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Agreed. I found out about this early perhaps due to my South African family who sent me this doctors analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vI4XczqZ8 https

by eloff 5y ago

Agreed. I found out about this early perhaps due to my South African family who sent me this doctors analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vI4XczqZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vI4XczqZ8 It could be excellent news. It sounds more virulent than delta, so should displace it given enough time, and much less dangerous. If this holds up, countries are doing the exact wrong thing by banning travel from South Africa. The thing to do would be to open travel with no restrictions and maybe even subsidize the airfares. The sooner you replace delta with omicron in a country, should this continue to hold up, the better. I bet not a single country does the logical thing. It's politically infeasible, because it's counterintuitive and the population wouldn't understand or support it. Plus the politicians themselves aren't exactly the sharpest. But it doesn't matter. Delta swept the world in under six months. Omicron may well do the same if what we're seeing so far about the R value holds up. At this rate it may well just be a matter of time. The "end" of the pandemic, at least in ways that matter may well be on the horizon.

sangnoir 5y ago
> The sooner you replace delta with omicron in a country, should this continue to hold up, the better. You think you want that, but this also increases the chances of Omicron evolving into something worse, like picking up genetic fragments from a haemorrhagic virus, or being able to cross the blood-brain barrier. The 2nd wave of the Spanish flu was deadlier than the first: being infected by an earlier variant doesn't automatically make one immune from subsequent variants, especially when given maximum genetic resources and time to work with by letting it run rampant. The ideal scenario would be making COVID extinct ASAP.
- chki 5y ago
  Making COVID extinct is unfortunately not a reasonable scenario. There will be animal reservoirs, high vaccination rates are difficult to achieve for most countries, long-term lockdowns will be hard to enforce if you're not China.

by eloff 5y ago

sangnoir 5y ago

> The sooner you replace delta with omicron in a country, should this continue to hold up, the better. You think you want that, but this also increases the chances of Omicron evolving into something worse, like picking up genetic fragments from a haemorrhagic virus, or being able to cross the blood-brain barrier. The 2nd wave of the Spanish flu was deadlier than the first: being infected by an earlier variant doesn't automatically make one immune from subsequent variants, especially when given maximum genetic resources and time to work with by letting it run rampant. The ideal scenario would be making COVID extinct ASAP.

chki 5y ago
Making COVID extinct is unfortunately not a reasonable scenario. There will be animal reservoirs, high vaccination rates are difficult to achieve for most countries, long-term lockdowns will be hard to enforce if you're not China.