S.Africa says vaccines, prior infection help mildness of Covid cases

Re:S.Africa says vaccines, prior infection help mildness of ... by nyokodo on Monday December 20, 2021 @12:56AM (#29621928)

> If Omicron is 10x more virulent

I think you mean “10x more infectious” as virulence is how serious/deadly/damaging the infection is. Omicron is no more virulent and maybe considerably less virulent than previous strains.

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Re:S.Africa says vaccines, prior infection help mildness of ... by asimpletune on Monday December 20, 2021 @03:32AM (#29622560)

So I was a little confused about the definition myself, because when I looked it up a while back my iPhone dictionary suggested both as a definition.

Is the key difference that in an infectious disease expert context, virulent means severe and infectious means contagious?

I always thought virulent was ability to spread because that’s what viruses do, but that was way before the pandemic.

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Re:S.Africa says vaccines, prior infection help mildness of ... by sterlind on Monday December 20, 2021 @04:56AM (#29622982)

correct. it's confusing terminology, but virulent means severe. so MERS is very virulent (30% mortality) but not very infectious (R0<1). SARS-COV-2 is the opposite.

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Re:S.Africa says vaccines, prior infection help mildness of ... by lettergram on Monday December 20, 2021 @05:10AM (#29623061)

You’re correct, brain was working a bit slower late at night -_-

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