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Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#351

Post by furyofantares »

comradesmith wrote: post #328
furyofantares wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vaccine resistant strains is extremely bad news; if it's less severe that would be good, but that remains to be seen while it's obvious now that vaccines are less good against it. We should be pressuring our governments to make paxlovid legal and to encourage work on Omicron boosters, rather than pretending this is good news.

I don’t think this indicates omicron is vaccine resistant. But rather that the current vaccines aren’t effect for because omicron is substantially different from the original covid strain used to develop those vaccines. The same thing happens every year with the flu.

Yes, that's what I meant, and why I advocated for developing omicron boosters in the post.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#352

Post by defaultprimate »

roywiggins wrote: post #269
iso1631 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how Scotland, which kept a mask mandate, and England, which dropped it, affected cases. From start to end of October, cases per 100k, 7 day average Glasgow -- 300->220 Edinburgh -- 210->250 Manchester -- 290->220 Birmingham -- 250->280 4 similar cities, two with mask mandates, two without. And smaller ones Aberdeen -- 267->330 Southampton -- 300->410 Perth -- 320->260 Hereford -- 290->580 So there ma…

There's already data that shows masks work. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/bangladesh-mask-study-do-...

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

"At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (75). A large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2 (76). A recent systematic review found nine trials (of which eight were cluster-randomized controlled trials in which clusters of people, versus individuals, were randomized) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness. Two trials were with healthcare workers and seven in the community. The review concluded that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness (ILI) (RR 0.99, 95%CI 0.82 to 1.18) or laboratory confirmed illness (LCI) (RR 0.91, 95%CI 0.66-1.26) (44); the certainty of the evidence was low for ILI, moderate for LCI."

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/337199/WHO-...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7546829/

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#353

Post by spookthesunset »

notreallyserio wrote: post #83
capdeck wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would still call that a victory overall. Humanity declared victory over every single pathogen to date (eradicated, contained or seasonal) because we are still here and thriving. We should go on with our lives.

In the mean time we should do whatever we can to avoid filling hospitals to capacity.

Maybe build more hospitals? I mean, in march of 2020 we expressly locked down to build up healthcare capacity. Where is it?

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#354

Post by lovecg »

random314 wrote: post #320
mohanmcgeek wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realise that mutation is not something the species can consciously control? How could the virus have mutated to become milder to suit the social response if the society, as it stands today, is continuing to do what they previously did..?

The lockdown prevents severe mutations from replicating because of lockdowns. Milder mutations don't result in lockdowns hence ...

But has this been true in practice? Was any variant successfully stopped with lockdowns? I suppose hypothetically if there’s a new strain with like a 10% fatality rate there will be new extreme measures where that could be the case, but it hasn’t happened yet. Even the extreme early 2020 measures failed to stop the virus.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#355

Post by native_samples »

chimprich wrote: post #334
roody15 wrote: post #175

This is honesty good news. The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear train running full steam. A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world.

> A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world. There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes observed with this variant so far are because of immunity generated by vaccines and prior infections. The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a fanta…

Evidence so far:

- Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths. There's only one reported death so far "with" Omicron, about which there are absolutely no details released whatsoever and which was rather suspiciously announced by the UK PM just before a vote.

- Pathogenicity: all reports from SA say the symptoms are not only extremely mild, but don't actually match COVID symptoms at all. The first person to get it thought they'd simply been in the sun too long. Muscle aches, a slight headache, etc. Basically common cold symptoms.

- Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the overall vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of vaccines.

There's really two ways to look at this. One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed, but it doesn't matter because new COVID is mild.

The other is that really, Omicron isn't a COVID-causing virus at all, and that this marks the end of COVID. Because:

1. The symptoms are different. Different symptoms = different disease.

2. The severity is different. Both are mild but Omicron appears to be super mild. What it creates can barely be classed as a "disease" at all.

3. The virus is different. Much more heavily mutated than any other variant so far, in fact, so much so that some of the DRASTIC people are starting to suspect it may be another lab leak. Unfortunately, there have been scientists doing GoF research on SARS-CoV-2, their papers are public to view.

I think in a properly functioning and rational health system, it would be very hard to describe this new variant as COVID. Based on the evidence and reports so far it would be more rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of the type that occur every year.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#356

Post by roywiggins »

jjgreen wrote: post #275
roywiggins wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgical masks probably help on a population level. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

This is still in peer-review

It's since been published in Science.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#357

Post by hackinthebochs »

rich_sasha wrote: post #37
boringg wrote: post #21

I have a question for anyone who has a serious level of knowledge on virus evolution: As viruses evolve over time is there any correlation to severity - do they have trade offs as they evolve? I am hoping that it would be some kind of trade off that the virus makes in that it can spread more easily but not be as severe (I understand that it is unlikely nature requires a trade-off). I ask as my concern is that while t…

Sort of. Sometimes. Viruses evolve according to evolutionary pressures. I'm surprised we don't see Covid mutations that invalidate PCR tests - perhaps it's too soon, or even, who knows, maybe they are there and we don't know? The common trope is that if the virus is too deadly, then it doesn't have a chance to find new hosts. This is kind-of what happened to "SARS-1" - it tended to kill its hosts before they could pa…

> So there is little evolutionary pressure on the virus to be less deadly - by the time it kills people, we are spent vessels from its point of view.

A variant that infects more people from a single host (assuming everything else held constant) is a positive selective pressure. So increasing the contagious period is beneficial. But the length of the contagious period is inversely related to the timing and strength of the immune response. So we should expect the virus to become less deadly over time, assuming there's a hard limit to its ability to evade a typical immune system.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#358

Post by stickfigure »

chimprich wrote: post #334
roody15 wrote: post #175

This is honesty good news. The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear train running full steam. A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world.

> A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world. There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes observed with this variant so far are because of immunity generated by vaccines and prior infections. The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a fanta…

It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir.

Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly. It will happen eventually, and then covid will be just another common cold.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#359

Post by NoblePublius »

fuzzybassoon wrote: post #278
NoblePublius wrote: post #232

Who cares? If you die with Omicron, you are very old and dying above the average life expectancy, or already sick with chronic preventable illnesses caused by poor lifestyle choices. We should be banning McDonalds advertising, not deputizing waitresses to be vaccination police. If you are not very old or already sick and get omicron, whether you have antibodies or not, you’re going to experience mild symptoms, if any…

This comment adds nothing to the discussion and of course ignores important factors like: * people with cancer or autoimmune diseases * concerning early signals like drastically increased hospitalizations in the under-2 population * unchecked spread allowing further mutations that could be worse It also lacks human decency.

Good point. Let's fire half of all the black people again like we did 2020. You're so empathetic and really looking out for the little people out there.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#360

Post by pwthornton »

roody15 wrote: post #175

This is honesty good news. The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear train running full steam. A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world.

Depends on your definition of require. The flu doesn't require a vaccine, but if we had much higher vaccine uptake each year we would save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. It's possible that with really high vaccine uptake and other measures we could make the flu a lot more rare.

If we end up with a version of COVID that is less deadly and then we decide to not take vaccines seriously, we'll end up with endemic hundreds of thousands or millions of people dying every year. In the U.S., is an extra 100,000 dead a year something we should be OK with?

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