pretty sure we could figure out how to staff 400 or so ICU's with people capable of managing sick covid patients. It might be all these people know how to do... but we could do it. We have almost unlimited resources to do so.

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

#225

Post by zerocount »

andybak wrote: post #198
hammock wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, natural immunity is real?

Please don't post comments like this. It's impossible to work out what your actual point is

I think it's clear he's referring to the fact that natural immunity has protected most of South Africa and thus, the world is freaking out over Omicron. As was suggested by a doctor in South Africa at the very beginning, which was ignored by governments. Of course, excuses for the South African data not aligning with the whole "vaccines are the only answer" narrative are now being created.

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

#226

Post by rightbyte »

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,…

I wonder how many of these increasing share variants you would expect to observe from just random walk. I.e. how much more infectious does a strain need to be to be measurable.

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

#227

Post by 1over137 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #175
fortran77 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And obese! https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n623

Most people are obese.

Most people are not obese. Though in some countries it's certainly getting there. :(

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

#228

Post by rich_sasha »

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,…

This is of course true, but I'd imagine the counterargument and concern is that healthcare runs out of capacity well before the growth slows to a sub-exponential run.

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

#229

Post by jacquesm »

ralfd wrote: post #195
jerlam wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark is the other country with an Omicron-fueled spike, but they have a corresponding increase in deaths: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

But compare that to the delta wave last winter! The infections are 3-4 times higher and the death count is 2-3 times lower (so far).

This isn't unexpected though: Besides a much higher vaccination rate COVID-19 has been doing the rounds now for two years and at some point the people that were highly susceptible will have simply died off. The remainder of the population may deal with current strains better or worse depending on what differences those strains bring to the table, and not all of those differences may end up targeting the same populations.

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

#230

Post by cpncrunch »

richarme wrote: post #155
cpncrunch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, my comment wasn't "factually untrue". The 7-day rolling average is steady at 9 or 10 according to the covid data on google. It hasn't changed (at least, up until yesterday's data). Things may change now, as there were 57 deaths just announced today.

> I'd like to see a source for your claim that numbers in hospitals are decreasing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29644613

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