outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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.

Take a look at these jabs.

They're passing in between us.

They're the only three I got

Effectiveness in what sense?

That was my first thought, too. Presenting those numbers, that chart and that brief explanation in such an info-limited format as a tweet requires a whole load of background knowledge be present before you could interpret it correctly. It was practically begging to be misunderstood by the average lay reader.

Limiting spread is definitely a part of the vaccination goal, and I think underplaying that when it's been fairly successful has been a major messaging flaw. It may not be as effective either omicron, we don't really know yet, but we shouldn't give up on that goal.

It literally says "symptomatic infection" right next to Vaccine Effectiveness

These estimates keep in mind are not based on real world data (hence the word estimate). I've seen other estimates with lower estimates for boosted.

Kall is a reliable source though, was just reading her last night.

Honesty 75% against symp infection for boosted would be pretty great considering the mutations

What does "symptomatic infection" mean? Does that mean everything from the sniffles to serious trouble breathing?

It literally says "symptomatic infection" right next to Vaccine Effectiveness

yes, sure ,but "symptomatic" can mean anything from some sniffles and feeling abnormally tired up to dying and "effectiveness" doesn't explain who qualified to be among the individuals who made up the subjects, so that seeing "30%" we would also know who the other 70 members of the group of 100 included, whether the subject group was "all humans" or "healthy adults between 20 and 50 spending X hours per week in environments filled with the omicron contagion", or some other set of criteria.

Correction, this VE estimate IS based on some real world data.

That's actually reassuring but only for the boosted. Dying to know what it means for severe disease but obviously know why we can't calculate yet

Symptomatic infection means people who tested positive and have symptoms. It has never spoken to severity.

Yup. This data refers to symptomatic infection. This is the biggest/best/least anecdotal study I’ve seen so far. I’m not posting every tweet I see here.

The trials for authorizing use of the vaccines mostly focussed on severe illness and death (because a sniffle doesn’t justify emergency use authorization and severe symptoms are easier to detect for obvious reasons).

Symptomatic infection data is usually more useful for public health decisions since it’s to a great extent what determines whether you infect other people.

Not Kall herself, but one of the study contributors says she believes that VE against severe illness and death will hold at high levels even for 2-dosed individuals. That would tend to make sense considering how early data seems to be showing the rate of severe disease is lower at this point of Omicron than it was for Delta in SA - they either had prior infection from a different strain (majority) or possibly had vaccine (less folks) and have some but not complete protection, but at least are going to avoid the worst of it.

however, still not known "for sure". but such guesses aren't made purely from the gut, either. it's based on extrapolating what we saw in other variants with some form of immune escape.

frankly, this is good news compared to what was feared, as it should at least temporarily shut up the doomsayers who are saying basically we're back to March 2020 now. that is bullshit, we are not, which doesn't mean it's bad, because it is, but if we were back to square one with *this* strain, we would have to begin digging mass graves on every street corner right now.

(fully aware in some countries, this WAS a necessity, but it'd be a necessity pretty much everywhere)

Symptomatic infection data is usually more useful for public health decisions

I'm sure that is true. My only point was that for the vast numbers of us who have no background in epidemiology and are not tasked with making public health decisions, the only piece of information I can safely derive from the tweet and chart is that if you have had two doses of mRNA vaccine followed by a booster, then you are better protected from omicron than others who have not.

Since this extremely simple bit of information is much easier to convey in the extremely simple terms I just used, then unless you provide all the necessary concomitants for interpreting the extra information in the chart and numbers, we non-experts who read that tweet are very likely to make incorrect guesses about what those numbers mean. And then, we're likely to pass along our misinterpretations to others in a game of telephone, where the information gets even further garbled.

little more on the speculative side but I enjoy John Burns-Murdoch's statistical analysis of what's being seen in SA currently, and he's spent a lot of time talking to scientists and medical teams there in addition to statistical analysis.

long-thread, skip if you hate those

NEW thread: data show South Africa’s Omicron wave is resulting in less severe disease and death than past waves, though health officials say it’s too early to be sure, and severe outcomes will continue to climb.

Story by me, @jsphctrl, @mroliverbarnes: https://t.co/32sIrIQQ8M pic.twitter.com/6DClwASKVi

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 10, 2021

Christ. Aimless, it may surprise you to learn that sharing information with you is not the author of that tweet’s main job.

more thorough data which doesn't tell us much but still interesting to me to keep an eye on

18. Summary:
1. The nr of new #COVID19 cases are on a sharp increase and so is the test positivity rate
2. % of younger admissions = changing (becoming a smaller % of total admissions)
3. No signals of more severe disease
4. Most hospital admissions = unvaccinated people pic.twitter.com/vf6zlcf0Bo

— Mia Malan (@miamalan) December 10, 2021

58,194 Covid cases in the UK today: the highest number of cases reported since 9 January, when there were 59,937.

Another 120 deaths within 28 days of a positive test have also been recorded.