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Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

covid19.colorado.gov

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Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#361

Post by specialp »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #276
gz5 wrote: post #84

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…

This data from NYC has been supplanted and updated for all of NYS: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-data

This still shows a greater than 10x difference in outcomes. Additionally, the "unvacccinated" population includes people naturally vaccinated by virtue of having a previous case.

It could very well evolve into a form that is mild enough and different enough from the vaccine spike that brings the unvaccinated and vaccinated hospitalization rates to convergence. Respiratory illnesses in general harm the elderly and immunocompromised disproportionately. But if that becomes the end game where COVID is still circulating, vaccines are no longer as effective at preventing serious illness, because the general severity has gone down, that is also a good outcome as it is what we have always lived with.

Colds and flus have always killed 10s of thousands a year. COVID killed many more because it was particularly severe. Just as the flu of 1918 is still with us today in a less harmful form (H1N1) This virus has a global reservoir and will never run its course entirely before mutating again most likely. Just like colds and flus before it.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#363

Post by djrogers »

prox wrote: post #24
ror_shubham wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its milder than Delta but way more transmissible. The more people get this, more will be the chances of a new variant which can be more deadly/transmissible.

It’s possible, but most coronaviruses do not seem to have followed this in the past, nor flu-based viruses. More deadly variants usually don’t win it from less deadly in a selection process. However it is important as the WHO recommends to do way more to export vaccines to countries that need it. Not just developed countries to prevent the chance of new variants.

> the WHO recommends to do way more to export vaccines to countries that need it.

My understanding is that in many of those countries, the vaccine is readily available, but people don't want to take it for various reasons.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#364

Post by neogodless »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #334
neogodless wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But does it matter? If omicron becomes the "new flu" (or "the new cold") for the young and healthy, and with vaccines even for old and weak, do we have to call it a "pandemic" anymore? 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…

> In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level in a geographic area without external inputs.

> A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic.

The cold and flu are "stable" albeit seasonal. While we might expect that outcome for variations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we're not there yet. A rapidly exploding number of infections is not a stable number of infected individuals.

At any rate, some people getting vaccinated and choosing to live as if the infections do not exist does not "end the pandemic."

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#365

Post by amanaplanacanal »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #348
throw8932894 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read article from Israel. It wrote: "severe covid cases are low, but flu season just started". Pandemic will finish at spring, and hopefully will not start next winter.

Of course it'll start again the next winter... as will the cold season and flu season. The only question here is, will there be lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccine passports, or will we finally give up, focus on the risk groups, and let the young and healthy live their normal lives.

Depends on hospitals. If the health care system starts getting overwhelmed, expect restrictions. If not, then probably not.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#366

Post by namelessoracle »

Serious question. If Omicron was the initial variant of Covid 19, would we have seen shut downs and the level of global response we did? Is the thought it's only this level of mildness because of vaccination rates?

My gut is that the answer would be yes because this variant targets children more effectively.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#367

Post by scrubs »

causality0 wrote: post #118
benjaminwootton wrote: post #103

Surely 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?

You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out.

Correct. I know several people who are vaccinated yet caught Covid twice. The principle thing to keep in mind,

- vaccination is a risk reducer on severity of infection. Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention.

- and on that point not getting into the hospital is important. From a management standpoint, we've got to insure demand for hospital resources does not dwarf those same resources. That's the key management function here.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#368

Post by joshuamorton »

HWR_14 wrote: post #343
radioactivist wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ontario science table dashboard has the hospitalization ratio for unvaccinated to vaccinated still at 5:1. Where are you getting that these rates have become nearly equal? edit: sorry had that written backwards

> Ontario science table dashboard has the hospitalization ratio for vaccinated to unvaccinated still at 5:1. Where are you getting that these rates have become nearly equal? If the rates are the same, and 5/6 people are vaccinated, we would expect 5/6 people admitted to the hospital to be vaccinated. In fact, 5/6 people are vaccinated in the 12-40 age cohort, with older (and more vulnerable) populations having at lea…

You're misunderstanding. The dashboard is per Capita (so you don't need to account for the stuff you're describing), and shows 5x lower rate of vaccinated people hospitalized (and 10x lower ventilated). A far cry from the ~1.5x rate mentioned by ggp

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#369

Post by scrooched_moose »

monological wrote: post #113
etchalon wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if we can say it's "over". People were saying the same thing after the Delta waves started subsiding and behold … Omicron.

But now we’ll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.

There's no guarantee of that. Omicron seems to be exceptionally capable of infecting both those who had the current vaccines and/or previous variants.

Maybe Omicron provides immunity to Rho (or whatever is coming), but it may provide no protection to Sigma.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#370

Post by martythemaniak »

convolvatron wrote: post #310
dehrmann wrote: post #243

With all the restrictions over the past two years, have we been selecting for hyper-contagious strains?

yes. would letting the original strains run amok freely have been better? I guess more people would have died, but it would have been over sooner.

Some places have been pretty close to "let it run amok", ie indifference by the population and government, widespread antivax sentiment, etc. I'm talking about places like Bulgaria, Russia, etc. They have seen around 0.75% of the population die.

Letting the original run freely would have likely cost at least 1% of the population, plus the long covid, lack of treatment for other conditions etc.

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