outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

"We share the same objective, except we've all decided that fealty to an unrestrained free market of rent-seeking ghouls is more important than ending the pandemic."

"Early data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital Complex in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, which is at the centre of the outbreak, showed that on December 2 only nine of the 42 patients on the Covid-19 ward, all of whom were unvaccinated, were being treated for the virus and were in need of oxygen.

The remainder of the patients had tested positive but were asymptomatic and being treated for other conditions."

"The pattern of milder disease in Pretoria is corroborated by data for the whole of Gauteng province. Eight per cent of Covid-positive hospital patients are being treated in intensive care units, down from 23 per cent throughout the Delta wave. And just 2 per cent are on ventilators, down from 11 per cent.

Although the total number of Covid-positive patients in Gauteng’s hospitals is approaching the level it reached at the same stage of the Delta wave, researchers said a large proportion received treatment for other conditions. And the number of Covid patients in intensive care is one quarter of what it was three weeks into the Delta outbreak."

www.ft.com/content/d315be08-cda0-462b-85ec-811290ad488e

Good news is better than bad news

But look, it's good to read whatever tea leaves there are in the cup, but inside of a month we are going to have very good worldwide data about how many thousands of people infected with omicron are doing

So if Omicron does turn out to be milder, does that mean it would be in countries' best interest to reverse their travel bans? Is it better for it to spread more widely and out-compete the more deadly strains?

travel bans are a pretense

A pretense I guess unless you have travel plans.

most experts are pointing out it still wouldn't be good for the entire world to have the same cold at the same time. people could still be hospitalized! even if it was a much milder form of COVID, heavy transmission could lead to a run on hospitals.

courting an epidemic disease instead of evading it is never a good idea

that's not what my friend the psychologist's chiropractor said

before farting and laughing

the ft article glosses over an important point.

the average age of people with omicron in SA is lower than the average age of people with delta, because we (the world, including SA) vaccinated a bunch of older people since the delta wave.

effectively they're looking at a bunch of older people getting very sick with delta and a bunch of younger people getting less sick with omicron and concluding that the difference is due to omicron being milder than delta, rather than the patients being younger.

i mean it might be due to omicron being mild! i don't think anyone can say at this point. but that's the kind of extremely confounding variable you'd home to see the FT mention more prominently than "may be a bit skewed" near the end of the article.

unfortunately Fauci has already started jumping on some of these reports and is having his words twisted by the likes of the NY Post (for obvious reasons). he said it's almost certain that Omicron isn't more severe than Delta (which even that seems a little early to say), but that it remains to be seen if it's less severe.

Post runs an article saying Fauci said "it's almost certainly less severe". and that'll be the takeaway for millions of people, who are already saying "well this shit's milder, so I guess we can breathe".

why is he speaking so soon? well, because you have a lot of blue check scientists spouting doomerism that is being circulated and sending people into a panic, so they're forced into the situation of "do we let that become the narrative, or do we counter it with positive things we might know", but idk that rushing into suggesting it's milder is the right counter-strategy, esp since once people hear that, they'll throw their masks away (again).

meanwhile Delta is still ripping the globe a new asshole.

I think it was YMP who recently pointed out that journalists will always target a storyline that changes rapidly over stories that are slow-moving, no matter if the slow one is hugely important and far-reaching. Delta has become a static storyline. Omicron is the hot new story that changes daily.

effectively they're looking at a bunch of older people getting very sick with delta and a bunch of younger people getting less sick with omicron

The article is looking at 42 people, not a bunch, and from that small a sample you can't presume the population involved, there just isn't enough information.

lot of chatter around how we may see a hybrid wave of Delta-Omicron in many communities currently facing a hefty Delta wave\. Hotez is championing that ,as well as a few others.

and that'll be the takeaway for millions of people, who are already saying "well this shit's milder, so I guess we can breathe".

Given so many tens of millions here didn't give much of a shit about delta or its antecedents, even before the vaccine, I'm not sure what difference it makes if the latest variant is stronger *or* milder.

Agreed, I'm so cynical, but it really does seem like there is ~30% (or more, depending on the region) of this country that will just never get vaccinated, no matter what.

COVID speculation is exhibit A in my case that everyone needs their gahdamn twitter access taken away from them immediately and forever afterward. You might as well gaze into your tv static and divine the latest variant news.

There sure seems to be a whole ton of optimism in the touring world, it seems like 4-5 major tour announcements a day for the past week or so.

Not that I blame any touring artists for putting this on hold for so long and not having anything to plan, but it's still weird to switch tabs between COVID updates and new tour announcements.

The article is looking at 42 people, not a bunch, and from that small a sample you can't presume the population involved, there just isn't enough information.

well, yes, there's that too. it's an anecdote. i do see the "it's milder" claim a lot though (not just that FT article), and it _always_ misses the extremely confounding point that the average person with covid in december 2020 is younger than the average person with covid in june 2020.

but if the vaccines turn out to be not effective against Omicron, then you can't assume that either, where Omicron predominates.

um, december 2021?

the thing about 'immunity' is it's seen too often as a light-switch. even if preliminary neut data showed a five-fold reduction in neutralization, that wouldn't necessarily translate to a 5-fold less protection against Omicron. we have our T-cells and B-cells, and the disease is no longer fully 'novel' to us as it was in 2020. (even then, the average person wouldn't go to the hospital or die from it, but the chances that they would , of course, would be higher than today, when they may have been exposed to said virus or been inoculated and boosted). we don't need 'perfect' protection to be protected.

breakthrough infections might go up, but severe disease may not. and we don't know how this impacts Long COVID.

Good tweet today:

Okay folks, still lot of uncertainty around severity of disease, but here’s what I’ve gleaned from latest data and many chats that @mroliverbarnes and I have had with the brilliant, tireless doctors & public health officials in South Africa https://t.co/u4VJzy6671

Thread follows

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 7, 2021

but if the vaccines turn out to be not effective against Omicron, then you can't assume that either, where Omicron predominates.

― bulb after bulb, Tuesday, December 7, 2021 3:24 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you can't assume it but observationally we apparently know it. if true though you're right that it's consistent with vaccines being at least somewhat effective.

Here's some preliminary neutralization data:

First data on Omicron neutralization by @sigallab pic.twitter.com/lOXtT7VZ2i

— Björn Meyer (@_b_meyer) December 7, 2021

And more commentary on that lab study:

Preliminary data on Omicron and whether it escapes vaccine antibodies shows immune escape is “robust” but NOT complete- it’s partial! Reduction in nAbs was even LESS in those who had a previous infection & two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. Boosters should be able to take this on!🧵

— Chise 🧬🧫🦠💉 (@sailorrooscout) December 7, 2021

(i apologize, this is my last one - figured since it's news it belongs here).

person working on study seems like he's saying this is better news than feared, even though it isn't great:

Just be be clear on something as I'm still awake, this was better than I expected of Omicron. The fact that it still needs the ACE2 receptor and that escape is incomplete means its a tractable problem with the tools we got

— Alex Sigal (@sigallab) December 7, 2021

(I have zero clue what the ACE inhibitor thing means)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McuLM-Zfg8w

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/forecasting/forecasts-cases.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/images/science/forecasting/cases/december2021/National-Forecast-Incident-Cases-2021-12-06.jpg

what... what are they basing that projected line on lol. 'it's just gonna go down somehow'

ah, so they're saying that the nonexistent interventions like increased social distancing and mask enforcement will slow this down, got it

pharmacy no longer accepting walkins for booster, pushed back from this friday to next. not hearing anything about shortages for boosters in the usa so not finding this worrying i guess? sooner is better than later of course.

Which pharmacy?

it's a mom and pop

lol uk gov has invoked "PLAN B" and everyone is totally going along with this idea that it's some kind of defcon 1 - my company's ceo sent out an email just after the announcement saying we are currently assessing the implications of this bombshell announcement &c... once again plan b entails virtually nothing, it is literally wfh "guidance", proof of vaccination to get into stadium gigs & such and that's it. who gives a shit?

(I have zero clue what the ACE inhibitor thing means)

ACE2 receptor: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7653219/

Covid19 antibodies attach themselves to the protein spike that allows the virus to enter your cells via the ACE2 receptor, thus blocking them from using those cells as captive 'factories' in which to multiply.

Plan B isn't meaningless! It's saying we now need to be cautious when doing things as usual!

I guess it could be a big deal for some people whose work will tell them to start wfh again so it’s not completely “who gives a shit” but it still feels like a fairly minor step that is being treated as a game changer

WHO says there are preliminary signs omicron is milder as hospitalisations in South Africa remain low.

— Clare Wilson (@ClareWilsonMed) December 9, 2021

kiiiiiinda worried that they might be conflating milder disease with prior infection/vaccination just making disease less severe?

this is their viewpoint: https://www.afro.who.int/news/omicron-spreads-severe-cases-remain-low-south-africa

Headlines like this don't help:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/fully-vaccinated-omicron-infections/620953/

I mean fully vaxxed people contracted ancestral strain of COVID, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron has shown a 40-fold reduction in neutralization titers in the lab. None of this is shocking. The pandemic has always been all of our problem, just moreso now with greater escape.

The unvaccinated are still going to have the worse outcomes, which is what the author seems to be missing

I mean boosted people will get it, but it's not a complete immune escape

i haven't read the article (seems dumb) but tbf every time there's a wave that overwhelms hospitals, vaccinated people have to postpone treatment or even suffer preventable deaths.

not great at a public health level (a lot of people out there with very little or no protection!), but could be worse

1. VACCINE EFFECTIVENESS (symptomatic infection)
*caveat: early estimates*

Real-world surveillance data shows a significant reduction in VE for Omicron vs Delta

* 2x AZ, VE is ZERO
* 2x Pfizer, VE is ~30%

BUT! Boosters increase VE to 70-75% (Pfizer, in the 1st month) pic.twitter.com/qcHCUEwSPL

— Meaghan Kall (@kallmemeg) December 10, 2021

where's the moderna data?

where are the tax returns?

Effectiveness in what sense? Protection against catching it, or protection against serious illness (hospitalization) and death? Because I could have sworn I read/heard that the current vaccines are likely still effective against Omicron when it comes to preventing hospitalization and death.

Vaccines have always been about protecting against serious illness and death.

These jabs, that is.