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I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower t

I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk. 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-interview-with-south-african-doctor 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.

JamesBarney 5y ago
The doctor who found it, isn't a psychic. She doesn't have any information the rest of us don't. She's just describing her personal experience. 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.
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  > 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
  - JamesBarney 5y ago
    How do I know "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." 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?
bitwize 5y ago
> Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? No. This is a perfectly good crisis and to do so would be to let it go to waste.
- tannisphere4 5y ago
  Someone out there is doing a study on meta-communication during COVID. The internalization of dominant narratives on social media is such an unspoken axiom, that merely SUGGESTING optimism results in a flurry of "we can't be sure!" finger-waves. 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.
ljm 5y ago
> COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all means try to replace it with something weaker! 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.
- jatone 5y ago
  I havent seen any evidence covid is seasonal. it may become seasonal. but nothing in the past 2 years as indicated it is.
  - QuarterReptile 5y ago
    Just so other commenters can understand: are you saying that you haven't seen the charts with enormous spikes on them every time a place enters a cold season? Or that you find them to be uncompelling for some (as yet undisclosed) reason?
    - unmole 5y ago
      The second wave hit India at the height of summer. That outlier is big enough for me to be sceptical.
  - coolspot 5y ago
    Have you seen infection/death charts? It peaks in winter and at its minimum in summer.
    - unmole 5y ago
      Have you seen the charts for India?
legulere 5y ago
Of course we should be optimistic that omicron and variants that will follow will be less severe. 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.
- manjana 5y ago
  > 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/1312-omikron-tager-over https://sum.dk/ministeren/sociale-medier-arkiv/2021/december... https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusrapport/rapport-omikronvarianten-14122021-rg41.pdf?la=da https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusr...
wokwokwok 5y ago
Wanting something to be true does not make it true. 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.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  According to what I heard through the Covid update of work. Omicron settles more in the nose and not as much in the long ( their source was a doctor). Although it's too early to be sure, it would explain both an increased transmissibility and a milder variant.
  - megablast 5y ago
    You understand that what you said is pure nonsense right?
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Based on? The second part seems logical tbh and the first part actually did happen ( 1200 employees and a decent company, so I doubt their would be lies. We're no better.com ). Also, it is similar enough to what i heard before from a conference about covid previous year.
      - NicoJuicy 5y ago
        COVID update from work is actually a weekly online meeting that started because of COVID. I forgot by now that it would sound weird for an outsider. Everything is discussed what's happening in and out of the company ( supply chain shortage, COVID variants, cyber security,...) There's a q&a if someone has questions/concerns. 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 :)
panarky 5y ago
> a little optimistic? 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.
- marpstar 5y ago
  It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long, and COVID is clearly not driving us to extinction.
  - panarky 5y ago
    Is it optimism to settle for any outcome that's better than extinction?
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    Are you arguing the equivalent of "something increasing the chance of another world war is not a concern, because previous world wars clearly didn't drive humans to extinction"?
  - adventured 5y ago
    > It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long 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).
tn890 5y ago
> I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk. 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.
- AustinDev 5y ago
  This may come off wrong but... COVID is not the first virus. Immunosuppressed people for all of human history have been falling victim to the common cold, the flu and other infections most humans can deal with safely. You can't stop the world economy and the benefit that brings to the majority of society to save a fraction of a percentage point of the population that is Immunocompromised.
  - tn890 5y ago
    Wearing a mask in a supermarket does not "stop the world economy". Americans are borderline insane with the mask mandate
    - jkubicek 5y ago
      Americans are full-on insane with their opposition to mask mandates.
  - mitigating 5y ago
    How does wearing a mask hurt the economy?
    - vkou 5y ago
      This may be a simple answer to a simple question - but it doesn't.
jjk166 5y ago
Hoping it's mild is great. Betting your life it's mild is dumb.
- aantix 5y ago
  243 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality). The death distributions are very clear. If you're healthy, betting that you would be OK is a very reasonable bet.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Death is merely the most extreme outcome. Not dying doesn't mean you're OK. 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-long-covid-more-half-researchers-find/ https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-people-get-... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2
    - timr 5y ago
      > Long COVID is a big deal 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/fullarticle/2785832 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.
brokensegue 5y ago
The south African doctor had insufficient evidence to conclude it was "extremely mild". Waiting for more data was the right course.
ineedasername 5y ago
Optimism on the part of news outlets can be dangerous here. It may cause people to prematurely relax their precautions, and if it turns out to be wrong it will further erode trust in media outlets that jumped the gun. Considering the study was comparing Omicron to the initial wave of 2020 infections (a strange choice) I am not confident in the results. If it turns out to be correct, it will be more of an accident than accurate analysis. 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.
mitigating 5y ago
"The omicron variant is cause for concern — but not panic" - Biden "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/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/health/omicron-cases-us-cdc/i... https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-report-omicron-finds-first-handful-cases-us-mostly-mild-rcna8352 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
- altcognito 5y ago
  It shouldn’t be surprising that the people that complain most vociferously about “The media panic” are selectively hearing only what reinforces their view of the media. 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.
GeekyBear 5y ago
> Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? 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.
- pbourke 5y ago
  30% less severe with twice the rate of spread does not seem like a good tradeoff. You have an exponential increase in cases but a linear reduction in hospital admissions.
- macintux 5y ago
  > 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.
mrtksn 5y ago
Just look at well vaccinated populations like UK or Spain and then look at not well vaccinated like Bulgaria to see if it holds. 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.
- sjg007 5y ago
  The UK has basically indicated that it is going to be bad and are relying on boosting before the new year to blunt the impact. If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming..
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming.. 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.
    - sjg007 5y ago
      I dunno, masks seem pretty effective as are capacity limits. That and rapid testing before gathering seems like a pretty good plan.
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        Mask and capacity limits until when? And why? What problem is being solved now? What’s the goal?
        mrtksn 5y ago
        Why I’m sensing a tone of desire to cancel the virus? As if, not fun anymore let’s do something else kind of canceling. 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.
sjg007 5y ago
Hope is not a strategy.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Nor is irrational panic
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Reality exists somewhere in the middle where we work together on rational mitigation strategies.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      We have mitigation strategies. Vaccines. We've had them for a year. Anybody can get them. Boosters even. You can even mix & match your preferred make & model at this point! We don't need any further mitigation strategies. Vaccines were the only real mitigation strategy we ever had.
      - sjg007 5y ago
        The medical and scientific consensus is that vaccines alone are not enough.
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        Could you imagine a company where lawyers had complete control over product development and the entire company designed their goods around whatever the lawyers said? Every square inch of the product would be covered in legal disclaimers, everything would have foam padding on the corners, and the box it came in would have you sign a 40 page document before you could even open it. I have no clue how the actual product might function but whatever it does, there is no way its failure would result in a lawsuit; which means it probably doesn't work very well at all. 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.

JamesBarney 5y ago

The doctor who found it, isn't a psychic. She doesn't have any information the rest of us don't. She's just describing her personal experience. 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.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago
> 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
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  How do I know "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." 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?

bitwize 5y ago

> Although... Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? No. This is a perfectly good crisis and to do so would be to let it go to waste.

tannisphere4 5y ago
Someone out there is doing a study on meta-communication during COVID. The internalization of dominant narratives on social media is such an unspoken axiom, that merely SUGGESTING optimism results in a flurry of "we can't be sure!" finger-waves. 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.

ljm 5y ago

> COVID clearly isn't going away at this point, so by all means try to replace it with something weaker! 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.

jatone 5y ago
I havent seen any evidence covid is seasonal. it may become seasonal. but nothing in the past 2 years as indicated it is.
- QuarterReptile 5y ago
  Just so other commenters can understand: are you saying that you haven't seen the charts with enormous spikes on them every time a place enters a cold season? Or that you find them to be uncompelling for some (as yet undisclosed) reason?
  - unmole 5y ago
    The second wave hit India at the height of summer. That outlier is big enough for me to be sceptical.
- coolspot 5y ago
  Have you seen infection/death charts? It peaks in winter and at its minimum in summer.
  - unmole 5y ago
    Have you seen the charts for India?

legulere 5y ago

Of course we should be optimistic that omicron and variants that will follow will be less severe. 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.

manjana 5y ago
> 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/1312-omikron-tager-over https://sum.dk/ministeren/sociale-medier-arkiv/2021/december... https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusrapport/rapport-omikronvarianten-14122021-rg41.pdf?la=da https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusr...

wokwokwok 5y ago

Wanting something to be true does not make it true. 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.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
According to what I heard through the Covid update of work. Omicron settles more in the nose and not as much in the long ( their source was a doctor). Although it's too early to be sure, it would explain both an increased transmissibility and a milder variant.
- megablast 5y ago
  You understand that what you said is pure nonsense right?
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Based on? The second part seems logical tbh and the first part actually did happen ( 1200 employees and a decent company, so I doubt their would be lies. We're no better.com ). Also, it is similar enough to what i heard before from a conference about covid previous year.
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      COVID update from work is actually a weekly online meeting that started because of COVID. I forgot by now that it would sound weird for an outsider. Everything is discussed what's happening in and out of the company ( supply chain shortage, COVID variants, cyber security,...) There's a q&a if someone has questions/concerns. 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 :)

panarky 5y ago

> a little optimistic? 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.

marpstar 5y ago
It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long, and COVID is clearly not driving us to extinction.
- panarky 5y ago
  Is it optimism to settle for any outcome that's better than extinction?
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  Are you arguing the equivalent of "something increasing the chance of another world war is not a concern, because previous world wars clearly didn't drive humans to extinction"?
- adventured 5y ago
  > It's a miracle that the human race has survived this long 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).

tn890 5y ago

> I would suspect that most people who are were already vulnerable have already passed or built immunity if the virus is equally dangerous, resulting in a lower than equal death rate despite equivalent risk. 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.

AustinDev 5y ago
This may come off wrong but... COVID is not the first virus. Immunosuppressed people for all of human history have been falling victim to the common cold, the flu and other infections most humans can deal with safely. You can't stop the world economy and the benefit that brings to the majority of society to save a fraction of a percentage point of the population that is Immunocompromised.
- tn890 5y ago
  Wearing a mask in a supermarket does not "stop the world economy". Americans are borderline insane with the mask mandate
  - jkubicek 5y ago
    Americans are full-on insane with their opposition to mask mandates.
- mitigating 5y ago
  How does wearing a mask hurt the economy?
  - vkou 5y ago
    This may be a simple answer to a simple question - but it doesn't.

jjk166 5y ago

Hoping it's mild is great. Betting your life it's mild is dumb.

aantix 5y ago
243 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S. (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality). The death distributions are very clear. If you're healthy, betting that you would be OK is a very reasonable bet.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Death is merely the most extreme outcome. Not dying doesn't mean you're OK. 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-long-covid-more-half-researchers-find/ https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-people-get-... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03495-2
  - timr 5y ago
    > Long COVID is a big deal 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/fullarticle/2785832 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.

brokensegue 5y ago

The south African doctor had insufficient evidence to conclude it was "extremely mild". Waiting for more data was the right course.

ineedasername 5y ago

Optimism on the part of news outlets can be dangerous here. It may cause people to prematurely relax their precautions, and if it turns out to be wrong it will further erode trust in media outlets that jumped the gun. Considering the study was comparing Omicron to the initial wave of 2020 infections (a strange choice) I am not confident in the results. If it turns out to be correct, it will be more of an accident than accurate analysis. 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.

mitigating 5y ago

"The omicron variant is cause for concern — but not panic" - Biden "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/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/health/omicron-cases-us-cdc/i... https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-report-omicron-finds-first-handful-cases-us-mostly-mild-rcna8352 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

altcognito 5y ago
It shouldn’t be surprising that the people that complain most vociferously about “The media panic” are selectively hearing only what reinforces their view of the media. 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.

GeekyBear 5y ago

> Can we never, not even once, be a little optimistic? 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.

pbourke 5y ago
30% less severe with twice the rate of spread does not seem like a good tradeoff. You have an exponential increase in cases but a linear reduction in hospital admissions.
macintux 5y ago
> 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.

mrtksn 5y ago

Just look at well vaccinated populations like UK or Spain and then look at not well vaccinated like Bulgaria to see if it holds. 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.

sjg007 5y ago
The UK has basically indicated that it is going to be bad and are relying on boosting before the new year to blunt the impact. If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming..
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > If that doesn't work, lock downs are coming.. 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.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    I dunno, masks seem pretty effective as are capacity limits. That and rapid testing before gathering seems like a pretty good plan.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Mask and capacity limits until when? And why? What problem is being solved now? What’s the goal?
      - mrtksn 5y ago
        Why I’m sensing a tone of desire to cancel the virus? As if, not fun anymore let’s do something else kind of canceling. 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.

sjg007 5y ago

Hope is not a strategy.

spookthesunset 5y ago
Nor is irrational panic
- sjg007 5y ago
  Reality exists somewhere in the middle where we work together on rational mitigation strategies.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    We have mitigation strategies. Vaccines. We've had them for a year. Anybody can get them. Boosters even. You can even mix & match your preferred make & model at this point! We don't need any further mitigation strategies. Vaccines were the only real mitigation strategy we ever had.
    - sjg007 5y ago
      The medical and scientific consensus is that vaccines alone are not enough.
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        Could you imagine a company where lawyers had complete control over product development and the entire company designed their goods around whatever the lawyers said? Every square inch of the product would be covered in legal disclaimers, everything would have foam padding on the corners, and the box it came in would have you sign a 40 page document before you could even open it. I have no clue how the actual product might function but whatever it does, there is no way its failure would result in a lawsuit; which means it probably doesn't work very well at all. 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.