Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

971–980 of 1001 posts

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#971

Post by johnchristopher »

spookthesunset wrote: post #839
johnchristopher wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen much on HN about such restrictions so I suppose something in the mainstream media does point to that or I have a bias. Do you have some examples ? Also, apparently, wearing a mask and getting vaccinated is already a giant no-no for some here so I'd like to know what restrictions are being advocated by who ? Surely it's not a `they` as in everyone though, right ?

I’m fully vaccinated, thanks. It is quite possible to be pro vaccine and extremely anti mask.

It's possible to be many things but I wish you would have provided examples of tech workers punishing people.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#972

Post by jacobolus »

johnisgood wrote: post #951
nikolay wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!

And in comparison to COVID-19? Do they actually need a vaccine to protect against COVID-19? If not, are we giving it to them in the chance that it reduces spread, or why? It has been said it reduces spread, but this is not what you observe in countries that are >80% fully vaccinated (at least double dose), so I do not get it.

Something on the order of 1e4 children aged 0–9 have died from Covid-19 so far, worldwide.

They face ~3 orders of magnitude less risk than elderly people (of whom ~1e7 have died so far), but it is still nontrivial and much higher than the risks from vaccination.

Small kids also spread Covid effectively. There have been a bunch of places with high vaccination rates where there were outbreaks in daycares.

> It has been said [the vaccine] reduces spread, but this is not what you observe

This is what you observe. There have been a large number of studies published examining the effects of vaccination rate on community spread showing that the reproductive number of the virus (at least the original and alpha/delta strains) is significantly depressed by vaccination.

With omicron, vaccine effectiveness vs. initial infection / mild disease is much worse than with previous Covid variants (though it seems that protection vs. severe disease / death is still robust), so we can expect to see significant spread in highly vaccinated areas, but still less and slower than among an unvaccinated population.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#973

Post by sharken »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #612
yread wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have ended the wildtype pandemic. As soon as delta appeared it was impossible. They have 90% efficiency at best and you need 84% of all people protected to stop delta (1-1/R0 for R0=6). It's impossible to get such high vax rate.

Not necessarily. Eg the Netherlands has ~77% vaccination rate, which is pretty close to the quoted 84%.

I'd go so far as to say 77% is "good enough", ie. it's time to live with the virus and not change our ways because of it.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#974

Post by cipheredStones »

zzzeek wrote: post #804
CountDrewku wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no one is wearing any mask appropriately. Even the n95 needs to be changed more than daily. I highly doubt any decent percentage of people are doing that. At this point it's just a statement and nothing to do with protecting themselves or anyone else. Alternatively, they're suffering from psychosis.

That's for hospital workers wearing them 18 hours a day in highly contaminated environments. I am exposed to other people for an hour a day with social distancing, tops. The N95 is much more protective than a cloth mask and it is entirely for self protection, the last thing in the world I want to do is make a "statement" in the places i go. However the intolerance for my silent practice is fairly frequent.

(I decided that I wasn't going to get a reasonable discussion out of this guy at his suggestion that people disagreeing with him are "suffering from psychosis", and that appears to have been borne out so far.)

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#975

Post by nikolay »

naasking wrote: post #833
nikolay wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!

Masks are nowhere near as effective as vaccines.

If two people wear N95 masks, masks beat vaccines manyfold!

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#976

Post by gfodor »

XorNot wrote: post #867
gfodor wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worm hypothesis is a hypothesis, and a good one. But it is a hypothesis. assuming good sounding hypotheses are true and running with it have been the root of a lot of problems in this pandemic.

I mean the other side of that punchline though is that Ivermectin is completely ineffective in clinical trials at reducing severity or mortality from COVID-19. The worm hypothesis is practically a curiosity to solve later.

No, the reason the worm hypothesis is good is because it would explain the clinical trials where it appears to be effective. (If there were no such trials, as you claim, the entire discussion about worms would be moot.)

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#977

Post by NicoJuicy »

spurgu wrote: post #864
megablast wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand that what you said is pure nonsense right?

Why is it nonsense? He meant "lung", not "long" btw.

Aaah. Okay, that could explain it :p

Thanks!

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#978

Post by johnisgood »

jacobolus wrote: post #972
johnisgood wrote: post #951

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in comparison to COVID-19? Do they actually need a vaccine to protect against COVID-19? If not, are we giving it to them in the chance that it reduces spread, or why? It has been said it reduces spread, but this is not what you observe in countries that are >80% fully vaccinated (at least double dose), so I do not get it.

Something on the order of 1e4 children aged 0–9 have died from Covid-19 so far, worldwide. They face ~3 orders of magnitude less risk than elderly people (of whom ~1e7 have died so far), but it is still nontrivial and much higher than the risks from vaccination. Small kids also spread Covid effectively. There have been a bunch of places with high vaccination rates where there were outbreaks in daycares. > It has been…

Well, a reply (from cudgy) to my comment says this:

> The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case.

So what is the truth?

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#979

Post by jacobolus »

johnisgood wrote: post #978
jacobolus wrote: post #972

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something on the order of 1e4 children aged 0–9 have died from Covid-19 so far, worldwide. They face ~3 orders of magnitude less risk than elderly people (of whom ~1e7 have died so far), but it is still nontrivial and much higher than the risks from vaccination. Small kids also spread Covid effectively. There have been a bunch of places with high vaccination rates where there were outbreaks in daycares. > It has been…

Well, a reply (from cudgy) to my comment says this: > The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case. So what is the truth?

The commenter cudgy who posted that clearly did not do nontrivial research on this question from reliable sources. The statement is flat out false.

The vaccines significantly reduce the chance of infection given identical exposure. For those who still get infected, the vaccines reduce the viral load throughout the infection, eliminate or ameliorate symptoms, and shorten the time during which an infected person is contagious.

They do not completely prevent any spread of the virus (nor does any other vaccine ever created for any disease), but they make a significant beneficial impact on the rate of spread. They both cut the rate of secondary infections within each household, and reduce the amount of inter-household spread in the community.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#980

Post by jacobolus »

ButtSpark69 wrote: post #888
jacobolus wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a few (I at least found one case study in the literature, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34664804/ ) people to have died from vaccine-related myocarditis, but my impression from skimming a handful of relevant review papers and news articles is that the vast majority of vaccine-related myocarditis cases were mild and temporary, and that those were still extremely rare among vaccine recipients. By comp…

You're not wrong, but neither is the person you're responding to. You responded with logic for why the vaccine was a good idea, while they only talked about what was typical in the past. Past American medical philosophy has mostly been dictated by an attitude of "do no harm" rather than "optimize for least harm". These yield very different recommendations.

This is not a fair historical summary.

The smallpox vaccine causes roughly comparable rates of myocarditis, but that didn’t stop us from undertaking a worldwide vaccination campaign to eradicate the disease.

* * *

If there were like 100x more common serious side effects, we should maybe have a conversation about whether certain populations with low Covid risk or heightened vaccine risk should pick which vaccine to take based on potential side effects. But we are so far away from that kind of risk that it is hard to see the commentary from the anti-vax side as any kind of good faith conversation, compared to grasping at whatever straws they can find to spread FUD.

The basic summary is: these vaccines are extremely safe and extremely effective for people of every age. Please everyone get vaccinated. If you have had 2 doses >4 months ago, get boosted. Anyone who tells you that the vaccine is unsafe compared to catching Covid is either grossly misinformed or lying.

Post reply on HN