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

#371

Post by davidw » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #323

davidw wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> People wear masks. It's not really a big deal. Do you wear masks 8 hours a day for work? 'Cause I'm sure all the people who do might beg to differ. Plus masks interfere with communication. Faces are important.

My kids wear masks all day long and school. They do not love it, but they complain way less than some people do about wearing one for 20 minutes in a grocery store.

I wore an N95 on a series of flights to Europe over the summer. It was not the most pleasant thing, but I was ok with it. Doctors and nurses regularly work 8/10/12 hours while masked up.

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

#372

Post by senectus1 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

mekkkkkk wrote: post #352

pg314 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid-19 doesn't kill rapidly, so there is no pressure for it to mutate to become milder.

The milder it gets, the less noticeable it is. As it gets less noticeable, the chance of exposure to new hosts increases. Seems reasonable.

the real question is, can we pivot faster than evolution can...

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

#373

Post by mekkkkkk » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:17 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…

What kind of life do you lead where mask mandates and moderate restrictions means two years of it is completely wasted. I understand freedoms being trampled and whatnot, but saying "they stole two years" seems pretty dramatic.

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

#374

Post by HPsquared » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

akomtu wrote: post #334

Retric wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We shouldnt forget that something like 80% of them were already old people with a variety of health issues.

It'd be interesting to look at "years lost" or something similar ("quality-adjusted life years").

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

#375

Post by moksly » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:18 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,…

> it would be surprising to me if hospitalization or deaths aren’t noticeably lower

Here on vaccinated Denmark this is the truth. But we’re actually approaching last years levels regardless because of just how many people are getting covid this year. It’s more manageable thanks to the very high vaccination status, but we seem to have been too slow with the 3rd hit for a major part of the population. I have two shots myself, and my family is all in covid isolation all tested positive and “looking forward” to spend Christmas with ourselves and not our families. It’s not too bad for any of us, it’s not pleasant either, but the biggest thing for me is how much we’re having to shut down despite the high vaccination percentage.

You can’t go to a movie or actual theatre. Bars close at 22:00. Most major Christmas parties (this is a big thing here) have been cancelled. But the biggest impact is on culture business like the theatres, concert houses, Christmas markets, museums and so on. If covid is going to be a recurrent thing every winter, then I think that we’re going to see some drastic changes to those aspects of society.

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

#376

Post by spookthesunset » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #336

spookthesunset wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we ever get a serious pandemic (or serious anything), we might be f*cked. If we had a serious pandemic where dudes were dropping like flys on the street and they had horse drawn carrages stacked with bodies, I don't think many people would have an issue dealing with it. The problem with covid is our response to it was way out of line with the actual illness. People kinda have a problem being asked to make huge s…

I think we're probably in luck somewhat: if something actually serious came along, I agree that people would be much less disagreeable, and perhaps we'd have enough actual problems so authorities wouldn't have to engage in make work projects. That said, I think massive numbers of people (likely the majority still, although the tides seem to be shifting extremely quickly lately) would strongly disagree with us on the…

> just in time for the climate change culture war

That will be the fun one for sure. What I do know is the knuckleheads running the show right now up and down the west coast are the last people I’d trust to handle that correctly.

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

#377

Post by piva00 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #309

com2kid wrote: post #235

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? 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…

Are we just ignoring all of the doctors and nurses who were fired for refusing vaccinations? They don't count?

They count but statistically speaking they are a blip in the numbers. It sucks to lose any manpower but given the risk they add to the overall system it could be still be a net positive.

I'm not an actuary though, I only have statistics background.

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

#378

Post by trhway » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:28 PM UTC

moksly wrote: post #375

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,…

> it would be surprising to me if hospitalization or deaths aren’t noticeably lower Here on vaccinated Denmark this is the truth. But we’re actually approaching last years levels regardless because of just how many people are getting covid this year. It’s more manageable thanks to the very high vaccination status, but we seem to have been too slow with the 3rd hit for a major part of the population. I have two shots…

what is the point of those lockdowns when 1. practically everybody is vaccinated and thus gets no symptoms or only light disease (and according to the latest science - superimmunity after that) and 2. the delta's and now omicron's transmissibility is so high among both - vaccinated as well as unvaccinated - that everybody susceptible to it (i.e. 30-70% of population, and anecdotally it seems to me that for covid it is on the lower end, ie. like 1/3rd) will get it (or omicron++) in the near future anyway (and the thing becoming endemic like flu).

I mean technically the lockdowns possibly make sense as a way to control the spread until a spread controlling vaccine (the existing mRNA ones aren't such) is widely applied - ie. that seems to be the case in China where initial spread was effectively controlled and they use inactivated covid virus vaccine instead of mRNA - though we don't know for sure because Chinese government info can be very different from reality.

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

#379

Post by jimmygrapes » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #239

zerocount wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure is. There's millions of us walking around without getting shots every six months.

Via previous infection? And if so, you're not concerned about waning protection? It would appear that people even with previous wild/delta infections have hit or miss immunity to omicron.

You gotta remember that the vast majority of infections are asymptomatic or mild. We focus on the ones that aren't, for a number of valid reasons, but this also skews the average person's risk tolerance and awareness toward thinking that there's life altering danger in each infection. There's millions walking about who think it's a fake virus because they got a headache and a sore throat for a day while being told that they are at risk of intubation and a range of "long covid" symptoms, and this doesn't meet their experience or that of their entire friend and family circle. Yeah, lots of families also experienced the opposite, but you'd probably be hard pressed to convince those ones that it's a mild disease. Thing is, it's both.

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

#380

Post by stefanpie » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 11:31 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,…

I don't know how well this relates, but the topic of logistic growth (exp. growth with a limit) is common in undergraduate differential equations classes. I guess it can work well for simpler models.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#Modeling_ear...