4 ms·

A vaccine resistant strains is extremely bad news; if it's less severe that would be good, but that remains to be seen while it's obvious now that vaccines are

A vaccine resistant strains is extremely bad news; if it's less severe that would be good, but that remains to be seen while it's obvious now that vaccines are less good against it. We should be pressuring our governments to make paxlovid legal and to encourage work on Omicron boosters, rather than pretending this is good news.

Spivak 5y ago
Yeah, a highly infectious vaccine resistant strain spreading while the world opens up and people rely on the waning strength of their first two shots is pretty much a recipe for year three of this crap.
- fullshark 5y ago
  At this point I'm expecting this crap to be a thing until we have a winter of excess deaths at or below Pre-Covid levels. Once that is observed I think people will finally move on. It sounds like this is still going to result in deaths, so I am now expecting year three of this crap. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... I think eventually that winter will come, but the process will be gradual and vaccines/antiviral treatments will only be able to accomplish so much in terms of mitigation.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    At some point, it seems like you have to weigh the lifetime risk of dying from COVID against the loss of life enjoyment and decide “We shouldn’t subject ourselves to another 1.25% of our lifetime of this (whatever “this” is) to lower the fatality rate from Y to X.” (If you’re lowering from 5% to 1%, that trade makes sense for even severe social restrictions. If you’re lowering it from 0.5% to 0.4%, that trade makes no sense for anything beyond the very mildest of restrictions.)
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      I think it's better to consider some kind of "casualty rate" that includes long COVID, rather than just the "fatality rate". At the moment it's possible some people may never fully recover full function after contracting COVID even though they survive.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        While I don't think you're wrong, in practice I think most people use fatality rates as a proxy that kinda implicitly includes non-fatal harms. How often do people talk about heart disease or obesity in terms of "casualty rates"?
      - moistly 5y ago
        The people who never fully recover are orders of magnitude more expensive than the dead. The latter are a one-time cost in lost productivity and care expenses; the former are an on-going cost. Since we, collectively, are the ones who are going to pay via taxation, we should IMO be a hell of a lot more concerned about COVID’s long-term consequences.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      People (Or at least governments), seem unwilling to take that kind of stance.
    - fullshark 5y ago
      Beyond personal choice, in America statewise regulations and urban v. rural differences in mitigation techniques may mean citizens vote with their feet and gov'ts respond to properly shore up tax bases. In any case I'm no longer thinking this has a clear end date, just a gradual fade into memory, the exact length of time it takes undefined/unclear.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > recipe for year three of this crap Only in places that continue to consider covid the only problem society should focus on. It might be hard for some to imagine but we cannot continue to put the world on hold for exactly one specific form of illness. For one thing, we've created a pandemic of untreated mental illness. All these people I see walking their dogs at night on a rainy day alone on the street wearing a mask with foggy glasses are gonna have a hard time getting over this... All the people who haven't left their house in two years are gonna need some help. People have lost their minds and it is gonna take a while to heal.
comradesmith 5y ago
I don’t think this indicates omicron is vaccine resistant. But rather that the current vaccines aren’t effect for because omicron is substantially different from the original covid strain used to develop those vaccines. The same thing happens every year with the flu.
- furyofantares 5y ago
  Yes, that's what I meant, and why I advocated for developing omicron boosters in the post.

Spivak 5y ago

Yeah, a highly infectious vaccine resistant strain spreading while the world opens up and people rely on the waning strength of their first two shots is pretty much a recipe for year three of this crap.

fullshark 5y ago
At this point I'm expecting this crap to be a thing until we have a winter of excess deaths at or below Pre-Covid levels. Once that is observed I think people will finally move on. It sounds like this is still going to result in deaths, so I am now expecting year three of this crap. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... I think eventually that winter will come, but the process will be gradual and vaccines/antiviral treatments will only be able to accomplish so much in terms of mitigation.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  At some point, it seems like you have to weigh the lifetime risk of dying from COVID against the loss of life enjoyment and decide “We shouldn’t subject ourselves to another 1.25% of our lifetime of this (whatever “this” is) to lower the fatality rate from Y to X.” (If you’re lowering from 5% to 1%, that trade makes sense for even severe social restrictions. If you’re lowering it from 0.5% to 0.4%, that trade makes no sense for anything beyond the very mildest of restrictions.)
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I think it's better to consider some kind of "casualty rate" that includes long COVID, rather than just the "fatality rate". At the moment it's possible some people may never fully recover full function after contracting COVID even though they survive.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      While I don't think you're wrong, in practice I think most people use fatality rates as a proxy that kinda implicitly includes non-fatal harms. How often do people talk about heart disease or obesity in terms of "casualty rates"?
    - moistly 5y ago
      The people who never fully recover are orders of magnitude more expensive than the dead. The latter are a one-time cost in lost productivity and care expenses; the former are an on-going cost. Since we, collectively, are the ones who are going to pay via taxation, we should IMO be a hell of a lot more concerned about COVID’s long-term consequences.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    People (Or at least governments), seem unwilling to take that kind of stance.
  - fullshark 5y ago
    Beyond personal choice, in America statewise regulations and urban v. rural differences in mitigation techniques may mean citizens vote with their feet and gov'ts respond to properly shore up tax bases. In any case I'm no longer thinking this has a clear end date, just a gradual fade into memory, the exact length of time it takes undefined/unclear.
spookthesunset 5y ago
> recipe for year three of this crap Only in places that continue to consider covid the only problem society should focus on. It might be hard for some to imagine but we cannot continue to put the world on hold for exactly one specific form of illness. For one thing, we've created a pandemic of untreated mental illness. All these people I see walking their dogs at night on a rainy day alone on the street wearing a mask with foggy glasses are gonna have a hard time getting over this... All the people who haven't left their house in two years are gonna need some help. People have lost their minds and it is gonna take a while to heal.

comradesmith 5y ago

I don’t think this indicates omicron is vaccine resistant. But rather that the current vaccines aren’t effect for because omicron is substantially different from the original covid strain used to develop those vaccines. The same thing happens every year with the flu.

furyofantares 5y ago
Yes, that's what I meant, and why I advocated for developing omicron boosters in the post.