outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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")

Is it wrong to think that a variant with mild symptoms becoming the dominant one is a good thing? If vaccines aren’t a viable path to herd immunity, or at least it becoming endemic (if I am understanding that correctly), maybe those who won’t take a vaccine getting a less severe strain is the second best path out of this pandemic?

It's premature to speculate about omicron's eventual path through the world. But ofc we will anyway. Hoping it proves to be a milder version that crowds out more virulent strains is a good thing to hope. But there's not much to pin that hope on so far.

Given the data we're all waiting on with Omicron, I want to spend a minute talking about antibodies and the possible worst-case scenario of Omicron showing complete escape from neutralization by vaccine- or infection-derived antibodies. 🧵

— Edward Nirenberg (@ENirenberg) December 2, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/12/covid-boosters-omicron-effective/620883/

Seems too early to tell if omicron really does have milder symptoms.. or if that's just anecdotal observations about the handful of westerners who caught it

IMO omicron turns you into the Beatles

Dark Hoarse.

The doctor in South African who initially reported the new and different symptoms of the omicron variant said they were "very, very mild." I realize nothing is certain and everything could change, but in agreement w beard papa, if the virus mutated into one that didn't kill its hosts wouldn't that be extremely in line with what viruses have always done and overall probably a not-bad outcome for people?

And also that most of the patients who were admitted were unvaccinated, as I understand the reporting.

i read an article a while ago by an immunologist that said yes, the virus will mutate, but when looking at how other viruses mutate often mutations that allow viruses to evade vaccines/antibodies also sometimes make the virus less severe or hamper the virus in other ways. i'm choosing to believe that is the case with omicron and all future "variants of concern", lalala i can't hear you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf2c6D0xlCE

The doctor in South African who initially reported the new and different symptoms of the omicron variant said they were "very, very mild." I realize nothing is certain and everything could change, but in agreement w beard papa, if the virus mutated into one that didn't kill its hosts wouldn't that be extremely in line with what viruses have always done and overall probably a not-bad outcome for people?

can you extrapolate a key lime pie

I am definitely up for just going along with “that’s apparently what viruses usually do” tbc, just don’t think what that one doctor said is the most meaningful data point necessarily

refreshingly honest take here:

“When delta overwhelms southwest Missouri, which is not very densely populated, it’s very foreboding what it can do to highly densely populated areas like the northeast,” said Steve Edwards, chief executive of CoxHealth, which operates a Springfield hospital that was battered in the summer and recently reopened a covid ward as admissions rise again.

Edwards watched in dismay as much of the country failed to heed the lessons from southern Missouri before delta tore through the Sun Belt and rest of the Midwest.

“Half the country listened and the other half listened to an ideology based on politics, religion and their sense of culture which overrode their understanding of science,” Edwards said. “It kind of breaks your spirit because it’s an open book test and the answers are there.”

I'm all for changing the variant names to various Transformers rather than greek letters

“It kind of breaks your spirit because it’s an open book test and the answers are there.”

Books?!? What're we, nerds!?! (dies of COVID like a total nerd)

can you extrapolate a key lime pie

Is it wrong to think that a variant with mild symptoms becoming the dominant one is a good thing?

Well, that depends. If omicron confers some immunity to delta, then sure. But if that's the case, it's just as likely that delta (and vaccinations to same) confers some immunity to omicron, which would be great.

If that's not the case, then you're talking about a milder strain which becomes very common OVER AND ABOVE the level of delta we already have, which is causing some real damage! i.e. 1000 people getting delta and 1000000 people getting omicron is worse than 1000 people getting delta and omicron not existing, even if omicron has milder symptoms.

And we have no reason to think omicron has milder symptoms.

if the virus mutated into one that didn't kill its hosts wouldn't that be extremely in line with what viruses have always done

(If I understand correctly): Fortunately, COVID doesn't kill that many of its hosts; not enough for this kind of evolutionary pressure to work. Almost everyone survives and even the people who don't certainly get plenty of chances to transmit, which is all the virus cares about.

yeah you don't even know you have it for a few days usually and that's enough to spread so unfortunately i think the dying or the not dying is neither here nor there

I've heard lots of anecdotes about the third vaccination having "saved" people - stories about coach trips where all the double vaccinated people have contracted Covid and those with the booster haven't ... and that kind of thing. And I guess others are hearing the same thing and thinking "I'll get that"?

I thought I was going to be fine, and then I decided to go to NY for a weekend, and two weeks before I made an appointment.

While I was there, I was in some very crowded places. Really glad I got boosted.

at least NYC requires proof of jabs. I too was in crowded places exactly three weeks ago and have tested negative twice since then.