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

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

#461

Post by zuminator »

sudosysgen wrote: post #456
zuminator wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I conveyed the impression that I thought the effective R0 could remain above 1 indefinitely, that is my error. But why assume no reinfection, that's not what we're seeing so far with SARS-CoV-2.

That is not quite what R0 means. R0 is the reproductive rate in a naive population. I believe the variable you are looking for is R(t), which is the effective reproductive rate at any point of time.

Thank you. I've seen the phrase "effective R0" used, for example, here [0], but I can see that you are correct that R(t) is the generally accepted epidemiological term.

[0] https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/how-scientists-quantif...

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

#462

Post by tdrdt »

selimthegrim wrote: post #454
tdrdt wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Japanese study showed that Omicron is reproducing 70 times faster in the bronchi but 10 times slower in the lungs than Delta. That's why it is giving less lung problems and therefore doesn't make people as ill as Delta.

I thought it was HK?

Yes I think you are right: LKS Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong.

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

#463

Post by arghnoname »

dpark wrote: post #381
arghnoname wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jurisdictions set their own rules for time of residency before being allowed to vote (e.g., registration X days before an election, Y days of the past Z days in the district, etc). Some people do decide where to live based on political considerations. If they are voting in accordance to the rules set by the relevant jurisdictions, I don't see a problem. This happens on "both sides." I will note that it's easier to br…

> I will note that it's easier to break the rules and commit voter fraud when you can vote by mail. In person voting at least requires that you be physically present on Election Day. Haven’t most (all?) jurisdictions supported vote by Mail for absentee ballots since a long time ago? All that vote by mail has actually changed is that people can vote from their homes.

I’ve usually voted by mail a few cycles before COVID. Previously it would depend on jurisdiction. In the jurisdictions I’ve lived in, the voter would have to request a ballot well ahead of the election and sometimes claim some allowable hardship, such as an illness that confines them to their home.

This is the first year I’ve gotten election material I didn’t request. I had forgotten to deregister, but the crazy thing is the post office told them I had moved because they forwarded a previous letter. They then sent me more material at the new forwarded address in another state.

I don’t think this is nefarious, mostly incompetence. I think fraud happens, always has. Voting by mail probably increases opportunistic fraud. It probably also increases voter participation, so maybe it’s worth it in that sense, not sure. However, I think we need to have rock-solid verifiable and trustworthy elections, even if it’s inconvenient and the fraud it is meant to prevent is theoretical (hacked voting machines, other schemes). It’s very unhealthy for a democracy when large fractions of the population distrust the results. We’ve had both major political parties suggest electoral fraud/shenanigans multiple times over the past 20 years. It’s bad stuff.

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

#464

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

JPKab wrote: post #441
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also what do you mean by they've been exposed to the virus? "have been exposed to the virus" usually means something like "immune system isn't totally unprepared, but has had contact with this virus before (or a proxy via vaccination)". In South Africa, it is mostly via getting COVID-19 in the Alpha or Delta waves. Yes, over 70% of South Africans have had it: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bloomberg/news/2021-12-14…

So now we're going to suddenly admit that natural immunity is a thing. The science has been super clear on this for a long time. The problem is that the CDC and NIH, the grand tradition of federally funded science, have chosen not to study anything that conflicts with the directives of their organizations. They haven't bothered to study natural immunity and have left it to other countries like Israel. Instead they pr…

> So now we're going to suddenly admit that natural immunity is a thing.

A thing that gives some benefit to a lot of South African who also later got sick with COVID-19-Omicron, some of those were hospitalised, and some of those died. So clearly not a magic wand that prevents Omicron entirely.

A benefit obtained at huge human costs in previous waves, which vaccination would have blunted.

You can tell the bad takes because of the accusatory tone - Who is going to "suddenly admit" I don't even know who is being accused here? And the simplistic "all or nothing" thinking - the "is a thing or isn't" idea. Medicine is not Boolean logic. None of this is binary, boolean, on-off. neither vaccination nor prior infection are a guarantee.

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

#465

Post by xigoi »

davidw wrote: post #367
spookthesunset wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The things that were about flattening the curve were about avoiding acute health system overload and increased mortality that would result from that So we agree it is about healthcare capacity. You know the best way to avoid healthcare collapse? Build more of it! You know the unethical, immoral way of avoiding healthcare collapse? Force hundreds of millions of people into this purgatory we are living in right now w…

> You know the best way to avoid healthcare collapse? Build more of it! No, the best way is to not need it in the first place. Vaccinating people is vasty more efficient in terms of people's time and money.

Who said anything about vaccination? You can have vaccination without lockdowns.

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

#466

Post by BirdieNZ »

spookthesunset wrote: post #267
throwhauser wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you have virtually unlimited resources you can do almost anything you want. > Dunno how because it ain't my expertise at all, but there would be a way. What makes you so sure?

I mean again I'm no expert but it seems to me that if all these people are supposed to do is treat exactly one illness, it would be possible to train a certain set of people on how to manage 80% of the workload and escalate the exceptions to somebody with more knowledge. It isn't like this staff has to treat anything else. Just an idea. Like I said, I'm no expert but the fact that absolutely nobody has attempted to f…

> They haven't even tried

This doesn't really pass the sniff test. There are a LOT of different countries and states in the world, with a fairly wide variety of responses to Covid. I'm not aware of any country where they managed to magic up some hospitals fully staffed to handle Covid cases. If it didn't happen despite all the different societies that could have attempted it then it is far more likely that it was considered (and tried even!) and rejected as unworkable.

In other words, you are certainly not the first person to think "what if we just had more hospital beds and staff and throw heaps of money at it to make it happen". The reason no country (that I know of) has done this is because it is impractical. The alternative is a grand conspiracy involving collusion in hundreds of countries and states and their leaders, including all the departments of health and the various officials, in democratic countries, communist countries, authoritarian countries and so on, some of whom are literally at war with each other.

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

#467

Post by oneoff786 »

zuminator wrote: post #448
oneoff786 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. You’re still making the same mistake. That is not how R0 works. You are falsely assuming that the exponential growth period of the virus stays the same forever. The virus does not reach 100%. R0 as a general trait of a disease assumes everyone is susceptible. That is not how diseases work. There are many diseases with R0 > 1 and guess what? Not everyone got them. I know you’re caveating “effective R0” but frank…

> the point I am making which is that it won’t keep growing. And what I'm saying to you is that nobody believes otherwise. It's all known that diseases are self-limiting, and infection rates follow an s-curve and eventually drop off. This isn't a groundbreaking revelation.

In my experience the majority of people assume that exponential growth means a small increase in spread rate means and exponentially larger number of people will be infected, and that “everyone” will get omicron. I’m not claiming to have a novel epidemiological insight. I’m claiming that most people get this wrong and are panicking about omicron because they don’t get this.

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

#468

Post by oneoff786 »

analog31 wrote: post #357
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,…

At the start of the pandemic, when downloadable data became available, I started charting it every day. The curves for many countries were uncannily exponential. Of course I knew that those curves had to tip over at some point, but I decided that I would use the exponential growth curve as a baseline and watch for deviations from it. I told my friends: "I'll breathe a huge sigh of relief if this thing turns over befo…

It’s not uncanny, it is, literally, how disease spreads. It ceases to be exponential when the people infected people are exposed to are no longer all susceptible because they themselves had been infected. At least in simplest terms.

That’s the big assumption in R0.

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

#469

Post by ChrisRR »

nostromo wrote: post #13

The panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

Hindsight is 20:20. It's easy to say after the fact once you've got the data, but I think the response was perfectly justified when an unknown strain was tearing through the population and it would be over a month until we start to see the physiological effects

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

#470

Post by ChrisRR »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #186
gammarator wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SA severity may not be representative because of greater prior immunity and a younger age skew.

Exhibit B will be the UK. Their cases started spiking about two weeks ago. So far their hospitalizations haven't budged and are even a bit lower than they were a month ago, less than a quarter of their pandemic peak[1] [1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

That is skewed by the vaccinations of course.
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