outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

That twitter thread by Bedford is good

Sanpaku did you read the article you linked?

She said that part of the increased rate of admissions may reflect extra precaution on the part of parents given the new concern about the mutation.

Also read that admissions are similar for Delta. You’d have to conclude some people are enjoying this!

Also read that admissions are similar for Delta. You’d have to conclude some people are enjoying this!

that display name will lead to a lawsuit fyi

In classic local news, a print shop in Canterbury called “Omicron” is trying to take advantage of the new-found interest in its name by having the two blokes who run it pose outside in hazmat suits pic.twitter.com/DbslA4iF0u

— Tom Hourigan (@TomHourigan) November 30, 2021

lol

People pointing out that Omicron B is anagram of 'no crimbo' is amazing.

Also micronob

And 'moronic' as the do your own research truthers are keen to point out ad nauseam

Washington Post headline:

Existing vaccines might not be effective against omicron variant right away, Moderna CEO says

Actual first line in body of story:

Moderna’s CEO predicted Tuesday that existing coronavirus vaccines would be much less effective at combating omicron compared with previous covid-19 variants

They need a vaccine for bad headline writing. There's a big difference between "not effective" and "much less effective."

Theyalso some variant (lol) on "Scientists can reconfigure existing mRNA vaccines to fight variants without much fuss."

Yeah, I heard some Moderna guy say on the radio they could update the vaccine by early next year, if I heard right.

we're all gonna die because of clickthru traffic rates

-Bad Religion

lol Neanderthal

I mean, what does that mean for the 2x vaxxed and boosted? Would we theoretically have to dodge the new variant until we hit 6 months again for New and Improved 'Derna Formula boostage?

Right now it means ... nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWrlAmT4jyA

Right now it means ... nothing.

Obviously, we still need data on how it even performs as is against Omicron, I'm just playing forward what it would mean if the formula keeps getting tweaked to address new variants.

I’d guess it depends on a number of things eg the severity of symptoms presented by covid caused by this variant

It depends on the severity, it depends on the effectiveness of the current vaccines, etc. It depends on all sorts of stuff we don't know. But I can't see how anyone can necessarily make a prediction that the vaccines will be less effective against the new variants(s) until more data comes out. Or at least, I don't even know what "less effective" would even look like. Like, what if it still proves 90%+ effective protecting us from hospitalization and death but only, I dunno, 70% effective keeping us from catching it in the first place?

^otm

The Omicron #COVID19 variant was in the Netherlands before South Africa identified its first cases, say Dutch officials.

The variant was used to justify EU and U.S. travel bans against countries in southern Africa, which the WHO condemned as penalizing countries who reported it. pic.twitter.com/J85FzZxLMe

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 30, 2021

uk government has gone from booster rollouts for over-40s who had their second jabs 6 months ago to over-18s / 3 months without increasing the number of places doing the jabs and then wonder why there are problems and complaints.

they reckon everyone will be done in the next two months, so why not roll it out over two months?

if you go to this page it says that the advice hasn't actually been implemented yet:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/

and indeed when i try to book it only offers me slots 6 months out from my second jab

interesting.

all the people on the radio this morning were at walk-in centres, some 40 miles away from home, which i guess is different.

i did notice on monday that i had more options, but they were again tiny chemists (including the tiny chemist that did my flu jab, which seemed like an inconvenience to them)

Very interesting that SA's epidemiologist were so good at detecting Omicron which I suspect is due to all the PEPFAR money GW sent during the HIV/AIDS epidemic

I think that (at least previous to this newly announced booster surge), they were going for hyper-local jab sites, more but smaller places, rather than the giant sites at ExCel and so on. My options were chemists or a tiny community centre I'd never heard of, but they were pretty efficient.

Will be interesting to see if they reopen ExCel or the Business Design Centre as vax sites to get everyone jabbed over the next two months.

Good news at least: a good friend who got her booster at Walgreens yesterday noticed a packed waiting area. The nurse who jabbed her said they "hadn't stopped in days." All ages. Wonder if omicron is a factor.

It was super easy for my wife and I to get our boosters a few weeks back, at CVS. But when my friend went to get his booster at Walgreens last week, there were no available slots. Hard to know what to make of that. I was volunteering again at a vax clinic for kids last night and learned that apparently there was something of a modest Moderna shortage, so maybe that explain it? I got a Pfizer booster at CVS so presume that's all they had. Maybe Walgreens does Moderna and there's currently less of that going around?

Like I mentioned upthread, while it wasn't difficult or anything comparable to the mad rush of March, I found it more difficult than I expected to schedule my booster shot (Moderna). Ended up at a CVS, but it took 3 or 4 days of looking for an appointment and, even when I found one, had to schedule it more than a week out. I'm hoping that's just encouraging news for overall numbers.

anecdotal but the person who gave me my booster remarked on the flood of ppl getting them compared to initial vaccination numbers in march/april

It was super easy for my wife and I to get our boosters a few weeks back, at CVS. But when my friend went to get his booster at Walgreens last week, there were no available slots. Hard to know what to make of that. I was volunteering again at a vax clinic for kids last night and learned that apparently there was something of a modest Moderna shortage, so maybe that explain it? I got a Pfizer booster at CVS so presume that's all they had. Maybe Walgreens does Moderna and there's currently less of that going around?

― Josh in Chicago

Pfizer iirc

got Pfizer boosters for myself and my son kind of randomly on Nov 22. We were actually trying to find a way to get some quick COVID tests for a trip, but I started asking about boosters too. Most of the pharmacies were booked a week out, but they people at CVS told me that the CVS pharmacy in the local Target was taking walk-ins, and sure enough, we popped over there and had our boosters fairly quickly. The only downside was that we both felt fairly crappy for a couple days after.

the person who gave me my booster remarked on the flood of ppl getting them compared to initial vaccination numbers in march/april

back in march/april the rollout was being done strictly according to well-defined age groups or critical employment. otoh, boosters are now open to all adults and that open-ages policy collided with the rollout for ages 5-11. seems like these are bigger factors than omicron.

That and the capacity/mass vaccination sites are no longer running so there’s more pressure on the remaining places and things will seem relatively crazy to them.

haha yeah that all scans, it struck me oddly when he said it

My son got his second shot on sunday, and while waiting for the fifteen minutes afterwards a maskless couple in full camo and carhartt gear checked in at the pharmacy window. A few minutes later they were wearing masks and in a different line, presumably to get vaccinated because the store required all vaccine recipients to be masked.

It just seemed so weird to stroll into a wal-mart maskless in the state with the highest covid rates to get vaccinated. My guess is that they had a December 1st deadline to get vaxxed or fired.

I've been trying to schedule a booster, but cannot. I'll wait a couple of weeks, I guess.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/israeli-doctor-believes-he-caught-omicron-variant-of-covid-in-london

That's why the finger-pointing at South Africa is so lame... who knows where it originated, they're just sounding the alarm

tbh this omicron thing hasn’t moved the needle at all for me - not to say I’m sanguine so much as it was already shit & nobody thought we’d seen the last mutation so my reaction so far to the tiny amount of info has basically been “oh ok, still a pandemic then” (no doubt this would be v different if I were planning to travel)

Been a bit bemused at some of the panicked scrabbling I’ve seen from ppl I know - sudden move back to masking up, testing, in some cases finally getting their jabs sorted(!) &c - I’m old enough to remember when delta was the scary voc worth taking basic precautions over

Maybe Walgreens does Moderna and there's currently less of that going around?

when I got my booster (Pfizer) I made the appointment at the Walgreens in town where I usually go for all my pharmacy stuff, because it's on the way to work. the day before my shot, the pharmacist called me and said that they were transferring my appointment to a different store on the other side of town, because their store only had Moderna and the other store apparently had all the Pfizer. so, a little extra travel time but otherwise no problem. they made it sound like this was a pretty typical thing and it was only the online scheduling app that couldn't tell the difference.

Delta thing really did change the game due to being way more transmissible, unless Omicron is particularly more severe/more transmissible or evades vaccines somehow I don't think this is going to change a whole lot ultimately. I'm usually wrong about this sort of stuff though

I think the big unknown is whether the current vaccines will be as effective, due to a much larger set of mutations in that variant

But I'm not tripping

Yes but at the same time, the variant doesn't seem...particularly dangerous? All the reported cases are the mildest types of symptoms iirc? Sorry, I actually haven't been doom-scrolling on this particular issue so I might be mis-informed. But Omicron seems like the least of our problems compared to people refusing to get vaccinated.

Sorry, people refusing to get vaxxed SLASH the inequity of vaccine availability which is the real crime here.

Fauci, etc. have also made clear they can tweak the mRNA vaccines easily.

We basically don't know. It seems like what we know is:

1. Omicron definitely exists worldwide already and did before the South African doctors sounded the alarm.

I was going to make a list but actually I think that's all we know for sure? It looks likely but not certain that omicron spreads faster than delta but we don't know whether that's because it's inherently more contagious or because it's better at reinfecting people who already had earlier strain. (Same reason the original strain spread ultra fast when it was brand new and nobody had any kind of immunity.) In the same vein, we don't know how much protection current vaccines provide against omicron and it might be different for different vaccines. We also don't know whether the health effects of omicron are worse, better, or about the same as earlier variants. (Hospitalizations in Gauteng are for sure up but it's not obvious how that generalizes.)

Basically I think it can't be ruled out that this will be a Big Problem and that's why people are scrambling to get ready but it's also not at all clear that will be.

Omicron definitely exists worldwide already and did before the South African doctors sounded the alarm.

The only difference between SA and the rest of the world has nothing to do with where omicron originated. Point of origin is moot anyway. SA just has the largest number of known cases and therefore is the largest know reservoir of omicron infections. The air travel bans make at least some sense in a public health context, in that it is a form of quarantine on that reservoir. Blaming SA in any way as being 'responsible' for omicron is just the normal extremely irrational, xenophobic and reactive way most humans think. It is 100% wrong. And it was 100% predictable.

and I've seen several people make the case that the reason SA was able to identify it first was that it's way more sophisticated at sequencing (which I take with a grain of salt and read as "is doing way more sequencing at the very least")