outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Good news:

New data from Scotland and South Africa suggest people infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus are at markedly lower risk of hospitalization than those who contracted earlier versions of the virus, promising signs that vaccines remain effective at warding off severe illness with the fast-spreading strain.

Scientists caution, though, that Omicron’s heightened transmissibility—and its ability to sidestep immunity from vaccination or prior infection—means it still has the potential to cause further waves of sickness and death simply by infecting many more people.

“The combination of increased risk of transmission and immune evasion of Omicron mean that any advantage in reduced hospitalization could potentially be exceeded by increased rates of infection in the community,” said researchers at the University of Edinburgh in a paper detailing their findings that is still to be peer-reviewed.

The Edinburgh study, drawing on the health records of 5.4 million people in Scotland, found the risk of hospitalization with Covid-19 was two-thirds lower with Omicron than with Delta.

If I'm reading it right, there's no news there at all? It's just saying more Scottish people are vaccinated now than in 2020.

for real, did any of you read anything about the Walter Reed/US Army vaccine? the one that broke last night?

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/

i realize reading a military-focused publication is going to make some of your lower intestines spontaneously explode. but this seems extremely promising to me, like incredibly EXTREMELY promising to me? am i fucking crazy?

It is confirming what was anecdotal prior to now, that in each of the places where Omicron hit hardest first carry a much lower risk of hospitalization. These are the first studies to actually definitively claim that.

Attribution is still not nailed down - how much of it is due to prior infection/vaccination versus less virulence. But the same pattern has been seen in countries with varying degrees of vaccine-derived immunity and immunity from infection.

However important not to overlook that this same summary indicated that this benefit could be offset by the ease of transmission, which means less people proportionately infected, but enough total hospitalizations to overwhelm hospitals.

It's probably going to come down to the reaction in the non-immunized - if there is an inherent less virulence rather than just it being a product of an immunity wall, things might turn out better.

Problem is we probably won't know that until the wave is over or close to it, so curbing spread is important.

Xpost

here. this way we don't have to give lucrative clicks to the mouthpiece of global genocide

Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.

The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus. The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.

Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and the other variants, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 and phase 3 trials.

Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed’s SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.

“It's very exciting to get to this point for our entire team and I think for the entire Army as well,” Modjarrad said.

The vaccine’s human trials took longer than expected, he said, because the lab needed to test the vaccine on subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID.

i am basically a town crier that is fucking annoying and no one looks at him, but

they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.

seems noteworthy

it is hard to exist in this state of hope without it being immediately narrowed and dampened by caution and the need for patience and probably 6-12 more months of developments. can someone please bring me out of this state of hope, back to where i belong, the purgatory of pragmatic caution?

"expect to announce that" is probably the reason none of us itt have any opinion yet KM

whatever dude

i am going to outside and be happy

it's huge fucking news

or you know what, it is to me. let me just put myself in the same idiotic bubble that the rest of the world is in. i am going to selectively choose my own favorite piece of news, and just believe the fuck out of it

to me, it already happened. i am free now

KM, the preliminary report sounds to me too good to be true, probably because it was written by a journalist or publicist and its simplifications all run in a positive direction. Nevertheless, when you remove the rosy tint, it still sounds very promising.

The DoD doesn't have a manufacturing capacity of its own, so it would still have to be handed over to a for-profit pharma corporation and their facilities adapted to its production. No word in that article about the temperatures required for safe handling.

imagine if everyone was looking for a good chapter in a book, and then, someone delivered an entire book full of good chapters

The army invented Covid as biological warfare so of course they also have a cure

it would be a vaccine that addresses a higher level of covid, a more encompassing one. and, if i'm not mistaken, i don't think ANYONE in the world knew that they were working on that?

except the researchers themselves? if so, absolutely no one here or anywhere i read has been talking about even the idea of it

on the plus side, this could finally be the ONLY politically opportune moment for Jim Webb, the moderate conservative democrat who loves guns. because if the army sponsored a vaccine, the left would refuse to take it out of principle, the right would continue to be feasting on their anuses looking for treasure nuggets, as they long have, and the only people left to take the army vaccine would be those in the army, and me, Jim Webb's biggest supporter

if so, absolutely no one here or anywhere i read has been talking about even the idea of it

ok, i'm gonna PRE-but myself here by saying ok, i bet sanpaku mentioned it somewhere in 2012

I read something about the protein based vaccine a few weeks ago - sounded positive but also wait-and-see on the trials. It reads like the variant specific identifiers will need to be identified and the vaccine base modified for each, similar to the mRNA tweaks. But it can carry 24 different identifiers simultaneously vs. single or tri/quad as in the current flu vaccines. Like a tiny Swiss army knife of vaccine spikes.

the army news is indeed good news, it's just that it's currently in Phase 1, where they test if the vaccine is safe, so it'll be a while before they get to Phase 3 and test how well it works.

it and other developments like the GSK monoclonal antibody treatment that works against Omicron as well as COVID pills are all good news, though a lot of them will not really be available the way we need them for a while. but when they arrive, great news indeed.

Yeah it passed phase 1 ie people took it and lived to tell the tale. No idea if it works yet. L

has this already been posted?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7wz5a/people-got-sick-at-a-conspiracy-conference-theyre-sure-its-anthrax

I saw a mention of the Walter Reed vax this morning and had the same reaction as you Karl, started immediately googling and was surprised that i couldnt find much info about it. if there's anything at all to it, i'm sure we'll hear more about it soon enough. if it actually adds up to anything and however far in the future it may be, the idea of a vaccine that targets SARS-related coronaviruses in general seems like the only way off of the endless merry-go-round of new variants & new waves.

xp thats like the most Dale Gribble story I've ever heard

This is the preprint I read last month, from May: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8132231/

is the army vaccine going to be as precise as their drone strikes?

has this already been posted?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7wz5a/people-got-sick-at-a-conspiracy-conference-theyre-sure-its-anthrax

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, December 22, 2021 7:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is the real story from that article:

While Oltmann said he was “sick, sick,” he claimed his symptoms were tempered because he was already taking the antibiotic doxycycline as a result of impaling his leg on an arrow in an accident in his brother’s garage weeks previously.

"... but then I took an arrow to the knee"

Karl, I’m with you. Sounds like great news! Hopefully it pans out.

IL and Cook County just yesterday broke the daily record for # of new cases. (clicks play on Tony! Toni! Toné! 'Feels Good' cassingle)

JUST IN: Air travel is HIGHER than pre-pandemic levels. TSA says it screened more people at airports yesterday than on the same day in 2019. 2.08 million vs 1.94 million.

— Pete Muntean (@petemuntean) December 23, 2021

Not great.

great time to be a viral pathogen

This is good

I’ve been writing a small, practical, maximally chill omicron newsletter for friends and family for a few weeks. It’s not about policy or even really data, just neighborly summaries of useful stuff.

I’m opening it up to a wider group for awhile: https://t.co/CtgERjLR6q

— Erin Kissane (@kissane) December 23, 2021

(Erin was one of the volunteers providing reliable national data about the US while trump was obstructing his own agencies)

just got two texts from people who were at small gatherings I was at (both 6 people) saying they tested positive. my brother's girlfriend just tested positive too. just in time for Christmas!! feel like more people I know have tested positive in the last month than the rest of the pandemic combined. luckily no one has gotten all that ill. I feel like a have a little cold and a little sore throat, but nothing serious. we've all tested negative but I guess I'm just gonna assume I have it

sadly that's wise, until you get definitive confirmation :(. sorry to hear that, man.

really surprised I haven't seen more of my circle reporting infection - during Delta, they popped up every other day. I think Florida right now is seeing more explosion in South FL but Central Florida has been almost all Omicron for a while.

hoping you somehow manage to avoid it and that if you do get it, it's nothing serious and you can clear it fast.

we decided to keep our pre-k daughter out of school this week because the school had multiple exposures (in other classes) over the last few weeks and if she was exposed this week, we wouldn't be able to spend the next two weekends celebrating the holidays with our families. It was tough, especially for my wife to be home all day with her, though we know we're lucky that it was even feasible for us to do that.

guess what notification we got today from our principle?

Jesus, Eric Feigl-Ding is really leaning into the doom and gloom, huh? He’s loving this.

Not “vague”—➡️We are staring at a thermonuclear-level bad pandemic 2.0 HMOG wave with #Omicron heading straight at us with BILLIONS infected in the next 3 months (@IHME_UW)—while some hand-wave it’s slightly milder—all while many choose to stay ignorant of exponential math.🔥 https://t.co/V1lz8xusGO

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 24, 2021

I mean, Omicron does not look good but “thermonuclear”?

DeWald is pretty bad too, she follows lunatic crank AJ Leonardi and posts shit like EF-D often, even though she also makes salient points that often get buried BECAUSE of that.

EF-D needs to be deplatformed completely.

Particularly annoyed to see people like Judd Apatow signal boosting him tonight.

even Dr Peter Hotez shares his shit sometimes which drives me nuts, as the guy gets basic science wrong fairly often

i'm trying to tag some of his peers but they get tagged in so much they'll never see it.

a lot of them also have him blocked already

*posts some guy's tweets*

Really annoyed to see ppl platforming this guy's tweets tonight.

Yep, you got me. I’m properly called out. My posting itt reaches the exact same audience as Judd Apatow’s 2.4 million followers. People just love my posts that much.

You’re an asshole.

Yeah, that last part was unnecessary, it’s just been a long week and I have zero patience for people that only pop into threads with the sole purpose of trolling or policing posts for imagined lapses in posting etiquette. As if the true problem is my post citing one of his more egregious tweets and not the guy tweeting that shit out to his nearly three quarters of a million followers. Anyway, timely reminder that this place has some posters just intent on making sure ilx stays toxic.

lol you are such a baby

Bold move; smart move. https://t.co/hasVuzWfLz

— Georgia Ladbury 🍫☕ (@GeorgiaLadbury) December 24, 2021