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Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

covid19.colorado.gov

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Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#41

Post by Bellend »

samwillis wrote: post #39
hereforphone wrote: post #28

I've been traveling internationally over the past couple of day. Every person seems to have the sniffles, or to be coughing. I haven't noticed this since covid began, presumably because the masks, sanitizer use, and social distancing have kept the cold and flu down.

Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat, headache, nasal congestion, cough) but “isn’t Codiv”. My whole family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren’t bed bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyw…

I had this and so did my friend and we live across the country. The same symptoms at different times. It was as you describe and my cough was terrible, unlike previous colds or chest infections. I coughed for about 40 hours straight and didn't sleep. I tested myself multiple times.

I found it strange that I am boosted, masked, and sanitized, plus I am isolated as I am an unpaid carer for a family member with poor health and I managed to catch the bloody cold!

It seemed suspect to me as well but of course, anecdotal.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#42

Post by [deleted] »

Bellend wrote: post #38

As someone else mentioned and I agree that I hope we are at the end of covid lockdown potential but is that realistic? Is it pure luck that Omicron is more transmissible but apparently less severe than Delta? What is to stop the next variant being more transmissible than Omicron but 10 times more deadly? I know news outlets are really bad for clickbait titles, but I read yesterday that a new variant was detected in S…

[deleted]

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#43

Post by Hallucinaut »

samwillis wrote: post #39
hereforphone wrote: post #28

I've been traveling internationally over the past couple of day. Every person seems to have the sniffles, or to be coughing. I haven't noticed this since covid began, presumably because the masks, sanitizer use, and social distancing have kept the cold and flu down.

Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat, headache, nasal congestion, cough) but “isn’t Codiv”. My whole family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren’t bed bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyw…

Same experience and suspicions here with December being miserable for the household but no positive LFTs (around 3 each) or PCR (one each). Wife still has a sore throat every night, weeks later, and mine lasted weeks too, which is unlike any cold we've had previously.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#44

Post by _Microft »

tomp wrote: post #40
rocqua wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scary thing is. Milder disease is a constant factor improvement in hospitalization. But faster spreading (higher R value) is an exponential worsening in hospitalization. It's probably better to have a 50% hospitalization rate and an R value of 0.8 than a 5% hospitalization rate and an R value of 2. After 3 'generations' of spreading the second situation already has more hospitalizations.

Maybe but “exponential growth” is a conspiracy theory promoted by epidemiologists. In reality, growth follows the S-curve, so a milder, faster spreading disease will also saturate the population (flatten the S-curve) much sooner, so overall the impact will be much less.

You want to keep the number of cases in a range that the health care system still can deal with. Reaching the the flat part of an S-curve (i.e. infecting everyone as fast as possible) is NOT desirable because that leads to many cases in very short term.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#45

Post by kolp »

samwillis wrote: post #39
hereforphone wrote: post #28

I've been traveling internationally over the past couple of day. Every person seems to have the sniffles, or to be coughing. I haven't noticed this since covid began, presumably because the masks, sanitizer use, and social distancing have kept the cold and flu down.

Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat, headache, nasal congestion, cough) but “isn’t Codiv”. My whole family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren’t bed bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyw…

There's a recent study(0) that suggests that saliva tests are more reliable than nasal swabs for detection of Omicron variants, whereas the inverse was true for the Delta variant.

(0) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268246v...

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#46

Post by rich_sasha »

Bellend wrote: post #38

As someone else mentioned and I agree that I hope we are at the end of covid lockdown potential but is that realistic? Is it pure luck that Omicron is more transmissible but apparently less severe than Delta? What is to stop the next variant being more transmissible than Omicron but 10 times more deadly? I know news outlets are really bad for clickbait titles, but I read yesterday that a new variant was detected in S…

It depends whether it confers immunity to other variants, and how long it lasts.

If it’s good at that, it is so transmissible that quickly everyone will get it (the fabled “herd immunity”) and new variants, unless they break the mould, won’t have a large enough population of o sustain themselves in.

Otherwise, maybe we’ll enter into some kind of equilibrium, where there’s enough of not-terrible Omicron to keep everyone “topped up”, equivalent to permanently high vaccination levels.

Or, none of our happens and as you say, the next variant is more transmissible and more deadly, and we’re screwed again.

Re France, new variants pop up all the time, if it’s the same one I read about, there’s no indication that it’s special right now so for now I’d say clickbait.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#47

Post by lostlogin »

reitoei wrote: post #35
albertzeyer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in Germany, and similar experience. I rarely know people who have been infected with Covid, and none with Omicron. Omicron is also a bit delayed in Germany (which is good).

I live in Ireland and I know at least 100 people who have had covid, including my wife, father, mother and 2 sisters. Omicron is prevalent here right now.

I think you know more people who have had it than I know in total.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#48

Post by slavik81 »

December 27th was the first day I personally knew a Canadian that had caught COVID. Today, I know of three independent outbreaks among my friends and even more at work.

The Alberta active case rate looks like a vertical line [1], and that's even after recently switching mostly to take-home test kits that don't get reported in these numbers. In my group of friends, 6/7 tested with take-home kits.

[1]: https://twitter.com/ByMatthewBlack/status/147886170257374003...

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#49

Post by mprovost »

rich_sasha wrote: post #10
akmarinov wrote: post #6

If it’s milder than Delta - then that’s good right? Or do the increased cases lead to more hospitalizations than Delta?

So far in the UK hospitalisations are increasing, but not dramatically so. There's also brouhaha about how London (where the wave is the worst) is at its peak, or already on the way down. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ [bear in mind, the hospitalisation number is not quite what it seems. It is "people in hospital who happen to have Covid", not "people who got Covid so bad they need to be hospitalised". So if you ha…

The "peak" in London last week (if it really was the peak) had 1 in 10 people infected. Those are huge numbers, even if most people don't need hospitalisation.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#50

Post by invalidusernam3 »

samwillis wrote: post #39
hereforphone wrote: post #28

I've been traveling internationally over the past couple of day. Every person seems to have the sniffles, or to be coughing. I haven't noticed this since covid began, presumably because the masks, sanitizer use, and social distancing have kept the cold and flu down.

Here in the UK there seems to be some sort of cold that is ticking all the same symptom boxes as Omicron (sore throat, headache, nasal congestion, cough) but “isn’t Codiv”. My whole family had it before Christmas. I would describe it a rotten cold, we all sat on the sofa for like 5 days but weren’t bed bound, tested negative with LFTs the whole time (each did one at least every other day for a week). We isolated anyw…

One of my friends tested positive for covid yesterday (via PCR test). He suspected he might have covid so he had been doing LFTs in the days leading up but kept coming up negative. Out of interest he did an LFT after he got his positive PCR and, surprise surprise, negative.

Obviously this is very anecdotal and speculative, but like you said, I wonder if LFTs don't pick up this strain of the virus as well as previous, and if that is what is causing the numbers to be so high since I would imagine it is how most people test.

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