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

#261

Post by tdrdt » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #147

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

Every virus infection can turn into a long recovery. There is no proof this is longer for Covid-19.

The Epstein-Barr virus for example can make you tired for months or years.

I am not saying long Covid isn't a thing, but it is not 'special' in any way.

Virus infections can cause damage. Years ago I had an infection that damaged a nerve. So virus infections can leave marks. But most of the time, as with Covid, you will recover from it.

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

#262

Post by baxtr » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #242

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…

Does it even matter? Covid is here forever. Doesn't matter if the next variant is "good" or "worse" or "horrible". It's here forever. We cannot continue playing this restriction / mandate game any longer. We have something like a dozen vaccines globally, multiple treatments, etc. We've had 2 years for government's to build healthcare capacity to handle any "surge" we get and it is no longer fair to the public to keep…

Thanks for expressing how I feel. Winter was always the worst season for me. With Covid it has become unbearable. I’ve lost 50% of my life quality.

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

#263

Post by joshuahedlund » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

nooneisanon wrote: post #220

joshuahedlund wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exhibit B will be the UK. Their cases started spiking about two weeks ago. So far their hospitalizations haven't budged and are even a bit lower than they were a month ago, less than a quarter of their pandemic peak[1] [1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

If you're looking at the UK the daily numbers for London (which is ahead of the rest of England, and the rest of the UK) are here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...

Thanks. Looks like you can filter my link by London as well, which shows hospital admissions have doubled in the last 10 days from about 1/6 to about 1/3 of the previous peak (though patients in hospital is lower at 1/4, possibly reflecting shorter stays but hard to say). London cases have continued spiking since but may possibly be peaking now (not sure how much lag there is in backdating reported cases here) so it will be interesting to see how much the hospital numbers rise from here.

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

#264

Post by adzm » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #127

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,…

If you're right, that would be disappointing, because it means there's less immunity gained than I was hoping, for the (relatively small) amount of hospitalization we've seen. And I (uneducated on the matter) would expect that if it's not really getting around that much, it would not displace delta. But I've heard some claims that it already has started to displace Delta, though not from a source I'd feel confident c…

The CDC estimate was a projection, not an actual recording of data.

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

#265

Post by School-Cotton » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

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.

> I personally think that YLL of 2-9x the flu after mitigations clearly justified the mitigations

To properly debate this claim we need to know (1) the baseline -- how many YLLs are caused by flu?, and (2) how many YLLs were _saved_ by the mitigations. (Would we have had 2x more Covid deaths without them? 10x? 1.1x?)

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

#266

Post by lb0 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

Talanes wrote: post #245

donquichotte wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. It is mind boggling to me how politicians and scientists (well, mostly MDs) keep talking about exponential growth and make horrible predictions, without realizing that exponential growth is never sustainable - a logistic growth is what often happens in reality if resources are limited.

Asking politicians to not over-estimate exponential growth is like asking water not to be wet.

Not understanding what you are both getting at ... the situation has maybe changed now.

But before, here at least, it was repeatedly underestimating the in the aftermath clearly visible exponential growth, exactly as the r factor is calculated? Which scientist/MD doesn't understand there is a saturation, in the extreme even schoolers understand you cannot have more than 100% infected.

Yes, at some point it is becoming logistic, but the previous waves were not about getting anywhere there, but going from 0.1% to 1% or more, and there it was truly exponential growth and overwhelming the health care system, what the start of that logistic curve is about..?!

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

#267

Post by spookthesunset » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

throwhauser wrote: post #259

spookthesunset wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capabl…

> When you have virtually unlimited resources you can do almost anything you want. > Dunno how because it ain't my expertise at all, but there would be a way. What makes you so sure?

I mean again I'm no expert but it seems to me that if all these people are supposed to do is treat exactly one illness, it would be possible to train a certain set of people on how to manage 80% of the workload and escalate the exceptions to somebody with more knowledge.

It isn't like this staff has to treat anything else.

Just an idea. Like I said, I'm no expert but the fact that absolutely nobody has attempted to figure it out is bullshit. They haven't even tried. They just keep throwing out excuse after excuse and blaming the public for their failures.

They literally have almost unlimited resources. They could get shit figured out somehow.

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

#268

Post by School-Cotton » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #247

nradov wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't seriously expect people to continue to practice social distancing. That is absurd.

You’re right, social distancing is no more realistic for many people than maintaining a healthy diet and exercise routine. My point is that we have tools to stop these diseases, we just view using these tools as worse than getting the disease.

But this contradicts your earlier comment where you attributed it to poor decision making, misinformation, and so on.

If one indeed puts greater value on "not indefinitely social distancing" than on "a slightly decreased risk of death or serious complications from Covid", then the decision not to continue social distancing is a good one.

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

#269

Post by lolc » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

anonred wrote: post #144

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?

My current Best Guess from reading Reliable Internet Sources(tm):

> What’s the hospitalization rate and long term effects from Omicron COVID?

Hospitalization could be about the same. While we see decreased hospitalisations in South Africa, the assumption is that this is due to widespread immunity from exposure to earlier waves and vaccinations. For the last two weeks, Omicron has been hitting populations that have higher shares of naive subjects. Now the first results on hospitalizations are coming in. Refreshing my tabs constantly :-)

I assume that long-term damage is related to immediate severity, so it's likely not going to be worse. But I'm out on a twig here.

> Do we have sufficient data to suggest that it’s milder than Delta etc?

Suggestive evidence of mildness is being discussed. No conclusions.

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

#270

Post by davidw » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #224

davidw wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capabl…

Vaccines were readily available; perhaps no one predicted quite so many people would avoid them, preferring to take a chance suffocating to death. Administering vaccines is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than expanding hospitals.