I continue to hope there’s something misleading about the SA data because yeah, that’s just ugly. Came here to post the same thing.
It seems pretty clear to me that in the US at least, if you’re unvaccinated and avoided infection from COVID during previous waves or Delta, you’re not going to avoid it this time.
Yeah, that’s really not in question, and unfortunately it means X more months of keeping the toddler away from other people (including child care which, at this point, we desperately need to be able to safely use).
Adults that are willfully unvaccinated can, of course, go fuck themselves. The real question for the responsible adults is the immune evasion issue.
No panic buttons need be pushed, but I think being smart about getting your shots and your behavior with masks seems like a prudent way to go.
Yeah, we’re several weeks from having a clear picture yet as I understand it and panic never serves any purpose anyway. And yes, it’s never stopped being a good idea to take sensible precautions.
Alstein
1854
I agree, I know I might sometimes sound like a headless chicken, but I do the precautious I consider sensible, like not hitting CEO this weekend or a pro wrestling show in 2.5 weeks.
Houngan
1856
Could you expand on this? My impression was that Omicron was the Delta with vaccine avoidance, but Delta was still the gold standard for transmissability. What confused me was you saying that if you were unvaccinated before, it’s different now, which suggests that Omicron is even more transmissable than Delta.
There’s no evidence really that its avoiding the vaccine in any meaningful way
Because Omicron is going to reinfect persons who previously had COVID, and also infect (and hopefully cause asymptomatic or milder cases in general) persons who are fully vaccinated, it’s very likely that people who the unvaccinated think of as “safe” are going to be carrying the virus around. And they’re going to be having some form of contact.
I think of the coronavirus like a heavy downpour of rain hitting a roof. The rain is going to find fault points to seep in. And if it missed any previously, it seems likely to me to find those fault points this time.
The relevant bit from Bedford’s (excellent and informative) thread, with the sizable caveat that we only have the data we have right now:
jsnell
1861
More sophisticated modeling (linked upthread) does suggest that even 100% immune evasion is not sufficient to explain the data, and you’d still need increased transmission as well.
It makes some intuitive sense, we didn’t see this kind of growth even for the initial Covid wave when nobody had immunity and no precautions were being taken (though also testing was more limited). From just eyeballing the graphs in South Africa COVID: 3,020,569 Cases and 89,965 Deaths - Worldometer, their previous waves took about 2 months to grow the way Omicron did in 2 weeks.
jsnell
1862
Actual numbers rather than anecdotes from one hospital in ZA (with some aggregate numbers from other hospitals in the area):
https://www.samrc.ac.za/news/tshwane-district-omicron-variant-patient-profile-early-features
There’s a lot of good news there. Most Covid hospitalizations (75%) are actually for something else, with the positive test being incidental and just part of the standard admissions process. The hospital stays are a lot shorter than previously. All the cases with a Covid-related pneumonia were in unvaccinated people.
There’s not any outright bad news there. It’s just that the report seems likely to be overinterpreted by some. The age distribution at the start of this wave is just too different for a direct comparison of the outcomes.
Really good Twitter thread from John Burn-Murdoch, with additional data pulled from the whole province:
Regarding the pre-Omicron winter wave, and noting that the US has plateaued at 60% vax rate (with many states in the 40s)
Back in November last year the UK instigated
https://www.opensafely.org/
which seems to have helped enormously our ability to produce relevant and timely information in relation to the pandemic
I thought this was a pretty interesting read.
Here’s the idea they explore, and talk about what we might expect to see in the next few months - essentially, they think that a number of the mutations seen in Omicron are neutral or deleterious (bad), and thus normally aren’t seen. One thing that could be happening is that while the individual mutations are problematic for the virus, in combination they may yield a more fit virus. Another possibility is that these mutations may have not been under selective pressure (for example an immune compromised host), and they may revert to the wild type over the next few months as they are under selective pressure now.
Those hypothesis (and what we could expect to see) would tell us more about the origins of this particular variant, which is very very far away from all other known lineages.
The Omicron (B.1.1.529) SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern (VOC) identified in Southern Africa in late November 2021 is the product of extensive evolution within an infection context that has so far left no obvious traces of intermediate forms since it diverged from the B.1.1 lineage (presumably at some time in mid to late 2020). Three possible explanations for the missing intermediates are: (1) SARS-CoV-2 sampling in Southern Africa between May and September 2021 might have been too sparse or biased to detect low frequency variants amongst high numbers of Delta variant infections during this time period; (2) long-term evolution in one or more chronically infected people - similar to the proposed origin of lineages such as Alpha and C.1.2 (1) (2) (3) - where intermediate forms would have remained unsampled within the individual(s); and (3) a reverse zoonosis to a non-human host, followed by undetected spread therein, and a spillover back into humans. At present there is no direct evidence to support or reject any of these hypotheses on the origin of Omicron, but as new data are collected, its origin may be more precisely identified.
Quaro
1867
If you’re sad about getting J&J initially, you might have the most powerful combination of all after combining with Pfizer. Potentially 2x the T cells. Though I’m not certain if the order is important.
aeneas
1869
My only colleague in South Africa came down with Omicron last week.
I have headaches, constant fever, fatigue, sore throat, persistent coughing, runny/blocked nose. Most evident signs are high fever and racing pulse, my fever was 39°C and pulse 136 bpm at that stage. Was sick 1 day after exposure. Fun!
He is double vaxxed fortunately.
