outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

the common theory is that the virus isn't actually 'less mild', but because almost everybody in Africa either got infected or vaccinated (less than 30%) against a previous strain of the virus, the protection wasn't perfect, but there was enough T-cell response/etc to keep the cases less severe than if they were a completely immune-naive population.

does bode well for countries with high levels of vaccination/natural infection, less so for those who don't have a lot of either.

still not a "nothingburger" as some suggest, as in the US alone we have 330 million people in this country and were just at over 100,000+ hospitalizations a few months ago, wrecking the system.

i'm hoping, fuckin' hoping that we avoid the worst.

confirmation from John Burn-Murdoch - cases definitely slowing and it's not an artificial artifact due to delayed reporting. Thomas Moultrie, another expert, confirms that in the comments, as someone challenges John's conclusion.

Quick situation update from Gauteng, showing all key metrics including excess deaths.

Cases and test positivity peaking, admissions slowing.

Deaths still climbing at same pace as past waves, but based on slowdown in cases we can be sure deaths will not get close to Delta peak. pic.twitter.com/Ce4xnfMOfD

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 16, 2021

What I think looking at that and reading about short incubation period is, it spreads fast, shows up fast and goes fast. So a short sharp wave as opposed to a long drawn out one? If so, that would make a huge difference ito the virus becoming epidemic, I think?

As someone just now recovering from a broken bone who needs physical therapy but not surgery I’ll count my blessings…
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, December 16, 2021

xp, that's what we thought about delta, and it makes sense in terms of the dynamics. and the UK delta wave dropped from it's peak very quickly in the summer. omicron could drop even quicker.

but delta cases then stabilized at a very high level for six months after that in the UK, so it's not necessarily over once it peaks.

the good(?) news is there's a real possibility this wave is so big that 1% of the UK population gets infected every day. after 30 days of that, there surely can't be enough naive hosts for the 6 months at 50,000/day the UK just had with delta.

not sure we have many hesitant parents here but ... covid isn't special. if you vaccinate your kids, vaccinate your kids against covid too.

From ACIP. We routinely vaccinate children against diseases that kill fewer than Covid before vaccines. Something nice about keeping children alive. https://t.co/yofrNn37BL pic.twitter.com/ZaJN8Lclwy

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) December 16, 2021

Once these antiviral treatments are approved and rolled out here next year that’s another factor, cases might remain high - though at some point that should stop being the measurable, right? - and with enough immunity from prior infection and/or vaccines, then the link between catching covid and ever needing to attend a hospital will be weaker…hopefully?

yes

antivirals have worse side effects/risks than vaccinations, and if the 30% of people who are currently unvaccinated stay that way on the assumption antivirals are like drinking a lemsip when you have a cold then that's going to go badly for them (and the health system), and obviously there's access problems (particularly in the US) with drugs that require a prescription and ongoing contact with healthcare, and pfizer currently has capacity to make 80m courses globally in 2022, which is not going to cut it.

BUT.

i don't think we'll be in the same situation next christmas, and they are part of the reason.

nyc positivity doubled in a week, wouldn't be surprised if it doubles again even faster

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/weve-never-seen-this-before-in-nyc-covid-positivity-rate-doubles-in-3-days-as-omicron-spreads/3454450/

In early November my 1 year old had a runny nose and low grade fever so the daycare made me get a PCR with a negative result before she could return. Took her the next day and waited maybe 15 minutes to get the swab. Got the result that night. On Friday a kid in her class tested positive so they shut down her room and advised us to get her tested again. My wife went up last night and they said it was a 5 hour wait. She went again at noon and they’re 81st in line. No clue if we’ll get the results tonight

yeah nyc is popping off

I figured social media being flooded with covid-positive New Yorkers was some sort of algorithmic artifact but on Sunday there were actually more positive cases reported in Manhattan than any day since the start of the pandemic pic.twitter.com/IXt2hElc4n

— Jake Anbinder (@JakeAnbinder) December 16, 2021

Looking @ that and having 2 people on set pop positives today i’m inclined to think that most of these new catches are bc people are testing before the holiday and the sample is bigger than a given weekday

there is a simpler explanation

nyc positivity doubled in a week

^that's the one that says it's not just an artifact of more people getting tested ahead of the holidays

Xp right the simple explanation is everyone has it currently but no one knows bc vax works etc

boston does have a measure that's independent of people testing, people testing correctly, people having access to testing, etc. i.e. toilet water. it's a laggy and noisy measure, so it's not perfect. but unless everyone in boston decides to stop going potty it doesn't have biases that change as a function of time, unlike testing. cases are up!

https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

posted on the rona thread but yeah NYC is hot right now. had 3 coworkers in NY just test positive

one of my band members tested positive. vaccinated and boosted (ofc). says it feels like a bad cold

we're all gonna get covid for christmas

Santa Baby.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/omicron-dominant-wastewater-samples-florida-173842553.html

interesting point in this article: omicron has overtaken delta in Orlando, but hospitalizations are all delta

Most likely because it takes a couple of weeks for
Infection to hospitalization and omicron is new in town

so glad the wife and I already decided we were staying around home for the holidays

This is where the calculus gets tricky for us. We skipped seeing my father-in-law for Christmas last year for obvious reasons, now that we are all vaxxed and boosted we had planned to go see him this year, but all the news this week makes us a little nervous. Thing for my wife, especially, is that he's 83. She, quite understandably, doesn't want to keep skipping seeing him because, well, he's 83.

My mom’s 93 and halfway across the country and I feel like I have no idea when I’ll see her

My sister and her family just flew in from….. South Africa

Haven’t seen them in 3 years

My mom’s 93 and halfway across the country and I feel like I have no idea when I’ll see her

Yeah, to be clear, not putting that out as a "woe is me" post, clearly a lot of people struggling far with far worse situations. Just frustrating how quickly risk calculus can change.

Shut down a job today because the third person on our interview docket had a weird persistent cough

new study, currently saying no evidence that Omicron is milder: https://www.ft.com/content/020534b3-5a54-4517-9fd1-167a5db50786

already dummies misinterpreting the study on both sides.

*This isn't saying "Omicron is definitely not milder", just that there's no evidence CURRENTLY to say that it is with confidence

*It acknowledges that hospitalizations/severe outcomes could likely be the case, just like in SA, but that the reason for it could be prior infection/immunity just as much as mildness.

--- btw could we have a new thread at some point? There's over 15k posts in this one!

holy FUCKING SHIT

i never noticed that

Posts are growing exponentially

If we don't get it under control, at this rate we'll hit 800,000 posts by next spring.

Tbf, the thread precedes covid by some span.

not sure covid is thread worthy

It's no ebola.

Stop posting. Flatten the curve.

This is the key part of the table from this Imperial study showing "no evidence" Omicron is less severe than delta. It's a simple logit regression.

Basically the results tell us "loads of young people got Omicron, and very few of them needed hospital treatment" https://t.co/0ae8L6ofxG pic.twitter.com/Y77di6XaKC

— Peter Sivey (@petesivey) December 17, 2021

bookmarks make all threads short of course. this is an interesting document of sorts.

"outbreak 2: omicron and on"

already dummies misinterpreting the study on both sides.

*This isn't saying "Omicron is definitely not milder", just that there's no evidence CURRENTLY to say that it is with confidence

the comical thing about all this is that the one thing we DO know is that omicron spreads so fast we are definitely gonna know one way or the other about its severity profile two weeks from now, so a huge amount of ink is being wasted arguing about it right now.

OK I guess not really "wasted"; certain aspects of policy response that have to be decided right now do depend on the answer to this question, I guess.

Not just so fast but apparently so easily, given the number of tales I've heard of even boosted people catching it. If you've gotten vaccinated, you've been boostered, and you wear a mask and you are reasonably cautious and it still breaks through, albeit with anecdotally mild symptoms, what else can you do?

Then again, as I understand it the majority of cases locally here have still been delta.

xxpost the thing that annoys me about that are all of the assholes who are like "WHY DON'T WE KNOW YET? OUR LEADERS NEED THIS INFORMATION TO ACT", as if we should wait until we know everything about Omicron before planning to deal with it.

the same people who scream "WHY DON'T WE KNOW WHERE THIS HURRICANE IS GOING YET, LIVES DEPEND ON IT" as if getting warning 5+ days in advance that your area might get hit isn't giving you ample time to prepare and evacuate if you need to, as opposed to waiting until the last minute to find out GPS coordinates for what street the hurricane is going to traipse down

i almost certainly have omicron - i live in london, where it’s rapidly taking over, i’ve been vaxxed and boosted and previously infected with the OG strain - yet my family members continue to test negative, with zero symptoms, including my mother in law who’s supposedly, ha ha, ha ha ha, going back to france on sunday, hahaha.

My wife (elementary school librarian) got new guidance on quarantining. It doesn't actually go into effect until mid-January, though!

btw could we have a new thread at some point? There's over 15k posts in this one!

― kinder, Friday, 17 December 2021 16:25 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a more radical solution to this, something along the lines of a circuit breaker where our "top" ten covid posters maybe take a two week break from blogging here idk

honestly if someone wants to threadban me from this thread, I would welcome it. I can't seem to stop myself, like a bad habit.

ha ha wait is this me