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

washingtonpost.com

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

#91
post #48

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...

> 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] Death always lag infections. That chart is a horrible representation because it doesn't give a good sense of the intermediate dates. But you can still tell with the "7-day average" string. On the first/infection chart you see the graph touching the word "average" while the second/death cha…

That graph is also incapable of clearly showing that deaths didn’t budge even if that actually is the case. The stroke on the deaths line is like half the total height indicated when the cases started to surge. Based on that terrible graph deaths could have tripled since cases started to surge.

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

#92

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...

Agreed, if any major US markets reintroduce restrictions, I’ll move back to one of them just to vote the governor and health director out in favor of some hardcore health gambler like De Santis. I played along, now they’re done. edit: the responder assumed something that wasn’t said, and then wrote an essay about something thats not happening and an example from Mississippi. Maybe to save time from having a natural f…

> I’ll move back to one of them just to vote the governor and health director out.

Am I correctly understanding that you intend to move to a different region for the sole purpose of voting against restrictions that otherwise would not apply to you? You’re literally trying to be a problematic immigrant.

I remember when I was in college a bunch of people did exactly this. They registered for residency in the state solely so they could vote a single issue in a state election. Specifically they registered so they could vote for Mississippi to keep the confederate flag as part of the state flag. So you’re in great company.

Honestly, isn’t the whole “state’s rights” thing about telling other people to fuck off and let them manage themselves? And here you are thinking you should meddle in someone else’s self-governance.

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

#93
Why do people still care about covid ? Vax your old people, stop getting tested and live like before.

The faster we get everyone infected the faster old people who didn't get vaxxed will either recover or die and after that the ones who die we can't do anything for them.

Trump was right (by chance) all along, that's just some kind of flu, the only difference is that it's the first time our body sees it.

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

#94
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who died were not vaccinated

Most people that died were 60+ years old

Yes, who were not vaccinated as it didn’t exist for much of the pandemic.

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

#95

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.

It’s gone from 20 to 40. With some rounding and cherry picking of dates.

This time last year it was over 400.

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

#96
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-afri...

3 day average is only 48 deaths per day in all of South Africa. We are at the 3 week mark. If Omicron was half as deadly as Delta we'd be seeing a corresponding spike as we saw the initial burst of cases weeks ago. We're not, it's a slight uptick. Another week and we can be quite confident.

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

#97

This is fantastic if it happens elsewhere as well. The only reason I am not super pumped is because SA is in Summer, and we’ve seen that sars-cov-2 is impacted my seasonality

In hot places with widespread air conditioning there is also usually a summer peak (people go indoors and close windows, just as they do in cooler places in winter). SA has had peaks in both winter and summer.

Oh good point. I know that is the case for the US South and I find it somewhat silly that media in the US always blames southern surges on anti-mask and anti-lockdown sentiments but the winter surge in the North is new variants etc. without all the victim blaming.

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

#98
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Let's look at years of life lost, then, shall we? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3 > YLL in heavily affected countries are 2–9 times the average seasonal influenza And that is after all the societal changes to deal with the disease. I personally think that YLL of 2-9x the flu after mitigations clearly justified the mitigations.

They disclose a bias: "Those dying from COVID-19 may be an at-risk population whose remaining life expectancy is shorter than the average person’s remaining life expectancy"

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

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And most people who were infected were not vaccinated

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

#100

I was at Costco this morning (DFW) buying a big hunk of Prime Rib for Christmas Day dinner. No one either knows or cares anymore. I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes but I'm starting to feel weird considering no one else is wearing a mask anymore, not even the folks who look like they got one foot in the grave already. Omicron is already so yesterday it isn't even a memory.

This is so regional; and it has little to do with the local death rate, unfortunately. Where I'm located, deaths are relatively low, and people have no problem masking up. In other places, such as Arizona, lots of people are still dying, and masking is also relatively rare. It's cultural and/or political, in many regions, as opposed to based on need/risk.

I wonder if the disposition towards following health advice is in some way causally connected to the reduction in death rate...
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