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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

#281

Post by joe_the_user »

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...

I hope omicron is a gateway to the virus becoming less and deadly until it's essentially like the common cold.

But it seems unwise to be certain that will be what happens. Worst case scenario is omicron running wild mutates into something much more lethal and a bit more contagious.

With a variety of uncertainties imaginable, it's understandable that authorities are currently taking omicron as a serious threat even if it seem like there's a significant chance it will be a "good thing" as you say.

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

#282

Post by jandrese »

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...

One of the questions asked early on with COVID19 was how we managed to end the Spanish Flu 100 years ago without vaccines. When I saw this question posted it was typically met with shrugs and "not sure".

I think Omicron offers a possible explanation. An even more infectious variant with lower mortality should out-compete the deadly variant over time. After a few mutations like that it should be no worse than the seasonal flu--which has its own death toll each year, remember.

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

#283

Post by JoshuaDavid »

cdrini wrote: post #193
joshuahedlund wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's so significantly more contagious, that even though a smaller percentage of infected people will require ventilators, the absolute number will be high enough to overwhelm hospitals. This is a legitimate theoretical concern, however empirically it looks like South Africa's hospitalizations are peaking at slightly more than half their previous wave, with deaths on pace to peak even lower[1][2] [1] https:/…

I believe the scientific consensus is that there isn't enough data to discount that theoretical concern. There's still too much uncertainty on how things will pan out, so the recommendation is boosters + some restrictions. They're not going to make a bet when people's lives are at stake, which seems reasonable to me. With more data coming out, I personally do hope we find that that concern is very unlikely. The situa…

They are going to make decisions based on incomplete information when people's lives are at stake, decisions where deciding wrong can have material consequences to lives and livelihoods, because choosing not to act is itself a decision.

I do think that the decision that was made to keep pushing boosters and basically do nothing else is probably the correct one, but not because it was the default thing to do and we have to wait until there's incontrovertible evidence that the default action will lead to ruin before doing anything else.

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

#284

Post by tedsanders »

thelittleone wrote: post #194

It has been really interesting to observe the hysteria. From the moment they chose the name Omicron, which sounds like a nemesis in a Transformers movie. But more in observing how friends and family back home latch on to the media (which they remain constantly plugged into). The repetition of buzzwords and how enthusiastically they talked about booster shots now being 5 months instead of 6. I don't know anything at a…

For what it's worth, I have observed zero hysteria. Took a flight last week out of California. Airport was packed. Plane was packed. No one was really distancing. People wore masks, but were pretty chill about it. Most masks looked to cloth or surgical, rather than tight-fitting (K)N95. People took masks off to eat. An old guy kept pulling his down each time he talked to his friend. Some kids ran around without masks and the parents didn't care. No one was hysterical. No one was shaming people without masks. And this is in a world with a million Americans dead and a new highly contagious variant spreading around the world.

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

#285

Post by slaw »

com2kid wrote: post #235
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…

> 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? The first wave of COVID killed a bunch of doctors and nurses, and burnt a lot more out. Then Delta made a bunch more doctors and nurses quit, with wide reports right now that 20% of nurses are looking to up and leave their job. Talking to my friends who are nurses, they are shor…

> The first wave of COVID killed a bunch of doctors and nurses

I never heard about it before. Could you provide link to your claim?

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

#286

Post by davidw »

tdfx wrote: post #253
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…

People will say "well you can't just make more nurses and doctors in 6 months!" However, had we built or repurposed buildings as COVID-specific treatment centers there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training, allowing the highly trained nurses and doctors to supervise the process and multiply their effectiveness. Combat soldiers learn basic e…

> give up another year

IDK, I'm in a fairly 'cautious' state, and things are pretty normal. My kids are in school, stores are open. Restaurants are open. People wear masks. It's not really a big deal.

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

#287

Post by johnisgood »

davidw wrote: post #189
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? 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.

We reduced the number of surgeries dramatically around the whole country, but it has nothing to do with hospital capacity nor shortage of any sort.

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

#288

Post by spookthesunset »

dragonwriter wrote: post #279
tdfx wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will say "well you can't just make more nurses and doctors in 6 months!" However, had we built or repurposed buildings as COVID-specific treatment centers there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training, allowing the highly trained nurses and doctors to supervise the process and multiply their effectiveness. Combat soldiers learn basic e…

> there would be a fairly standard treatment protocol that could be applied by people without 4-8 years of medical training No, there wouldn't, because, among other things, comorbidities that must be managed, especially in the population most COVID hospitalizations come from. > Combat soldiers learn basic emergency medical techniques, even to the point of running IVs Which allows them to serve as, basically, better-t…

> which is useful on the battlefield to keep people alive to get to proper medical care

This is a battlefield. It's an emergency, remember? Do whatever it takes. We forced people to sacrifice their short-ass lives in lockdown so these people could figure it out. Where is the results? 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue locking down to protect a healthcare system they had 2 years to build up specifically to manage covid.

It's as if every one of our lives is worthless in the eyes of people making excuses. No. We paid with our time--something we'll never get back. It is a complete travesty that governments continue to blame the public for their own inability to figure shit out.

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

#289

Post by oneoff786 »

svara wrote: post #246
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,…

Not sure what you're trying to say. Of course there is a limited pool of people to infect. And various effects can cause infections to spread in multiple waves even far from herd immunity. And yet, you can go from a few rare cases in your country to hospitals overflowing in a couple of weeks. That's because of exponential growth, obviously.

The point is that

1) exponential growth has consistently ceased before the hospitals overflowed too bad

2) exponential growth confuses readers into thinking that a small boost in spread rate means many more will be infected. This isn’t true because the exponential phase is brief and is a progression towards a ceiling defined by the graph, not an arbitrary period of time. Like what we are seeing in South Africa right now.

The big problem is that people think an increase in the spreading rate will cause an exponentially higher number of infected. But it won’t. The model is not appropriate.

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

#290

Post by chasd00 »

vmception wrote: post #113
dpark wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ll move back to one of them just to vote the governor and health director out. Am I correctly understanding that you intend to move to a different region for the sole purpose of voting against restrictions that otherwise would not apply to you? You’re literally trying to be a problematic immigrant. I remember when I was in college a bunch of people did exactly this. They registered for residency in the state sole…

It would be where I’m already registered to vote, dont worry Tie any restriction to ICU capacity and only if efforts were made to expand ICU capacity Otherwise that means the state was only pretending to care because it was easier to govern if people werent doing anything If the state actually cares increase the ICU bandwidth or tell us the challenges encountered doing that and how those are being addressed

one thing that isn't communicated very much is ICU capacity goes up and down with need. "ICU at 98%" means it's 98% at that point in time, ICU capacity can be added as needed up to a point. In the other direction a hospital can be at 50% ICU capacity, decide they can dial back ICU beds and then percent util jumps even though they may have fewer ICU patients. Hospitals likely have a target ICU utilization and add/remove beds to hit that target as much as possible.
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