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

#51

Post by kadoban » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #31

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...

I concur. It’s amazing how well anti vaxxers have taken over the narrative. Literally all data has shown that omicron is a non-issue for triple vaxxed individuals, with a baseline being the standard flu. If someone has data showing that triple vaxxed people are dying at rates similar to March 2020 I’d love to see.

Triple vaxxed are safe, therefore antivaxxers have won? That does not seem to make any sense. What am I missing?

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

#52

Post by softwaredoug » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

It seems likely that the US would still see waves over much of the winter.

South Africa has a population of about 60 million, fairly dense compared to the US. Compared to the US, their spike and fall would be expected to come on faster (and drop faster). The US is more spread out but with many more people. So its great to know that local spikes would come and go fast, it still is a very acute strain likely to be spread over months as it travels around the country.

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

#53

Post by tanseydavid » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

volkse wrote: post #42

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...

It has been discussed many times before - the issue with the SA data is that 80% of the population have been exposed to the virus (either had it or have been vaccinated) so the deaths not budging there can be very misleading for countries with lower vaccination rates.

Can anyone point to an official worldwide number of deaths attributable to Omicron?

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

#54

Post by oneoff786 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

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, that much more than 5x people will be infected. This is extremely incorrect. In truth, far fewer than 5x people will be infected over the long term. And again, no, this is not because it’s hitting the upper limits of 100% of the population or anywhere near that.

I won’t be so bold as to say it’s probable, but given this is not a novel virus, it’s entirely believable to say that omicron could go on to infect fewer people than delta due to the past two years of vaccination and immunity and die off. Presuming data about lower severity holds, it would be surprising to me if hospitalization or deaths aren’t noticeably lower than delta; which, in turn, was noticeably lower than the original.

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

#55

Post by cpncrunch » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

volkse wrote: post #42

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...

It has been discussed many times before - the issue with the SA data is that 80% of the population have been exposed to the virus (either had it or have been vaccinated) so the deaths not budging there can be very misleading for countries with lower vaccination rates.

Similar situation in Denmark as well. Huge number of omicron infections, but deaths haven't budged and number of covid patients in hospitals are actually decreasing.

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

#56

Post by globalise83 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

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...

Germany has been running at 500 deaths per day from Delta for several weeks (https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/de). The evidence from the UK is that Omicron overtakes Delta in just a few days (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...). As the most recent research in the UK suggests (https://www.politico.eu/article/omicron-variant-coronavirus-...), and the data in the parent comment demonstrates in the case of South Africa, Omicron is significantly less harmful. My conclusion is that we should really welcome Omicron as the variant that will vaccinate those holding out against the man-made vaccine without killing and hospitalising too many of them.

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

#57

Post by woodruffw » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

GDC7 wrote: post #36

catillac wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than five million probable died from Covid, the vast majority since summer 2020. The pandemic isn’t over because someone decided it was. This person’s comment is asinine.

Quoted post unavailable.

Telling people that the deaths of their loved ones are "meaningless" is not a very convincing argumentative tack.

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

#58

Post by endisneigh » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

kadoban wrote: post #51

endisneigh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. It’s amazing how well anti vaxxers have taken over the narrative. Literally all data has shown that omicron is a non-issue for triple vaxxed individuals, with a baseline being the standard flu. If someone has data showing that triple vaxxed people are dying at rates similar to March 2020 I’d love to see.

Triple vaxxed are safe, therefore antivaxxers have won? That does not seem to make any sense. What am I missing?

Yes, because there are still restrictions as a result of them, even though most people in the USA have been vaccinated.

In other words policies that affect the super majority are being formed due to the actions of a small group.

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

#59

Post by ds206 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #47

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...

Deaths have literally just shot up in SA in the last few days. The 7 day average has doubled in two weeks.

Link to data?

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

#60

Post by endisneigh » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

earthbee wrote: post #44

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...

It typically takes three weeks to go from being a case to dead, given how quickly it was rising it was very hard to get a good sense of how many people were likely to die before it was already infecting huge numbers of people. That's not panic, that's justifiable concern about a new strain of a virus that has killed millions of people around the world already.

Most people who died were not vaccinated