14 ms·

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 o

by 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
    Yeah we have this thing called a clinical trial. I volunteered in it. Did you?
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    > Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also experience mild symptoms. This is true of essentially all diseases except some very very rare exceptions that also tend to burn out very quickly. That's just how disease spread works, mild cases help the virus propagate. It's not like the virus is a mustache twirling villain that wants to murder you, it takes a fairly specific balance to obtain long term survival. > It's almost like you've got an unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!" There's plenty of evidence to support the idea that "it works", and actually quite a lot of evidence to contradict the idea that "it doesn't work". Severe outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita, in people who are not vaccinated. The only way you get to any other conclusion is if you just plain don't trust any evidence presented, in which case there is literally nothing that is falsifiable for you and you may as well believe covid-19 is evil unicorns or something.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      > Severe outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita, in people who are not vaccinated. With omicron? I have not seen any data to support that.
      - stormbrew 5y ago
        I mean, it's pretty early to be drawing conclusions about this with omicron. Especially since it hit right as people in most of the vaccinated world were hitting 5-6mo since their second shots. That doesn't mean it's "unfalsifiable" it just means it hasn't been yet. That said, I don't think the null hypothesis is suddenly "vaccines do nothing" for some reason. It's clear enough it spreads more easily but that doesn't suddenly invalidate all prior assumptions about the vaccines' effectiveness against severe outcomes. Edit: I'm very happy to be proven wrong about this but I feel like people should direct some of these replies more to the person I was replying to? I'm not the one who thinks vaccines do nothing here. :P
- potatoman22 5y ago
  That's the point. It's often a mild cold for the vaccinated
  - spurgu 5y ago
    It's mild for non-vaccinated South Africans as well. The same still applies as always: Vaccinate the risk groups.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      SA had very high numbers of previous infections, so there was a ton of pre-existing immunity.
      - spurgu 5y ago
        Which some would see as a partial argument against lockdowns.
        mullingitover 5y ago
        Comparing death rates in Australia, which actually did pretty major lockdowns, to South Africa[1], I don't know that this is a great argument against them. South Africa definitely paid for that infection-based immunity in human lives. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=ZAF~AUS https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
        spurgu 5y ago
        Of course heavy and complete lockdowns are effective (at delaying the spread of the virus) - if no one is in contact with anyone else there's no way for the virus to spread. A more apt comparison would be made between countries/states with slight or "normal/average" lockdown to ones without, but that's very difficult to do in practice. And then measure the financial and societal impacts (which is also difficult/impossible).
- spurgu 5y ago
  4-5 months..... even against Delta that would've been close to 50% efficacy. With Omicron probably non-existent. Also, see most of South Africa.
- JPKab 5y ago
  My brother had mild symptoms after being unvaccinated. So did my kids. So did my neighbors whose kids play at my house all the time. So did the vast majority of South Africans who aren't vaccinated. I push the vaccine onto all my high-risk family members. I recommend it to anybody as a tool to introduce your immune system to the virus. But let's be honest about this: The vaccines in circulation were created to stop the Alpha variant. The immune system response is too targeted to antigens on the spike protein that are no longer present in the newly evolved, vaccine escaping variants. The vaccine is a useful tool for mitigating severe disease, but it's an outdated vaccine for a variant that no longer exists. Just like the a flu shot for the wrong strain tends to have some positive benefit when you catch a mismatched strain via some cross immunity, that's what we get from this vaccine. And guess what? We get it from infection induced immunity as well.
  - MrMan 5y ago
    an honest, but wrong, take in your final paragraph.
    - JPKab 5y ago
      Feel free to state counter arguments. I'd like to hear what statements I said conflict with your understanding of the science.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- HNDen21 5y ago
  I have 5 people in the house, 1 vaccinated, 4 not.. the ones that were not had a 2 day fever... the one vaccinated (me) had no fever but just a cough for 3-4 days. All in all just like a mild flu
  - twox2 5y ago
    Anecdotal stories don't paint an accurate picture. I live in NYC and had Covid xmas week. It was ROUGH. (I'm double jabbed.) I also know unvaxxed people (0 shots) that just had a little sniffle and bounced back in 2 days. I also know of a seemingly healthy young lady that tested positive and died 3 days later.
    - time_to_smile 5y ago
      > Anecdotal stories don't paint an accurate picture You would have thought that after 800,000+ deaths in the US people would have learned the importance of understanding statistics when dealing with these issues, especially on a place like HN, but pandemic has melted people's brains and now people are arguing anecdotes about what constitutes a "bad cold" and a "mild flu". The funny part is that it doesn't really matter because it's not like we get to collectively vote whether the pandemic will end or not. It's pretty clear that, even given how extremely contagious omicron is, people don't care as much as the used to about a seasonal flu. Even supposing covid sticks around and becomes "only" as bad as the flu, 10 years ago if your said it was fine to double the annual cases of flu and flu death people would have said that was insane. Sadly if people haven't learned to reason about these problems correctly now, it means they very likely never will.
      - brandonmenc 5y ago
        > 10 years ago if your said it was fine to double the annual cases of flu and flu death people would have said that was insane. And if you told them that things like lockdowns and vaccine mandates were still in effect at that point, they'd say that was insane too.
        5y ago
brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
Granted this still needs peer review...but you may want to look into this: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1 I hope your recovery goes well and you truly have zero issues.
- swader999 5y ago
  That's pretty terrifying.
  - rblatz 5y ago
    Eventually it’s going to do what all other viruses have done. Mutate into another flu or common cold. We already have l seasonal coronavirus outbreaks. We call it cold and flu season; except it’s numerous coronaviruses and influenza viruses and one or two “win” that year.
    - lovecg 5y ago
      Some part mutation, some part immunization so that future infections are milder. In the absence of perfect vaccination this involves killing millions of people. Let’s not forget about this.
- PraetorianGourd 5y ago
  That also covers only previous, more virulent variants. Omicron does not seem to infect areas outside of upper respiratory so it is a tad overzealous to spread such fear over a preprint of a different variant. It would be like comparing a mild flu strain to H1N1 original.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- spurgu 5y ago
  Keep up the fear-mongering... I'm healthy, I'm not worried about that at all. Neither am I afraid of drowning while boating.
causality0 5y ago
I'm happy it's not a battle for you, but it is for my wife.
- spurgu 5y ago
  I'm sorry about your wife, hope she gets through it fine. It's mainly that you provided a personal anecdote in one direction and I found it prudent to provide one in the other direction - one that echoes everything we've seen so far, cases skyrocketing, hospitalization rates barely nudging.
  - hedgehog 5y ago
    Motivated anecdotes aren't prudent or useful. We know from the 2ish years of this we've had so far that the dynamics are tricky to pick apart. For example when young low-risk people are out at bars (very high exposure) and older or higher risk people stay home what happens is the hospitalizations lag because it takes some time for the first group to get sick, infect the second, and then some of those people to go on to the hospital. On the other hand older people are much more vaccinated so the relative risk between the groups will likely be different from previous waves. That aside, hospitalizations are going up faster than they have at any point prior so not sure where your "barely nudging" comes from.
- JPKab 5y ago
  I hope your wife is ok. Unfortunately, infection with Omicron is inevitable and not preventable, without living in a bubble. It's too infectious, and the vaccine, unlike with previous variants, does basically nothing to stop transmission. Combine that with an R0 equivalent to measles, and avoiding infection was never possible. She probably took every precaution she could reasonably take, and still got infected. That was my experience as well. Statistically, people who are healthy and vaxxed developing severe symptoms from Omicron are outliers. That is no comfort to you, and I can assure you I know how you feel on that front when people like me tell you the stats. My mother-in-law suffered a very rare (statistically) adverse event from her second Pfizer shot in May, which killed her. She was in her early 60s, and healthy, but suffered cardiac arrest 3 hours after her second shot, in the midst of a fever. It was an exceedingly rare event, but it was no comfort to us to be told that.
throwhauser 5y ago
Every year you'll be a year older though, which eventually results in being in a different (higher) risk category.
- spurgu 5y ago
  Sure, and at some point I might even consider flu shots. So what?
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  But this means, that we can reopen everything, let young people "live", and target the efforts towards old people (and other risk groups). Atleast here in slovenia, most of the mandates affect mostly the young and healthy... yes, theoretically neither 20yo bobby nor his grandpa can enter nightclubs, due to them being closed, but with such data, we could reopen nightclubs, let bobby party and do all the stupid stuff we were free to do at 20yo, and focus the effort at grandpa, so he gets vaccinated, gets the masks, has somone bring him food, so he doesnt have to go to the stores, subsidize a plan for a smartphone to encourage more videoconferencing instead of live visits, give out free tests at home, to detect the infection early, etc.
  - spurgu 5y ago
    You're describing a sanity of focused protection which should've been in place since day one, but for some reason policymakers instead lost their minds. :| At least now with Omicron they will slowly realize that lockdowns make no sense. Right? Right? (looking at Finland and crying, my home country recently having gone into full lockdown mode for no good reason other than case numbers)
jmspring 5y ago
- PraetorianGourd 5y ago
  You realize that in the United States, the so called “freedumb idiots” are not the bulk of the unvaccinated right? And you also must realize that Omicron did not start among a population of “freedumb idiots” right? Leave the straw man out of this, disease is not a reflection of character.
- nradov 5y ago
  I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but the current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. The vaccines aren't very effective for them. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma... It's also possible for new variants to evolve in animal hosts, then spread back to humans. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/some-experts-suggest-omicron-variant-may-have-evolved-in-an-animal-host https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/some-experts-suggest-omi...
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    The vaccines would (probably) have been effective on whoever gave the immunocompromised patient the disease, though. It's not all about the individual.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Unfortunately there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect the immunocompromised. They will all be exposed. The main benefit of vaccines is in reducing symptom severity. They only produce a limited and temporary reduction in transmission risk. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
shrikant 5y ago
Congratulations. Both my wife and I (double vaxxed for 5 months, not boosted yet although were just about to do so) caught Omicron-flavoured Covid in the lead-up to Christmas and it wiped us out each for 2-3 days each, with a combination of fatigue, aches, fever, and violent coughing. Certainly worse than any cold or flu we've had up until that point. I still have a pretty nasty cough and a throat inflammation. Aren't anecdotes fun?
- spurgu 5y ago
  > Aren't anecdotes fun? Anecdotes was precisely the reason why I posted it. See whom I'm replying to.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  It’s terrible to feel terrible, but getting over the worst part of Covid in 3 days is an enormous improvement from how unvaccinated people fared in the initial waves. Even for people not hospitalized, they dealt with pneumonia and shortness of breath for weeks. I think we can celebrate the progress we are making in reducing the average severity of this disease and there are more tools coming soon with Pfizer’s new pill and newer multivalent vaccines.
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    Your comment makes it out like everyone with Covid had pnuemonia and shortness of breath for weeks, when really it was a small minority.
    - dougmwne 5y ago
      According to the CDC, 30% to 40% of symptomatic people get shortness of breath, which is a significant share. That is a signal that the infection has reached the lower respiratory system. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-settings/guidance-identify-hcw-patients.html#anchor_1595973012457 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-setting...
      - 5y ago
atwebb 5y ago
Whew, I'm similar and it tanked me for about a week. I could feel every joint in my body and breathing was a conscientious decision for a few days due to the pain/discomfort. It has subsided a bit (and my family wasn't hit as hard) but I have 0 interest in experiencing it again. Currently hoping it doesn't impact me long term since I like to stay active.
r00fus 5y ago
> (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold So you have milder symptoms because you're vaxxed.
- spurgu 5y ago
  I'll let you know how I feel when I get it "unvaxxed" the next time, since I decided months ago already against getting a booster. It also sounds like you're not aware of a) the vaning efficacy of the vaccine or b) how little it does against Omicron.

by spurgu 5y ago

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
  Yeah we have this thing called a clinical trial. I volunteered in it. Did you?
- stormbrew 5y ago
  > Plenty of unvaccinated (the vast majority, in fact) also experience mild symptoms. This is true of essentially all diseases except some very very rare exceptions that also tend to burn out very quickly. That's just how disease spread works, mild cases help the virus propagate. It's not like the virus is a mustache twirling villain that wants to murder you, it takes a fairly specific balance to obtain long term survival. > It's almost like you've got an unfalsifiable way to always say "it worked!" There's plenty of evidence to support the idea that "it works", and actually quite a lot of evidence to contradict the idea that "it doesn't work". Severe outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita, in people who are not vaccinated. The only way you get to any other conclusion is if you just plain don't trust any evidence presented, in which case there is literally nothing that is falsifiable for you and you may as well believe covid-19 is evil unicorns or something.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    > Severe outcomes are blatantly more common, per capita, in people who are not vaccinated. With omicron? I have not seen any data to support that.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      I mean, it's pretty early to be drawing conclusions about this with omicron. Especially since it hit right as people in most of the vaccinated world were hitting 5-6mo since their second shots. That doesn't mean it's "unfalsifiable" it just means it hasn't been yet. That said, I don't think the null hypothesis is suddenly "vaccines do nothing" for some reason. It's clear enough it spreads more easily but that doesn't suddenly invalidate all prior assumptions about the vaccines' effectiveness against severe outcomes. Edit: I'm very happy to be proven wrong about this but I feel like people should direct some of these replies more to the person I was replying to? I'm not the one who thinks vaccines do nothing here. :P
potatoman22 5y ago
That's the point. It's often a mild cold for the vaccinated
- spurgu 5y ago
  It's mild for non-vaccinated South Africans as well. The same still applies as always: Vaccinate the risk groups.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    SA had very high numbers of previous infections, so there was a ton of pre-existing immunity.
    - spurgu 5y ago
      Which some would see as a partial argument against lockdowns.
      - mullingitover 5y ago
        Comparing death rates in Australia, which actually did pretty major lockdowns, to South Africa[1], I don't know that this is a great argument against them. South Africa definitely paid for that infection-based immunity in human lives. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=ZAF~AUS https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
        spurgu 5y ago
        Of course heavy and complete lockdowns are effective (at delaying the spread of the virus) - if no one is in contact with anyone else there's no way for the virus to spread. A more apt comparison would be made between countries/states with slight or "normal/average" lockdown to ones without, but that's very difficult to do in practice. And then measure the financial and societal impacts (which is also difficult/impossible).
spurgu 5y ago
4-5 months..... even against Delta that would've been close to 50% efficacy. With Omicron probably non-existent. Also, see most of South Africa.
JPKab 5y ago
My brother had mild symptoms after being unvaccinated. So did my kids. So did my neighbors whose kids play at my house all the time. So did the vast majority of South Africans who aren't vaccinated. I push the vaccine onto all my high-risk family members. I recommend it to anybody as a tool to introduce your immune system to the virus. But let's be honest about this: The vaccines in circulation were created to stop the Alpha variant. The immune system response is too targeted to antigens on the spike protein that are no longer present in the newly evolved, vaccine escaping variants. The vaccine is a useful tool for mitigating severe disease, but it's an outdated vaccine for a variant that no longer exists. Just like the a flu shot for the wrong strain tends to have some positive benefit when you catch a mismatched strain via some cross immunity, that's what we get from this vaccine. And guess what? We get it from infection induced immunity as well.
- MrMan 5y ago
  an honest, but wrong, take in your final paragraph.
  - JPKab 5y ago
    Feel free to state counter arguments. I'd like to hear what statements I said conflict with your understanding of the science.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
HNDen21 5y ago
I have 5 people in the house, 1 vaccinated, 4 not.. the ones that were not had a 2 day fever... the one vaccinated (me) had no fever but just a cough for 3-4 days. All in all just like a mild flu
- twox2 5y ago
  Anecdotal stories don't paint an accurate picture. I live in NYC and had Covid xmas week. It was ROUGH. (I'm double jabbed.) I also know unvaxxed people (0 shots) that just had a little sniffle and bounced back in 2 days. I also know of a seemingly healthy young lady that tested positive and died 3 days later.
  - time_to_smile 5y ago
    > Anecdotal stories don't paint an accurate picture You would have thought that after 800,000+ deaths in the US people would have learned the importance of understanding statistics when dealing with these issues, especially on a place like HN, but pandemic has melted people's brains and now people are arguing anecdotes about what constitutes a "bad cold" and a "mild flu". The funny part is that it doesn't really matter because it's not like we get to collectively vote whether the pandemic will end or not. It's pretty clear that, even given how extremely contagious omicron is, people don't care as much as the used to about a seasonal flu. Even supposing covid sticks around and becomes "only" as bad as the flu, 10 years ago if your said it was fine to double the annual cases of flu and flu death people would have said that was insane. Sadly if people haven't learned to reason about these problems correctly now, it means they very likely never will.
    - brandonmenc 5y ago
      > 10 years ago if your said it was fine to double the annual cases of flu and flu death people would have said that was insane. And if you told them that things like lockdowns and vaccine mandates were still in effect at that point, they'd say that was insane too.
      - 5y ago

brutal_chaos_ 5y ago

Granted this still needs peer review...but you may want to look into this: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1 I hope your recovery goes well and you truly have zero issues.

swader999 5y ago
That's pretty terrifying.
- rblatz 5y ago
  Eventually it’s going to do what all other viruses have done. Mutate into another flu or common cold. We already have l seasonal coronavirus outbreaks. We call it cold and flu season; except it’s numerous coronaviruses and influenza viruses and one or two “win” that year.
  - lovecg 5y ago
    Some part mutation, some part immunization so that future infections are milder. In the absence of perfect vaccination this involves killing millions of people. Let’s not forget about this.
PraetorianGourd 5y ago
That also covers only previous, more virulent variants. Omicron does not seem to infect areas outside of upper respiratory so it is a tad overzealous to spread such fear over a preprint of a different variant. It would be like comparing a mild flu strain to H1N1 original.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
spurgu 5y ago
Keep up the fear-mongering... I'm healthy, I'm not worried about that at all. Neither am I afraid of drowning while boating.

causality0 5y ago

I'm happy it's not a battle for you, but it is for my wife.

spurgu 5y ago
I'm sorry about your wife, hope she gets through it fine. It's mainly that you provided a personal anecdote in one direction and I found it prudent to provide one in the other direction - one that echoes everything we've seen so far, cases skyrocketing, hospitalization rates barely nudging.
- hedgehog 5y ago
  Motivated anecdotes aren't prudent or useful. We know from the 2ish years of this we've had so far that the dynamics are tricky to pick apart. For example when young low-risk people are out at bars (very high exposure) and older or higher risk people stay home what happens is the hospitalizations lag because it takes some time for the first group to get sick, infect the second, and then some of those people to go on to the hospital. On the other hand older people are much more vaccinated so the relative risk between the groups will likely be different from previous waves. That aside, hospitalizations are going up faster than they have at any point prior so not sure where your "barely nudging" comes from.
JPKab 5y ago
I hope your wife is ok. Unfortunately, infection with Omicron is inevitable and not preventable, without living in a bubble. It's too infectious, and the vaccine, unlike with previous variants, does basically nothing to stop transmission. Combine that with an R0 equivalent to measles, and avoiding infection was never possible. She probably took every precaution she could reasonably take, and still got infected. That was my experience as well. Statistically, people who are healthy and vaxxed developing severe symptoms from Omicron are outliers. That is no comfort to you, and I can assure you I know how you feel on that front when people like me tell you the stats. My mother-in-law suffered a very rare (statistically) adverse event from her second Pfizer shot in May, which killed her. She was in her early 60s, and healthy, but suffered cardiac arrest 3 hours after her second shot, in the midst of a fever. It was an exceedingly rare event, but it was no comfort to us to be told that.

throwhauser 5y ago

Every year you'll be a year older though, which eventually results in being in a different (higher) risk category.

spurgu 5y ago
Sure, and at some point I might even consider flu shots. So what?
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
But this means, that we can reopen everything, let young people "live", and target the efforts towards old people (and other risk groups). Atleast here in slovenia, most of the mandates affect mostly the young and healthy... yes, theoretically neither 20yo bobby nor his grandpa can enter nightclubs, due to them being closed, but with such data, we could reopen nightclubs, let bobby party and do all the stupid stuff we were free to do at 20yo, and focus the effort at grandpa, so he gets vaccinated, gets the masks, has somone bring him food, so he doesnt have to go to the stores, subsidize a plan for a smartphone to encourage more videoconferencing instead of live visits, give out free tests at home, to detect the infection early, etc.
- spurgu 5y ago
  You're describing a sanity of focused protection which should've been in place since day one, but for some reason policymakers instead lost their minds. :| At least now with Omicron they will slowly realize that lockdowns make no sense. Right? Right? (looking at Finland and crying, my home country recently having gone into full lockdown mode for no good reason other than case numbers)

jmspring 5y ago

PraetorianGourd 5y ago
You realize that in the United States, the so called “freedumb idiots” are not the bulk of the unvaccinated right? And you also must realize that Omicron did not start among a population of “freedumb idiots” right? Leave the straw man out of this, disease is not a reflection of character.
nradov 5y ago
I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but the current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. The vaccines aren't very effective for them. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma... It's also possible for new variants to evolve in animal hosts, then spread back to humans. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/some-experts-suggest-omicron-variant-may-have-evolved-in-an-animal-host https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/some-experts-suggest-omi...
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  The vaccines would (probably) have been effective on whoever gave the immunocompromised patient the disease, though. It's not all about the individual.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Unfortunately there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect the immunocompromised. They will all be exposed. The main benefit of vaccines is in reducing symptom severity. They only produce a limited and temporary reduction in transmission risk. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

shrikant 5y ago

Congratulations. Both my wife and I (double vaxxed for 5 months, not boosted yet although were just about to do so) caught Omicron-flavoured Covid in the lead-up to Christmas and it wiped us out each for 2-3 days each, with a combination of fatigue, aches, fever, and violent coughing. Certainly worse than any cold or flu we've had up until that point. I still have a pretty nasty cough and a throat inflammation. Aren't anecdotes fun?

spurgu 5y ago
> Aren't anecdotes fun? Anecdotes was precisely the reason why I posted it. See whom I'm replying to.
dougmwne 5y ago
It’s terrible to feel terrible, but getting over the worst part of Covid in 3 days is an enormous improvement from how unvaccinated people fared in the initial waves. Even for people not hospitalized, they dealt with pneumonia and shortness of breath for weeks. I think we can celebrate the progress we are making in reducing the average severity of this disease and there are more tools coming soon with Pfizer’s new pill and newer multivalent vaccines.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  Your comment makes it out like everyone with Covid had pnuemonia and shortness of breath for weeks, when really it was a small minority.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    According to the CDC, 30% to 40% of symptomatic people get shortness of breath, which is a significant share. That is a signal that the infection has reached the lower respiratory system. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-settings/guidance-identify-hcw-patients.html#anchor_1595973012457 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-setting...
    - 5y ago

atwebb 5y ago

Whew, I'm similar and it tanked me for about a week. I could feel every joint in my body and breathing was a conscientious decision for a few days due to the pain/discomfort. It has subsided a bit (and my family wasn't hit as hard) but I have 0 interest in experiencing it again. Currently hoping it doesn't impact me long term since I like to stay active.

r00fus 5y ago

> (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold So you have milder symptoms because you're vaxxed.

spurgu 5y ago
I'll let you know how I feel when I get it "unvaxxed" the next time, since I decided months ago already against getting a booster. It also sounds like you're not aware of a) the vaning efficacy of the vaccine or b) how little it does against Omicron.