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There likely is no herd immunity to be had. Omicron infects those with previous delta infections, and there are cases being studied further from South Africa of
by dv_dt 5y ago
There likely is no herd immunity to be had. Omicron infects those with previous delta infections, and there are cases being studied further from South Africa of omicron cases getting reinfections of omicron.
I think our best chance is faster vaccine cycles and better targeting of the sequences to impede transmission.
- tasha0663 5y agoA week or two ago they were saying Omicron might confer Delta immunity. Don't overlook that part.
- nradov 5y agoImmunity isn't a binary condition. Infection by any known SARS-CoV-2 variant will leave most recovered patients with a significant level of cellular immunity against all other variants. This won't necessarily prevent reinfection, but just like with every other coronavirus the symptoms of reinfection cases will typically be mild. The mRNA vaccines also seem to confer a significant level of durable cellular immunity against all variants, although they also don't reliably prevent infections.
- dv_dt 5y agoThat was what was said of delta, yet six months after, because of how many cases of delta were created, the next Omicron variant can reinfect previous delta patients. Just from looking at the broad waves of Covid, one should conclude that natural immunity conveyed by getting Covid does not protect us as a herd against future mutations. Because omicron is even more contagious, I might expect the next major variant in the same to faster timeframe, and that variant will have the grainy of bypass previous immunity to some degree.
- cjonas 5y agoYa "herd immunity" wasn't the right phase... More so just that I hope we collectively developed a decent enough immune response that we see a dramatic reduction in hospitization.