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

#291

Post by raverbashing » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

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,…

Yes, I don't think the SIR models work well in predicting the dynamic of waves

The exponential part is easy and that works, but it's more complicated with isolation of the infectious, refractory periods, etc

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

#292

Post by throwawaytemp27 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

martin938 wrote: post #135

globalise83 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has been running at 500 deaths per day from Delta for several weeks ( https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/de ). The evidence from the UK is that Omicron overtakes Delta in just a few days ( https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... ). As the most recent research in the UK suggests ( https://www.politico.eu/article/omicron-variant-coronavirus-... ), and the data in the parent comm…

Quoted post unavailable.

I think the parent meant that people who had not gotten a vaccine will get omicron, which is hopefully mild, and will hopefully provide good protection. So they probably should have used immunize vs vaccinate.

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

#293

Post by jedberg » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #183

jedberg wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 20% of Americans are triple vaxxed.

Yeah, about 60% double and 70% single. Anyone can get more vaccines for free. Not sure why people support restrictions at this point. If someone doesn’t want to be vaccinated that’s fair enough, but let the rest of us be free.

I’m curious how you think your freedoms are being curtailed at this point? What do you want to do that you can’t?

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

#294

Post by Retric » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

specialp wrote: post #173

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,…

A place where it hit exponential levels with really bad results is here in NY at the beginning. We had no precautions, testing, or vaccines in place yet, and hospitals were overwhelmed. It was honestly a scary time. That was where we started "flattening the curve". Now with vaccines available if there are surges and they are not literally building hospitals on fields like they were near me that is something we have t…

We are currently sitting at at total of over 800,000 COVID deaths in the US and 1,500 COVID deaths per day, which is roughly where it’s been since September 1st. That’s approximately an additional half a million dead people per year.

So yes the vaccine has already saved million of lives, but I sure hope that this is not the new normal this winter or we are going to cross 1 million deaths fairly soon.

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

#295

Post by mardifoufs » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #271

eropple wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I readily admit that I don't know what I'm talking about but at the same time I'm going to insist that my hypothetical situation is definitely correct and the knowledgeable people working on medical staffing and capacity management for their entire careers simply do not know as much as me, a computer toucher." Somehow I remain unconvinced that "thinking outside the box" conjures doctors and nurses into existence or…

> makes those who refuse to work ICUs suddenly interested in the job Then fucking draft them into working in an ICU like you would draft somebody into a war. Build a second story on their house. I don't care. This shit is an existential emergency where we asked hundreds of millions of people to put 2 years of their life on hold to build healthcare up. Figure it out. If healthcare capacity was the reason we did all th…

Exactly. It's crazy how some people think that shutting down pretty much everything within days is a more viable alternative or even more doable than ramping up healthcare capacity in... 2 years. They'll usually wave away the massive repercussions that shutdowns cause but they will become very perfectionist when it comes to standard of care and how we need fully trained doctors and nothing less. It's an emergency, as you said it's not time for perfection because the costs are extreme

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

#296

Post by redisman » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #108

cdrini wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That chart is misleading; the rise/spike in deaths is always delayed from the rise/spike in cases. It does seem like Omicron is less deadly than Delta. The big concern is that 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. Sources: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Larry Brilliant (W…

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.

Is there any reason to think they’ll be mutually exclusive ?

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

#297

Post by jimkleiber » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

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?

I wonder if the approach is similar to managing herpes. We don't yet know how to eliminate it and yet we believe that if someone has a current outbreak (visible sores, etc) than they should avoid sexual contact with others so they don't spread it...until it subsides again.

I may not have all the details right on that, just seems the approach some are taking to covid is the "yes we won't eliminate it and yet we can try to minimize exposure during times of high infectiousness."

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

#298

Post by patcon » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

tdrdt wrote: post #261

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 wil…

Thanks! That's a fresh angle for me.

But isn't COVID novel in the damage it poses to microvascular systems (importantly brain and lungs), compared to other viruses? E.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7556303/

My understanding is that this is still different from other viruses.

So if large swaths of a country get that damage from delta vs omicron vs some future weaker variant, that could have very different public health consequences in the coming decades...

Disclaimer: In tech for over a decade, but once upon a time I did an honours degree in biochemistry, so I'm only maybe half-capable of musing my way through some of these papers :)

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

#299

Post by oneoff786 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

joshocar wrote: post #241

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,…

What about the population of the unvaccinated? What percentage should we expect of the unvaccinated to get omicron given how contagious it is?

It depends on many things and will vary wildly by geography. I’m not suggesting this is a population level trend one can safely piggyback on, unvaccinated. If you are unvaccinated in a community with spread, your odds of getting it are likely comparable, plausibly higher, to previous periods.

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

#300

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #288

dragonwriter wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 specific…

> This is a battlefield.

No, it's literally not.

> It's an emergency, remember?

Yes and all battlefields are emergencies but not all emergencies have the same conditions (and thus make the same measures expedient) as battlefields.

> Do whatever it takes.

Sure, but what you are suggesting is not what it takes, or something that would be reasonably expected to be useful and effective.

> 2 years and these "experts" still want us to continue locking down

We never generally locked down in the US and no one is suggesting lockdowns now, so I have no idea what “continue locking down” is supposed to mean. (Some US jurisdictions had brief and mostly unenforced policies that, if enforced, would have been local lockdowns, but even the on paper policies expired without renewal quite some time ago.)