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> A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world. There is absolutely

> A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world. There is absolutely no evidence for this variant being less pathogenic. It is quite likely that the milder outcomes observed with this variant so far are because of immunity generated by vaccines and prior infections. The idea that this will make vaccines less essential is a fantasy.

native_samples 5y ago
Evidence so far: - Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths. There's only one reported death so far "with" Omicron, about which there are absolutely no details released whatsoever and which was rather suspiciously announced by the UK PM just before a vote. - Pathogenicity: all reports from SA say the symptoms are not only extremely mild, but don't actually match COVID symptoms at all. The first person to get it thought they'd simply been in the sun too long. Muscle aches, a slight headache, etc. Basically common cold symptoms. - Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the overall vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of vaccines. There's really two ways to look at this. One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed, but it doesn't matter because new COVID is mild. The other is that really, Omicron isn't a COVID-causing virus at all, and that this marks the end of COVID. Because: 1. The symptoms are different. Different symptoms = different disease. 2. The severity is different. Both are mild but Omicron appears to be super mild. What it creates can barely be classed as a "disease" at all. 3. The virus is different. Much more heavily mutated than any other variant so far, in fact, so much so that some of the DRASTIC people are starting to suspect it may be another lab leak. Unfortunately, there have been scientists doing GoF research on SARS-CoV-2, their papers are public to view. I think in a properly functioning and rational health system, it would be very hard to describe this new variant as COVID. Based on the evidence and reports so far it would be more rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of the type that occur every year.
- romwell 5y ago
  > One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed You mean succeeded? As in, prevented many people from dying, and forced the virus to mutate into Omicron, which is far less dangerous.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised as being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only 6 months ago, no longer provide any protection at all. As for the vaccines forcing mutation, SA is only 25% vaccinated so that doesn't work. Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge. There just isn't good enough data on vaccine deaths to judge that at the moment. The problem for COVID vaccines is that whilst they may some people from dying of COVID, not many life years are saved because almost all the COVID deaths are concentrated in the very elderly. Meanwhile vaccine injuries are a looming iceberg because they aren't being properly tracked or recorded. The number of random cardiac failures in athletes is well up this year and eventually people will stop being in denial about the reasons. The long term damage from this programme can be judged in five or ten years. However, if Omicron does display Delta as it appears to be doing very rapidly, we can say that at most the vaccines were useful for maybe 6-8 months. Bearing in mind you aren't "vaccinated" until your second dose and there's a gap.
    - chimprich 5y ago
      > Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge Please don't post this nonsense on HN. There's ample evidence for vaccines saving the lives of millions.
    - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      I don't think I've ever seen so many wrong sentences in a single HN comment. I would love to go through and debunk them all, but I don't have the time or the crayons, nor would I think it would be effective in changing your beliefs. You're too far gone.
    - romwell 5y ago
- chimprich 5y ago
  > Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths This is not correct. We've seen quite a few hospitalisations. See the dramatic uptick in South African hospital numbers. Deaths have generally occurred about 4 weeks after infection. Omicron was only reported to the WHO about 3 weeks ago. The rest of your post is of a similar level of confusion.
- kcplate 5y ago
  > I think in a properly functioning and rational health system, it would be very hard to describe this new variant as COVID. Based on the evidence and reports so far it would be more rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of the type that occur every year. I suspect that if this omicron had emerged in 2018 at least with the symptoms and lack of severe disease that we have seen so far…it would likely have been described as a virulent common cold and may have gotten an occasional news mention, but zero public and government panic. I think the phrase “Look for the devil and you will find him” is going to describe virology and government approach to virology for probably the next decade. This is a shame, because it seems to create and feed tyrants at almost every level of government.
- manwe150 5y ago
  > Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the overall vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of vaccines. I see currently reported numbers of 75% and 81% for those rates respectively, which means unvaccinated people are over-represented by about 30% relative their percentage of the population. Now these numbers are still very new, and unreliable, have no confidence interval, and only for infection, not hospitalization. But I don’t think that difference would be irrelevant, unless it ceases to hold up after data is collected over the next few weeks.
stickfigure 5y ago
It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly. It will happen eventually, and then covid will be just another common cold.
- ASinclair 5y ago
  > Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly What selection pressure exists to make it less-deadly? It takes weeks for the virus to kill people and they are most infectious early on.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The same selection pressure that applies to every other disease. Symptoms make you less likely to spread. Fatalities make you much less likely to spread. Most of the diseases you carry are completely asymptomatic. This is why island populations all get sick when a ship comes in.
    - thedorkknight 5y ago
      Don't most covid deaths happen after you're no longer infectious? I thought a lot of that was from the cytokine storm. But to the other commenter's point, if omicron DID get a more deadly variant that kills you after you've already infected other people due to presymptomatic spread, then why would that variant be likely to die out? It's already reproduced before killing the host
      - Barrin92 5y ago
        it's overall less likely to reproduce because we take measures against covid collectively. What spreads more unhindered, covid or the common cold? A disease that spreads before it's symptomatic may not face negative selection pressure for some individuals, but on the aggregate people wear masks, avoid contact, even entered lockdowns, are more likely to obtain vaccination, and so on. There's a stronger behavioral response to a more deadly covid than there is to one that is entirely harmless. It's not just death that reduces rates of transmission, and it's not just sick or symptomatic people who avoid contact.
manwe150 5y ago
Well, logically speaking, we never needed vaccines, since some percentage of the human race will survive COVID regardless. The question always was just whether you can improve your own odds of staying healthy. And so far that data seems to have been strongly in favor of vaccination of yourself and those around you, with further increased benefit demonstrated from opting for a booster shot. But still never being essential or necessary for survival.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  I don't think that was the question? It was how to not overload hospitals and create a safer environment for those in the population most at risk. Thus healthy young adults getting vaccinated to reduce the rate of spread
- MereInterest 5y ago
  You seem to be interpreting "essential" as "essential for continued human existence", which is a pretty low bar. "Essential for maintaining public health", or "essential for preventing excess deaths" would be better interpretations. While vaccines are not essential for continued human existence, they are essential for maintaining public health and preventing excess deaths.
  - the_doctah 5y ago
    You could make the same argument for the common Flu.
    - anoonmoose 5y ago
      I get the flu shot every year, to help reduce transmission and reduce the severity if I get it myself
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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robbedpeter 5y ago
There are two primary factors driving virus evolution - not killing the host and defeating the host's immune system. Killing the host, at least with humans, is an evolutionary dead end, since we go out of our way to quarantine the body and destroy or permanently confine it. In humans, viruses typically evolve to be less severe and more infectious over time. There's significant evidence that omicron is less severe. At some point we should see an equilibrium reached with the coronaviruses, and the hope is that it'll be as mild as seasonal colds. Omicron could be a significant leap in that direction. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-africa-south-africa-c8d09bed79be4a25f752237c0470961b https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-hea...
- _whiteCaps_ 5y ago
  > In humans, viruses typically evolve to be less severe and more infectious over time. There isn't consensus in the scientific community about that. Counterexamples: polio, rabies, avian flu in human hosts, Black Death. It isn't clear what category COVID19 will end up in.
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  No human virus is known to have evolved to become more contagious and less virulent. Zero. None. Unfortunately this is just a (comforting!) myth. Feel free to provide an example virus if you think I'm wrong!
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111?with-ds=yes https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111?wit... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-viruses-vanish-and-go-extinct https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-... https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.00694-10 https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.00694-10 Covid related links have saturated any searches on viruses in general, and the doom&gloom "reporting"is at the top. There are a lot of papers and examples of what I'm talking about, though, it's just irritating to get at. Gain of function research gives us rapid and repeatable demonstrations of vital evolution. Viruses that don't kill their hosts and develop more and better mechanisms of infection or evasion of immune system defenses outcompete other variants. There are a lot of examples in animal viruses, but Sars and hiv are examples of recent relevance. To be clear, I'm not making the claim that this happens to all viruses - evolution doesn't work like that. A virus that leaves you mostly functional for a few months before it kills you is not at all an unlikely scenario. Viruses also exist concurrent with other variants, and they can mutate rapidly. There's no hard and fast rule, just influences and constraints that can manifest as trends. In my opinion, the ideal outcome for sars-cov2 at this point is that a super mild variant evolves that will confer robust natural immunity while spreading fast enough to prevent the spread of other variants. It could become more deadly - I hope it won't, and what we know of virus evolutionary pressures in humans hints that we could get lucky.

native_samples 5y ago

Evidence so far: - Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths. There's only one reported death so far "with" Omicron, about which there are absolutely no details released whatsoever and which was rather suspiciously announced by the UK PM just before a vote. - Pathogenicity: all reports from SA say the symptoms are not only extremely mild, but don't actually match COVID symptoms at all. The first person to get it thought they'd simply been in the sun too long. Muscle aches, a slight headache, etc. Basically common cold symptoms. - Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the overall vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of vaccines. There's really two ways to look at this. One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed, but it doesn't matter because new COVID is mild. The other is that really, Omicron isn't a COVID-causing virus at all, and that this marks the end of COVID. Because: 1. The symptoms are different. Different symptoms = different disease. 2. The severity is different. Both are mild but Omicron appears to be super mild. What it creates can barely be classed as a "disease" at all. 3. The virus is different. Much more heavily mutated than any other variant so far, in fact, so much so that some of the DRASTIC people are starting to suspect it may be another lab leak. Unfortunately, there have been scientists doing GoF research on SARS-CoV-2, their papers are public to view. I think in a properly functioning and rational health system, it would be very hard to describe this new variant as COVID. Based on the evidence and reports so far it would be more rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of the type that occur every year.

romwell 5y ago
> One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed You mean succeeded? As in, prevented many people from dying, and forced the virus to mutate into Omicron, which is far less dangerous.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised as being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only 6 months ago, no longer provide any protection at all. As for the vaccines forcing mutation, SA is only 25% vaccinated so that doesn't work. Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge. There just isn't good enough data on vaccine deaths to judge that at the moment. The problem for COVID vaccines is that whilst they may some people from dying of COVID, not many life years are saved because almost all the COVID deaths are concentrated in the very elderly. Meanwhile vaccine injuries are a looming iceberg because they aren't being properly tracked or recorded. The number of random cardiac failures in athletes is well up this year and eventually people will stop being in denial about the reasons. The long term damage from this programme can be judged in five or ten years. However, if Omicron does display Delta as it appears to be doing very rapidly, we can say that at most the vaccines were useful for maybe 6-8 months. Bearing in mind you aren't "vaccinated" until your second dose and there's a gap.
  - chimprich 5y ago
    > Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge Please don't post this nonsense on HN. There's ample evidence for vaccines saving the lives of millions.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    I don't think I've ever seen so many wrong sentences in a single HN comment. I would love to go through and debunk them all, but I don't have the time or the crayons, nor would I think it would be effective in changing your beliefs. You're too far gone.
  - romwell 5y ago
chimprich 5y ago
> Pathogenicity: Virtually no hospitalizations or deaths This is not correct. We've seen quite a few hospitalisations. See the dramatic uptick in South African hospital numbers. Deaths have generally occurred about 4 weeks after infection. Omicron was only reported to the WHO about 3 weeks ago. The rest of your post is of a similar level of confusion.
kcplate 5y ago
> I think in a properly functioning and rational health system, it would be very hard to describe this new variant as COVID. Based on the evidence and reports so far it would be more rational to describe it as a common cold virus, of the type that occur every year. I suspect that if this omicron had emerged in 2018 at least with the symptoms and lack of severe disease that we have seen so far…it would likely have been described as a virulent common cold and may have gotten an occasional news mention, but zero public and government panic. I think the phrase “Look for the devil and you will find him” is going to describe virology and government approach to virology for probably the next decade. This is a shame, because it seems to create and feed tyrants at almost every level of government.
manwe150 5y ago
> Irrelevance of vaccines: in Denmark the percentage of Omicron cases that are vaccinated is the same as the overall vaccination rate, i.e. there's ~no impact of vaccines. I see currently reported numbers of 75% and 81% for those rates respectively, which means unvaccinated people are over-represented by about 30% relative their percentage of the population. Now these numbers are still very new, and unreliable, have no confidence interval, and only for infection, not hospitalization. But I don’t think that difference would be irrelevant, unless it ceases to hold up after data is collected over the next few weeks.

stickfigure 5y ago

It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly. It will happen eventually, and then covid will be just another common cold.

ASinclair 5y ago
> Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly What selection pressure exists to make it less-deadly? It takes weeks for the virus to kill people and they are most infectious early on.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  The same selection pressure that applies to every other disease. Symptoms make you less likely to spread. Fatalities make you much less likely to spread. Most of the diseases you carry are completely asymptomatic. This is why island populations all get sick when a ship comes in.
  - thedorkknight 5y ago
    Don't most covid deaths happen after you're no longer infectious? I thought a lot of that was from the cytokine storm. But to the other commenter's point, if omicron DID get a more deadly variant that kills you after you've already infected other people due to presymptomatic spread, then why would that variant be likely to die out? It's already reproduced before killing the host
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      it's overall less likely to reproduce because we take measures against covid collectively. What spreads more unhindered, covid or the common cold? A disease that spreads before it's symptomatic may not face negative selection pressure for some individuals, but on the aggregate people wear masks, avoid contact, even entered lockdowns, are more likely to obtain vaccination, and so on. There's a stronger behavioral response to a more deadly covid than there is to one that is entirely harmless. It's not just death that reduces rates of transmission, and it's not just sick or symptomatic people who avoid contact.

manwe150 5y ago

Well, logically speaking, we never needed vaccines, since some percentage of the human race will survive COVID regardless. The question always was just whether you can improve your own odds of staying healthy. And so far that data seems to have been strongly in favor of vaccination of yourself and those around you, with further increased benefit demonstrated from opting for a booster shot. But still never being essential or necessary for survival.

gmadsen 5y ago
I don't think that was the question? It was how to not overload hospitals and create a safer environment for those in the population most at risk. Thus healthy young adults getting vaccinated to reduce the rate of spread
MereInterest 5y ago
You seem to be interpreting "essential" as "essential for continued human existence", which is a pretty low bar. "Essential for maintaining public health", or "essential for preventing excess deaths" would be better interpretations. While vaccines are not essential for continued human existence, they are essential for maintaining public health and preventing excess deaths.
- the_doctah 5y ago
  You could make the same argument for the common Flu.
  - anoonmoose 5y ago
    I get the flu shot every year, to help reduce transmission and reduce the severity if I get it myself

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago

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robbedpeter 5y ago

There are two primary factors driving virus evolution - not killing the host and defeating the host's immune system. Killing the host, at least with humans, is an evolutionary dead end, since we go out of our way to quarantine the body and destroy or permanently confine it. In humans, viruses typically evolve to be less severe and more infectious over time. There's significant evidence that omicron is less severe. At some point we should see an equilibrium reached with the coronaviruses, and the hope is that it'll be as mild as seasonal colds. Omicron could be a significant leap in that direction. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-africa-south-africa-c8d09bed79be4a25f752237c0470961b https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-hea...

_whiteCaps_ 5y ago
> In humans, viruses typically evolve to be less severe and more infectious over time. There isn't consensus in the scientific community about that. Counterexamples: polio, rabies, avian flu in human hosts, Black Death. It isn't clear what category COVID19 will end up in.
somewhereoutth 5y ago
No human virus is known to have evolved to become more contagious and less virulent. Zero. None. Unfortunately this is just a (comforting!) myth. Feel free to provide an example virus if you think I'm wrong!
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111?with-ds=yes https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111?wit... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-viruses-vanish-and-go-extinct https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-... https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.00694-10 https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.00694-10 Covid related links have saturated any searches on viruses in general, and the doom&gloom "reporting"is at the top. There are a lot of papers and examples of what I'm talking about, though, it's just irritating to get at. Gain of function research gives us rapid and repeatable demonstrations of vital evolution. Viruses that don't kill their hosts and develop more and better mechanisms of infection or evasion of immune system defenses outcompete other variants. There are a lot of examples in animal viruses, but Sars and hiv are examples of recent relevance. To be clear, I'm not making the claim that this happens to all viruses - evolution doesn't work like that. A virus that leaves you mostly functional for a few months before it kills you is not at all an unlikely scenario. Viruses also exist concurrent with other variants, and they can mutate rapidly. There's no hard and fast rule, just influences and constraints that can manifest as trends. In my opinion, the ideal outcome for sars-cov2 at this point is that a super mild variant evolves that will confer robust natural immunity while spreading fast enough to prevent the spread of other variants. It could become more deadly - I hope it won't, and what we know of virus evolutionary pressures in humans hints that we could get lucky.