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South Africa’s omicron coronavirus outbreak subsides as fast as it grew
- phnofive 5y agohttps://archive.md/WJXml https://archive.md/WJXml
- mdoms 5y agoOk I know it's off topic but I have got to ask, what is up with archive.md links? I have never in my life successfully loaded an archive.md URL. I either get straight up DNS errors or very occasionally I see a spinner that never finishes loading. Yet they must work for others because they're constantly being posted here.
- executive 5y agoCloudflare DNS blocks
- mdoms 5y agoHuh. Any idea why?
- willhinsa 5y agoYou can read about their reasoning here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 Posted by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eastdakota https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eastdakota, whose profile reads: > A little bit geek, wonk, and nerd. Repeat entrepreneur, recovering lawyer and former ski instructor. CEO & co-founder of CloudFlare. [ my public key: https://keybase.io/eastdakota https://keybase.io/eastdakota; my proof: https://keybase.io/eastdakota/sigs/_uDY0ZsLTEWaNu5daRtuwzZtJDJJrtGS4uXoYxwI634 https://keybase.io/eastdakota/sigs/_uDY0ZsLTEWaNu5daRtuwzZtJ... ]
- majkinetor 5y agoWhy would it do that FFS ?
- ricardobeat 5y agoCloudflare doesn't block them, Archive.is intentionally refuses to resolve DNS queries from 1.1.1.1 due to lack of geo information. See explanation here: https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/ https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
- stavros 5y agoIt doesn't/its complicated.
- forgotmyoldacc 5y agoThe website blocks Cloudflare DNS, not the other way around.
- jffry 5y agoThat's untrue, you can see Cloudflare's explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 Short version: The Archive.is authoritative DNS servers do not give correct addresses to Cloudflare when Cloudflare asks for them
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- benjiweber 5y agoMaybe you're using cloudflare dns? https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/18227 https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
- mdoms 5y agoI am, on all of my devices. Interesting.
- toxik 5y agoA great example of why you as a techie should be using your own recursive resolver.
- Bellamy 5y agoCan someone explain in English what is going on here? I thought I understand DNS but I guess I don't.
- ianai 5y agoFor Cloudflare DNS servers the archive.md DNS server tells them the URL is not configured. It's configured to change according to which DNS server queries it by location/IP. It's not something Cloudflare can fix unilaterally. (or something like that) edit: elsewhere linked is an explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
- majkinetor 5y agoI wish we have archive.md automatic for each post...
- yosito 5y agoThey usually help with sites that go down under a heavy traffic load, or that have a paywall.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ricardobeat 5y agoAre you using Cloudflare DNS? The archive.is owners intentionally block it. It's occasionally blocked at the ISP level too.
- galgalesh 5y agoAfter opening this url on my phone, it waits three seconds and then shows me a scam ad scaring me into purchasing a fake android cleaner app.
- codazoda 5y agoSame for me. Full page add, no way to close.
- TaylorSwift 5y agoDoes anyone have insights/thoughts as to the implications of this variant growing as fast as it subsides? Does that mean a new variant will emerge which will be more/less infectious or more/less deadly?
- randomopining 5y agoVirus just wants to replicate and spread as much as possible. Sometimes the side effect of this is death etc. If this one spreads super fast, has generally more mild effects... it will ramp up faster, infect all, and may get more severe so that it can last longer in the host and spread more. But the combo of high infectiousness and more mild side effects might be a net negative for this one. If we get a good amount of herd immunity, it may be a few weeks of heavy spread and then very little.
- alliao 5y agosuper fast spread even with milder effects will still meant overwhelming healthcare capacity let's not even go near the notion that more infection means brewing more variants we've never entertained herd immunity for polio, why covid..
- snet0 5y agoIt only means overwhelmed healthcare if the hospitalisation/requirement for healthcare rate is high enough. If this variant is 5x more infectious, but 5x less likely to result in hospitalisation, the net effect on healthcare resources should remain level, no?
- jakeinspace 5y agoNo, there is no formula quite that simple while we're still in the transient, exponential growth stage for omicron. 5x transmissibility can lead to single-day infections much greater than past peaks. If omicron does cause a disaster in the US and other western countries, it will probably be due to a short (2-3 week) window of insanely high daily case rates, leading to very high daily hospitalization/ICU requirements. If the US hits let's say 1M confirmed cases/day for example (3x the peak last winter), with a daily demand for beds (non-icu) of ~25k, things would get very bad in urban centers. The combo of exponential growth and localized hospital resource constraints means that what would seem at face value to be an even tradeoff of transmissibility for lethality is not so simple. Omicron might be a blessing in disguise, but there is a very bad plausible outcome for the coming month.
- wehnsdaefflae 5y agoPaywalled
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gentleman11 5y agoThere was a brief spike in daily new cases that was extremely high, then it lowered. It will take more than a day or two to know if it is truly subsiding as fast as it’s growing, and what the meaning of that spike was, so this seems premature. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-afri...
- destitude 5y ago"case counts" are also a really bad way for measuring. Media likes to use it because they love sensationalizing things but if we already know this is a "mild" variant with little to no increase in hospitalizations then using "case counts" is really poor unit of measurement.
- gentleman11 5y agoAll the reports about how severe omicron is say they are preliminary. It’s just more jumping of the gun by news agencies. We’ll know more in a week or two
- kevinmchugh 5y agoMedia reports about case counts are useful because they precede hospitalizations by days or weeks. This allows the risk averse to modify their behavior sooner.
- yosito 5y agoI read this news a week ago, so I think it's already been more than a day or two.
- PraetorianGourd 5y agoThis is fantastic if it happens elsewhere as well. The only reason I am not super pumped is because SA is in Summer, and we’ve seen that sars-cov-2 is impacted my seasonality
- HPsquared 5y agoIn hot places with widespread air conditioning there is also usually a summer peak (people go indoors and close windows, just as they do in cooler places in winter). SA has had peaks in both winter and summer.
- Trumpi 5y agoAir conditioning is rare in South African homes. They keep cool in the summer by opening their windows and doors, and with swimming pools. South African businesses, however, almost all have air conditioning.
- PraetorianGourd 5y agoOh good point. I know that is the case for the US South and I find it somewhat silly that media in the US always blames southern surges on anti-mask and anti-lockdown sentiments but the winter surge in the North is new variants etc. without all the victim blaming.
- nostromo 5y agoThe panic surrounding Omicron is absurd. Take a look at these two charts. Omicron cases spiked in SA. Deaths didn't budge. At all. https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png https://i.imgur.com/TgRmz4F.png [1] Omicron is a good thing, if your baseline is Delta. But I'm still waiting for the US media stop hyperventilating about it. 1. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/south-africa/ https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...
- yosito 5y agoI saw some charts out of South Africa today showing that deaths are starting to rise with a three week delay. I'm optimistic that Omicron is less severe, but it's also possible that it's just taking a little longer than expected to start killing people.
- barbs 5y agoDo you have a link for those charts?
- tjr225 5y agoDon’t worry about it; he saw them.
- nostrademons 5y agoPretty good one here: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-22 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...
- HPsquared 5y agohttps://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-a... Pretty interesting how it clearly shows both "deaths" and "excess deaths". Here's a good one for Europe: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
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- voxadam 5y agoAm I the only one who reads these less than scientific articles as much more than wishful thinking? I mean, I hope this pandemic comes to a close as much as anyone but so many of the recent news articles about the omicron variant being our collective way out of this pandemic seem a bit premature. I understand the theory that viruses become more contagious and less deadly over time but is there an real, peer reviewed science that backs up the idea that omicron is going to be our "savior"?
- snet0 5y agoThere is a recently released preprint that concludes that omicron-infected have an 80% reduced likelihood to be hospitalised compared to non-omicron infections. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.21.21268116v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.21.21268116v... Of course, it's not yet peer-reviewed, and doesn't model the possible outcomes based on the conclusions, but it certainly seems to be great news.
- rsfern 5y agoThis paper is interesting and I agree seems like good news. It was posted yesterday BTW. There is a wrinkle though: the 80% reduction in hospitalizations is compared to this summers delta infections, but they found no difference in hospitalizations compared to non-omicron infections this November (the time period of the study). They have some discussion of maybe if that’s due to prior immunity or something, but it seems like things are still just not clear, and more data is coming down the pipe.
- barbs 5y agoThere's been no time to have real, peer reviewed science to make a definitive conclusion either way. All we have is preliminary data which seems to be trending towards the positive. The sensationalist flip-flopping media reports have been mostly unhelpful. I've been swinging between "this is wishful thinking and it's going to be really bad" to "this is overly dramatic and it's going to be ok" for the past few weeks. I've been feeling more of the latter recently, but I'm still not 100% certain. Call it cautious optimism.
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- hourislate 5y agoI was at Costco this morning (DFW) buying a big hunk of Prime Rib for Christmas Day dinner. No one either knows or cares anymore. I'm still wearing a mask for facial recognition purposes but I'm starting to feel weird considering no one else is wearing a mask anymore, not even the folks who look like they got one foot in the grave already. Omicron is already so yesterday it isn't even a memory.
- standardUser 5y agoI find it mind-boggling that a person could live through nearly 2 years of this pandemic and still not understand how hospitalizations lag cases and deaths lag hospitalizations by a number of weeks. I'm optimistic about Omicron, but I'm not going to pretend I don't know the pattern we have seen over and over and over again.
- spookthesunset 5y ago> hospitalizations lag cases and deaths lag hospitalizations Why aren't you upset with your governments for not making this a non-issue? You gave them 2 years to figure it out and all I hear are excuses like "you can't just spin up new staff". Bullshit. These governments have virtually unlimited resources to build healthcare capacity to deal with covid. If there was a will to do so, they could have built capacity specific for covid that includes proper staffing. The fact that entire regions of 17 million people get thrown into month-long lockdowns and asked to cancel christmas because the region can only support like 400 people in the ICU is a travesty. People should be furious with their governments continuing to blame the public for "possible healthcare collapses". We paid with 2 years of our short-ass lives waiting for them to fix capacity issues. There are zero excuses.
- cortesoft 5y agoWhere are you? Everyone where I am in Southern California still wears a mask inside.
- pvarangot 5y agoI'm in San Francisco and it depends on the event. For example: - Infected Mushroom in the Midway: hardly anyone wearing masks, irregardless of if they are drinking or not - Chvrches in the Civic Auditorium: most people wearing masks, maybe 20% of the audience unmasked. Even people with drinks mostly just removing it drinking and putting it back on. - Spiderman in the AMC Kabuki: mostly everyone wearing masks - Karaoke bar in Japantown after Spiderman: no one wearing masks, not even the barman and the owner of the bar that were of course not drinking
- softwaredoug 5y agoIt seems likely that the US would still see waves over much of the winter. South Africa has a population of about 60 million, fairly dense compared to the US. Compared to the US, their spike and fall would be expected to come on faster (and drop faster). The US is more spread out but with many more people. So its great to know that local spikes would come and go fast, it still is a very acute strain likely to be spread over months as it travels around the country.
- oneoff786 5y agoI’ve been tanking some downvotes for the past few days for saying this. Disease spread is only exponential for a brief initial period. It is not a good mental or even general model for how disease spreads. We have two years of observational covid data that shows this to be true. Spread slows down rapidly long before reaching 100%. People hear “5x as infectious” and reason that due to the nature of exponential models, that much more than 5x people will be infected. This is extremely incorrect. In truth, far fewer than 5x people will be infected over the long term. And again, no, this is not because it’s hitting the upper limits of 100% of the population or anywhere near that. I won’t be so bold as to say it’s probable, but given this is not a novel virus, it’s entirely believable to say that omicron could go on to infect fewer people than delta due to the past two years of vaccination and immunity and die off. Presuming data about lower severity holds, it would be surprising to me if hospitalization or deaths aren’t noticeably lower than delta; which, in turn, was noticeably lower than the original.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoWon't downvote you, but I think that this is mistaken. I think that everyone will get omicron eventually.
- xyzzy21 5y agoAnd it will generate herd immunity...
- jonnycomputer 5y agoMaybe. There is a lot of reinfection/breakthroughs going on from alpha/delta to omicron. Does conferred immunity to omicron protect from alpha/delta? I don't know enough to say.
- bufferoverflow 5y agoYou're mistaken. There's no disease on this planet that infects 100% of people, even when constantly exposed. Our immune systems are quite amazing.
- jessaustin 5y agoThis is very bad news for pharma profits! There are at least some people who have figured out the right covid policies, because some of them are running NFL. NFL has ruled that asymptomatic players who received the initial round of vaccinations don't need to be regularly tested. With the rise of omicron, populations of healthy young people whose families have access to health care don't need to fear infection and don't need "boosters". Of course, many families in USA lack access to health care because capitalism. NFL can't directly be held responsible for that, although many NFL owners are billionaires so they can. [0] [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
- jgalt212 5y agoI've basically given up on trying to figure out what the right response is to Omicron. I've seen moved on to trying to figure out the hidden incentives of the hysterics and the covid deniers. I've since regretted moving on from the first intractable problem.
- polote 5y agoWhy do people still care about covid ? Vax your old people, stop getting tested and live like before. The faster we get everyone infected the faster old people who didn't get vaxxed will either recover or die and after that the ones who die we can't do anything for them. Trump was right (by chance) all along, that's just some kind of flu, the only difference is that it's the first time our body sees it.
- ryanobjc 5y agoThe flu has been feared throughout history, as it is... frankly quite deadly at times. Now a days we have excellent flu monitoring, and flu shots, and have been able to manage it, also at great cost. But to dismiss the flu, and covid-19 as "nbd" is... not the kind of analytical strength I am expecting on HN. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu At the time of the breakout of Covid-19 in Jan/Feb 2020, the reports on the ground in Wuhan and Italy were pointing to a catastrophic failure of healthcare systems leading to significantly enhanced death rates, CFR of 10% or so was being observed in Wuhan. Yes, everyone knew that not everyone was being tested, but having 10% of everyone you tested died... well that ain't good. And China has a powerful government and can mobilize resources when they feel like it. Witness the building of hospitals in Wuhan in 10 days. Turns out they were probably more like convalescent centers, but they were fighting the multi-generational housing problem where younger sick people would get their parents/grandparents sick (who lived with them, and weren't able to isolate in their apartment/houses). Back then, people noted "if we do this right, then we will be accused of over-reaction", and sure enough that is what we are seeing. Fun fact: by the time the first lockdowns in SF/bay area were announced, domestic flights were down... 97%. All major conferences had been cancelled. Tech companies were already allowing/requiring WFH. If that seems like an overreaction, imagine if Google Search went down in spring 2020... that isn't an impossible situation, after all if staff were spreading covid to each other readily without being aware and having a 1% death rate as a result... that is devastating. The notion that life would have been fine if we just ignored it is kinda nuts considering we had 800,000 deaths to date, and yet our mask effort resulted in the extinction of a strain of the flu, and reducing the pediatric flu deaths from 200 -> 1. Yet still 800,000 deaths.
- bennyp101 5y agoWhy is there not an official WHO site? I don't want to know about things from news agencies with an agenda - I want a horses mouth facts.
- dehrmann 5y agoYou don't think the WHO has an agenda?
- Marazan 5y agoFor anyone who wants to look at the raw data then you can find it here https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covid-19/surveillance-reports/daily-hospital-surveillance-datcov-report/ https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covi... This is direct from the SA government including archives of all the daily data for the duration of the pandemic. Pay attention to the data lag. But it isn't _that_ laggy.
- patcon 5y agoEven ignoring deaths, "long COVID" is still a very real unknown: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-medical-school-expert-explains-long-covid/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-medic... As I understand, we don't know much about whether omicron has worse, same, or better outcomes in relation to long-term consequences and persistent symptoms. Pls do share if you've heard otherwise
- tdrdt 5y agoEvery virus infection can turn into a long recovery. There is no proof this is longer for Covid-19. The Epstein-Barr virus for example can make you tired for months or years. I am not saying long Covid isn't a thing, but it is not 'special' in any way. Virus infections can cause damage. Years ago I had an infection that damaged a nerve. So virus infections can leave marks. But most of the time, as with Covid, you will recover from it.
- patcon 5y agoThanks! That's a fresh angle for me. But isn't COVID novel in the damage it poses to microvascular systems (importantly brain and lungs), compared to other viruses? E.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7556303/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7556303/ My understanding is that this is still different from other viruses. So if large swaths of a country get that damage from delta vs omicron vs some future weaker variant, that could have very different public health consequences in the coming decades... Disclaimer: In tech for over a decade, but once upon a time I did an honours degree in biochemistry, so I'm only maybe half-capable of musing my way through some of these papers :)
- bsder 5y ago> But isn't COVID novel in the damage it poses to microvascular systems (importantly brain and lungs), compared to other viruses? Maybe. But I suspect actually the reverse is true. "Normal" viruses (virii?) are probably far more damaging than we have ever credited. The fact that we can vaccinate against a cancer (cervical cancer) and the fact that asthma went down more than expected during lockdowns, suggests that we are significantly underestimating the risks that "normal" pathogens incur.
- smm11 5y agoIn other news, heart disease is still the number one killer in the US.
- awb 5y agoYou could go down the rabbit hole and say that misinformation, poor decision making, logical fallacies, mental health issues, etc. are the actual catalysts. My point is that COVID and heart disease are largely preventable at an individual level if you have ability to eat healthy foods and take the vaccine and/or practice social distancing.
- nradov 5y agoYou can't seriously expect people to continue to practice social distancing. That is absurd.
- awb 5y agoYou’re right, social distancing is no more realistic for many people than maintaining a healthy diet and exercise routine. My point is that we have tools to stop these diseases, we just view using these tools as worse than getting the disease.
- School-Cotton 5y agoBut this contradicts your earlier comment where you attributed it to poor decision making, misinformation, and so on. If one indeed puts greater value on "not indefinitely social distancing" than on "a slightly decreased risk of death or serious complications from Covid", then the decision not to continue social distancing is a good one.
- awb 5y agoWhat I meant is that heart disease is largely avoidable for most people through relatively simple / nearly free solutions like good diet and exercise, yet it’s still pervasive as OC pointed out. I guess “poor decision making” was a misleading phrase on my part because I think I get your point that individuals could put greater value on enjoying the present, future be damned, and who’s to tell them that’s not the best way to live life. Life on average will be shorter, but I guess that’s not fair to project that as a success metric onto other people who might not care as much about their projected lifespan as they do about enjoying some more indulgent foods. And further to your point, there’s a very reasonable debate about the value of the individual vs. the value of the community in decision making that isn’t universal. So yeah I take back that earlier comment.
- LandR 5y agoIf Omicron is less severe, will an Omicron infection likely provide immunity against delta?
- hammock 5y agoYes
- thelittleone 5y agoIt has been really interesting to observe the hysteria. From the moment they chose the name Omicron, which sounds like a nemesis in a Transformers movie. But more in observing how friends and family back home latch on to the media (which they remain constantly plugged into). The repetition of buzzwords and how enthusiastically they talked about booster shots now being 5 months instead of 6. I don't know anything at all about the medical realities, but can see loud and clear, more than ever how people's mental states are manipulated by media.
- tedsanders 5y agoFor what it's worth, I have observed zero hysteria. Took a flight last week out of California. Airport was packed. Plane was packed. No one was really distancing. People wore masks, but were pretty chill about it. Most masks looked to cloth or surgical, rather than tight-fitting (K)N95. People took masks off to eat. An old guy kept pulling his down each time he talked to his friend. Some kids ran around without masks and the parents didn't care. No one was hysterical. No one was shaming people without masks. And this is in a world with a million Americans dead and a new highly contagious variant spreading around the world.
- GoatHerders2 5y ago
- WalterBright 5y agoIt's Farr's Law in action. "Farr's laws is a law formulated by Dr. William Farr when he made the observation that epidemic events rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern. The time-evolution behavior could be captured by a single mathematical formula that could be approximated by a bell-shaped curve." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farr's_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farr's_laws
- dham 5y agoI think we should take advantage of Omicron right now and let it rip through the population as it's most likely less deadly. Not doing so could be catastrophic and lead to more deaths in the future if the virus mutates to be more deadly.
- jimkleiber 5y agoYes, but couldn't it also be catastrophic if 1) the virus mutates to be even less deadly and infectious or 2) Omicron has long-term, currently unseen consequences? I mean, not saying your strategy wouldn't be the better strategy in the end, just think it's hard to know the risk equation at this moment. edit: not sure why someone downvoted this, I'd love to hear your thoughts if you did
- collaborative 5y agoI became alarmed about covid since it first appeared in Wuhan, but these days I am more alarmed about people I meet saying that the unvaccinated shouldn't be admitted to hospital, etc
- riekus 5y agoThe division is the only killer part of this killer virus.