Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? To me, the news that we may be replacing COVID with a less severe strain is some of the best news of the year. COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all means try to replace it with something weaker!
EDIT: Also, on a side note, the actual doctor who found Omicron said it was less dangerous. She even described it as "extremely mild." https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgddw4/omicron-variant-inter... Needless to say, politicians and news hosts decided to completely ignore her description about it.
Even if it turns up to actually be true, the fact that so many people want it to be true is an excellent reason to be cautious in how you look at things here, because that is causing a lot of people to say things that haven’t been proven to be true.
The evidence so far looks like cause to be cautiously optimistic, but when the people giving out that evidence say “it’s too soon to be sure”, then pay attention.
It’s too soon to be sure.
Indeed. And wanting something to be false does not make it false. People on both sides of this debate are far too eager to run with their preferred opinion and accuse anyone who disagrees of "misinformation".
"I don't like this paper, and I see arguments against it, therefore it is dangerous and wrong."
It's petty behavior.
No, it doesn't.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-p...
> The claim makes a broad generalization about pathogens that’s not supported by science. It has been well-documented that pathogens can evolve to be more virulent. And many viruses, including HIV and Ebola, have in fact become more lethal over time.
As you note, smallpox disproves the idea that viruses automatically become mild. It had thousands of years to do so and carried a 30% mortality rate still.
If everything survives, the resulting community can live with each other and that requires a sufficiently mild virus. However that doesn't help predict the future, because you can't enforce the precondition of everyone surviving.
So a more lethal virus during a pandemic must also be more transmissible, as it's actively competing for the same susceptible hosts with other circulating strains. If another strain gets there first, chances are it's going to prime that host's immune system sufficiently to prevent reinfection.
Which means it needs not just more lethal mutations, but also more transmissible ones. The probability of all of those coinciding seems low, as the former are more likely to arise in immunocompromised hosts, and the latter in circulation among dense populations, no?
Although it's too early to be sure, it would explain both an increased transmissibility and a milder variant.
Also, it is similar enough to what i heard before from a conference about covid previous year.
It's actually a worldwide and European meeting ( so 2 times/ week for me actually) and it's a pretty good alternative for keeping company culture and bringing it somewhat online.
Yes, it's not required if you don't want to attend :)
Thanks!
"Most Omicron cases in US have been mild but most were vaccinated" from CDC reported on by CNN and MSNBC
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/health/omicron-cases-us-cdc/i...
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-report-omicro...
There may be more but that was a quick Google search. You said "politicians and news hosts decided to completely ignore her description about it." but that's incorrect
That being said there are a lot of people hand wringing about “we don’t know yet, we don’t know yet” in this very thread. Three weeks into it, and the evidence is almost overwhelming: it is not likely to be nearly as bad.
I followed the original covid news in early January and I fought against the narrative that it was “just the flu”. We would know by now if the news was bad.
That being said, folks should continue to remain vigilant in those areas where spread is prevalent.
Sure, for this immediate wave [more transmissible less virulent] is better than [more transmissible more virulent].
But that's awfully myopic. What happens after that?
Since mutation rate is a function of the number of viral particles, and more transmission means many more hosts incubating many more particles, we should expect to see more new variants, faster.
So the probability just went up that we'll get a new wave of a new variant that's [more transmissible more virulent] and will kill 10x more people than alpha through omicron will.
That's a probability and not a certainty, but life is probabilistic and our risk level just went up a lot.
It's not a miracle or anything close to that level of implied bafflement (devoid of being able to explain it rationally). We're excellent survivors overall, and a lot more than that. We're very skilled at resource utilization, we're relatively talented at conceptual thinking, we're competent tool builders on a planet ripe for it, we possess the ability to plan far ahead and understand consequences numerous steps out, we have memory capabilities that are quite effective across most of our lifetimes, most of our species is not particularly violent and is generally good natured & friendly (only a very small fraction of the population will ever commit serious acts of violence), we function quite well together in groups/tribes/cities/nations (compounded, shared outcomes), and so on. It's not particularly complicated, despite the doomsayers that will never stop existing amongst us (their mentality says more about them than it does the human race).
We should have prioritized health and Vitamin D in April 2020. At that time it was clear it was mainly affecting overweight people. Of course even almost 2 years later people still don't think that as a whole. They say comorbidities. Just say it like it is... it's mostly fat people. The news and society won't say that.
Also by some definitions America is “mostly fat people” so your point is not that meaningful to begin with.
The human mind can create symptoms very easily, especially if every day you get bombarded by social media and news about Covid.
> Also by some definitions America is “mostly fat people” so your point is not that meaningful to begin with
True, but I'm just saying this wouldn't have been an issue 30 - 50 years ago.
Citation for this? I've never heard this at all.
But still useful data. Thanks.
There's just no nuance in any conversation related to Covid.
Let me ask you a question. If weight had absolutely no impact on Covid then what expected percentage of Covid hospitalizations would be with overweight people?
Globally that is one thing, but if that data point is in the US, then the baseline population is something like 60-70% overweight/obese to begin with. In which case, that elevation from baseline isn’t as significant as implied.
Apparently though people's risk perceptions about COVID are wildly off base, by orders of magnitude.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...
40% of US Democrats think COVID hospitalization risk if you're unvaccinated is 50%! Fifty percent! The real answer is less than 1%. Other polls have shown similar things for fatality rates, like estimated 16% IFR on average in France. It really makes me realize why people act in such extreme ways, if that's what they think.
COVID is to a large extent a total failure of our societies ability to disseminate accurate information. Unfortunately this misinformation catastrophe is largely the work of the very same people who are constantly complaining about misinformation.
The probability of a more transmissible, more virulent strain just went down, not up. It certainly isn't zero, but "more transmissible less virulent" is exactly how viruses tend to evolve. Mutations are a dice roll and it there's no way to be sure of anything, but being a little optimistic is completely appropriate.
How does selection pressure work when the disease is spread by people with no symptoms?
For a disease to make us go extinct it would have to be highly transmissible and have a fatality rate of close to 100%. Anything less than that, and evolution will produce a generation of humans that are resistant to (or otherwise able to protect themselves from) the disease, and from there the population will replenish itself. The great plague had a fatality rate of 30% and it didn't even come close to threatening our existence as a specie. (In fact, the resulting redistribution of wealth arguably contributed to the advent of the renaissance.)
While there can be recombinations of some similar viruses, that's not the common way that viruses propagate, and it's not mating. Point mutations are much more common. And if they do recombine there's no reason to (automatically) expect that the results will be the worst characteristics of both.
As for the doctor that discovered it: Here experience with infected individuals is anecdotal data. She has not, to my knowledge, been involved in systematic studies. She is a general practitioner so here experience with this has been on the ground, primarily with the patients she has seen. Certainly this is useful but it is not a replacement for well-formed studies. Medical research and epidemiology are distinctly different activities from medical practice, even if many people involved in both have a medical degree.
You are forgetting about the most vulnerable group of all: immunosuppressed people.
They cannot mount a sufficient immune response, in severe immunosuppression like after a transplant event months or years after. In some cases the covid mortality for these people can approach 40% for young adults.
We have to be mindful of people like this when thinking about dropping mask mandates and such. Or "whoever's not vaccinated dies of their own fault". Not 100% true.
We as a society must protect those most vulnerable.
"We have to be mindful of people like this when thinking about dropping mask mandates and such."
Not arguing with you, just genuinely interested on how long you would advocate for mask mandates? Would you be willing to accept mask mandates in perpetuity?
I think it depends on location. In key environments like public transport and supermarkets and other spaces that everyone needs to be able to access it seems reasonable to me that we might keep them for at least a 5-10 year horizon if that proves necessary. It just doesn't seem like a big deal to wear a mask, and it would cut down on the need for more restrictive measures like lockdowns.
My wife has a medical exemption from wearing a mask. She cannot live a normal life when the standard response to her being out in public is disgust, constant questioning, or outright rejecting her due to "in-store policies."
My father has been wearing a mask, but constantly deals with hyperventilation issues. He's working with his family doctor to determine next steps.
Some things are a big deal for some people. I support anyone wearing a mask if they so choose. I oppose mask mandates as a one-size fits all solution.
I expect my wife would have to strap her card over her mouth to satisfy the social pressure to conform. It's not in most people's imaginations that anyone else could suffer from something that doesn't bother them.
What about the fully vaccinated, boostered employees who work at these places? Should they also continue wearing masks despite being at virtually zero risk of major covid issues?
But yeah, no thanks. We didn't do masks in 2019 and we sure as heck shouldn't keep doing them going forward. Masks were a hack to get us to vaccines. They aren't something we should be keeping around anymore.
From start to end of October, cases per 100k, 7 day average
Glasgow -- 300->220
Edinburgh -- 210->250
Manchester -- 290->220
Birmingham -- 250->280
4 similar cities, two with mask mandates, two without.
And smaller ones
Aberdeen -- 267->330
Southampton -- 300->410
Perth -- 320->260
Hereford -- 290->580
So there may be something there, would need more data to really see, but it certainly isn't a glowing mandate for masks
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
1) Were people in Scotland (with higher masking) being less cautious in other areas (washing hands, staying further away, etc)
2) Was the weather worse in Scotland, leading to more closed windows
3) Are people in Scotland more likely to be tested and thus more cases caught
The problem I have is that
The Scientific method comes out with great studies (wearing masks, all things being equal, reduces transmission)
That leads to a prediction (enforcing masks reduces cases figures)
That prediction doesn't hold out (Scottish cases figures)
So we need to revisit the prediction,
1) Does a mask mandate increase mask usage (anecdotally it appears so, but I only went to Glasgow and Manchester in October)
2) Does increased mask usage lead to other behaviours which would increase risk
3) Does increased mask usage lead to more awareness in testing
4) Do anti mask people go round licking door handles to try to spread covid to prove their points
These are perfectly valid questions, yet you can't ask them, because half the responses will be some idiotic cultish anti-mask covid denier, and the others will be some cultish mask worshiper
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
"At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (75). A large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2 (76). A recent systematic review found nine trials (of which eight were cluster-randomized controlled trials in which clusters of people, versus individuals, were randomized) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness. Two trials were with healthcare workers and seven in the community. The review concluded that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness (ILI) (RR 0.99, 95%CI 0.82 to 1.18) or laboratory confirmed illness (LCI) (RR 0.91, 95%CI 0.66-1.26) (44); the certainty of the evidence was low for ILI, moderate for LCI."
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/337199/WHO-...
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/11/ja...
They saw a significant reduction in covid presence in communities with more masking -- even though total masking was still only 40% in those communities -- which is very much in line with all the other literature.
I literally can't believe people still pretend like masks (especially surgical/KN95s) don't protect people when it's completely self-evident since we've used them forever to protect people in medical settings.
They don't work, at all, across decades of research and dozens of studies. They're not going to magically start working for COVID when they haven't worked for the flu or any other respiratory virus in the past.
>forever to protect people in medical settings.
Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.
Unfortunately, Tyler Cowen's blog has worse Covid commentary than even HN does, which is pretty impressive given the amount of HCQ/Ivermectin/bioweapon conspiracy theorizing here.
> Surgical masks in medical settings are designed to protect from bacterial infections, not viral ones.
This is patently untrue.. you're not one of those "virus particles can fit through masks" people are you? As just one example of how obvious it is that masks protect against viruses in HCW from the last SARS outbreak;
> Although more research on universal masking in heath settings is needed, it is the expert opinion of the majority (79%) of WHO COVID-19 IPC GDG members that universal masking is advisable in geographic settings where there is known or suspected community or cluster transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
> 1. In areas of known or suspected community or cluster SARS-CoV-2 transmission, universal masking should be advised in all health facilities (see Table 1).
> All health workers, including community health workers and caregivers, should wear a medical mask at all times, for any activity (care of COVID-19 or nonCOVID-19 patients) and in any common area (e.g., cafeteria, staff rooms).
> Other staff, visitors, outpatients and service providers should also wear a mask (medical or non-medical) at all times
"Experts" supported eugenics, antibacterial soap, breakfast cereal, the food pyramid, lobotomies, and all kinds of other things on the basis of popular "consensus"
The people making those recommendations are experts in the field and have all read the relevant research. Weighting the good studies vs. the bad ones, measuring evidence, etc. They literally exist to give guidance on world health matters based on the spectrum of results from all these different researchers.
And here you are, telling me that in your opinion, we should ignore their assessment and only trust these few specific papers that you choose to emphasize. (At least you've stopped advocating for ivermectin now?)
A bit of a paradox to get people to rely on your opinion when you've previously said we shouldn't rely on opinions isn't it? Or is it just that you don't like the WHO's opinion on World Health issues because they might be in the pocket of "big surgical mask".
I'm not telling you anything in my opinion. I'm telling you what the empirical evidence says or doesn't say.
I have not stopped advocating Ivermectin. The empirical evidence shows that it is still an extremely cheap, safe, and correlated treatment demonstrated across populations of billions through a mechanism of action that has been well established.
There's literally no reason not to try it, and there's a reason it's part of treatment regimens across several countries. Its use doesn't involve eroding the liberty of the populace or solidifying absolute power of state. It has virtually zero side effects medically or socioculturally, unlike things like masks or vaccines that have zero long term data
Even if I disagree with TC on something, I still think he's pretty much intellectually honest, i.e., is not beholden to one political agenda or another simply because it matches his world view or completely unaware of competing data. And he often does a good job in striking a balance on ideology & practicality (State Capacity Libertarianism comes to mind)
However the comments section on MR are often a hot mess of cherry picking or misinformation parroted back by people trying emulate TC's style without anything approaching his intellectual rigor.
Interestingly the DOI does not show up
Here's some further criticisms:
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1073440/latest.pdf
https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
Yeah... I'm sure all these studies done post-2019 are totally legit though.
Both of these may be widely available in the US quite soon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/14/does-pfizer...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ 'Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad-spectrum antiparasitic agent with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).'
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
We know that steroids work because they were studied, they definitely work, they're cheap and now they're the standard of care. Why didn't the anti-ivermectin conspiracy come for dexamethasone? It's left unexplained...
This is the problem, isn't it? For how long will these mandates be in place for? Right now, it's clear that they won't end until populations start revolting.
That's not at all clear. My very cautious Northern California county dropped the mask mandates when cases started dropping this summer and only re-implimented them when cases and hospitalizations started to rise again.
I don't see any reason for them not to drop the mandates again when infection/hospitalization rates drop down to acceptable levels.
Define acceptable levels? And does this suggest we continue masking every winter when "cases surge"? There will always be a variant of covid. Always. It's never going away. Basing mask mandates of any metric, be it cases, hospitalizations or deaths means every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask.
We've been in this pandemic now for close to 2 years. At every single point, government rules and guidance have lagged recommendations from the experts. I'm confident that there is exactly 0 chance that any governmental body in the US is going to continue to mandate masking after it's no longer necessary.
At this point, in the states that have mandates? I'm honestly not sure. There sure seems to be no rush to remove them despite having low "cases" and hospitalizations not being an issue. And given none of these states have given a single hint as to when they will go away... who knows?
States that continue this are absolutely normalizing mandated masks. Vaccines were sold as the end of masks (and they morally should have been regardless of what politicians say). Vaccines are the best we can do. Mandated masks in a post-vaccine world makes absolutely no sense at all. What other target could a government reasonably set after a vaccine? "Cases"? "Hospitalizations"? Well... those will always be there. So do we just keep doing this forever?
And if you say "hospital capacity" shouldn't these governments have fixed that already? We gave them two years and it was an emergency so where is the hospital capacity we put our lives on hold for? I mean, its still an emergency right? Shouldn't people be super pissed that government hasn't dealt with the actual problem they keep saying we have?
There shortages of hospital beds across many states [0] If you want a full perspective on things, look further than your own state.
Unless you live in Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, North Dakota, or Montana then everything is not going very well. Most people don't live in these states, and many of the states with loose mask mandates are not in that short list. A small are just about holding their ground, but about 40 states have seen a >= 15% increase in infections just in the last two weeks, and one of the least restrictive states for mask mandates (Texas) has increased by 80%. [1]
[0] https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
I also don't understand your assessment that we are reaching (or can reach) herd immunity: We're not there on the common cold or influenza, and it seems COVID mutates at rates that will keep it around as well. Early evidence on Omicron indicates that it in particular is better at reinfection than other strains, so I hope the data in the next few weeks confirms its milder nature, but reinfection provides even more opportunity for variants to emerge.
We're much better off than we were a year ago: The holiday spike is (so far) not as bad, deaths are lower than last year at this time, and vaccines are widely available. But we're not back to normal yet (probably never will be) and I don't think we're doing as well right now as we could be, and I think we can make a lot more progress before we declare this thing over and adjust to a new status-quo.
As for your experience, it is not predictive or representative given the ~800,000 US deaths. Especially because you live in an admittedly very cautious area.
Give me "unnecessarily wear a mask while walking the dog" and no deaths every day if my other option is "never wear a mask anywhere" and be surrounded by death.
This is still so hilarious to me. It's pretty obvious that some masks work, that is, n95 or whatever actual respirator masks. It's pretty obvious that other masks don't work at all, that is, 99.99% of masks worn by the public at large.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
So a N95 mask works and covering your mouth with a bandana has no effect at all? Not even 10%?
I'm fully vaccinated, so why should I? And when will the pandemic "be over"? Covid is here forever and ever. As long as we keep testing at the level we do, we will always find new variants and always see "spikes" of cases every single winter.
When, specifically, do the states with mask mandates remove them? Why not today? What makes a month better? Or a year? Or never?
Pushing for masks at this stage is arguing we wear masks forever. That isn't a world I care to live in.
Plus many of these people arguing to keep them around forever forget that actual living humans work at these businesses. It takes a lot of privilege to suggest employees should continue wearing masks forever to make a small set of extremely fearful customers feel "safe". I bet 99% of the "pro mask" people on are not in a place requiring them to wear a mask 40 hours a week.
The death distributions are very clear.
If you're healthy, betting that you would be OK is a very reasonable bet.
Long COVID is a big deal, and it apparently affects half of those who get COVID [1]. Furthermore, even double-vaxxed, while protected against hospitalization or death, are still at risk (reduced about 50%) for long COVID [2].
Until/unless Omicron has been proven to have less severe long covid symptoms, yeah I'm treating it with the same caution that I'd do with Delta.
[1] https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-people-get-... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2
Long Covid is not a defined term. It comprises everything from "post-hospitalization syndrome" -- which is something that has existed since long before Covid -- to "slight cough for a few weeks". If you're young (under 65) and otherwise healthy, you are highly unlikely to have anything more than a minor illness. Particularly after vaccination.
Here's a paper that might interest you:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
> In this cross-sectional analysis of 26,823 adults from the population-based French CONSTANCES cohort during the COVID-19 pandemic, self-reported COVID-19 infection was associated with most persistent physical symptoms, whereas laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection was associated only with [loss of smell].
In other words, in a large study out of France, the only "long covid symptom" actually correlated with SARS-CoV2 infection was loss of smell. All of the other various symptoms were associated with self-reported illness, but not confirmed illness.
This is a fairly strong argument that "long covid" is at least partly psychosomatic. We'd probably see this more clearly if the various "long covid" studies didn't rely exclusively on self-reporting of symptoms, and mix together all levels of illness.
To combat this, perhaps we could swap the masks out with gags. /s
Because that's what you do every time you drive. 11 crash fatalities per 100,000 people.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
Getting infected with COVID does not.
Same thing with driving; we have a variety of safety precautions - quite a few of them mandatory - involved that help tilt the cost/benefit balance in our favor.
So they will buy carbon indulgences for your corporate trip to Bora Bora but not regular travelers?
You would need to compare the benefits of driving to the benefits of living a normal life, and compare that to the risks of dying from each.
Why would getting infected with COVID have benefits? What are you trying to say?
Why do you think you get a choice? Without extreme measures of staying locked up, most everyone will encounter the virus. Why not help your body deal with it by going for a walk today to get some exercise? Life is to live, not eat ourselves to overweight deaths.
Going to a live game has benefits. Do those not matter?
So many benefits.
This is a ludicrous abuse of statistics. 11 fatalities per 100k people is 11 fatalities per 100k people's worth of trips. That is a few orders of magnitude less than executing 11 people out of every 100k who show up to a stadium.
The OP comparison of Covid to a football game has the same issue, of course.
> Would you go to a game if you knew 243 people were going to be randomly executed at it?
Covid-19 deaths are not randomly distributed. We've known this for nearly two years now.
I'll happily give those odds a miss.
Without knowing your specific background, your numbers are probably much less.
E.g. ages 0-17, there's been 644 deaths. Across a cohort with ~75,000,000 people.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...
Given the option, I'm not taking that bet. I wouldn't play Russian roulette even with a 2000-bullet revolver. Especially when there are pretty simple steps I can take to further minimize the risk.
(It would be nice to have more-- and updated-- data than this. If anyone is aware of a source, I'd love to know about it)
That's also discounting other (and possibly not yet known) complications from getting COVID. There might not be much of any, but we it will be some time before we know that so I wouldn't discount that factor in my risk analysis.
Serious measure to mitigate transmission rates still seems like a very reasonable practice, even for healthy people.
Thank-you for acknowledging the subjectivity of Risk Tolerance.
But keeping the panic dialed up to 11 for two years is very healthy.
Signed, someone who probably now has a cardiac neurosis.
Unfortunately, in Bulgaria you see that the size of the deaths wave still follows the size of the infection wave.
The “no vulnerable people to die are left” hypothesis doesn’t hold. Those who survived survived because they were lucky, careful or vaccinated. It’s not true that the virus burned through the population and the remaining are the immune or resilient survivors.
If they lock down again, they'll lock down every single winter from here on out. Lockdowns in a post-vaccine world are complete madness.
A few months back I was in Bulgaria, where the majority of the population is antivaxx virus deniers mask sceptics. It’s true that mask free virus free worry free life is much better, it was liberating to be in Bulgaria. However, at the same time everyone knew someone who died from covid. Much more than Turkey, where I have been since the start of the pandemic.
The situation we are in is not a choice. The virus is real, the damage is real and we can’t simply refuse to play. We can but a lot of people will die and I’m not convinced that this is the way to go.
I bet, when the things start getting real with other issues like the global warming, the inconveniences will create similar reactions. I appreciate the drive, the desire for freedom and convince but these things happen to people all the time when they fail to address the slow moving issues beforehand.
Everything we’ve done in the last two years is not caused by the virus but our reaction to the virus.
PS: eventually even the most hardcore fearful will have no choice but to move on. Omicron is not the last variant and Covid will be with us forever. Expecting every member of society to treat Covid as if it is the only problem from here on out is not going to happen.
Get your vaccines. Stop being scared and move on. It’s quite literally as simple as that.
We will eventually move on, the idea is to do it with least damage possible. People moved on from the plague, the black death ve will move on. It’s just doesn’t need to lose so many people in the name of conspiracy theories and inconvenience.
The handling of the situation is different everywhere. It’s a management issue, not really a virus issue.
The way you talk scares me more than the virus. It is so authoritarian and creepy. So many of my tech worker colleagues talk the same way. It’s abuse. People that talk your way are the kinds of people that commit grave atrocities in the name of some cause you are 100% bought into. You do not have the moral high ground you think you do. Stop now before you let very evil people use you to commit very bad things to your fellow humans.
You’ve already allowed your government to destroy our kids, caused old folks to die alone in care homes, gutted the working class, transferred enormous amounts of wealth to the richest in society, and divided the population in a way never seen before. You are committing great evil and you foolishly believe you are doing it for a proper cause. You aren’t.
Covid ends when you personally decide it does. Covid has no feelings. It’s a virus. It does virus stuff. It’s a part of nature just like earthquakes or tornadoes. We have very little control over it. Accept that and move on.
End your fear and Covid is no longer a problem. It is literally as easy as that. Nobody has to “accept” the virus requires them to sacrifice their very short amount of time on this earth unless they allow it to. And anybody who tells them otherwise is not to be trusted at all, for they have nobodies interest in mind.
You know what’s part of the nature? lions, crocodiles and sharks and yet I’m not going to let them eat me. Earthquakes are natural too and you build accordingly, actually the evil governments even implemented building codes for it. 20 years ago I survived an earthquake that wiped out the neighbourhood because the previous governments couldn't bother to be evil and authoritarian over building standards.
What's up with this obsession with naturalism and personification of events?
I'm optimistic.
A version of Covid that is much more contagious, but less likely to be severe is a great way to get the immune system of the vaccine avoidant trained on how to recognize and fight Covid.
For those who have already been vaccinated, a mild breakthrough infection would serve the same function as a booster shot.
Except booster shots don’t infect other people.
And her experience is entirely consistent with Omicron appearing less virulent because it's infecting the previously infected and vaccinated who already have some degree of immunity.
The doctor isn't a psychic but how do _you_ know this
1. We know that break through infections are less serious than infections to the unvaccinated and uninfected. 2. We determine virulence by # of hospitalizations (or other serious outcome) / # of infections 3. If we add more infections that don't have serious outcomes (because they are break through cases) that greatly increases the denominator without affecting the numerator. 4. This is how you could have Omicron be just as virulent as the original but look less virulent to a doctor. (Because of the break through cases)
Does that make sense?
We don't need any further mitigation strategies. Vaccines were the only real mitigation strategy we ever had.
Sometimes I feel this is what people want when they say we should be listening to "medical and scientific" people. They want us to build society around the advice of exactly one profession to the exclusion of everything else.
It takes way more than just a very narrow expert to run a society. For two years we've handed the keys over to exactly one form of expert and completely ignored every other form of expertise.
These "medical and scientific" folks you talk of can yell "not enough" until they run out of air but that doesn't mean we should listen to them. Of course they are gonna say "it isn't enough"! That is their job! That doesn't mean we should to listen to their advice.
It may come as a surprise to some people but at some point you have to move on from covid no matter what these "experts" say. There are vastly more problems with the world than one specific form of illness.
This blind adherence to a small set of "medical experts" is completely myopic and is resulting in a cure that is much worse than covid ever was. We've had a vaccine for a year. You can mix & match boosters at this point. Party is over. Covid is here to stay. Move on, people.
One could hypothesize that those who derive greater self-esteem or self-worth from social dynamics would engage in behaviors where the long-run probability of increasing self-esteem is higher. In other words, the most adaptive posts on both sides of a social media debate would be those which: A) maximally increase self-esteem via ingroup loyalty, and B) cause the debate to be prolonged or not resolved, thereby increasing the duration of A. The "we can't be sure" defense in response to optimism is B.
But that hope should not be treated as a fact like the headline does.
Another hope could be that omicron is actually not as virulent as delta, but only spreads so fast in South Africa, because people can get reinfected.
It's seeing a pretty explosive growth rate in Denmark.
https://sum.dk/ministeren/sociale-medier-arkiv/2021/december...
https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusr...
Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it within a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join Smallpox and Polio though.
That said, we've accepted an annual winter uptick in flu infections and we just tell people most vulnerable to get their yearly flu jab; less vulnerable folks can stay at home for a bit and manage the symptoms. If that's what we have to do for covid every winter then so be it.
I would still call that a victory overall.
We would have to completely redesign our current method of vaccination, then. We do not have a sterilizing vaccine for COVID (like we did for smallpox and polio). The current vaccines all use spike proteins to prepare a body's antibodies against the main infection tool of the COVID virus. This method indirectly prevents the virus from efficiently infecting cells in vaccinated hosts, but it does not and cannot eradicate the virus.
We don't actually have sterilizing vaccines for smallpox or polio either.
>The classic tale of sterilizing immunity unfolds something like this: A pathogen attempts to infiltrate a body; antibodies, lurking in the vicinity thanks to vaccination or a previous infection, instantly zap it out of existence, so speedily that the microbe can’t even reproduce. No symptoms manifest, and most of the body’s immune cells never get involved, a bit like an intruder smacking up against an electric fence around a building, leaving the security guards inside none the wiser.
and
>This is a very neat story. And it is “almost impossible to prove,” Mark Slifka, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Oregon Health & Science University, told me. To show sterilizing immunity, researchers have to demonstrate that an infection never occurred—a big ask, considering that microbiologists can’t even agree on what an infection actually is.
If that is the definition used, yes, you are right. It is also basically useless as a term, as it is 'almost impossible to prove.' If you wish to use another term, we can do that. Instead of sterilizing, I could simply say 'highly effective.' Suffice to say, the mechanisms used by the COVID vaccine and the polio vaccine are very different. At most, the polio vaccine only included 3 strains (or variants)- the Salk vaccine, the first, only targeted type 1, but two more were added later over the course of years.
All of this is to say- the highly effective polio vaccine works because there are very few polio variants and people are immunized against them directly.
The COVID vaccine does not make one immune to the virus, or immune to the spike protein. The presence of the spike protein in the vaccine provokes an autoimmune response in the form of antibodies that will target that spike protein. This is somewhat effective, and a clever 'hack' that allows us a measure of protection. However, different spike proteins can be used by different variant viruses.
I am not antivaccine, and while autoimmune systems can be fairly complex, it is certainly worth discussing. Frankly I find the obfuscation and sloppy, ideological reporting to be frustrating. On all sides I see a lack of rigor and emotional attempts at control.
Would someone who is flagging this comment please, instead, respond to it? If it is so trivially dismissed, please show the rest of us.
Accepted? I would call that normalizing as well. According to an estimate, about 290,000 to 650,000 globally died of the flu each year.[1]
Normalization means it's a problem out of mind out of sight. We stop demanding these problems to be solved.
1. https://www.who.int/news/item/13-12-2017-up-to-650-000-peopl...
At some point, drastic measures start being worse than the disease. It doesn't mean we should ignore the few hundred thousand death.
Since we have 100% death ratio, show us your health history along with your verifiable ID. We are the ministry of Truth and Safety.
In all seriousness: We need to push back on robbing of civil liberties. No one cared to check for flu vaccine. It should be the same for COVID now that it’s getting weaker and it won’t end forever.
Humanity declared victory over every single pathogen to date (eradicated, contained or seasonal) because we are still here and thriving. We should go on with our lives.
So these politicians should treat this like an emergency and drive dumptrucks of money up to healthcare staff not working and get them back. Get nursing students. Do whatever it takes. Think outside of the box. This is supposed to be an emergency, is it not?
I mean, if it was an emergency and healthcare was truly an issue, why aren't those hospital tents and hospital ships docked in the harbor of every major city? "Lack of staff" is just an excuse in an emergency. You work around it. Make it happen. It's an emergency, right?
And if it isn't an emergency, why are we mandating anything at all? Shouldn't we all be going about our lives like we did prior to march 2020? If it isn't an emergency why are governments still using emergency powers to push mandates onto citizens instead of actually dealing with hospital shortages?
None of this makes any sense at all when you really start thinking about it. Absolutely none of it... Never did, never will...
[US Closing Hospitals At Record Pace During Pandemic - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz46ZQSRdRE)
Here's LA County using overflow tents in 2018 because the flu season was particularly bad: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-flu-demand-2018...
So it's not like this is some new threat. "2 weeks to flatten the curve" came along with some understanding that hospitals would increase their resources. Instead, in many states, they've spent more time working out which unvaccinated staff to fire and how than they have increasing staffing levels.
You're picking an outlier as proof that its not seasonal. Others may say it's the exception that proves the rule.
I just did. There are no discernable spikes coinciding with cold weather for India, Brazil, the UK or Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season#Timing -> https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/165/12/1434/125289
> In the Fourier analysis, the seasonality of influenza in Brazil was characterized by a semiannual pattern, peaking in the winter month of June (amplitude = 27 percent), with a second, smaller peak during the summer (January; amplitude = 13 percent; figure 2).
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/health/covid-deer-animals/ind...
For example, it could be the case that Omicron is actually less infectious than the original variant, when compared in the setting of 2020. It spreads faster today because, (i) because of preexisting immunity most cases are very mild, and so lots of people become unwitting carriers, (ii) people have gone back to normal behavior after vaccination, and (iii) the vaccines inhibit the other variants much more than Omnicron. So Omicron gets more opportunities to infect and spread. Of course, all this is just conjecture and could be true or false.
What matters from a practical point of view is that, Omnicron is less severe in the general population today(for various reasons), as compared to the original strain back in 2020.
I think it is misleading. AIDS is much more survivable in "the current situation" because of various drug advances we made in the past few decades. Does that mean 2021 AIDS is "less severe" than 90s AIDS? I guess you could claim it's technically less severe, but the wording definitely suggests it's something about the virus, rather than the environment.
* variant "D" that kills 1% of the 20% of the population that isn't seropositive
* variant "O" that kills 1% of the 20% of the population that isn't seropositive and 0.2% of the 80% of the population that is seropositive
The takeaway is "good news everyone, variant O is less severe!"
>“Epidemiological tracking shows a steep trajectory of new infections, indicating Omicron’s rapid spread, but so far with a flatter trajectory of hospital admissions, possibly indicating lower severity,” explains Dr Noach. “This lesser severity could, however, be confounded by the high seroprevalence levels of SARS CoV-2 antibodies in the general South African population, especially following an extensive Delta wave of infections.” [1].
So, to actually make the comparison we'd need to compare new Delta infections with new Omicron infections time-matched, comparing people who were seronegative to start with. This would be really hard to do in South Africa since there is a high proportion of seropositive people.
For a bit more of an apples-to-apples comparison they should be comparing omicron hospitalization & fatality rates to those of non-omicron variants over the same period of time. It doesn't look like they've done that, and I'm not aware of a study that has systematically done this (yet).
It would certainly be a holiday-season gift if we shifted to a more virulent but less serious variant, but I'll hold out for a bit more information before I completely buy into that narrative. That can be difficult: people want to believe some good news here. Heck, my initial gut reaction was to push back against your objections but my career has trained me to resist that sort of thing. It won't be good for the erosion of trust in the media if they've jumped the gun on this and Omicron doesn't turn out the way we hope it will.
> For individuals who have had COVID-19 previously, the risk of reinfection with Omicron is significantly higher, relative to prior variants.
All viruses are severe if you have no immune protection from them. A small number of people die from the cold every year. The only thing that matters is how severe the infection is given the immunity you have.
Comparing the severity of the viral strains on some objective scale, if that’s even possible, is at best an academic curiosity. Severity comparisons only really matter in giving us an accurate idea of how likely severe illness and death will be so that individuals, families, and public health officials can make any changes necessary.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/covid-vaccinat...
Few headlines work without context so what we want is for them to choose the most obvious, pertinent context. I think we all care a lot more about what Omicron means to us now, not what it would have meant if it were the main variant at the start of the pandemic.
And, of course, anyone who cares about the topic should read past the headline.
Plus, this combination could be a lot WORSE for the hospital capacity situation.
Even if the virulence/severity is only a fraction, the severe consequences will still grow exponentially, just further to the right on the curve.
Meanwhile, the curve will grow a lot faster to the top of the graph because the greater exponential growth among both the unvaxed and the vaccinated.
So, higher percentage of severe cases and lower transmisability would be less bad — fewer sever cases and much greater trensmissability is almost the worst case.
It could still be that among people infected with Omicron, there is a larger proportion of vaccinated people, due to vaccines being less efficient, but that's still a better yardstick.
Just because you disagree with something does not make it "misleading". The question of prior immunity is not unknown, is an obvious question, and in fact is mentioned in the article and discussed in the study.
The title accurately reflects the contents of the study. I have many issues with Washington Post's coverage of Covid, but this is actually fair.
No research paper stands alone, and we never have all context on a given question. You disagree with the conclusion for reasons -- that's fine. Make your arguments, and see if you can convince people. That's how science works.
Google doesn't run its data centers at 5% capacity for the same reasons ICUs don't.
These numbers show (as one would expect) that prior infection makes you less likely to get Omicron, and that prior infection with more recent strains does so more effectively. (Which might be because they're more Omicron-like, or because the infection was more recent. I'm guessing more the latter.)
> South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of South Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to previous infection. We don’t think it’s a question of virulence, but more a question of exposure to vaccination and prior infection, so we would be cautious to try and interpret that this is a less virulent strain. We’ll have to see what happens in other parts of the world before we make a call on this.