24 ms·

> Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. Hospitals are getting overloaded due to Omicron. People are dying in droves. Omicron is by n

> Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. Hospitals are getting overloaded due to Omicron. People are dying in droves. Omicron is by no means mild. "Omicron may be milder compared to Delta, but it’s not mild. " Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-24 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...

native_samples 5y ago
Where? In the UK hospitals are quiet for this time of year (less than 80% loaded which for the UK is quiet), and deaths are below the 5 year running average.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  UK has somewhat decent (50%) booster uptake
  - OnlyMortal 5y ago
    More than 50% https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/_122920491_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation_with_booster_20jan-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/...
  - iso1210 5y ago
    64.3% currently. 83.9% have had 2 doses.
- fpgaminer 5y ago
  In the U.S. at least: > There are two states and 618 counties that require circuit breakers (i.e. short-term mitigation measures needed to preserve hospital functioning) at this point because their hospitals are at or above 100% capacity (assuming that the number of staffed beds has not increased in the past week). Medical military personnel have already been dispatched to a number of hospitals across the nation. Nebraska also joined a short list of states that have enacted its Crisis Standards of Care plan. But community-wide efforts to reduce spread desperately need to be taken, too. Fourteen additional states are at high risk of exceeding 100% hospital capacity in the next 1-10 days. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-18 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
  - jbirer 5y ago
    Americans also have higher dates of obesity and diabetes though so it doesn't surprise me.
  - encoderer 5y ago
    It’s mild. Everybody is getting it and that strains hospitals but it’s a mild illness and many infected people won’t even be tested let alone seek treatment. How much evidence do you need of this being a mild variant?
    - fivea 5y ago
      > It’s mild. Everybody is getting it and that strains hospitals but it’s a mild illness and many infected people won’t even be tested let alone seek treatment. It really is not. It's mild to double- and triple-vaccinated individuals living in highly vaccinated populations. They get the shot, they brush it aside The poor souls who didn't managed to get vaccinated, or didn't wanted to, represent the bulk of the hospitalized population and deaths. The key factor is that the world has spent the last year bulking on vaccines, precisely to allow any infection to be at most mild. And now that we're seeing highly vaccinated populations being exposed and developing mostly mild cases are we now supposed to pretend that vaccines don't exist and the disease suddenly got tame? In whose head does this even compute?
      - encoderer 5y ago
        I believe you truly have bought the full narrative. I’m boosted I’m not anti vax but I’ll give you one data point that contradicts your claim: South Africa vax rate is 52%. Their health officials have declared it to be mild. It’s mild.
        dang 5y ago
        Please make your substantive points without personal swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - 5y ago
- Closi 5y ago
  In the UK our healthcare system is overloaded though because of 2 years of lockdown policy postponing any elective surgeries. You are right on your figures though - when you look at excess deaths over 5 years there has been much fewer deaths because of Covid than the official figures would have you believe, but the impact of lockdown will be felt for many years to come.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    It is both overloaded and not working at full capacity simultaneously, due to chaotic and foolish rules.
- kurthr 5y ago
  It would appear that a country that is over 90% vaccinated and 60% boosted is having ~440 deaths a day with roughly 15k admitted to the hospital (ignoring simple ER visits) that week. It's worth noting that the 10% unvaccinated (even though skewed younger) are ~5x overrepresented at ~50% of the hospitalizations. It's about half as high as the peak last Jan although ventilators are less in use and treatments are better. From your dashboard: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Actually, now I'm intrigued. It would appear that the total annual death rate in the UK is about 135k/yr or 370/day. So the last couple of weeks of the current Omicron wave exceeds the typical average death rate from all causes from 2010-2018 (scaled for population). https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/leadingcausesofdeathuk/2001to2018 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
    - MikeAmelung 5y ago
      Close, you're only off by ~465,000
  - iso1210 5y ago
    Pre covid, the UK typically had 1400 deaths a day in the winter. It's a little higher at the moment, but nowhere near 400. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1048504/Weekly_report_mortality__W3.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Be careful about who is in covid because of non-covid reasons that just happen to have covid, compared with those who are in hospital because of covid.
    - kurthr 5y ago
      Did you look at that plot on page 2? Choosing what certainly looks like a single dramatic outlier point which is 2 weeks older than the dashboard certainly seems like cherry picking. Just look at the current dashboard data it shows ~440 deaths per day for the last 2 weeks. Again: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Also note that there almost aren't deaths from other flus over the last 2 years, likely because they don't have an R value >1 due to masking etc. Look, I'm all for getting back to normal and letting the unvaccinated (and old, poor, sick) die off as god intended, but let's not pretend it's all due to a lack of joyful evenings in the pub.
- iso1210 5y ago
  Do you have a link to UK hospitalisation figures?
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  True, and thank goodness, but also because hospitals kicked out everyone they could ahead of the wave. In a “normal” winter there would be more regular patients in the hospitals.
prvc 5y ago
I don't see what the supporting evidence for that conclusion is in the article.
- ygjb 5y ago
  It doesn't. The refrain that Omicron is "mild" is being parroted by people who don't understand what they are talking about. In fact, the Omicron variant (like other COVID variants) is relatively mild among individuals who have been vaccinated. That hasn't stopped the vast majority of folks yeeting themselves off a dunning-kruger cliff and assuming that they are competent to discuss the topic because they read a medical journal or an opinion piece that aligns well with their own perceptions of COVID and the broad spectrum of economic, political, and medical topics (myself included sometimes).
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    It’s mild relative to other variants for everyone. However, it is still quite dangerous for unvaccinated individuals… CFR is not that high but it is extremely contagious, so it is still killing a lot of unvaccinated people.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      It was mild in South Africa as well, where there really is not a high vaccination rate.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > It was mild in South Africa as well, where there really is not a high vaccination rate. That's not the only variable. IIRC, South Africa's population is on-average much younger, less obese, and much more likely to have had a previous infection compared to America's.
        tinus_hn 5y ago
        All these factors would have applied to the other variants the same.
nicoburns 5y ago
I think Omicron is almost universally mild for those who have had the existing vaccines. And as most people have (here in the UK anyway), I can understand why people are seeing it as mild.
- ygjb 5y ago
  There is an ocean of difference between "it's mild because I am vaccinated" and "it's mild", and the bridge across it is being built on the mental and physical well being of our health care providers around the world.
  - fivea 5y ago
    I'd add that it's extremely disingenuous to hide the fact that high vaccination rates are the sole reason why the same disease spreading like wildfire is not leaving a trail of dead bodies stacked high on it's wake.
ripper1138 5y ago
The data in the article makes a pretty compelling argument that Omicron is extremely mild.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  what surprises me is to see how Germany, despite the low number in comparison with the other countries, has capitulated in almost all areas.
- obmelvin 5y ago
  I mean...it's possible for something to be both significantly less bad than something worse and also still pretty shitty.
cma 5y ago
Even if it was as mild as flu, with its much higher rate of spread hospitals would probably still be seeing a big surge.
nradov 5y ago
A lot of the deaths occurring right now are still from patients that were infected by the Delta variant weeks ago. Preliminary research indicates that Omicron has an 87% lower fatality rate. Of course that number is a little fuzzy because it's impossible to perform a real controlled experiment. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4010080 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4010080
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Preliminary research indicates that Omicron has an 87% lower fatality rate. 1. 87% less of a lot isn't a little. It can still be a lot. 2. "Fatality rate" isn't a number that just floats in the air by itself. It's a factor in the equation deaths = case_count * fatality_rate, and the case_count term has skyrocketed. 3. Deaths aren't the only thing to worry about. Hospitalizations that don't result in a fatality are nothing to sneeze at. Ditto for other kinds of bad outcomes. Where's the concern about COVID-caused myocarditis?
  - nevermindiguess 5y ago
    There’s no way of winning with those like you. You just like the drama of the pandemic too much and want it to stay forever. Even if it killed 1 person a year globally, those like you would probably argue that “even one life is infinitely precious and we should be on lockdown to save it”. Perhaps you feel this is your opportunity of a lifetime to be righteous. Honestly, I am so fed up with so many of you around that I have been hoping for a global nuclear Armageddon between Russia and the USA just to shut all of you up. Don’t forget to wear your mask when you look at the strange bright light in the sky.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > There’s no way of winning with those like you. You just like the drama of the pandemic too much and want it to stay forever....Honestly, I am so fed up with so many of you around that I have been hoping for a global nuclear Armageddon between Russia and the USA just to shut all of you up. I'm sorry, but it seems you're complaining about a straw man that lives only in your head. Also, there are much easier and more effective ways to deal with things like that than wishing for a nuclear war. Thanks for your comment, though. It felt nice to read it for reasons you almost certainly didn't intend.

native_samples 5y ago

Where? In the UK hospitals are quiet for this time of year (less than 80% loaded which for the UK is quiet), and deaths are below the 5 year running average.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dzhiurgis 5y ago
UK has somewhat decent (50%) booster uptake
- OnlyMortal 5y ago
  More than 50% https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/_122920491_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation_with_booster_20jan-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/...
- iso1210 5y ago
  64.3% currently. 83.9% have had 2 doses.
fpgaminer 5y ago
In the U.S. at least: > There are two states and 618 counties that require circuit breakers (i.e. short-term mitigation measures needed to preserve hospital functioning) at this point because their hospitals are at or above 100% capacity (assuming that the number of staffed beds has not increased in the past week). Medical military personnel have already been dispatched to a number of hospitals across the nation. Nebraska also joined a short list of states that have enacted its Crisis Standards of Care plan. But community-wide efforts to reduce spread desperately need to be taken, too. Fourteen additional states are at high risk of exceeding 100% hospital capacity in the next 1-10 days. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-18 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
- jbirer 5y ago
  Americans also have higher dates of obesity and diabetes though so it doesn't surprise me.
- encoderer 5y ago
  It’s mild. Everybody is getting it and that strains hospitals but it’s a mild illness and many infected people won’t even be tested let alone seek treatment. How much evidence do you need of this being a mild variant?
  - fivea 5y ago
    > It’s mild. Everybody is getting it and that strains hospitals but it’s a mild illness and many infected people won’t even be tested let alone seek treatment. It really is not. It's mild to double- and triple-vaccinated individuals living in highly vaccinated populations. They get the shot, they brush it aside The poor souls who didn't managed to get vaccinated, or didn't wanted to, represent the bulk of the hospitalized population and deaths. The key factor is that the world has spent the last year bulking on vaccines, precisely to allow any infection to be at most mild. And now that we're seeing highly vaccinated populations being exposed and developing mostly mild cases are we now supposed to pretend that vaccines don't exist and the disease suddenly got tame? In whose head does this even compute?
    - encoderer 5y ago
      I believe you truly have bought the full narrative. I’m boosted I’m not anti vax but I’ll give you one data point that contradicts your claim: South Africa vax rate is 52%. Their health officials have declared it to be mild. It’s mild.
      - dang 5y ago
        Please make your substantive points without personal swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - 5y ago
Closi 5y ago
In the UK our healthcare system is overloaded though because of 2 years of lockdown policy postponing any elective surgeries. You are right on your figures though - when you look at excess deaths over 5 years there has been much fewer deaths because of Covid than the official figures would have you believe, but the impact of lockdown will be felt for many years to come.
- native_samples 5y ago
  It is both overloaded and not working at full capacity simultaneously, due to chaotic and foolish rules.
kurthr 5y ago
It would appear that a country that is over 90% vaccinated and 60% boosted is having ~440 deaths a day with roughly 15k admitted to the hospital (ignoring simple ER visits) that week. It's worth noting that the 10% unvaccinated (even though skewed younger) are ~5x overrepresented at ~50% of the hospitalizations. It's about half as high as the peak last Jan although ventilators are less in use and treatments are better. From your dashboard: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
- kurthr 5y ago
  Actually, now I'm intrigued. It would appear that the total annual death rate in the UK is about 135k/yr or 370/day. So the last couple of weeks of the current Omicron wave exceeds the typical average death rate from all causes from 2010-2018 (scaled for population). https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/leadingcausesofdeathuk/2001to2018 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
  - MikeAmelung 5y ago
    Close, you're only off by ~465,000
- iso1210 5y ago
  Pre covid, the UK typically had 1400 deaths a day in the winter. It's a little higher at the moment, but nowhere near 400. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1048504/Weekly_report_mortality__W3.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Be careful about who is in covid because of non-covid reasons that just happen to have covid, compared with those who are in hospital because of covid.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Did you look at that plot on page 2? Choosing what certainly looks like a single dramatic outlier point which is 2 weeks older than the dashboard certainly seems like cherry picking. Just look at the current dashboard data it shows ~440 deaths per day for the last 2 weeks. Again: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Also note that there almost aren't deaths from other flus over the last 2 years, likely because they don't have an R value >1 due to masking etc. Look, I'm all for getting back to normal and letting the unvaccinated (and old, poor, sick) die off as god intended, but let's not pretend it's all due to a lack of joyful evenings in the pub.
iso1210 5y ago
Do you have a link to UK hospitalisation figures?
rich_sasha 5y ago
True, and thank goodness, but also because hospitals kicked out everyone they could ahead of the wave. In a “normal” winter there would be more regular patients in the hospitals.

prvc 5y ago

I don't see what the supporting evidence for that conclusion is in the article.

ygjb 5y ago
It doesn't. The refrain that Omicron is "mild" is being parroted by people who don't understand what they are talking about. In fact, the Omicron variant (like other COVID variants) is relatively mild among individuals who have been vaccinated. That hasn't stopped the vast majority of folks yeeting themselves off a dunning-kruger cliff and assuming that they are competent to discuss the topic because they read a medical journal or an opinion piece that aligns well with their own perceptions of COVID and the broad spectrum of economic, political, and medical topics (myself included sometimes).
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  It’s mild relative to other variants for everyone. However, it is still quite dangerous for unvaccinated individuals… CFR is not that high but it is extremely contagious, so it is still killing a lot of unvaccinated people.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    It was mild in South Africa as well, where there really is not a high vaccination rate.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > It was mild in South Africa as well, where there really is not a high vaccination rate. That's not the only variable. IIRC, South Africa's population is on-average much younger, less obese, and much more likely to have had a previous infection compared to America's.
      - tinus_hn 5y ago
        All these factors would have applied to the other variants the same.

nicoburns 5y ago

I think Omicron is almost universally mild for those who have had the existing vaccines. And as most people have (here in the UK anyway), I can understand why people are seeing it as mild.

ygjb 5y ago
There is an ocean of difference between "it's mild because I am vaccinated" and "it's mild", and the bridge across it is being built on the mental and physical well being of our health care providers around the world.
- fivea 5y ago
  I'd add that it's extremely disingenuous to hide the fact that high vaccination rates are the sole reason why the same disease spreading like wildfire is not leaving a trail of dead bodies stacked high on it's wake.

ripper1138 5y ago

The data in the article makes a pretty compelling argument that Omicron is extremely mild.

pelasaco 5y ago
what surprises me is to see how Germany, despite the low number in comparison with the other countries, has capitulated in almost all areas.
obmelvin 5y ago
I mean...it's possible for something to be both significantly less bad than something worse and also still pretty shitty.

cma 5y ago

Even if it was as mild as flu, with its much higher rate of spread hospitals would probably still be seeing a big surge.

nradov 5y ago

A lot of the deaths occurring right now are still from patients that were infected by the Delta variant weeks ago. Preliminary research indicates that Omicron has an 87% lower fatality rate. Of course that number is a little fuzzy because it's impossible to perform a real controlled experiment. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4010080 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4010080

tablespoon 5y ago
> Preliminary research indicates that Omicron has an 87% lower fatality rate. 1. 87% less of a lot isn't a little. It can still be a lot. 2. "Fatality rate" isn't a number that just floats in the air by itself. It's a factor in the equation deaths = case_count * fatality_rate, and the case_count term has skyrocketed. 3. Deaths aren't the only thing to worry about. Hospitalizations that don't result in a fatality are nothing to sneeze at. Ditto for other kinds of bad outcomes. Where's the concern about COVID-caused myocarditis?
- nevermindiguess 5y ago
  There’s no way of winning with those like you. You just like the drama of the pandemic too much and want it to stay forever. Even if it killed 1 person a year globally, those like you would probably argue that “even one life is infinitely precious and we should be on lockdown to save it”. Perhaps you feel this is your opportunity of a lifetime to be righteous. Honestly, I am so fed up with so many of you around that I have been hoping for a global nuclear Armageddon between Russia and the USA just to shut all of you up. Don’t forget to wear your mask when you look at the strange bright light in the sky.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > There’s no way of winning with those like you. You just like the drama of the pandemic too much and want it to stay forever....Honestly, I am so fed up with so many of you around that I have been hoping for a global nuclear Armageddon between Russia and the USA just to shut all of you up. I'm sorry, but it seems you're complaining about a straw man that lives only in your head. Also, there are much easier and more effective ways to deal with things like that than wishing for a nuclear war. Thanks for your comment, though. It felt nice to read it for reasons you almost certainly didn't intend.