Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD, has a nice substack from perspective of an epidemiologist. Two notable recent Omicron posts on that substack: The potentially scary aspects: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa... The potentially good news: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/there-is-good... Obviously it is still early, but imo those 2 posts give a decent lay of the land.
" We can easily see that in many graphs, but my favorite is below from New York City, showing a clear distinction in hospitalizations among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated people " I don't see this as much here in Ontario. Among the vaccinated as of today there is a 10.10/100k hospitalization status vs 16/100k for the unvaccinated (and 11.9 for one-dose). The hospitalization rate among the vaccinated is climbing…
Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
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Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have omicron right now (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold (certainly wouldn't call it "battling omicron"). I have zero problems with getting this each year.
Congratulations. Both my wife and I (double vaxxed for 5 months, not boosted yet although were just about to do so) caught Omicron-flavoured Covid in the lead-up to Christmas and it wiped us out each for 2-3 days each, with a combination of fatigue, aches, fever, and violent coughing. Certainly worse than any cold or flu we've had up until that point. I still have a pretty nasty cough and a throat inflammation. Aren'…
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#333Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?
In Europe they definitely will with increased surveillance and digital IDs that have proven to do nothing to stop covid (as initially portrayed), but that won't stop govs from pushing them onwards and dehumanising any group who doesn't want to comply with their coercive measures.
It's an interesting time for people who really value freedom and human rights.
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's been over ever since the vaccines became widely available. After vaccination many of us went back to normal and haven't looked back. Huge bureaucracies just take a long time to change course and some simply refuse to recognize that it's endemic for whatever reasons.
> A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. > An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time In no way has "rapid spread of infection disease across multiple continents" ended. The past few weeks should…
I mean... did we have a "cold pandemic" or a "flu pandemic" before 2020? I'm pretty sure most of the planet had a cold every winter, and we just lived with it. Same with the flu... risk-groups died, and noone bothered the young with it, we just called it "normal life".
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#335Just giving my 2 cents. Got boosted 3 weeks ago. Now I have covid. Everything is fine, feels like the least ill i ever was from anything. But I wanted to state that omnicron is a beast. I did wear a ffp2 mask with nearly every social contact and if we didnt wear mask we would test ourself. I am sure I got it from the streets from people passing by. That said I am in the french alps and it was vacation time here. And…
Maybe it's time to start taking the wear 2 masks advice seriously.
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#336Can anyone point me to a reliable source that explains in layman's terms why one cancels out the other and it's not possible to have both (say) delta and omicron at once. Somewhat tongue in cheek, but since cancellation seems to be the case, could we not create a version that was 100x more transmissible than omicron but completely benign? Cane toads in Australia aside ;)
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've also found this blog to be useful: https://thezvi.substack.com
Calling zvi's blog "useful" is an understatement, he's practically a lesser deity of covid-19 modeling.
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Severe outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita, in people who are not vaccinated. With omicron? I have not seen any data to support that.
I mean, it's pretty early to be drawing conclusions about this with omicron. Especially since it hit right as people in most of the vaccinated world were hitting 5-6mo since their second shots. That doesn't mean it's "unfalsifiable" it just means it hasn't been yet. That said, I don't think the null hypothesis is suddenly "vaccines do nothing" for some reason. It's clear enough it spreads more easily but that doesn't…
From the very beginning, the South African medical authorities were screaming that this variant was producing far fewer hospitalizations OVERALL (despite higher case numbers) than the delta/alpha did.
But because they are a third world country, and the news media in the West is biased towards bad news, they chose to treat this positive data as suspect. It the SA scientists had talked about how horrible it was, they would have taken it as gospel.
Those of us who were looking at the data knew otherwise.
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dumb question that's been vaguely nagging at me: If a host can have both at the same time, in what sense are they competing? There are plenty of cells to infect in a particular host aren't there?
They're competing to infect the next hosts in the chain. With two present, the one that can get itself passed on more often wins overall.
Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
#340Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?
As far as I can tell, there ends up being no practical difference between "the pandemic is over" and "this virus will be in circulation forever". People use one phrase or the other to emphasize different concerns.
If omicron means we'll all get it in the next few months, and (for the 99.x% survivors) that means that covid is "just another cold/flu", we can stop with the "pandemic" (political), and live as we did before 2020. Old people will need vaccines and boosters and all that (as they did for the flu before 2020), and young people can finally live a normal life again.