14 ms·

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 vaccinate

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.
  - pikma 5y ago
    Actually my wife had a bad cold this summer and she coughed so hard during the night that we had to take her to the ER and she was lacking oxygen (not sure by how much). She is otherwise healthy in her early 30s, though she was pregnant, which might have made it worse. It surprised me, I always thought that colds were harmless.
    - Enginerrrd 5y ago
      Yeah, they're really not. I was a paramedic about 10 years ago. Every winter I'd see colds or influenza kill people. (Or at least, initiate convalescence and subsequent rapid death from related issues within a few weeks.) Always though, those were people who were either very old or had COPD (a lung disease). It's a common way that people go out actually. A cold leads to weakness/stress leads to pneuomonia/UTI's/sepsis and then death.
    - smt88 5y ago
      Colds kill thousands of people every year and some may have lifelong effects, such as neurological impairment or heart damage.
    - UncleOxidant 5y ago
      > though she was pregnant, which might have made it worse. Being pregnant does dampen the immune system.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    The death rate isn't the same for your 1st case of covid and your nth case.
- nradov 5y ago
  The common cold is not one disease. There are hundreds of different viruses which all cause similar cold symptoms, including four other coronaviruses. https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_causes https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...
pier25 5y ago
> Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. Vaccines do not prevent contagion but reduce the chances of severe symptoms. Also AFAIK vaccines do not lower transmission either.
- pavon 5y ago
  In general, vaccines do lower transmission, by decreasing the viral load and duration of infection. Of course when you are dealing with a mutation that the vaccine has low effectiveness against, that is all out the window.
  - EA 5y ago
    The vaccine also reduces the symptoms of the virus and so a carrier of the virus may seem well but actually transfer the virus to someone else as they are less likely to quarantine if they are not tested or showing symptoms. The vaccine also gives one a sense of protection from infection and so they are more likely to attend mass gatherings. where the virus can be transferred.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  If a vaccine reduces your cough/oozing orifice severity, wouldn’t that reduce transmission?
  - gopalv 5y ago
    > wouldn’t that reduce transmission? Lowered symptoms on droplets would be better, but a lot of in-person workplaces have a "do you have a fever?" check before they issue you any sick leave. Not having a fever and looking like a mild cold in winter would cause at least my cousin's employer to ask her to come in and wear a mask at work (manufacturing, so she wears a P100 respirator anyway).
  - pier25 5y ago
    Technically yes, but see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29826355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29826355
CoastalCoder 5y ago
Do we know if a previous omicron infection helps confer immunity to future omicron infections?
- spurgu 5y ago
  If past history is any indicator, then yes.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  We can't know that because it hasn't been around long enough. But as far as taking a bayesian prior, I'd start by assuming yes except in rare cases and correct your model as evidence comes in. I'd guess that because, for the most part, that's how the previous variants behaved. Relatively robust immunity, with subsequent infections generally being rare and more mild. Since Omicron has a lot of mutations on the spike protein which is the primary antibody target, it has greater immune escape potential because the antibodies don't fit as well.
- everybodyknows 5y ago
  > ... preliminary evidence WHO based their recommendation on earlier this week: People who have previously had COVID-19 could become reinfected more easily with Omicron. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-4 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...
ricardobayes 5y ago
I will say beforehand that I'm heavily pro-vaccination and reducing risks regarding covid. Do we know at this point what are the hospitalization rates of omicron compared to the flu? p.s. I hope your wife gets better soon.
- causality0 5y ago
  Numbers are still changing but the current stat is one percent hospitalization rate for Omicron. This year's flu has a hospitalization rate almost twice as high as last year's, at 1.4 in 100,000 or 0.0014%.
  - ricardobayes 5y ago
    Is that vaccinated in both cases or overall?
    - causality0 5y ago
      Overall for the infected regardless of vaccine status.
  - devin 5y ago
    And Delta was something like 6% IIRC?
  - virgilp 5y ago
    This can't be right. > For the week ending Dec. 18, 1,265 lab-confirmed flu patients were hospitalized, up from the week prior. The cumulative hospitalization rate was 1.4 per 100,000 population as of Dec. 18, nearly double the overall cumulative hospitalization rate reported during the 2020-21 season. 3 I think you're comparing hospitalization rate per population vs. hospitalization per infected persons. If we look at the recent data and do some estimation, that's about 50k new hospitalzed for 3M new omicron cases, which is 0.016 or 10 times the flu; this sounds more reasonable.
spurgu 5y ago
I have omicron right now (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold (certainly wouldn't call it "battling omicron"). I have zero problems with getting this each year.
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
  You know what, I was unintentionally fear mongering. I'm glad you and others pointed that out. I did not make the connection between you having Omicron and the lack of Omicron in the paper (my nephew caught Delta...so that's where my concern lied). I hope you are still ok. :)
  - spurgu 5y ago
    I'm ok, tested negative today with a home test so I can finally go out and bother people again. ;)
- phonypc 5y ago
  Hmmm... mild symptoms after being vaccinated. It's almost like the vaccine worked or something. How weird.
  - spurgu 5y ago
    Have a look here: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectiveness-goes-down-the https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectivenes... tl;dr Vaccine effectiveness around 15% for me at this point. So it was the natural immune response (gasp!), combined hospitalization rates across the world reflects this.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also experience mild symptoms. It's almost like you've got an unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!"
    - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
jaywalk 5y ago
You say "over and over" but Omicron is the first variant that actually evades immunity (both natural and vaccine-induced) in a meaningful way. What we don't know is the level of immunity that an Omicron infection will provide. It could actually confer immunity to both itself and previous variants, which would effectively end the pandemic.
- cduzz 5y ago
  If something's a one a million event, happening billions of times per day, it'll happen pretty much constantly. This one, omicron, seems to mostly infect nasal passages and upper respiratory tract. The next, maybe after spending 2 years spreading across all the weasels of upper winchester county, may affect the lungs again. This is a lottery that's less fun to play... (edited for clarity)
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Yeah, sure. Who knows what viruses could be spreading and mutating amongst those weasels. It's not like SARS-CoV-2 is the first, and it won't be the last. But when you say > This is a lottery that's less fun to play How exactly do you propose not playing? Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life? We're eventually going to have to start treating Covid the same as we've always treated "the flu" and it definitely appears that once Omicron has run through the population, we'll have reached the time to do that.
    - cduzz 5y ago
      I believe the idiom is "the horse left the barn" There are a number of things going on in the world that fall into the "really bad" category of both thing and trend of thing. There's space in between bland acceptance and incapacitating terror. At the very least have an honest, clear eyed view of where the risk bars are going, and it isn't in a good direction.
    - acdha 5y ago
      > Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life? Very few places did lockdowns at any point so I wouldn’t expect that to start now, butthe ones which did were successful in breaking spread. It doesn’t need to be continuous, but it’s clearly effective for preventing huge spikes. Similarly, we’d save lives and billions of dollars if we established the same social norms which some Asian countries have about wearing masks when you’re symptomatic. It doesn’t need anything like 100% compliance or time to be useful – we appear to have lost an entire strain of influenza this way.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
"battling Omicron" Can you give us some indication of how severe your symptoms are? Mostly we're hearing that if you've been vaccinated and/or you've had covid in the past that omicron is relatively mild.
- causality0 5y ago
  Muscle aches, chest pain, headache, and severe coughing fits that won't let her sleep and scare me when I hear them from the other room. After being awake for two days and one of them dropping her blood oxygen to 87 I made her go to the emergency room where they gave her prescription cough medicine that finally let her sleep. Omicron is less dangerous than Delta. It's still dangerous.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Sorry to hear about your troubles. Everyone is shouting in the media (including here) Omicron is upper tract instead of lower so I had hoped you wouldn't get oxygen drops that low or lung related chest pains. Maybe I misunderstood what these things mean although some renowned newspapers here explained it like that.
  - rajup 5y ago
    Wait 87 SpO2?! I'm pretty sure that's the point at which you would be on a ventilator? Not sure what sleep has to do with SpO2 and it seems criminally negligent for the emergency room to just send your wife off with just a cough medicine..
    - nradov 5y ago
      An SpO2 of 92% or lower is considered severe. In most cases the patient should be hospitalized. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n677 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n677
    - causality0 5y ago
      If it stays there yes. This was for less than five seconds. After the medicine it hasn't gone below 95.
hanoz 5y ago
Are the unvaccinated catching it over and over again? That seems to me a vanishingly rare occurrence, admittedly within a rapidly shrinking set of people. It would be interesting to get some figures for this, hopefully without being lynched for asking the question.
- jonpalmisc 5y ago
  Personal anecdote, sample size of 1: I know an unvaccinated person who has had it 3 times. Not immunocompromised, otherwise healthy.
  - hanoz 5y ago
    > sample size of 1 The only unvaccinated person you know who has had it, has had it three times?
  - beamatronic 5y ago
    Were they at least 6-9 months apart, or closer to a year?
    - jonpalmisc 5y ago
      First two infections were closer to 3-4 months IIRC, third was probably ~6 months.
      - lovecg 5y ago
        How did the severity compare across the three cases if you know?
- verdverm 5y ago
  From what I understand, Covid is endemic and we should expect new seasonal variations each year like the flu and common cold
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  There were many stats, showing most of people with omicron being vaccinated (above the vaccination rate). I never found the methodology behind it, because if they only tested travellers to eg. africa for omicron, then sure, probably all of them were vaccinated, if they did randomized testings, they you'd expect at worst (vaccines don't work) the same percentage un/vaccinated as in the general population, or at best, vastly more unvaccinated infected. > hopefully without being lynched for asking the question Somehow this is a sad reality of social media and the current 'situation'... asking anything is seen as "provocative", and there are many things happening that would require more rigid questioning and better answers.
JPKab 5y ago
Coloradan here: I have Omicron. Already caught the virus in February 2021, good old OG Alpha Covid, which resulted in mild symptoms and loss of sense of smell for 7 months. My only symptom is a mild runny nose, nothing else. I WISH I had colds this mild. We have a new virus that is endemic in humanity. We can choose to accept it, protect the vulnerable like we do with flu, and get on with our lives. Or we can continue to allow the news media to enervate us with non-stop panic, and choose existing over living, while fucking over kids to protect older adults. My father is a rabid viewer of MSNBC, lacks mathematical or critical thinking skills, and doesn't read much. The result is he has been in a constant panic since the virus hit, and has isolated himself from family in a manner that has been detrimental to his health. This despite being vaxxed, boosted, and recovered from a mild post vax delta breakthrough infection. He still thinks the virus can kill him, and cancelled Christmas Eve plans for 5 of us to go to his house. The media has polluted his brain with irrational fear. His shitty physician (where I grew up is a dirt poor rural county, and the MDs there are the dumbest i've ever met) told him that "there is no natural immunity to COVID, it doesn't exist." Utter nonsense. As if my immune system (I wasn't eligible for the vaccine in Feb 21) fought, then cleared the virus from my body with some mysterious, unidentifiable mechanism that is completely unrelated to how it clears other viruses.... just unbelievable. The virus was deadly because it was novel. It ceases to be novel when your immune system acquires memory T-cells, even if you no longer have active antibodies present. If you are old enough, or have a deteriorated immune system, the lag of producing new antibodies can be very problematic with the other strains of COVID, which is why boosters are so crucial for high-risk groups. The data is now this: People in their 70s who are VACCINATED have a lower death rate from Omicron than they do from flu. (If they aren't vaxxed, this is obviously not the case.) See the New York Times, which is a very hawkish paper on COVID, for that specific stat: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/briefing/omicron-risk-milder-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/briefing/omicron-risk-mil... FWIW, David Leonhart is one of the only journalists at the NYT who seems to be remotely literate in data and statistics writing about COVID. That newsroom is essentially filled with people who haven't studied math since high school, despite their degrees from Columbia/Yale/Harvard journalism schools. And boy does it show.
makeworld 5y ago
Yep, especially Omicron. > This is the first evidence to show us that the rate of reinfection with Omicron is high—3 times higher than Delta. In other words, infection-induced immunity is not doing a great job at stopping Omicron. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-4 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...
deeviant 5y ago
The epidemic ends when the unusually high threat of serious illness or death ends, though, right? If we get to the point where people aren't dying of covid at a significantly higher rate as any of the other "usual suspects", does that not mean it's over? It looks like between the vaccinated and just about everybody else that is about to or already has gotten covid, we're must may arrive at the point where covid is a just another thing on the list of seasons ailments.
scrubs 5y ago
Correct. I know several people who are vaccinated yet caught Covid twice. The principle thing to keep in mind, - vaccination is a risk reducer on severity of infection. Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention. - and on that point not getting into the hospital is important. From a management standpoint, we've got to insure demand for hospital resources does not dwarf those same resources. That's the key management function here.
- simonsarris 5y ago
  > Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention. What on earth? Yes they did, all along. December 2020: > Fauci Predicts U.S. Could See Signs Of Herd Immunity By Late March Or Early April https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/15/946714505/fauci-predicts-u-s-could-see-signs-of-herd-immunity-by-late-march-or-early-april https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1... > "I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity." Talking about herd immunity is definitely saying immunity, and doesn't make sense unless the vaccine prevented transmission. Then, May 2021: > Masks off? Fauci confirms ‘extremely low’ risk of transmission, infection for vaccinated https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-extremely-low-risk-of-transmission-and-infection-for-vaccinated-112213061906 https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-extreme...
  - scrubs 5y ago
    Yah, ok, I blew it. Vaccinations will trend towards immunity.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    Different variants mean different efficacy for vaccines, particularly regarding infection. The existing vaccines could very well have led to "signs of herd immunity" had the variants not taken hold.
  - conradfr 5y ago
    It's amazing how we can rewrite history so fast. The number of times I see on Twitter people from different countries saying the same things, first it was "nobody ever said this vaccine will be 90% efficient against getting covid", then "nobody ever said the vaccine reduce transmission", and now it's "the vaccines have always be only to reduce ICU stays". (I am vaccinated btw)
coding123 5y ago
Here's a thought experiment. Compare the reddit "the button" with Covid staying with us. Even with only 1 person at a time trying to hit the button it stayed alive for 3 months. And that's with people trying to keep it alive, 24x7 - just enough people to keep it going. Enough people being interested in getting a low time and staying with it. With covid, it's just automatic, but you just need 1 foolish move between 2 people, and there's no server making sure only one person gets it at a time, it's totally a distributed network. And the timeout, instead of being 60 seconds, it's 2 maybe 3 weeks (perhaps a lot longer - we don't REALLY know). The thought experiment here is that if we TRY to keep something alive that's actually kinda hard to and it lasts 3 months, how is covid EVER going to end?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
everybodyknows 5y ago
Do you know what was the test that distinguished omicron from delta? Asking because my local county health department seems lacking in that technology.
landemva 5y ago
I would buy this on a t-shirt, 'Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway.' Does anyone else still believe the shots prevent infection or transmission?

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.
- pikma 5y ago
  Actually my wife had a bad cold this summer and she coughed so hard during the night that we had to take her to the ER and she was lacking oxygen (not sure by how much). She is otherwise healthy in her early 30s, though she was pregnant, which might have made it worse. It surprised me, I always thought that colds were harmless.
  - Enginerrrd 5y ago
    Yeah, they're really not. I was a paramedic about 10 years ago. Every winter I'd see colds or influenza kill people. (Or at least, initiate convalescence and subsequent rapid death from related issues within a few weeks.) Always though, those were people who were either very old or had COPD (a lung disease). It's a common way that people go out actually. A cold leads to weakness/stress leads to pneuomonia/UTI's/sepsis and then death.
  - smt88 5y ago
    Colds kill thousands of people every year and some may have lifelong effects, such as neurological impairment or heart damage.
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    > though she was pregnant, which might have made it worse. Being pregnant does dampen the immune system.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  The death rate isn't the same for your 1st case of covid and your nth case.
nradov 5y ago
The common cold is not one disease. There are hundreds of different viruses which all cause similar cold symptoms, including four other coronaviruses. https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_causes https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...

pier25 5y ago

> Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. Vaccines do not prevent contagion but reduce the chances of severe symptoms. Also AFAIK vaccines do not lower transmission either.

pavon 5y ago
In general, vaccines do lower transmission, by decreasing the viral load and duration of infection. Of course when you are dealing with a mutation that the vaccine has low effectiveness against, that is all out the window.
- EA 5y ago
  The vaccine also reduces the symptoms of the virus and so a carrier of the virus may seem well but actually transfer the virus to someone else as they are less likely to quarantine if they are not tested or showing symptoms. The vaccine also gives one a sense of protection from infection and so they are more likely to attend mass gatherings. where the virus can be transferred.
Scoundreller 5y ago
If a vaccine reduces your cough/oozing orifice severity, wouldn’t that reduce transmission?
- gopalv 5y ago
  > wouldn’t that reduce transmission? Lowered symptoms on droplets would be better, but a lot of in-person workplaces have a "do you have a fever?" check before they issue you any sick leave. Not having a fever and looking like a mild cold in winter would cause at least my cousin's employer to ask her to come in and wear a mask at work (manufacturing, so she wears a P100 respirator anyway).
- pier25 5y ago
  Technically yes, but see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29826355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29826355

CoastalCoder 5y ago

Do we know if a previous omicron infection helps confer immunity to future omicron infections?

spurgu 5y ago
If past history is any indicator, then yes.
Enginerrrd 5y ago
We can't know that because it hasn't been around long enough. But as far as taking a bayesian prior, I'd start by assuming yes except in rare cases and correct your model as evidence comes in. I'd guess that because, for the most part, that's how the previous variants behaved. Relatively robust immunity, with subsequent infections generally being rare and more mild. Since Omicron has a lot of mutations on the spike protein which is the primary antibody target, it has greater immune escape potential because the antibodies don't fit as well.
everybodyknows 5y ago
> ... preliminary evidence WHO based their recommendation on earlier this week: People who have previously had COVID-19 could become reinfected more easily with Omicron. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-4 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...

ricardobayes 5y ago

I will say beforehand that I'm heavily pro-vaccination and reducing risks regarding covid. Do we know at this point what are the hospitalization rates of omicron compared to the flu? p.s. I hope your wife gets better soon.

causality0 5y ago
Numbers are still changing but the current stat is one percent hospitalization rate for Omicron. This year's flu has a hospitalization rate almost twice as high as last year's, at 1.4 in 100,000 or 0.0014%.
- ricardobayes 5y ago
  Is that vaccinated in both cases or overall?
  - causality0 5y ago
    Overall for the infected regardless of vaccine status.
- devin 5y ago
  And Delta was something like 6% IIRC?
- virgilp 5y ago
  This can't be right. > For the week ending Dec. 18, 1,265 lab-confirmed flu patients were hospitalized, up from the week prior. The cumulative hospitalization rate was 1.4 per 100,000 population as of Dec. 18, nearly double the overall cumulative hospitalization rate reported during the 2020-21 season. 3 I think you're comparing hospitalization rate per population vs. hospitalization per infected persons. If we look at the recent data and do some estimation, that's about 50k new hospitalzed for 3M new omicron cases, which is 0.016 or 10 times the flu; this sounds more reasonable.

spurgu 5y ago

I have omicron right now (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold (certainly wouldn't call it "battling omicron"). I have zero problems with getting this each year.

brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
You know what, I was unintentionally fear mongering. I'm glad you and others pointed that out. I did not make the connection between you having Omicron and the lack of Omicron in the paper (my nephew caught Delta...so that's where my concern lied). I hope you are still ok. :)
- spurgu 5y ago
  I'm ok, tested negative today with a home test so I can finally go out and bother people again. ;)
phonypc 5y ago
Hmmm... mild symptoms after being vaccinated. It's almost like the vaccine worked or something. How weird.
- spurgu 5y ago
  Have a look here: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectiveness-goes-down-the https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectivenes... tl;dr Vaccine effectiveness around 15% for me at this point. So it was the natural immune response (gasp!), combined hospitalization rates across the world reflects this.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also experience mild symptoms. It's almost like you've got an unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!"
  - eli_gottlieb 5y ago

jaywalk 5y ago

You say "over and over" but Omicron is the first variant that actually evades immunity (both natural and vaccine-induced) in a meaningful way. What we don't know is the level of immunity that an Omicron infection will provide. It could actually confer immunity to both itself and previous variants, which would effectively end the pandemic.

cduzz 5y ago
If something's a one a million event, happening billions of times per day, it'll happen pretty much constantly. This one, omicron, seems to mostly infect nasal passages and upper respiratory tract. The next, maybe after spending 2 years spreading across all the weasels of upper winchester county, may affect the lungs again. This is a lottery that's less fun to play... (edited for clarity)
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Yeah, sure. Who knows what viruses could be spreading and mutating amongst those weasels. It's not like SARS-CoV-2 is the first, and it won't be the last. But when you say > This is a lottery that's less fun to play How exactly do you propose not playing? Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life? We're eventually going to have to start treating Covid the same as we've always treated "the flu" and it definitely appears that once Omicron has run through the population, we'll have reached the time to do that.
  - cduzz 5y ago
    I believe the idiom is "the horse left the barn" There are a number of things going on in the world that fall into the "really bad" category of both thing and trend of thing. There's space in between bland acceptance and incapacitating terror. At the very least have an honest, clear eyed view of where the risk bars are going, and it isn't in a good direction.
  - acdha 5y ago
    > Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc. for life? Very few places did lockdowns at any point so I wouldn’t expect that to start now, butthe ones which did were successful in breaking spread. It doesn’t need to be continuous, but it’s clearly effective for preventing huge spikes. Similarly, we’d save lives and billions of dollars if we established the same social norms which some Asian countries have about wearing masks when you’re symptomatic. It doesn’t need anything like 100% compliance or time to be useful – we appear to have lost an entire strain of influenza this way.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

"battling Omicron" Can you give us some indication of how severe your symptoms are? Mostly we're hearing that if you've been vaccinated and/or you've had covid in the past that omicron is relatively mild.

causality0 5y ago
Muscle aches, chest pain, headache, and severe coughing fits that won't let her sleep and scare me when I hear them from the other room. After being awake for two days and one of them dropping her blood oxygen to 87 I made her go to the emergency room where they gave her prescription cough medicine that finally let her sleep. Omicron is less dangerous than Delta. It's still dangerous.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Sorry to hear about your troubles. Everyone is shouting in the media (including here) Omicron is upper tract instead of lower so I had hoped you wouldn't get oxygen drops that low or lung related chest pains. Maybe I misunderstood what these things mean although some renowned newspapers here explained it like that.
- rajup 5y ago
  Wait 87 SpO2?! I'm pretty sure that's the point at which you would be on a ventilator? Not sure what sleep has to do with SpO2 and it seems criminally negligent for the emergency room to just send your wife off with just a cough medicine..
  - nradov 5y ago
    An SpO2 of 92% or lower is considered severe. In most cases the patient should be hospitalized. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n677 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n677
  - causality0 5y ago
    If it stays there yes. This was for less than five seconds. After the medicine it hasn't gone below 95.

hanoz 5y ago

Are the unvaccinated catching it over and over again? That seems to me a vanishingly rare occurrence, admittedly within a rapidly shrinking set of people. It would be interesting to get some figures for this, hopefully without being lynched for asking the question.

jonpalmisc 5y ago
Personal anecdote, sample size of 1: I know an unvaccinated person who has had it 3 times. Not immunocompromised, otherwise healthy.
- hanoz 5y ago
  > sample size of 1 The only unvaccinated person you know who has had it, has had it three times?
- beamatronic 5y ago
  Were they at least 6-9 months apart, or closer to a year?
  - jonpalmisc 5y ago
    First two infections were closer to 3-4 months IIRC, third was probably ~6 months.
    - lovecg 5y ago
      How did the severity compare across the three cases if you know?
verdverm 5y ago
From what I understand, Covid is endemic and we should expect new seasonal variations each year like the flu and common cold
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
There were many stats, showing most of people with omicron being vaccinated (above the vaccination rate). I never found the methodology behind it, because if they only tested travellers to eg. africa for omicron, then sure, probably all of them were vaccinated, if they did randomized testings, they you'd expect at worst (vaccines don't work) the same percentage un/vaccinated as in the general population, or at best, vastly more unvaccinated infected. > hopefully without being lynched for asking the question Somehow this is a sad reality of social media and the current 'situation'... asking anything is seen as "provocative", and there are many things happening that would require more rigid questioning and better answers.

JPKab 5y ago

Coloradan here: I have Omicron. Already caught the virus in February 2021, good old OG Alpha Covid, which resulted in mild symptoms and loss of sense of smell for 7 months. My only symptom is a mild runny nose, nothing else. I WISH I had colds this mild. We have a new virus that is endemic in humanity. We can choose to accept it, protect the vulnerable like we do with flu, and get on with our lives. Or we can continue to allow the news media to enervate us with non-stop panic, and choose existing over living, while fucking over kids to protect older adults. My father is a rabid viewer of MSNBC, lacks mathematical or critical thinking skills, and doesn't read much. The result is he has been in a constant panic since the virus hit, and has isolated himself from family in a manner that has been detrimental to his health. This despite being vaxxed, boosted, and recovered from a mild post vax delta breakthrough infection. He still thinks the virus can kill him, and cancelled Christmas Eve plans for 5 of us to go to his house. The media has polluted his brain with irrational fear. His shitty physician (where I grew up is a dirt poor rural county, and the MDs there are the dumbest i've ever met) told him that "there is no natural immunity to COVID, it doesn't exist." Utter nonsense. As if my immune system (I wasn't eligible for the vaccine in Feb 21) fought, then cleared the virus from my body with some mysterious, unidentifiable mechanism that is completely unrelated to how it clears other viruses.... just unbelievable. The virus was deadly because it was novel. It ceases to be novel when your immune system acquires memory T-cells, even if you no longer have active antibodies present. If you are old enough, or have a deteriorated immune system, the lag of producing new antibodies can be very problematic with the other strains of COVID, which is why boosters are so crucial for high-risk groups. The data is now this: People in their 70s who are VACCINATED have a lower death rate from Omicron than they do from flu. (If they aren't vaxxed, this is obviously not the case.) See the New York Times, which is a very hawkish paper on COVID, for that specific stat: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/briefing/omicron-risk-milder-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/briefing/omicron-risk-mil... FWIW, David Leonhart is one of the only journalists at the NYT who seems to be remotely literate in data and statistics writing about COVID. That newsroom is essentially filled with people who haven't studied math since high school, despite their degrees from Columbia/Yale/Harvard journalism schools. And boy does it show.

makeworld 5y ago

Yep, especially Omicron. > This is the first evidence to show us that the rate of reinfection with Omicron is high—3 times higher than Delta. In other words, infection-induced immunity is not doing a great job at stopping Omicron. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-4 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...

deeviant 5y ago

The epidemic ends when the unusually high threat of serious illness or death ends, though, right? If we get to the point where people aren't dying of covid at a significantly higher rate as any of the other "usual suspects", does that not mean it's over? It looks like between the vaccinated and just about everybody else that is about to or already has gotten covid, we're must may arrive at the point where covid is a just another thing on the list of seasons ailments.

scrubs 5y ago

Correct. I know several people who are vaccinated yet caught Covid twice. The principle thing to keep in mind, - vaccination is a risk reducer on severity of infection. Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention. - and on that point not getting into the hospital is important. From a management standpoint, we've got to insure demand for hospital resources does not dwarf those same resources. That's the key management function here.

simonsarris 5y ago
> Nobody said immunity; nobody said prevention. What on earth? Yes they did, all along. December 2020: > Fauci Predicts U.S. Could See Signs Of Herd Immunity By Late March Or Early April https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/15/946714505/fauci-predicts-u-s-could-see-signs-of-herd-immunity-by-late-march-or-early-april https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1... > "I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity." Talking about herd immunity is definitely saying immunity, and doesn't make sense unless the vaccine prevented transmission. Then, May 2021: > Masks off? Fauci confirms ‘extremely low’ risk of transmission, infection for vaccinated https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-extremely-low-risk-of-transmission-and-infection-for-vaccinated-112213061906 https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-confirms-extreme...
- scrubs 5y ago
  Yah, ok, I blew it. Vaccinations will trend towards immunity.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  Different variants mean different efficacy for vaccines, particularly regarding infection. The existing vaccines could very well have led to "signs of herd immunity" had the variants not taken hold.
- conradfr 5y ago
  It's amazing how we can rewrite history so fast. The number of times I see on Twitter people from different countries saying the same things, first it was "nobody ever said this vaccine will be 90% efficient against getting covid", then "nobody ever said the vaccine reduce transmission", and now it's "the vaccines have always be only to reduce ICU stays". (I am vaccinated btw)

coding123 5y ago

Here's a thought experiment. Compare the reddit "the button" with Covid staying with us. Even with only 1 person at a time trying to hit the button it stayed alive for 3 months. And that's with people trying to keep it alive, 24x7 - just enough people to keep it going. Enough people being interested in getting a low time and staying with it. With covid, it's just automatic, but you just need 1 foolish move between 2 people, and there's no server making sure only one person gets it at a time, it's totally a distributed network. And the timeout, instead of being 60 seconds, it's 2 maybe 3 weeks (perhaps a lot longer - we don't REALLY know). The thought experiment here is that if we TRY to keep something alive that's actually kinda hard to and it lasts 3 months, how is covid EVER going to end?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

everybodyknows 5y ago

Do you know what was the test that distinguished omicron from delta? Asking because my local county health department seems lacking in that technology.

landemva 5y ago

I would buy this on a t-shirt, 'Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway.' Does anyone else still believe the shots prevent infection or transmission?