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Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

kuroguro 5y ago
I really hope so. The hospitalizations usually lag behind case detection AFAIK, so there might still be some damage to watch out for.
- rytcio 5y ago
  People have been talking about how hospitalization numbers are lagged since before Thanksgiving. It's been almost two months. It's time to stop hoping for doom and gloom and accept that it's over.
  - magicalist 5y ago
    > People have been talking about how hospitalization numbers are lagged since before Thanksgiving People have been saying that since 2020, but if you're talking about the current variant, omicron wasn't even given the omicron designation until the day after Thanksgiving.
  - archagon 5y ago
    It is quite offensive to suggest that anyone is “hoping for doom and gloom.”
etchalon 5y ago
I'm not sure if we can say it's "over". People were saying the same thing after the Delta waves started subsiding and behold … Omicron.
- monological 5y ago
  But now we’ll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.
  - ptaipale 5y ago
    Herd immunity has been predicted since about May 2020 (in Sweden) and there is always far too optimism about it. We now know that a recovered infection does not produce permanent immunity.
  - TylerE 5y ago
    I've been watching over both my parents the past week. Both Omicron cases. "Very mild" is... not accurate. It hasn't hospitalized them, but even without quarantining, they'd be incapable of living anything like a normal life. The common cold it most certainly IS NOT. (Both are double vaxxed and boosted, btw)
    - pikma 5y ago
      Was it worse than a flu for them, or roughly similar?
      - TylerE 5y ago
        Normal flu for my dad, a bit worse than that from mom. She basically hasn't gotten out of bed for about 8 days except to use the bathroom.
        pikma 5y ago
        Gee, 8 days is a lot, yeah that feels like worse than a flu. I hope they both feel better soon.
        dwaltrip 5y ago
        How old are they?
tinus_hn 5y ago
It at least is the end of managing the pandemic. Whether you want to or not, there is no locking down against this version.
causality0 5y ago
You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  But even after mutations, the next time you catch it, symptoms will likely be a lot less severe than the first. At that point, we can stop tracking it and write it off as a variant of the common cold.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out. I think at this point, the likely endgame is endemic virus with tolerable consequences. Humanity probably isn't capable of the level of cooperation required to drive this virus to extinction (I'm guessing that would take a massive, coordinated, well-complied with vaccination campaign undertaken over just a couple months). As far as I know previous immunity still protects against serious disease, even with the variants, so hopefully we'll see less deaths and hospital admissions.
- polski-g 5y ago
  You can also catch the cold over and over. 1 or 2 colds a year is pretty typical.
  - antidaily 5y ago
    Or crabs. Not me, a buddy of mine.
  - causality0 5y ago
    Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage that is potentially cumulative. If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some serious damn consequences.
throw8932894 5y ago
I read article from Israel. It wrote: "severe covid cases are low, but flu season just started". Pandemic will finish at spring, and hopefully will not start next winter.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Of course it'll start again the next winter... as will the cold season and flu season. The only question here is, will there be lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccine passports, or will we finally give up, focus on the risk groups, and let the young and healthy live their normal lives.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Depends on hospitals. If the health care system starts getting overwhelmed, expect restrictions. If not, then probably not.
ipspam 5y ago
- throw10920 5y ago
  You might make some valid points, but it's really hard to see them when you don't cite sources, and when you deliberately use inflammatory language like "cronies" - and that's against the spirit of HN anyway.
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  I assume you are referring to the "There is no federal solution to covid" quote. But it was in the context of talking to state governors and Biden saying a federal plan wasn't being forced on them -- that the primary work is done at the state level and the federal level is there to support it. https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/05/save-america-pac/bidens-no-federal-solution-clip-doesnt-save-trump-/ https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/05/save-ameri...
  - nradov 5y ago
    Apparently in October 2020 Joe Biden believed that there was a federal solution to COVID. What has changed since then? "We're eight months into this pandemic, and Donald Trump still doesn't have a plan to get this virus under control. I do." https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1316894374500962305 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1316894374500962305
    - tasty_freeze 5y ago
      I can't speak for him, and obviously tweets are short enough they can't contain it either. But apparently the plan was (a) to use federal funds and manpower to get vaccines spread as widely as possible. There was an early goals of 100M doses in the first 100 days, which was met, and another goal was set and met [1]. Another factor was sending the message: this isn't a "Democrat hoax", that it is real, is killing people, the vaccines are safe and certainly much safer than getting covid. I say that has been accomplished. On the other hand, there is a large contingent of people and talking heads who have tried their hardest to spread fear and misinformation. We are still at something like 60% inoculated, and many doses of the vaccine ended up going bad or were shipped overseas because not enough people trust the vaccine. Third, there is no way to prevent novel variants from causing new problems, other than getting the old variants under control to reduce the vast pool of variant breeders. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/56901183 https://www.bbc.com/news/56901183 [EDIT] Also, your terse "he claimed there was a federal solution" is also subject to debate. He said he had a plan, but that doesn't mean the plan was a federal-only solution.
stefan_ 5y ago
Omicron evades the "natural immunity" that people were getting a hard on for. That explains a lot (not all) of the massive fitness it has - it can infect people that previously had Covid infections again.
- unmole 5y ago
  Does it only evade natural immunity and not that imparted by vaccines?
- nradov 5y ago
  Immunity is a spectrum, not a binary condition. Infection by previous variants appears to still provide a significant level of durable cellular immunity against Omicron. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1
rixrax 5y ago
I guess it depends on a few things: - how long the immunity gained from having recovered from Omicron lasts - how well that immunity protects against other current (and future) variants of covid - what kind of new strains of covid appears in next several months / years that may replace Omicron - how many people we are able to get vaccinated globally - advances in new and better vaccines becoming available (complete with antiviral pills etc) And probably quite a few other factors that weren't on top of my layman head...
- spurgu 5y ago
  Also: - how much/long the media keeps the fear drum pounding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U
  - gromitss 5y ago
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Media fear drum has no effect on whether my local hospital is overwhelmed. Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as hospitals are good.
    - slickrick216 5y ago
      Everyone should be able to make their own decisions anyway. Hospitals are some arbitrator of decision making and hosptial admission due to covid is collapsing. Stop fear mongering this isn’t Facebook.
    - spurgu 5y ago
      > Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as hospitals are good. Wait. "Everyone can make their own decisions"? And those decisions are completely rational, not affected at all by what the media is saying? I would argue the complete opposite. Why are you trying to bend the argument into hospital capacity? Is your argument that if hospital capacity is under threat then it's ok for the media and government to lie and instill baseless fear into people, solely as a means of a) scaring them into staying at home (to minimize the spread of the virus) and b) to demonize unvaccinated people? One would think that transparency and honesty would work better than bullshitting people.
steelstraw 5y ago
It's been over ever since the vaccines became widely available. After vaccination many of us went back to normal and haven't looked back. Huge bureaucracies just take a long time to change course and some simply refuse to recognize that it's endemic for whatever reasons.
- neogodless 5y ago
  > A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. > An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time In no way has "rapid spread of infection disease across multiple continents" ended. The past few weeks should make that a bit more clear. Being vaccinated reduces the negative effects of infection, and may also reduce infectiousness and spread, but it didn't end the pandemic.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    But does it matter? If omicron becomes the "new flu" (or "the new cold") for the young and healthy, and with vaccines even for old and weak, do we have to call it a "pandemic" anymore? I mean... did we have a "cold pandemic" or a "flu pandemic" before 2020? I'm pretty sure most of the planet had a cold every winter, and we just lived with it. Same with the flu... risk-groups died, and noone bothered the young with it, we just called it "normal life".
    - neogodless 5y ago
      > In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level in a geographic area without external inputs. > A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic. The cold and flu are "stable" albeit seasonal. While we might expect that outcome for variations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we're not there yet. A rapidly exploding number of infections is not a stable number of infected individuals. At any rate, some people getting vaccinated and choosing to live as if the infections do not exist does not "end the pandemic."
mattmaroon 5y ago
I don’t know. Anecdotal but I know a lot of people who had prior strains (many even vaccinated) who have gotten it. The numbers are so high that natural immunity from previous strains/vaccines seems to be very low. If delta or OG Covid didn’t do much about omicron, I don’t think we can assume omicron will do much about some future variant.
rhino369 5y ago
>Or am I missing something? The possibility that a new variant arises that substantially evades both Delta and Omicron immunity. But it will probably turn endemic after this. There won't be any virgin hosts anymore.
nickysielicki 5y ago
It’s just politicians trying to save face at this point. Trillions of dollars lost and total debasement of western currencies was all to arrive at the natural solution to a virus that was destined to become endemic from the very start: let it play out. Two administrations, one from both parties. Same fed chair. Same people at the CDC and WHO. It’s not partisan. It’s institutional failure.
- swader999 5y ago
  More like corporate capture imo.
  - nickysielicki 5y ago
    I think this is a good take.
- pmoleri 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean. Vaccine was a success, it saved millions of lives. What's becoming endemic is a less deadly variant, otherwise we would be back to square 0, confinement and developing a new vaccine. So, instead of calling it a failure I would call it success with a lucky ending, if everything continues like this of course.
  - collias 5y ago
    It's not a lucky ending as much as it is the inevitable ending. Virus evolution tends toward becoming more contagious and less deadly. We've known this for a long time, and we have no reason to believe that this virus would be any different. If viruses tended toward becoming more deadly as they became closer to being endemic, humanity (or any animal) would not have lasted very long.
butterisgood 5y ago
Yes it is now endemic.
hitpointdrew 5y ago
>Surely this is the end of the pandemic? Yes, welcome to the endemic. Covid is here to stay, it doesn't matter if 100% of the world were vaccinated tommrow, covid would not go away. It doesn't matter if you get the vaccination or not, in your life time you WILL get covid (just like the flu, no one escapes it, you typically get the flu about every decade or so regardless of shots). We need to just accept this and move back to "old normal".
- stefan_ 5y ago
  You have a rather crucial misunderstanding. There are lots of endemic viruses; that is part of why we vaccinate new humans against so many of them.
  - swader999 5y ago
    Not ones that mutate this efficiently. Flu is the only example and we typically only manage to get high percentages of the vulnerable with it. This is what we want with these types of virus otherwise you risk Mariks scenario. (See the poultry industry issues)
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Most of those viruses are actually very deadly, and most of those vaccines actually make you not-get-it-at-all. The only comparable virus is the flu, and the vaccine is equally shitty [0] as the covid vaccines are. Death rates for young and (currently healthy) people are very very low (lower than traffic deaths in my country, much lower than suicides), and they are the most affected by the lockdowns. By reopening and focusing on risk groups we could finally start living normally again. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effectivenes...
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      800,000 dead americans in less than two years sounds pretty deadly to me
clomond 5y ago
Can't say that 'it is the end' yet - but given that pandemics end when there is no more 'room' for the virus to move through naive hosts (places to infect). The fact that Omicron is SO contagious means it will effectively find any pockets of 'fuel' in the adult human population in the coming weeks and months. Everyone will be exposed. It is probably more accurate to say it is the likely start of the transition between 'pandemic' and 'endemic' phase. We say endemic as it LOOKS like the gap between coronavirus immunity length to viral instability (number of changes) is longer than for influenza. (T-cell response still very strong, original SARS patients almost 2 decades later have cross immunity to SARS-Cov-2, Omicron immunity effective against delta, etc) That said - it is VERY unlikely to be eradicable at this point due to its ability to infect so many different species and circulate and breed in the wild (more so than even influenza). So new variants down the line in the coming years/decades is more likely (not different than swine flu, bird flu, etc pandemic risks in the recent past). But, if longer term immunity holds up - none of these will have anywhere near the impact given the absence of billions of naive hosts to burn through. So if we call the transition from pandemic to endemic the end (likely, yes) - then probably.
_greim_ 5y ago
As far as I can tell, there ends up being no practical difference between "the pandemic is over" and "this virus will be in circulation forever". People use one phrase or the other to emphasize different concerns.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I think people don't think of "the pandemic" as a state of having virus around us, but as a bigger political picture of lockdowns, mandates, vaccine passports, travel limits, mandatory testing, masks and all that. If omicron means we'll all get it in the next few months, and (for the 99.x% survivors) that means that covid is "just another cold/flu", we can stop with the "pandemic" (political), and live as we did before 2020. Old people will need vaccines and boosters and all that (as they did for the flu before 2020), and young people can finally live a normal life again.
dheera 5y ago
What does 100% prevalence mean? 100% of people are at least silent carriers?
- nradov 5y ago
  It means that among recent PCR test confirmed cases, 100% of patients were infected with the Omicron variant rather than Delta or some older variant. The number of asymptomatic carriers is unknown and probably large, but can't possibly be anywhere near 100% of the populace.
jakear 5y ago
Yes, COVID is finished in much the same way the Spanish flu is finished. Derivatives of it come up and smack us every winter but life goes on.
bedhead 5y ago
What you're missing is that we're eventually (arguably right now) going to be referring to colds and other weak mutations of COVID as "COVID" still, and by virtue of still calling it COVID and still having these COVID dashboards, it's never ending. There is no end, it is a new normal for millions. Too many people's brains short circuited, too many people got anchored to March 2020.
isaacremuant 5y ago
It's not the end if governments keep playing covid theater games. In Europe they definitely will with increased surveillance and digital IDs that have proven to do nothing to stop covid (as initially portrayed), but that won't stop govs from pushing them onwards and dehumanising any group who doesn't want to comply with their coercive measures. It's an interesting time for people who really value freedom and human rights.
dokem 5y ago
The gov and media are never going to straight up tell us the pandemic is over. We have to take our way of life back and let big bro silently move on to something else.
dgellow 5y ago
There is no way to know when it will end.
oldstrangers 5y ago
The actual elephant in the room is that covid is never truly going away without an actual vaccine / cure.
umvi 5y ago
> Surely this is the end of the pandemic? Depends on if politicians believe they can lift restrictions without negatively reflecting their career or not. There's a lot of Twitter mobs out there promoting "extreme caution" that will tank your political career if you aren't catering enough to their caution-comfort-level.
awb 5y ago
It doesn’t appear to be competing with COVID as much as supplementing it. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article256786862.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25678686... Omicron is infecting fully vaccinated people and those with previous infection. In the early cases detected in SA, many had already had COVID and/or Delta. It would be amazing if an Omicron infection produced antibodies that fought off COVID & Delta, as that could rapidly bring relief to the pandemic, but I haven’t seen that suggested anywhere yet. If it’s largely immune to the vaccine and doesn’t produce antibodies against COVID/Delta, we might as well label it a new disease instead of a variant. Luckily it seems to be incredibly mild. I wonder if we had such robust data on the common cold of it would look similar to Omicron.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  You're thinking about it all wrong. Omicron and Delta are the same virus, and there's not particularly any good data that Omicron is less intrinsically virulent than Delta. Omicron infects those who are unboosted, and likely reinfects a lot of the population that is >6 months recovered from prior single infection. It is all about the fact that Omicron infects people who already have T-cells and aren't immunologically naive. The way out of the pandemic is our memory B-cells and T-cells.
  - awb 5y ago
    > It is all about the fact that Omicron infects people who already have T-cells and aren't immunologically naive. The way out of the pandemic is our memory B-cells and T-cells. What does immunologically naive mean? And how do B-cells and T-cells help us get out of the pandemic? Trying to learn as much as possible, thanks.
    - jatone 5y ago
      not a biologist, but my current understanding: immunologically naive means that your body has no prior exposure to a virus (or its variants). basically it means it has NFC how to deal with it. so it basically has to brute force its way to a defense against the strain. This is why you saw people with early covid cases having their immune system go haywire and a lot of the treatments for covid focused on dampening the immune system to prevent it from killing the patient. once you've seen a virus and its variants a few times your body has 'remembers' strategies on how to fight the virus. and launches those strategies against it. sometimes depending on the mutations those strategies are less effective (omicron) and your body has to create new strategies. B-cells and T-cells are how the body store and deploy these strategies.
supperburg 5y ago
The pandemic will truly end when therapeutics are mature. My liberal relatives become visibly upset when just the concept of therapeutics is brought up. Thanks liberal dogma/media…

kuroguro 5y ago

I really hope so. The hospitalizations usually lag behind case detection AFAIK, so there might still be some damage to watch out for.

rytcio 5y ago
People have been talking about how hospitalization numbers are lagged since before Thanksgiving. It's been almost two months. It's time to stop hoping for doom and gloom and accept that it's over.
- magicalist 5y ago
  > People have been talking about how hospitalization numbers are lagged since before Thanksgiving People have been saying that since 2020, but if you're talking about the current variant, omicron wasn't even given the omicron designation until the day after Thanksgiving.
- archagon 5y ago
  It is quite offensive to suggest that anyone is “hoping for doom and gloom.”

etchalon 5y ago

I'm not sure if we can say it's "over". People were saying the same thing after the Delta waves started subsiding and behold … Omicron.

monological 5y ago
But now we’ll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.
- ptaipale 5y ago
  Herd immunity has been predicted since about May 2020 (in Sweden) and there is always far too optimism about it. We now know that a recovered infection does not produce permanent immunity.
- TylerE 5y ago
  I've been watching over both my parents the past week. Both Omicron cases. "Very mild" is... not accurate. It hasn't hospitalized them, but even without quarantining, they'd be incapable of living anything like a normal life. The common cold it most certainly IS NOT. (Both are double vaxxed and boosted, btw)
  - pikma 5y ago
    Was it worse than a flu for them, or roughly similar?
    - TylerE 5y ago
      Normal flu for my dad, a bit worse than that from mom. She basically hasn't gotten out of bed for about 8 days except to use the bathroom.
      - pikma 5y ago
        Gee, 8 days is a lot, yeah that feels like worse than a flu. I hope they both feel better soon.
      - dwaltrip 5y ago
        How old are they?

tinus_hn 5y ago

It at least is the end of managing the pandemic. Whether you want to or not, there is no locking down against this version.

causality0 5y ago

You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out.

dehrmann 5y ago
But even after mutations, the next time you catch it, symptoms will likely be a lot less severe than the first. At that point, we can stop tracking it and write it off as a variant of the common cold.
tablespoon 5y ago
> You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out. I think at this point, the likely endgame is endemic virus with tolerable consequences. Humanity probably isn't capable of the level of cooperation required to drive this virus to extinction (I'm guessing that would take a massive, coordinated, well-complied with vaccination campaign undertaken over just a couple months). As far as I know previous immunity still protects against serious disease, even with the variants, so hopefully we'll see less deaths and hospital admissions.
polski-g 5y ago
You can also catch the cold over and over. 1 or 2 colds a year is pretty typical.
- antidaily 5y ago
  Or crabs. Not me, a buddy of mine.
- causality0 5y ago
  Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage that is potentially cumulative. If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some serious damn consequences.

throw8932894 5y ago

I read article from Israel. It wrote: "severe covid cases are low, but flu season just started". Pandemic will finish at spring, and hopefully will not start next winter.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Of course it'll start again the next winter... as will the cold season and flu season. The only question here is, will there be lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccine passports, or will we finally give up, focus on the risk groups, and let the young and healthy live their normal lives.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Depends on hospitals. If the health care system starts getting overwhelmed, expect restrictions. If not, then probably not.

ipspam 5y ago

throw10920 5y ago
You might make some valid points, but it's really hard to see them when you don't cite sources, and when you deliberately use inflammatory language like "cronies" - and that's against the spirit of HN anyway.
tasty_freeze 5y ago
I assume you are referring to the "There is no federal solution to covid" quote. But it was in the context of talking to state governors and Biden saying a federal plan wasn't being forced on them -- that the primary work is done at the state level and the federal level is there to support it. https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/05/save-america-pac/bidens-no-federal-solution-clip-doesnt-save-trump-/ https://api.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/05/save-ameri...
- nradov 5y ago
  Apparently in October 2020 Joe Biden believed that there was a federal solution to COVID. What has changed since then? "We're eight months into this pandemic, and Donald Trump still doesn't have a plan to get this virus under control. I do." https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1316894374500962305 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1316894374500962305
  - tasty_freeze 5y ago
    I can't speak for him, and obviously tweets are short enough they can't contain it either. But apparently the plan was (a) to use federal funds and manpower to get vaccines spread as widely as possible. There was an early goals of 100M doses in the first 100 days, which was met, and another goal was set and met [1]. Another factor was sending the message: this isn't a "Democrat hoax", that it is real, is killing people, the vaccines are safe and certainly much safer than getting covid. I say that has been accomplished. On the other hand, there is a large contingent of people and talking heads who have tried their hardest to spread fear and misinformation. We are still at something like 60% inoculated, and many doses of the vaccine ended up going bad or were shipped overseas because not enough people trust the vaccine. Third, there is no way to prevent novel variants from causing new problems, other than getting the old variants under control to reduce the vast pool of variant breeders. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/56901183 https://www.bbc.com/news/56901183 [EDIT] Also, your terse "he claimed there was a federal solution" is also subject to debate. He said he had a plan, but that doesn't mean the plan was a federal-only solution.

stefan_ 5y ago

Omicron evades the "natural immunity" that people were getting a hard on for. That explains a lot (not all) of the massive fitness it has - it can infect people that previously had Covid infections again.

unmole 5y ago
Does it only evade natural immunity and not that imparted by vaccines?
nradov 5y ago
Immunity is a spectrum, not a binary condition. Infection by previous variants appears to still provide a significant level of durable cellular immunity against Omicron. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1

rixrax 5y ago

I guess it depends on a few things: - how long the immunity gained from having recovered from Omicron lasts - how well that immunity protects against other current (and future) variants of covid - what kind of new strains of covid appears in next several months / years that may replace Omicron - how many people we are able to get vaccinated globally - advances in new and better vaccines becoming available (complete with antiviral pills etc) And probably quite a few other factors that weren't on top of my layman head...

spurgu 5y ago
Also: - how much/long the media keeps the fear drum pounding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U
- gromitss 5y ago
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Media fear drum has no effect on whether my local hospital is overwhelmed. Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as hospitals are good.
  - slickrick216 5y ago
    Everyone should be able to make their own decisions anyway. Hospitals are some arbitrator of decision making and hosptial admission due to covid is collapsing. Stop fear mongering this isn’t Facebook.
  - spurgu 5y ago
    > Everybody can make their own decisions, as long as hospitals are good. Wait. "Everyone can make their own decisions"? And those decisions are completely rational, not affected at all by what the media is saying? I would argue the complete opposite. Why are you trying to bend the argument into hospital capacity? Is your argument that if hospital capacity is under threat then it's ok for the media and government to lie and instill baseless fear into people, solely as a means of a) scaring them into staying at home (to minimize the spread of the virus) and b) to demonize unvaccinated people? One would think that transparency and honesty would work better than bullshitting people.

steelstraw 5y ago

It's been over ever since the vaccines became widely available. After vaccination many of us went back to normal and haven't looked back. Huge bureaucracies just take a long time to change course and some simply refuse to recognize that it's endemic for whatever reasons.

neogodless 5y ago
> A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. > An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time In no way has "rapid spread of infection disease across multiple continents" ended. The past few weeks should make that a bit more clear. Being vaccinated reduces the negative effects of infection, and may also reduce infectiousness and spread, but it didn't end the pandemic.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  But does it matter? If omicron becomes the "new flu" (or "the new cold") for the young and healthy, and with vaccines even for old and weak, do we have to call it a "pandemic" anymore? I mean... did we have a "cold pandemic" or a "flu pandemic" before 2020? I'm pretty sure most of the planet had a cold every winter, and we just lived with it. Same with the flu... risk-groups died, and noone bothered the young with it, we just called it "normal life".
  - neogodless 5y ago
    > In epidemiology, an infection is said to be endemic in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level in a geographic area without external inputs. > A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic. The cold and flu are "stable" albeit seasonal. While we might expect that outcome for variations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we're not there yet. A rapidly exploding number of infections is not a stable number of infected individuals. At any rate, some people getting vaccinated and choosing to live as if the infections do not exist does not "end the pandemic."

mattmaroon 5y ago

I don’t know. Anecdotal but I know a lot of people who had prior strains (many even vaccinated) who have gotten it. The numbers are so high that natural immunity from previous strains/vaccines seems to be very low. If delta or OG Covid didn’t do much about omicron, I don’t think we can assume omicron will do much about some future variant.

rhino369 5y ago

>Or am I missing something? The possibility that a new variant arises that substantially evades both Delta and Omicron immunity. But it will probably turn endemic after this. There won't be any virgin hosts anymore.

nickysielicki 5y ago

It’s just politicians trying to save face at this point. Trillions of dollars lost and total debasement of western currencies was all to arrive at the natural solution to a virus that was destined to become endemic from the very start: let it play out. Two administrations, one from both parties. Same fed chair. Same people at the CDC and WHO. It’s not partisan. It’s institutional failure.

swader999 5y ago
More like corporate capture imo.
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  I think this is a good take.
pmoleri 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean. Vaccine was a success, it saved millions of lives. What's becoming endemic is a less deadly variant, otherwise we would be back to square 0, confinement and developing a new vaccine. So, instead of calling it a failure I would call it success with a lucky ending, if everything continues like this of course.
- collias 5y ago
  It's not a lucky ending as much as it is the inevitable ending. Virus evolution tends toward becoming more contagious and less deadly. We've known this for a long time, and we have no reason to believe that this virus would be any different. If viruses tended toward becoming more deadly as they became closer to being endemic, humanity (or any animal) would not have lasted very long.

butterisgood 5y ago

Yes it is now endemic.

hitpointdrew 5y ago

>Surely this is the end of the pandemic? Yes, welcome to the endemic. Covid is here to stay, it doesn't matter if 100% of the world were vaccinated tommrow, covid would not go away. It doesn't matter if you get the vaccination or not, in your life time you WILL get covid (just like the flu, no one escapes it, you typically get the flu about every decade or so regardless of shots). We need to just accept this and move back to "old normal".

stefan_ 5y ago
You have a rather crucial misunderstanding. There are lots of endemic viruses; that is part of why we vaccinate new humans against so many of them.
- swader999 5y ago
  Not ones that mutate this efficiently. Flu is the only example and we typically only manage to get high percentages of the vulnerable with it. This is what we want with these types of virus otherwise you risk Mariks scenario. (See the poultry industry issues)
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Most of those viruses are actually very deadly, and most of those vaccines actually make you not-get-it-at-all. The only comparable virus is the flu, and the vaccine is equally shitty [0] as the covid vaccines are. Death rates for young and (currently healthy) people are very very low (lower than traffic deaths in my country, much lower than suicides), and they are the most affected by the lockdowns. By reopening and focusing on risk groups we could finally start living normally again. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effectivenes...
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    800,000 dead americans in less than two years sounds pretty deadly to me

clomond 5y ago

Can't say that 'it is the end' yet - but given that pandemics end when there is no more 'room' for the virus to move through naive hosts (places to infect). The fact that Omicron is SO contagious means it will effectively find any pockets of 'fuel' in the adult human population in the coming weeks and months. Everyone will be exposed. It is probably more accurate to say it is the likely start of the transition between 'pandemic' and 'endemic' phase. We say endemic as it LOOKS like the gap between coronavirus immunity length to viral instability (number of changes) is longer than for influenza. (T-cell response still very strong, original SARS patients almost 2 decades later have cross immunity to SARS-Cov-2, Omicron immunity effective against delta, etc) That said - it is VERY unlikely to be eradicable at this point due to its ability to infect so many different species and circulate and breed in the wild (more so than even influenza). So new variants down the line in the coming years/decades is more likely (not different than swine flu, bird flu, etc pandemic risks in the recent past). But, if longer term immunity holds up - none of these will have anywhere near the impact given the absence of billions of naive hosts to burn through. So if we call the transition from pandemic to endemic the end (likely, yes) - then probably.

_greim_ 5y ago

As far as I can tell, there ends up being no practical difference between "the pandemic is over" and "this virus will be in circulation forever". People use one phrase or the other to emphasize different concerns.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I think people don't think of "the pandemic" as a state of having virus around us, but as a bigger political picture of lockdowns, mandates, vaccine passports, travel limits, mandatory testing, masks and all that. If omicron means we'll all get it in the next few months, and (for the 99.x% survivors) that means that covid is "just another cold/flu", we can stop with the "pandemic" (political), and live as we did before 2020. Old people will need vaccines and boosters and all that (as they did for the flu before 2020), and young people can finally live a normal life again.

dheera 5y ago

What does 100% prevalence mean? 100% of people are at least silent carriers?

nradov 5y ago
It means that among recent PCR test confirmed cases, 100% of patients were infected with the Omicron variant rather than Delta or some older variant. The number of asymptomatic carriers is unknown and probably large, but can't possibly be anywhere near 100% of the populace.

jakear 5y ago

Yes, COVID is finished in much the same way the Spanish flu is finished. Derivatives of it come up and smack us every winter but life goes on.

bedhead 5y ago

What you're missing is that we're eventually (arguably right now) going to be referring to colds and other weak mutations of COVID as "COVID" still, and by virtue of still calling it COVID and still having these COVID dashboards, it's never ending. There is no end, it is a new normal for millions. Too many people's brains short circuited, too many people got anchored to March 2020.

isaacremuant 5y ago

It's not the end if governments keep playing covid theater games. In Europe they definitely will with increased surveillance and digital IDs that have proven to do nothing to stop covid (as initially portrayed), but that won't stop govs from pushing them onwards and dehumanising any group who doesn't want to comply with their coercive measures. It's an interesting time for people who really value freedom and human rights.

dokem 5y ago

The gov and media are never going to straight up tell us the pandemic is over. We have to take our way of life back and let big bro silently move on to something else.

dgellow 5y ago

There is no way to know when it will end.

oldstrangers 5y ago

The actual elephant in the room is that covid is never truly going away without an actual vaccine / cure.

umvi 5y ago

> Surely this is the end of the pandemic? Depends on if politicians believe they can lift restrictions without negatively reflecting their career or not. There's a lot of Twitter mobs out there promoting "extreme caution" that will tank your political career if you aren't catering enough to their caution-comfort-level.

awb 5y ago

It doesn’t appear to be competing with COVID as much as supplementing it. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article256786862.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25678686... Omicron is infecting fully vaccinated people and those with previous infection. In the early cases detected in SA, many had already had COVID and/or Delta. It would be amazing if an Omicron infection produced antibodies that fought off COVID & Delta, as that could rapidly bring relief to the pandemic, but I haven’t seen that suggested anywhere yet. If it’s largely immune to the vaccine and doesn’t produce antibodies against COVID/Delta, we might as well label it a new disease instead of a variant. Luckily it seems to be incredibly mild. I wonder if we had such robust data on the common cold of it would look similar to Omicron.

lamontcg 5y ago
You're thinking about it all wrong. Omicron and Delta are the same virus, and there's not particularly any good data that Omicron is less intrinsically virulent than Delta. Omicron infects those who are unboosted, and likely reinfects a lot of the population that is >6 months recovered from prior single infection. It is all about the fact that Omicron infects people who already have T-cells and aren't immunologically naive. The way out of the pandemic is our memory B-cells and T-cells.
- awb 5y ago
  > It is all about the fact that Omicron infects people who already have T-cells and aren't immunologically naive. The way out of the pandemic is our memory B-cells and T-cells. What does immunologically naive mean? And how do B-cells and T-cells help us get out of the pandemic? Trying to learn as much as possible, thanks.
  - jatone 5y ago
    not a biologist, but my current understanding: immunologically naive means that your body has no prior exposure to a virus (or its variants). basically it means it has NFC how to deal with it. so it basically has to brute force its way to a defense against the strain. This is why you saw people with early covid cases having their immune system go haywire and a lot of the treatments for covid focused on dampening the immune system to prevent it from killing the patient. once you've seen a virus and its variants a few times your body has 'remembers' strategies on how to fight the virus. and launches those strategies against it. sometimes depending on the mutations those strategies are less effective (omicron) and your body has to create new strategies. B-cells and T-cells are how the body store and deploy these strategies.

supperburg 5y ago

The pandemic will truly end when therapeutics are mature. My liberal relatives become visibly upset when just the concept of therapeutics is brought up. Thanks liberal dogma/media…