15 ms·

Covid-19: Runny nose, headache, and fatigue are commonest symptoms of omicron

iends 5y ago
Off topic, but I was struck by the word "commonest" in this academic article, and stumbled upon this: https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2016/04/14/commonest-common-or-not/ https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2016/04/14/commonest-com...
switch007 5y ago
> The UK government has been urged to update its list of symptoms for covid-19, after early data showed that cold-like symptoms were the most commonly reported by people with the new omicron variant. That would be tyranny and be exactly what I feared. That would mean anyone with allergies, a bad nights sleep, a headache caused by many other things etc is classed a persona non grata and denied travel and entry in to their place of work, pubs etc.
- tokai 5y ago
  Not with a negative test they wont.
  - switch007 5y ago
    Well, at my company at least, a negative test does not trump symptoms. Coming in with any COVID symptoms will get you sent home and do that a few times and you’ll attract a disciplinary. And Ryanair make you declare you have no symptoms when checking in (change of taste, smell, diarrhoea, high temperature, sore throat, headache etc etc) Negative test already doesn’t count for much
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > Well, at my company at least, a negative test does not trump symptoms. Coming in with any COVID symptoms will get you sent home and do that a few times and you’ll attract a disciplinary Who comes in actively sick with symptoms?? Spreading disease at the workplace was never a good idea, even before Covid. > Negative test already doesn’t count for much They're still the main thing.
      - switch007 5y ago
        > Who comes in actively sick with symptoms?? Spreading disease at the workplace was never a good idea, even before Covid. The entire point of my comment was about expanding the definition to mild and non contagious things like a headache and tiredness > They're still the main thing. Except for airlines and a lot of companies. Are you being obtuse on purpose?
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    So guilty until proven innocent then?
bsjks 5y ago
Good. Now: when are governments going to lift restrictions?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Good. Now: when are governments going to lift restrictions? Obviously the set of "commonest" systems is not the thing to base such a decision on (e.g. for a hypothetical disease where 90% get a mild cough and 10% drop dead, cough is the most common symptom, but the death symptom is what should drive policy).
  - bsjks 5y ago
    Then we shouldn’t be allowed to drive… or just go out altogether. Too many dangers out there, you see.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Then we shouldn’t be allowed to drive… or just go out altogether. Too many dangers out there, you see. No, and don't be ridiculous. Do I have to explicitly spell out every piddling nuance of an idea for you to get it? There's obviously other factors involved, but my point was "most common symptoms" (if they're mild) is not one of them.
- refurb 5y ago
  I’m thinking “two weeks to bend the curve”(tm) and we’ll be good?
  - walterbell 5y ago
    https://howlongistwoweeks.com/ https://howlongistwoweeks.com/
_bax 5y ago
fatigue are commonest symptoms of life
- sundvor 5y ago
  speaking as a dad with a young girl who wakes up most nights with night terrors: this is true.
walterbell 5y ago
Dec 7, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/07/europes-biggest-omicron-outbreak-appears-mild-say-norway-covid/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/07/europes-bi... & https://archive.md/2vFnI https://archive.md/2vFnI > The omicron outbreak at an Oslo Christmas party seen as "the biggest in the world outside of South Africa", is so far only causing mild disease, with Norway's state epidemiologist expressing hope it might mark the beginning of the end for the pandemic ... They have symptoms like fever, cough, headache, muscle pain, fatigue, but for now, none of them has become severely ill, and none of them have been treated in hospital ... one of his agency's three scenarios for omicron was that it would be both very mild and very transmissible. "That is the hope. That is the best scenario we can have," he said. "That it's getting minder, most people will get it, and they will get a natural immunity." Dec 16, https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/wireStory/omicron-dominant-wastewater-samples-florida-county-81793644 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/wireStory/omicron-dominant... > wastewater samples show that the new omicron variant is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the Florida county that is home to the nation's largest theme park resorts ... It's a different story when it comes to people seeking treatment for COVID-19, officials said. “Those who are hospitalized are being primarily infected by the Delta variant,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Wednesday.
- morsch 5y ago
  Everybody at the party was fully vaccinated. It takes a couple of weeks for hospital arrivals to track infections, so even if omicron was as bad as delta, you wouldn't expect significant numbers for a week or two. Hopefully, you're right.
omosubi 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chinathrow 5y ago
  Because in lots of countries all over the world, hospitals are still at or over capacity, making live miserable for those lying there, waiting to get there for other treatments and last but not least, for those working under enormous stress there.
  - jMyles 5y ago
    1) Where? Where specifically are patients being turned away today from care due to overcrowding due to COVID-19? 2) If there are clear answers to #1, why in tarnation isn't our response, "OK, we need to improve the health care systems in these marginalized communities?" Why instead would we even consider repeating the failed, class-based horizontal interdiction efforts which have terrorized these same communities and cut them off from their centers of support (eg, schools)?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - chinathrow 5y ago
      1) Are you seriously asking this? Europe sees huge backlogs of delayed surgeries, e.g. of cancer patient treatments. https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/covid-scotland-swift-action-needed-to-prevent-cancer-catastrophe-as-nhs-fails-to-meet-target-3494251 https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/covid-scotland-s... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/late-diagnosis-of-breast-cancer-rises-as-nhs-struggles-in-covid-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/late-diagnos... 2) Because you can't improve health care systems within a short time frame. People are quitting their health care jobs in Europe in big numbers due to being overworked due to the pandemic.
adriand 5y ago
I think I'd like a version of the famous "cloud-to-butt" browser plugin that changes Omicron/COVID/etc. to "common cold". Then headlines like, "The Omicron variant will spread quickly through the U.S., experts say — the threat it poses is less certain." will read, "The common cold will spread quickly through the U.S., experts say — the threat it poses is less certain." Then a) I won't feel as stressed out, and b) I won't read the article, since it sounds ridiculous. This plugin would only make sense for people who are vaccinated of course, since for those people, like myself, COVID has been defanged. Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived?
- tejohnso 5y ago
  > Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived? Yes, and I would add, time to stop worrying so much about what other people are doing. People are getting really worked up about how so-and-so hasn't been vaccinated or so-and-so doesn't wear a mask properly. It's one more newly promoted category upon which we can focus our vehement, irrational tribalism.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    Yeah it's brought the moral busybodies out of the woodwork like nothing else, I'd bet a fair amount that the people snitching on their neighbours for breaking lockdown rules or harassing strangers in public about masks would be exactly the same people siding with things like witchcraft trials or McCarthyism in ages past. Some people identify very strongly with the established norms of the day and will be aggressively conformist towards them because that's who they are, regardless of how much merit those norms actually have. One social impact of the pandemic is that nobody can mind their own damn business any more, and the reason is because we decided basically overnight in March 2020 that catching an airborne virus now has a moral dimension it never had before. You catch a cold, you catch the flu, you catch norovirus, it's just something shitty that happens to you by chance rather than being anyone's fault. When it comes to other diseases people do attach moral judgements; someone gives you HIV or clamydia or syphilis so it automatically has to be someone else's fault that you got sick. Because of the way society has come to see COVID, that disease has been put in the latter category rather than the former which is incorrect in my opinion. Society will never heal from the wounds of this pandemic until COVID is just something shitty you happen to catch rather than something someone gave to you because of a moral failure.
bananapear 5y ago
This is great news, as it seems to be following the trajectory of the last novel human coronavirus which emerged in 1889 and is still endemic today - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic
tdrdt 5y ago
Note that this means a PCR-test will have no meaning other than you came in contact with Covid-19 somewhere between now and up to 3 months ago. The PCR-test measures the existence of virus RNA. Not when you were infected, if you are sick of that virus and also not if you are contagious. Because the symptoms are now similar to almost all other virus infections there is no way of knowing if you are sick of Omicron after a positive PCR-test. Edit: For some confused people an example. You came in contact with Omicron but didn't get sick of it. 2 weeks later you came in contact with the RS virus and this time you got a runny nose so you get a PCR-test. The result is positive from the Omicron contact 2 weeks earlier. So they say you are sick of Omicron. But in fact you are sick of RS.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > there is no way of knowing if you are sick of Omicron after a positive PCR-test. Huh? I though Omicron was particularly obvious on a PCR test (spike-negative but virus-positive).
  - orra 5y ago
    Indeed, it can very easily be identified due to some gene deletion.
  - tdrdt 5y ago
    I am not saying the PCR-tests are false. See my added example.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Not all Covid PCR tests target the S-gene. The cheap RT-PCR test I took recently in London (for travel) targeted only the E-gene and ORF1ab sequences, so if it had been positive it wouldn't have told me if it were Omicron or not.
- orra 5y ago
  What? PCRs are by far the best proxy we have for active infection. And no, people don't typically (ever?) test positives anywhere near 3 months after. Common symptoms being less specific doesn't make PCRs unreliable.
Blahagun 5y ago
I am trying really hard to make sense of the past two years and constantly giving the benefit of the doubt, but it's really not easy. So many banal things have become news worthy and it's like all of a sudden everyone completely lost their memory. If someone has told me years before that I will be reading such articles on the news I would probably tell them that they need psychological evaluation. Have people forgotten about respiratory viruses all of a sudden? Do we really need an article to tell us that respiratory viruses cause runny nose, headache and fatigue? And I'm in no way downplaying the past two years but are people forgetting that respiratory viruses have always been a serious thing? Deaths from respiratory viruses have always been in the top of the statistics, every year.
- vitus 5y ago
  Well, it's more notable how the symptoms are evolving. Used to be that fever + cough + loss of smell / taste were the most commonly reported symptoms (probably in part due to how noticeable they are, and unlikely to be confused with, say, allergies or stress). I suspect this is in part driven by more acute cognizance of even minor potential symptoms, combined with greater testing capacity, but if the strain is in fact causing different, less visible (but still highly contagious!) symptoms, that's somewhat concerning (although may be balanced out if it is actually accompanied by much less severe disease). For reference: Omicron (from the OP): > the top five symptoms reported in the app for omicron infection were runny nose, headache, fatigue (either mild or severe), sneezing, and sore throat. Delta [0]: > the most commonly reported covid-19 symptoms were now headache, runny nose, and sore throat and not fever, cough, and loss of sense of smell or taste, as listed by the government. [0] This paper was cited in the OP: https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1654?ijkey=7f296b9905d42085a1f599e964bab05b63165522&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1654?ijkey=7f296b9905d4...
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  People are not used to a cold that spread that fast and far and does so much damage. It's wrecking havoc on our health infrastructure. Usual procedures aren't working for now obviously. So yes, if the symptoms are now different from before then it's news worthy. Also, why complain that an article about covid deals with covid?
refurb 5y ago
Clearly the only logical solution, based on science(tm) and all available data is to force everyone to stay at home until further notice.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  Inshallah.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Well if the point is to curb the spread, yeah, it's hard to beat a lockdown. It has consequences ( mental, physical, economical, educational, etc.) but it'd be stupid to ignore its effectiveness.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    well, a a-bomb is very effective at eliminating someone, but it'd be stupid to ignore it's collateral damage.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  but since we live in a highly interdependent scociety, forcing everyone to stay at home is highly unrealistic. just think about your life necceseties (food, water, waste, security...) who is gonna care for that?
eric_b 5y ago
At this point I assume it's clear to everyone that all humans will be exposed to COVID. Get your vaccine or don't, but one way or another your immune system will have to sort it out. The biggest story of COVID that no one is talking about is the absolute failure at all levels (political, medical establishment, etc) to increase hospital capacity. We are in year 2 of a global pandemic and, at least where I am, there has been a reduction in ICU staff, beds and hospital capacity more generally. Vaccine mandates taking qualified healthcare workers out of the workforce is one of the biggest own-goals I've seen. Why haven't we increased hospital capacity to deal with a highly transmissible disease we knew was never going away? Lockdowns, mandates, personal freedom restrictions are all just cover for not handling the basic blocking and tackling of fortifying our medical systems. All that money and none of it increased the ability to care for COVID patients. What a shame.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  > Vaccine mandates taking qualified healthcare workers out of the workforce is one of the biggest own-goals I've seen. Bzzzt. Thank you for playing. Also, you fail to understand that capacity is down because of burnout, so advocating against vaccination, especially for health care workers, is hypocritical in the most cynical way. You are advocating for the onset of chaos.
  - yucky 5y ago
    > capacity is down because of burnout ...and mandates. The stories in the media only capture the firings, but a ton more left before getting fired, simply because they had no desire to be fired.
- altcognito 5y ago
  > Vaccine mandates taking qualified healthcare workers out of the workforce is one of the biggest own-goals I've seen. OR, we've filtered to the people that actually believe in medical science, ones that are willing to do what needs to be done to prevent the spread of contagious disease. > Why haven't we increased hospital capacity to deal with a highly transmissible disease we knew was never going away? Lockdowns, mandates, personal freedom restrictions are all just cover for not handling the basic blocking and tackling of fortifying our medical systems. All that money and none of it increased the ability to care for COVID patients. What a shame. Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Your freedom ends where my nose begins.
fasteddie31003 5y ago
Just a reminder that Pfizer's PAXLOVID's trials have been halted because the results were so positive it was unethical to keep the control group away from the real drug. The FDA is just sitting on this data waiting for a scheduled meeting to decide to do an emergency authorization. You know no rush FDA just take your time, don't want to mess up you busy schedule for this review.
- altcognito 5y ago
  Sometimes you have to do things before a meeting, you don't just meet and approve something. You have to actually read the published research. Here is some recent information release 3 days ago: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pfizer-s-paxlovid-holds https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pfizer-s-paxlovid-...
  - fasteddie31003 5y ago
    I've been following the studies. I'd give it to my parents if they got ill. I wouldn't give them Molnupiravir, based on its pathway of disrupting error correcting DNA enzymes. It basically sounds like it would give you cancer and there is not enough time in the trials to identify this IMO.
NoblePublius 5y ago
We have come full circle. It’s the flu.
Scottn1 5y ago
We experienced a 100% infection rate super-spreader event in our circle of four close friends last weekend. A husband in our group traveled for work last week and by end of the week was sick and clearly showing symptoms. His wife felt fine and the rest of our wives still decided to go out for the long-ago planed dinner/drinks Saturday night. To make matters worse they decided to car pool into one SUV. These are all fully vaccinated and boosted adults. My son also went into car (vaccinated) for short ride to babysitter. By Monday my wife and another one of the wives was feeling symptoms. Tuesday my son stayed home from school with sore throat and by bedtime we were rushing him to the hospital with a 103 fever. He tested positive while at the hospital. Since then every single person in that car has also tested positive through PCR. I thought I escaped it by isolating from my wife/son in our home but I started to show early symptoms Wednesday morning waking up with splitting headache. I went and got tested that afternoon. By Thursday night I was having itchy throat, chills, fatigue and body aches. Feeling pretty crappy and a crazy symptom I also have been having is uncontrollable hiccups past 24 hours that come and go. The test I took Wednesday came back negative but the OTC Rapid I did today was positive. I am going for another PCR tomorrow to confirm as the first one was done possibly too early after exposure with no symptoms. IF this is the Omicron that went through our vaccinated group like butter, we are going to be in a very bad spot by mid-january.
- phyalow 5y ago
  Agreed, I was at a Xmas dinner party last Saturday with 9 people, all who were double vax'd with Pfizer and 7 of the 9 were previously infected either last year or earlier this year - in short as a group we should have been close to maximum theoritical immunity (all of us are 35 or under too). Everyone at Dinner except myself (somehow) has now contracted Covid again (confirmed via PCR and Antigen testing). Its just nuts, I am buying SPY puts ;)

Off topic, but I was struck by the word "commonest" in this academic article, and stumbled upon this: https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2016/04/14/commonest-common-or-not/ https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2016/04/14/commonest-com...

switch007 5y ago

> The UK government has been urged to update its list of symptoms for covid-19, after early data showed that cold-like symptoms were the most commonly reported by people with the new omicron variant. That would be tyranny and be exactly what I feared. That would mean anyone with allergies, a bad nights sleep, a headache caused by many other things etc is classed a persona non grata and denied travel and entry in to their place of work, pubs etc.

tokai 5y ago
Not with a negative test they wont.
- switch007 5y ago
  Well, at my company at least, a negative test does not trump symptoms. Coming in with any COVID symptoms will get you sent home and do that a few times and you’ll attract a disciplinary. And Ryanair make you declare you have no symptoms when checking in (change of taste, smell, diarrhoea, high temperature, sore throat, headache etc etc) Negative test already doesn’t count for much
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Well, at my company at least, a negative test does not trump symptoms. Coming in with any COVID symptoms will get you sent home and do that a few times and you’ll attract a disciplinary Who comes in actively sick with symptoms?? Spreading disease at the workplace was never a good idea, even before Covid. > Negative test already doesn’t count for much They're still the main thing.
    - switch007 5y ago
      > Who comes in actively sick with symptoms?? Spreading disease at the workplace was never a good idea, even before Covid. The entire point of my comment was about expanding the definition to mild and non contagious things like a headache and tiredness > They're still the main thing. Except for airlines and a lot of companies. Are you being obtuse on purpose?
- disambiguation 5y ago
  So guilty until proven innocent then?

bsjks 5y ago

Good. Now: when are governments going to lift restrictions?

tablespoon 5y ago
> Good. Now: when are governments going to lift restrictions? Obviously the set of "commonest" systems is not the thing to base such a decision on (e.g. for a hypothetical disease where 90% get a mild cough and 10% drop dead, cough is the most common symptom, but the death symptom is what should drive policy).
- bsjks 5y ago
  Then we shouldn’t be allowed to drive… or just go out altogether. Too many dangers out there, you see.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Then we shouldn’t be allowed to drive… or just go out altogether. Too many dangers out there, you see. No, and don't be ridiculous. Do I have to explicitly spell out every piddling nuance of an idea for you to get it? There's obviously other factors involved, but my point was "most common symptoms" (if they're mild) is not one of them.
refurb 5y ago
I’m thinking “two weeks to bend the curve”(tm) and we’ll be good?
- walterbell 5y ago
  https://howlongistwoweeks.com/ https://howlongistwoweeks.com/

_bax 5y ago

fatigue are commonest symptoms of life

sundvor 5y ago
speaking as a dad with a young girl who wakes up most nights with night terrors: this is true.

walterbell 5y ago

Dec 7, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/07/europes-biggest-omicron-outbreak-appears-mild-say-norway-covid/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/07/europes-bi... & https://archive.md/2vFnI https://archive.md/2vFnI > The omicron outbreak at an Oslo Christmas party seen as "the biggest in the world outside of South Africa", is so far only causing mild disease, with Norway's state epidemiologist expressing hope it might mark the beginning of the end for the pandemic ... They have symptoms like fever, cough, headache, muscle pain, fatigue, but for now, none of them has become severely ill, and none of them have been treated in hospital ... one of his agency's three scenarios for omicron was that it would be both very mild and very transmissible. "That is the hope. That is the best scenario we can have," he said. "That it's getting minder, most people will get it, and they will get a natural immunity." Dec 16, https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/wireStory/omicron-dominant-wastewater-samples-florida-county-81793644 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/wireStory/omicron-dominant... > wastewater samples show that the new omicron variant is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the Florida county that is home to the nation's largest theme park resorts ... It's a different story when it comes to people seeking treatment for COVID-19, officials said. “Those who are hospitalized are being primarily infected by the Delta variant,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Wednesday.

morsch 5y ago
Everybody at the party was fully vaccinated. It takes a couple of weeks for hospital arrivals to track infections, so even if omicron was as bad as delta, you wouldn't expect significant numbers for a week or two. Hopefully, you're right.

omosubi 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chinathrow 5y ago
Because in lots of countries all over the world, hospitals are still at or over capacity, making live miserable for those lying there, waiting to get there for other treatments and last but not least, for those working under enormous stress there.
- jMyles 5y ago
  1) Where? Where specifically are patients being turned away today from care due to overcrowding due to COVID-19? 2) If there are clear answers to #1, why in tarnation isn't our response, "OK, we need to improve the health care systems in these marginalized communities?" Why instead would we even consider repeating the failed, class-based horizontal interdiction efforts which have terrorized these same communities and cut them off from their centers of support (eg, schools)?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    1) Are you seriously asking this? Europe sees huge backlogs of delayed surgeries, e.g. of cancer patient treatments. https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/covid-scotland-swift-action-needed-to-prevent-cancer-catastrophe-as-nhs-fails-to-meet-target-3494251 https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/covid-scotland-s... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/late-diagnosis-of-breast-cancer-rises-as-nhs-struggles-in-covid-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/late-diagnos... 2) Because you can't improve health care systems within a short time frame. People are quitting their health care jobs in Europe in big numbers due to being overworked due to the pandemic.

adriand 5y ago

I think I'd like a version of the famous "cloud-to-butt" browser plugin that changes Omicron/COVID/etc. to "common cold". Then headlines like, "The Omicron variant will spread quickly through the U.S., experts say — the threat it poses is less certain." will read, "The common cold will spread quickly through the U.S., experts say — the threat it poses is less certain." Then a) I won't feel as stressed out, and b) I won't read the article, since it sounds ridiculous. This plugin would only make sense for people who are vaccinated of course, since for those people, like myself, COVID has been defanged. Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived?

tejohnso 5y ago
> Isn't it time for those of us who have had two doses, or even three (I have yet another one scheduled a week from now...), to stop worrying and start enjoying life the way it is meant to be lived? Yes, and I would add, time to stop worrying so much about what other people are doing. People are getting really worked up about how so-and-so hasn't been vaccinated or so-and-so doesn't wear a mask properly. It's one more newly promoted category upon which we can focus our vehement, irrational tribalism.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  Yeah it's brought the moral busybodies out of the woodwork like nothing else, I'd bet a fair amount that the people snitching on their neighbours for breaking lockdown rules or harassing strangers in public about masks would be exactly the same people siding with things like witchcraft trials or McCarthyism in ages past. Some people identify very strongly with the established norms of the day and will be aggressively conformist towards them because that's who they are, regardless of how much merit those norms actually have. One social impact of the pandemic is that nobody can mind their own damn business any more, and the reason is because we decided basically overnight in March 2020 that catching an airborne virus now has a moral dimension it never had before. You catch a cold, you catch the flu, you catch norovirus, it's just something shitty that happens to you by chance rather than being anyone's fault. When it comes to other diseases people do attach moral judgements; someone gives you HIV or clamydia or syphilis so it automatically has to be someone else's fault that you got sick. Because of the way society has come to see COVID, that disease has been put in the latter category rather than the former which is incorrect in my opinion. Society will never heal from the wounds of this pandemic until COVID is just something shitty you happen to catch rather than something someone gave to you because of a moral failure.

bananapear 5y ago

This is great news, as it seems to be following the trajectory of the last novel human coronavirus which emerged in 1889 and is still endemic today - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic

tdrdt 5y ago

Note that this means a PCR-test will have no meaning other than you came in contact with Covid-19 somewhere between now and up to 3 months ago. The PCR-test measures the existence of virus RNA. Not when you were infected, if you are sick of that virus and also not if you are contagious. Because the symptoms are now similar to almost all other virus infections there is no way of knowing if you are sick of Omicron after a positive PCR-test. Edit: For some confused people an example. You came in contact with Omicron but didn't get sick of it. 2 weeks later you came in contact with the RS virus and this time you got a runny nose so you get a PCR-test. The result is positive from the Omicron contact 2 weeks earlier. So they say you are sick of Omicron. But in fact you are sick of RS.

tablespoon 5y ago
> there is no way of knowing if you are sick of Omicron after a positive PCR-test. Huh? I though Omicron was particularly obvious on a PCR test (spike-negative but virus-positive).
- orra 5y ago
  Indeed, it can very easily be identified due to some gene deletion.
- tdrdt 5y ago
  I am not saying the PCR-tests are false. See my added example.
- Reason077 5y ago
  Not all Covid PCR tests target the S-gene. The cheap RT-PCR test I took recently in London (for travel) targeted only the E-gene and ORF1ab sequences, so if it had been positive it wouldn't have told me if it were Omicron or not.
orra 5y ago
What? PCRs are by far the best proxy we have for active infection. And no, people don't typically (ever?) test positives anywhere near 3 months after. Common symptoms being less specific doesn't make PCRs unreliable.

Blahagun 5y ago

I am trying really hard to make sense of the past two years and constantly giving the benefit of the doubt, but it's really not easy. So many banal things have become news worthy and it's like all of a sudden everyone completely lost their memory. If someone has told me years before that I will be reading such articles on the news I would probably tell them that they need psychological evaluation. Have people forgotten about respiratory viruses all of a sudden? Do we really need an article to tell us that respiratory viruses cause runny nose, headache and fatigue? And I'm in no way downplaying the past two years but are people forgetting that respiratory viruses have always been a serious thing? Deaths from respiratory viruses have always been in the top of the statistics, every year.

vitus 5y ago
Well, it's more notable how the symptoms are evolving. Used to be that fever + cough + loss of smell / taste were the most commonly reported symptoms (probably in part due to how noticeable they are, and unlikely to be confused with, say, allergies or stress). I suspect this is in part driven by more acute cognizance of even minor potential symptoms, combined with greater testing capacity, but if the strain is in fact causing different, less visible (but still highly contagious!) symptoms, that's somewhat concerning (although may be balanced out if it is actually accompanied by much less severe disease). For reference: Omicron (from the OP): > the top five symptoms reported in the app for omicron infection were runny nose, headache, fatigue (either mild or severe), sneezing, and sore throat. Delta [0]: > the most commonly reported covid-19 symptoms were now headache, runny nose, and sore throat and not fever, cough, and loss of sense of smell or taste, as listed by the government. [0] This paper was cited in the OP: https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1654?ijkey=7f296b9905d42085a1f599e964bab05b63165522&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1654?ijkey=7f296b9905d4...
johnchristopher 5y ago
People are not used to a cold that spread that fast and far and does so much damage. It's wrecking havoc on our health infrastructure. Usual procedures aren't working for now obviously. So yes, if the symptoms are now different from before then it's news worthy. Also, why complain that an article about covid deals with covid?

refurb 5y ago

Clearly the only logical solution, based on science(tm) and all available data is to force everyone to stay at home until further notice.

NoGravitas 5y ago
Inshallah.
sofixa 5y ago
Well if the point is to curb the spread, yeah, it's hard to beat a lockdown. It has consequences ( mental, physical, economical, educational, etc.) but it'd be stupid to ignore its effectiveness.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  well, a a-bomb is very effective at eliminating someone, but it'd be stupid to ignore it's collateral damage.
hansel_der 5y ago
but since we live in a highly interdependent scociety, forcing everyone to stay at home is highly unrealistic. just think about your life necceseties (food, water, waste, security...) who is gonna care for that?

eric_b 5y ago

At this point I assume it's clear to everyone that all humans will be exposed to COVID. Get your vaccine or don't, but one way or another your immune system will have to sort it out. The biggest story of COVID that no one is talking about is the absolute failure at all levels (political, medical establishment, etc) to increase hospital capacity. We are in year 2 of a global pandemic and, at least where I am, there has been a reduction in ICU staff, beds and hospital capacity more generally. Vaccine mandates taking qualified healthcare workers out of the workforce is one of the biggest own-goals I've seen. Why haven't we increased hospital capacity to deal with a highly transmissible disease we knew was never going away? Lockdowns, mandates, personal freedom restrictions are all just cover for not handling the basic blocking and tackling of fortifying our medical systems. All that money and none of it increased the ability to care for COVID patients. What a shame.

Zigurd 5y ago
> Vaccine mandates taking qualified healthcare workers out of the workforce is one of the biggest own-goals I've seen. Bzzzt. Thank you for playing. Also, you fail to understand that capacity is down because of burnout, so advocating against vaccination, especially for health care workers, is hypocritical in the most cynical way. You are advocating for the onset of chaos.
- yucky 5y ago
  > capacity is down because of burnout ...and mandates. The stories in the media only capture the firings, but a ton more left before getting fired, simply because they had no desire to be fired.
altcognito 5y ago
> Vaccine mandates taking qualified healthcare workers out of the workforce is one of the biggest own-goals I've seen. OR, we've filtered to the people that actually believe in medical science, ones that are willing to do what needs to be done to prevent the spread of contagious disease. > Why haven't we increased hospital capacity to deal with a highly transmissible disease we knew was never going away? Lockdowns, mandates, personal freedom restrictions are all just cover for not handling the basic blocking and tackling of fortifying our medical systems. All that money and none of it increased the ability to care for COVID patients. What a shame. Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Your freedom ends where my nose begins.

fasteddie31003 5y ago

Just a reminder that Pfizer's PAXLOVID's trials have been halted because the results were so positive it was unethical to keep the control group away from the real drug. The FDA is just sitting on this data waiting for a scheduled meeting to decide to do an emergency authorization. You know no rush FDA just take your time, don't want to mess up you busy schedule for this review.

altcognito 5y ago
Sometimes you have to do things before a meeting, you don't just meet and approve something. You have to actually read the published research. Here is some recent information release 3 days ago: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pfizer-s-paxlovid-holds https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pfizer-s-paxlovid-...
- fasteddie31003 5y ago
  I've been following the studies. I'd give it to my parents if they got ill. I wouldn't give them Molnupiravir, based on its pathway of disrupting error correcting DNA enzymes. It basically sounds like it would give you cancer and there is not enough time in the trials to identify this IMO.

NoblePublius 5y ago

We have come full circle. It’s the flu.

Scottn1 5y ago

We experienced a 100% infection rate super-spreader event in our circle of four close friends last weekend. A husband in our group traveled for work last week and by end of the week was sick and clearly showing symptoms. His wife felt fine and the rest of our wives still decided to go out for the long-ago planed dinner/drinks Saturday night. To make matters worse they decided to car pool into one SUV. These are all fully vaccinated and boosted adults. My son also went into car (vaccinated) for short ride to babysitter. By Monday my wife and another one of the wives was feeling symptoms. Tuesday my son stayed home from school with sore throat and by bedtime we were rushing him to the hospital with a 103 fever. He tested positive while at the hospital. Since then every single person in that car has also tested positive through PCR. I thought I escaped it by isolating from my wife/son in our home but I started to show early symptoms Wednesday morning waking up with splitting headache. I went and got tested that afternoon. By Thursday night I was having itchy throat, chills, fatigue and body aches. Feeling pretty crappy and a crazy symptom I also have been having is uncontrollable hiccups past 24 hours that come and go. The test I took Wednesday came back negative but the OTC Rapid I did today was positive. I am going for another PCR tomorrow to confirm as the first one was done possibly too early after exposure with no symptoms. IF this is the Omicron that went through our vaccinated group like butter, we are going to be in a very bad spot by mid-january.

phyalow 5y ago
Agreed, I was at a Xmas dinner party last Saturday with 9 people, all who were double vax'd with Pfizer and 7 of the 9 were previously infected either last year or earlier this year - in short as a group we should have been close to maximum theoritical immunity (all of us are 35 or under too). Everyone at Dinner except myself (somehow) has now contracted Covid again (confirmed via PCR and Antigen testing). Its just nuts, I am buying SPY puts ;)