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It seems like Omicron is way worse in China because their initial lockdown response had them living in a covid bubble while the rest of the world got infected.

It seems like Omicron is way worse in China because their initial lockdown response had them living in a covid bubble while the rest of the world got infected. Unless they managed to never have another case forever this seemed like an inevitable outcome.

lnsru 4y ago
I also heard, their vaccination program wasn’t that good as elsewhere. Everybody in my bubble in Germany got corona at least once. Everybody were vaccinated at least twice. All cases in all age groups were not worse than average cold.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I was very cautious before the vaccines. But afterwards, it was mostly Covid theatre in the US: 1. Mask mandates - dumb - people who didn’t want to wear them weren’t wearing them properly and most were wearing completely ineffective cloth masks. I travelled a lot and you were allowed to take your mask off while eating on a plane. So what good was requiring a mask? 2. Vaccine mandates - everyone agrees that the vaccines don’t stop you from getting or spreading Covid. But it does help prevent severe cases. So if people decide not to get vaccinated, it’s on them. Raise their insurance rates and don’t give them extra sick time. I would have been in compliance with my company’s mandate if I had only gotten the one shot J&J 3/2021 even though six months later, everyone agreed that it wasn’t effective against the variants and you should get a booster. No one would be crazy enough to propose that you must get a shot every six months. I did so voluntarily. Yeah I caught Covid after vaccinations and boosters. It really was no worse than a cold.
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    Re: the masks on planes. Assume a linear rate of virus particle shedding per breath and calculate the total viral load in the air of the plane over time, assuming the mask can catch a resonable proportion. The "pointless ceremony" of "masks while not eating" works out better. I think because we see ourselves as "sick or not sick" and "infected or not infected", people are not very calibrated to think or care about magnitude of exposure. Public health prophylactic measures can have real impact on both large and small scales, even when imperfectly followed. It's the statistics of the thing. Terrorism measures are stil theatre IMHO because they have such a lumpy and weird distribution.
    - jstrong 4y ago
      if masks work so well, why didn't they work? how did omicron get around the world in like two weeks flat when everyone was wearing masks on planes? at what point does covid making an utter mockery of our mitigation efforts start to dent your faith in them?
      - xyzzy123 4y ago
        Why not one week? Masks aren't perfect, and they don't make sense in every context but a plane IMHO is actually reasonable. Not every context is the same. I'm willing to acknowledge that the data is not great, but I think the action is more or less "plausible" and IMHO the suffering is small.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Yes, the suffering is small. But so is the payoff. My contention is that the people who statistically got seriously sick by the time Omicron became a thing in the US were the ones that decided to not get a vaccinated. I feel not an ounce of pity for them. The knock on affects is that the Democrats were not doing themselves any favors in the election. It’s bad politics.
- abdouls 4y ago
  I've seen all kind of cases in my surrounding.With very bad migraines to absolutely nothing (while still testing positive). Heck, even have a colleague who had it at least 4 times and still felt pretty bad with two doses...
FooBarWidget 4y ago
They have vaccines. They don't need to get infected to build immunity. But no vaccine, nor natural infection, is good enough to prevent transmission. Just good enough to prevent severe disease. And a few added problems are: - China's health infrastructure is not as advanced. They have very few ICUs per capita. - Vaccines are not mandatory, and many elderly either choose not to get vaccinated out of health concerns, or their doctor actively advise against getting vaccinated because of health concerns. So vaccination rate among the elderly is not that high, I remember a figure around 50%. So even with a relatively low mortality rate compared to Delta, with the lacking health infra and the sheer population size, letting Omicron rip through China will still lead to millions of deaths, which they find unacceptable.
- yakak 4y ago
  1. Their vaccines are not good and they didn't make mRNA vaccines despite the freedom from royalties for political reasons. 2. Omicron death rate is not as substantially lower as it appears in the west as this is largely explained by previous infection survivor bias, vaccination, and improvements in understanding about care.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    1. Vaccine quality is a multifaceted issue. "Not good" really means not good at preventing transmission, compared to mRNA, for the original strain. Since Omicron, all vaccines are "not good" at this. When it comes to preventing severe disease and death, Chinese vaccines work just fine, both for the original strain and for Omicron. It's arguably "less good" in the sense that it requires 3 shots instead of 2, but research has shown that once the 3 shots are reached then efficacy is as good as mRNA. Report on the study: https://www.fridayeveryday.com/boosted-sinovac-as-strong-as-mrna-new-study-shows/amp/ https://www.fridayeveryday.com/boosted-sinovac-as-strong-as-... So really, the "Chinese vaccines are not good" narrative is an oversimplified and frankly wrong take, perhaps deliberately so. What's interesting is that nobody talks about vaccine safety. Chinese vaccines, being of the inactivated type, have fewer side effects than mRNA ones. The jury is still out on whether mRNA vaccines are safe long-term. I got two shots of Pfizer and every time I watch dr Campbell's videos I really hope I won't get cancer in 10 years.
vmception 4y ago
We don’t know about it having a worse effect on people, but it’s just more transmissible, and china does have a lack of exposure and lack of immunity
- izzydata 4y ago
  Right, I don't mean worse on a per case basis. Just worse overall number of cases if they respond the same way as the US. Instead they are basically forced to do these harsh lockdowns or else it would be way too devastating. If covid continues to mutate as the rest of the world keeps getting infected then China will keep having to have more aggressive and longer lockdowns. Everywhere else is slowly building natural immunity.
  - vmception 4y ago
    Yeah, tough order for them, Xi has specifically said they won’t do a Darwinian thing that the west/US did So they will have to keep doubling down until more people die of starvation or a reaction to a mental health challenge
babypuncher 4y ago
Sinovac is also considerably less effective than the mRNA vaccines deployed in the rest of the world last year. As we've observed during our own Omicron waves, mRNA vaccines provide better protection from severe disease and death than prior infection.

lnsru 4y ago

I also heard, their vaccination program wasn’t that good as elsewhere. Everybody in my bubble in Germany got corona at least once. Everybody were vaccinated at least twice. All cases in all age groups were not worse than average cold.

scarface74 4y ago
I was very cautious before the vaccines. But afterwards, it was mostly Covid theatre in the US: 1. Mask mandates - dumb - people who didn’t want to wear them weren’t wearing them properly and most were wearing completely ineffective cloth masks. I travelled a lot and you were allowed to take your mask off while eating on a plane. So what good was requiring a mask? 2. Vaccine mandates - everyone agrees that the vaccines don’t stop you from getting or spreading Covid. But it does help prevent severe cases. So if people decide not to get vaccinated, it’s on them. Raise their insurance rates and don’t give them extra sick time. I would have been in compliance with my company’s mandate if I had only gotten the one shot J&J 3/2021 even though six months later, everyone agreed that it wasn’t effective against the variants and you should get a booster. No one would be crazy enough to propose that you must get a shot every six months. I did so voluntarily. Yeah I caught Covid after vaccinations and boosters. It really was no worse than a cold.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  Re: the masks on planes. Assume a linear rate of virus particle shedding per breath and calculate the total viral load in the air of the plane over time, assuming the mask can catch a resonable proportion. The "pointless ceremony" of "masks while not eating" works out better. I think because we see ourselves as "sick or not sick" and "infected or not infected", people are not very calibrated to think or care about magnitude of exposure. Public health prophylactic measures can have real impact on both large and small scales, even when imperfectly followed. It's the statistics of the thing. Terrorism measures are stil theatre IMHO because they have such a lumpy and weird distribution.
  - jstrong 4y ago
    if masks work so well, why didn't they work? how did omicron get around the world in like two weeks flat when everyone was wearing masks on planes? at what point does covid making an utter mockery of our mitigation efforts start to dent your faith in them?
    - xyzzy123 4y ago
      Why not one week? Masks aren't perfect, and they don't make sense in every context but a plane IMHO is actually reasonable. Not every context is the same. I'm willing to acknowledge that the data is not great, but I think the action is more or less "plausible" and IMHO the suffering is small.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Yes, the suffering is small. But so is the payoff. My contention is that the people who statistically got seriously sick by the time Omicron became a thing in the US were the ones that decided to not get a vaccinated. I feel not an ounce of pity for them. The knock on affects is that the Democrats were not doing themselves any favors in the election. It’s bad politics.
abdouls 4y ago
I've seen all kind of cases in my surrounding.With very bad migraines to absolutely nothing (while still testing positive). Heck, even have a colleague who had it at least 4 times and still felt pretty bad with two doses...

FooBarWidget 4y ago

They have vaccines. They don't need to get infected to build immunity. But no vaccine, nor natural infection, is good enough to prevent transmission. Just good enough to prevent severe disease. And a few added problems are: - China's health infrastructure is not as advanced. They have very few ICUs per capita. - Vaccines are not mandatory, and many elderly either choose not to get vaccinated out of health concerns, or their doctor actively advise against getting vaccinated because of health concerns. So vaccination rate among the elderly is not that high, I remember a figure around 50%. So even with a relatively low mortality rate compared to Delta, with the lacking health infra and the sheer population size, letting Omicron rip through China will still lead to millions of deaths, which they find unacceptable.

yakak 4y ago
1. Their vaccines are not good and they didn't make mRNA vaccines despite the freedom from royalties for political reasons. 2. Omicron death rate is not as substantially lower as it appears in the west as this is largely explained by previous infection survivor bias, vaccination, and improvements in understanding about care.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  1. Vaccine quality is a multifaceted issue. "Not good" really means not good at preventing transmission, compared to mRNA, for the original strain. Since Omicron, all vaccines are "not good" at this. When it comes to preventing severe disease and death, Chinese vaccines work just fine, both for the original strain and for Omicron. It's arguably "less good" in the sense that it requires 3 shots instead of 2, but research has shown that once the 3 shots are reached then efficacy is as good as mRNA. Report on the study: https://www.fridayeveryday.com/boosted-sinovac-as-strong-as-mrna-new-study-shows/amp/ https://www.fridayeveryday.com/boosted-sinovac-as-strong-as-... So really, the "Chinese vaccines are not good" narrative is an oversimplified and frankly wrong take, perhaps deliberately so. What's interesting is that nobody talks about vaccine safety. Chinese vaccines, being of the inactivated type, have fewer side effects than mRNA ones. The jury is still out on whether mRNA vaccines are safe long-term. I got two shots of Pfizer and every time I watch dr Campbell's videos I really hope I won't get cancer in 10 years.

vmception 4y ago

We don’t know about it having a worse effect on people, but it’s just more transmissible, and china does have a lack of exposure and lack of immunity

izzydata 4y ago
Right, I don't mean worse on a per case basis. Just worse overall number of cases if they respond the same way as the US. Instead they are basically forced to do these harsh lockdowns or else it would be way too devastating. If covid continues to mutate as the rest of the world keeps getting infected then China will keep having to have more aggressive and longer lockdowns. Everywhere else is slowly building natural immunity.
- vmception 4y ago
  Yeah, tough order for them, Xi has specifically said they won’t do a Darwinian thing that the west/US did So they will have to keep doubling down until more people die of starvation or a reaction to a mental health challenge

babypuncher 4y ago

Sinovac is also considerably less effective than the mRNA vaccines deployed in the rest of the world last year. As we've observed during our own Omicron waves, mRNA vaccines provide better protection from severe disease and death than prior infection.