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Omicron Update, Dec 2
- draw_down 5y agoRelated: > Dr ANGELIQUE COETZEE, the doctor who alerted the world to the Omicron Covid variant, says we are over-reacting to the threat https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10256373/Dr-ANGELIQUE-COETZEE-discovered-Omicron-says-reacting-threat.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10256373/Dr-ANGEL...
- y4mi 5y agoi don't have any domain knowledge so i cannot build an opinion on the matter, but the fact that they discovered it doesn't give them more authority on the topic then everyone else. most researchers i've heard on the topic only said "we will have to pay close attention to it", which sounds pretty reasonable from my uneducated perspective.
- tremon 5y agoBoth the name and the picture in the article would suggest that "he" is, in all likelihood, a she.
- jrochkind1 5y agoThe South African scientists I have read saying "over-reacting" also agree with what you summarize as most researchers saying: "we will have to pay attention to it". They say we are over-reacting because many places are doing more than paying attention to it, making policy decisions and instituting additional restrictions based on unproven fears about it, not just paying attention to it. The South African scientists who discovered it don't have more authority on the topic than everyone else, but they have as much or more than many. They have more than, say, me. They probably have as much as most other scientists in the field, since they're on the ground with access to evidence, and for longer than anyone else.
- junon 5y ago> but they have as much or more than many That's not how epidemiology or even science works. There are so many variables at play that a response in one region might not make sense in another region, and the same goes for the virus's behavior.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoBelieving there's an option to do nothing until more data is available is a luxurious fallacy. By then it's too late. Obviously. That's the problem with exponential growth. Not much seems to happen until suddenly it all happens at once, and the only chance to prevent that was a few weeks ago.
- jrochkind1 5y agoI don't understand your theory of when it's appropriate to impose restrictions before you have enough data to know they are useful or necessary. Is your suggestion, what, to impose the strictest restrictions possible everywhere, forever, just in case, because by the time we know it's really necessary it's too late, so we should always do it without knowing it's necessary? Like, what do you think should trigger restrictions? Just finding a variant? Should all the variants Alpha through Mu have triggered global worldwide lockdown, because if they had turned out more dangerous than they did, by the time we had found that out it would have been too late? Basically we should lock down until there are no more variants? (Will that ever happen?)
- edmcnulty101 5y agoThat's because the news media does not make money on rational and level headed takes, and the people in power do not maintain power with rational and level headed takes. Threat level ORANGE!
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoIs the assumption that those in positions of power in various governments are just watching the news, so that's why they chose to take more drastic actions with this one, even though Delta raised similar flags with the media but much less action was taken?
- edmcnulty101 5y agoIts more of a historical observation. Fear is the powerful person's best friend. US has been surprisingly tame with it's authoritarian power grabs probably due to our checks and balances and state rights. I hear other countries are having much bigger problems with authoritarian power grabs.
- shmatt 5y agoShe, as a family doctor, was fast to alert from the front lines. But she is not an infectious disease specialist. The first doctors seeing HIV cases in California without knowing what it was, yet alerting the medical community, were not the same people who brought us the current medication that controls it Her position on the front lines is very important. But the decision on how dangerous the variant is should be given to those who specialize in just that (and would probably suck at diagnosing you with a stomach ulcer)
- spaniard89277 5y agoWell if Rt is ~3 I guess we're going to have another ride in Spain. I don't think this country can handle another lockdown. In my region people is pretty sensible about mask use etc. We relaxed a bit, but people still take care. I've been to Madrid and Barcelona for work and people behaves like this never happened. I hope I get a chance to a boost shot, because I know a couple of dudes that got covid and the side effects are pretty ugly. I'd rather be in my bed with fever for a couple of days.
- adam_arthur 5y agoHas anyone done the math on whether these lockdown policies have produced objectively better outcomes over the long term? Given that widespread vaccination does not stop infection from spreading, lockdowns seem arbitrary and pointless. Especially when you consider economic consequences, which also inflicts very real pain and suffering on the populace. Anecdotally, it doesn't seem to have made any difference at all in the US, state by state.
- shin_lao 5y agoImagine if the conclusion is "the lockdowns were useless".
- sirkent 5y agoMy understanding is that a lockdown is only supposed to slow the spread and alleviate pressure on health services so that they are not overwhelmed. We saw what happens when they are overwhelmed in India - Many more people die that could have been saved. So to answer your question, you would have to define 'objectively better'. Are you referring to economic outcomes, number of deaths or some other measurement?
- spaniard89277 5y agoWell, it helped to aleviate the collapse of hospitals here. They were late so hospitals collapsed anyway, but could have been worse. It's just a question of timing. Late for Madrid, nicely timed for my city. Another new problem I see is that healthcare personnel is burnt-out. Not only because of the insane work-hours and all the jazz, they feel mistreated by politicians and society in general, and I have doubts that if they get called for a new emergency they'll go contribute in the same numbers.
- rossdavidh 5y agoThe graph showing Omicron outcompeting Delta is, I think, actually good news. The worse condition would be if they don't even compete, i.e. Omicron was so different that having either Delta or Omicron wouldn't make you immune from the other. The pretty abrupt decline in Delta as Omicron ramps up, suggests pretty strongly that they do compete. I think this one might be The One. Everyone will be immune soon, perhaps, one way or the other. But if Omicron and Delta compete, then it seems plausible that the existing vaccines would at least help a bit with the severity of symptoms.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI don't see how a mutation, no matter what, being more infectious is good news. The fact it (and Delta for that matter) was allowed to mutate in the first place is already pretty telling that the approach used to stem the tide was not effective.
- tgv 5y agoYeah, but only if it's milder than Delta, of course. This was my initial hope: if the virus mutates so quickly, it could mutate itself out of existence after a while by becoming very contagious but as strong as a common cold. Of course, once this happens, people will forget it ever happened and ignore the next warning signals.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoThe other side of that is that, given the long time COVID takes to kill someone and the amount of time they are infectious before that, it doesn't have much of a reason to become less deadly. Sure, it could mutate by chance to become more benign, but if it's communicable for twoish weeks, including while asymptomatic, then stops being communicable, and then kills the host what does it matter evolutionarily speaking that the host died? I don't think there's any pressure on COVID to become less deadly.
- jsnell 5y agoYou are misreading the graph. The y axis is a percentage of total infections, not absolute number of infections. You can't tell from it whether the number of Delta infections is down, steady, or even up.
- christmm 5y agoI find that the most relevant information is given by Dr Fauci. Everyone needs to trust the science and Dr Fauci, and stop reading anything else when we know the rest is misinformation.
- digitalsushi 5y agoI trust science and I trust Fauci but if I am learning anything from the current tense, it's that we should push back on idolization
- thomcano 5y agoLet's do our jobs properly to minimize the spread of the Omicron variant as possible; this will help our health works and researchers somehow.