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Omicron Variant: Early Analysis
- archsurface 5y agoNot early, pre-mature. The South African scientists have said it will be weeks before useful analysis is complete. You'll have to web search for the ref, I'm busy, but it shouldn't be difficult.
- stevespang 5y ago[dead]
- h2odragon 5y agoWow that's amazing coverage and will be a great resource someday for seeing how the news and the policy happened over the course of today. Thus far. Excellent work.
- estaseuropano 5y agoIt seems to me a rather random selection of info, the only real insight comes from the Twitter threads quoted.
- akmarinov 5y agoWhat happened to Nu?
- sdoering 5y agoFrom the article: > I was almost finished with this post when the WHO decided to go with Omicron instead of Nu (or even Xi) and then I had to go through and replace Nu with Omicron about 25 times. We could have just said ‘the Nu variant’ a lot but the WHO hates both efficiency and fun even more than it hates freedom, it seems. Sad.
- R0b0t1 5y agoSeems reasonable to skip Nu to avoid miscommunication. Maybe overthinking it a little.
- ThePinion 5y agoFunny how they skipped "Xi" Wimps.
- Waterluvian 5y agoNo. It’s sensible to. This isn’t a subject to get all edgy and political over. Just avoid any obvious touchy symbols given the symbols are entirely interchangeable. If there was a letter sharing a name with any current political leader I’m sure they’d do the same.
- cavisne 5y agoEspecially not the leader who created this bio weapon and unleashed it on the world.
- tekstar 5y agoThe Nu Rave epidemic of 2009 already claimed it
- cajuncanuck 5y agoThat's a ton of hot air and speculation that's going to feed FUD.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fizzyfizz 5y agoI'm sure this person means well, and is very intelligent, but I stopped reading at the byline. I went and found what this person's expertise actually is. Zvi Mowshowitz is a former professional Magic: The Gathering player who also held a developer intern position at Wizards of the Coast Magic R&D. He is known for having created innovative and sometimes game-breaking decks TurboZvi and My Fires. Now, there is a balance between credentialism and amateurism. Amateurs can get a lot of things right. They can also get a lot of things wrong, and I at least don't have the meta-expertise to know which is which, especially when there's breaking news. Do we need informed amateurs? Yes. But the crucial test is still whether they are accepted or promoted by the professionals. Zeynep Tufekci was vocalizing concerns that many professionals had, which is why her criticisms of health policy worked out. In contrast, I have an extremely nerdy friend who has thinks it's her job to explain things to people, and thus writes deeply researched, well-footnoted blog posts about COVID, which are quite often wrong. I for one can't tell what sort of person this is. But I also know that I'm not good at tagging facts with epistemic certainty. If I read a thing in a blog post it will probably stick, but I'll forget where I got that. So the simple solution it to not read it. I think when it comes to writing explainers, it's 2021 and we have a wealth of resources and can wait for the professionals, including scientists who blog part time. I suggest that more people should be like me, and ignore the laypeople, indeed even most of the journalism, at least during the initial stages.
- 542458 5y agoEspecially when his conclusion gets into him predicting specific percent chances of things happening… I know he slapped a disclaimer around it, but that still feels more than a bit irresponsible. This really feels like a “wait for the experts” moment. Edit: I don’t think the parent comment deserved to be flag killed. It’s entirely legitimate to point out that the author is not an epidemiologist or biologist or any other relevant -ist, and that early on you often need the domain experience to sift hype or panic from actual data. This is doubly true given the somewhat sensational tone here (“we’re f**ed”).
- chillacy 5y agoThe author could be practicing a superforecasting exercise of coming up with probability estimates and grading them at the end of the year to calibrate, but this author doesn't show his work as to where these estimates come from. For example: > In hindsight the 70% prediction was somewhat overconfident, and a prediction of about 45% would have been better That's a huge post-hoc adjustment, what factors were important? Just because a p70 event does not occur does not mean that it did not warrant a p70 at the time.
- sofixa 5y ago> ... but the WHO hates both efficiency and fun even more than it hates freedom, it seems. Sad Can someone clarify this part for me please? I find it incredibly hard to trust an author who starts a supposedly serious article with such sensationalist bullshit.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rp1 5y agoXi is the spelling of China’s leader’s last name. Nu just sounds like the word “new”, but is longer than omicron.
- Pokepokalypse 5y agoOnly in Romanized Chinese; which is an English-approximate spelling of how it would be pronounced. (sort of). Spelling is different in Chinese, of course, which has fuck-all to do with the Greek letter, or how it would be pronounced in English. People bringing up the Chinese leader pronounced name's English spelling, to confuse it with a Greek letter, are really reaching hard.
- iheartdaikaiju 5y agoThe complaint is over the name, your placement of the ellipses is really unfortunate as the snipped portion of the sentence answers your question. Regarding the tone, I would not read so much into this; if you read a little bit further in the article (you can just ctrl+f and search for who, it doesn't have a lot of occurrences either as WHO or who) you'll find that the author Mowshowitz agrees with the world health organization regarding their recommendation not to restrict travel. It bears mentioning that at least on a literal level, the WHO recommending against a travel restriction is the WHO doing the opposite of hating freedom, so we are forced to conclude that the sentence you chose to highlight was intended to be read tongue-in-cheek.
- mrjangles 5y agoI feel like we are doing this to ourselves. All the lockdowns are breeding viruses which are stronger and more infectious than ever. The way viruses normally work is that they evolve to be less deadly over time, and this evolution happens quite quickly. The less deadly strains spread quicker (because carriers aren't walled up in bed), and by the time the deadly strains get to people, they already have partial immunity after catching the less deadly strains. Anyway, something has clearly changed. Coronaviruses have been around since forever, now we are getting more and more super spreaders appearing, seemingly, out of nowhere. As far as I can tell, the only thing that is different now than in the past that could be causing this is the lockdowns.
- nojito 5y ago>All the lockdowns are breeding viruses which are stronger and more infectious than ever. Not sure you where you got this from, but this variant came from a region with subpar vaccination rates. >The way viruses normally work is that they evolve to be less deadly over time, and this evolution happens quite quickly. The less deadly strains spread quicker (because carriers aren't walled up in bed), and by the time the deadly strains get to people, they already have partial immunity after catching the less deadly strains. Also very incorrect. Delta has a higher hospitalization rates than other variants https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01358-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- mrjangles 5y agoI feel like you really need to reread my comment. Nothing you wrote is related to anything I said. >Not sure you where you got this from, but this variant came from a region with subpar vaccination rates. I never said anything about vaccinations. >Delta has a higher hospitalization rates than other variants yes that's what I said. We are breeding stronger viruses.
- zerobits 5y agoHere's an attempt at a summary of this article: · Became dominant strain in South Africa in like a week (way faster than Delta). Must be either a superspreader event, much more transmissible, or much more evasive of antibodies. · No real data on that cause, and no evidence for increased lethality. Will find out in next 1-2 weeks probably. Decent chance this becomes dominant worldwide and US soon, but not clear if that will be a problem or not. · The one worrying data we know is the variant has a lot more mutations than other variants, which would make it likely to evade vaccine/antibody treatments – but not necessarily the other kinds of treatments. · WHO not recommending countries to limit travel. Also problematic that vaccines aren't updating for new variants, and good chance FDA will be the bottleneck there.
- clarge1120 5y agoThis is the fourth story in one day on the newest deadliest variant ever.
- blockwriter 5y agoWhen I bought My Files from the Dojo by Zvi Mowshowitz as a paperback, little did I know that the same person to detail the power of Galina’s Knight in a formate defined by Flametounge Kabul would advise me on burgeoning matters of epidemiology.
- codephined 5y agofake BS. the WHO talked about this in July. they are going to use this to explain away the deaths due to the acquired immune deficiency syndrome incurred by the injections. here is the WHO talking about this "variant" in July: https://archive.md/fl9rp https://archive.md/fl9rp
- elp 5y agoThis is pure opinion. No Facts. At this stage the virus has been found we know almost nothing else yet. And quoting Feigl-Ding is like quoting the exact opposite of a virus denier. Everything he ever sees is evidence that the sky is falling. Vaccination rate in South Africa is only about 24% of the pop. Just off the top of my head some of the things that would have caused the even the Alpha variant to spike: We've just finished local elections i.e standing in long queues for an hour or two and the political rallies just before then. Its summer and almost the end of the school year so lots of parties. I went to my kid's school carol thing this week. Outdoors but still 200 people all close together without masks. This included the hairdresser/epidemiologist mom who has done the research on why the vaccine is bad. (We have our share of idiots). All the office parties are getting held now before everyone leaves for holidays or the government locks everyone down for Christmas. Think buffet style queue all using the same serving spoons, no hand sanitizing, questionable hygiene anyway after a few beers.
- Ginden 5y agoOutcompeting other variants that fast is deeply disturbing - it implies very strong advantage in terms of transmitability over other variants.