Covid-19 miscellany

[Loren Pechtel]

May I remind everyone; omicron is not omega

The virus doesn't speak Greek.

As Toni points out, Omicron happened because Delta remained unchecked.

Omicron is not descended from Delta.

I wasn't talking to the virus. Which works out well because Omicron can't read.

As more variants emerge, it does not mean that previous variants have disappeared. But uncontained strains of COVID does lead to new mutations/variants

The comment about Greek is that nothing says it will stop when it reaches Omega. It's not like it has a defined course.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The fact that you and Elixir have a sclerotic poverty of imagination and a limited understanding of counterfactuals is not my problem. The fact that you both appear to believe that the last delta wave would have been the last of COVID all together is an aggressively stupid thing to believe.

You're shooting down your own position. Variants come along that escape "beneficial" immunity. You're betting on a horse that isn't even in the race.

 

[Toni]

May I remind everyone; omicron is not omega

The virus doesn't speak Greek.

As Toni points out, Omicron happened because Delta remained unchecked.

Omicron is not descended from Delta.

I wasn't talking to the virus. Which works out well because Omicron can't read.

As more variants emerge, it does not mean that previous variants have disappeared. But uncontained strains of COVID does lead to new mutations/variants

The comment about Greek is that nothing says it will stop when it reaches Omega. It's not like it has a defined course.

Right.

 

[Metaphor]

For fuck sakes, stop using math and stats if you lack the understanding of what those things mean. Yes, Omicron less deadly. However, it led to the second highest daily death toll in the US because it made up for lack of killing power with bulk infections.

For fuck's sake, read the fuck what I fucking wrote and try the fuck to fucking understand it.

The total number of deaths (not death rate) will be lower with the emergence of omicron than it would have been had some other variant emerged. The daily number of deaths worldwide is nowhere near the peak of the daily number of deaths in previous wave peaks, and omicron is also occupying a biological niche that would make equally transmissible but more deadly variants unlikely, and protects against previous, more deadly variants.

That's fucking marvelous. And if Beta or Gamma has a baby?

What if it does? Omicron protected against delta even though it is not a delta offshoot and developed independently.

If your counterfactual is "it would have been better for all waves of COVID to stop than have omicron emerge", I don't know the fuck to say to you.

 

[Metaphor]

In the case of COVID19, the virus has mutated in those who are not vaccinated, so we have multiple strains active, some of which are less controlled by current vaccine.

The Omicron mutation is a blessing, given it has displaced Delta, gives protection against Delta for people who get Omicron, has a much, much, much lower rate of causing severe disease and death, and will result in the end of the pandemic.

The data out of South Africa is misleading. Omicron has about half the lethality of Delta. However, it kills slower, causing misleading measurements.

Incorrect. Omicron has 10% of the lethality of delta.

How the omicron variant differs from delta

The extremely transmissible omicron variant continues to cause record numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, despite causing less severe disease than delta.

www.cnet.com

As I said, misleading. It takes longer to kill so comparing the death rate at a certain point in the wave to the Delta wave will produce an answer lower than reality.

I have seen no evidence that 'it takes longer to kill'.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

COVID was not over after the last delta wave. COVID will never be over. It is a blessing that the current wave is omicron and not delta or an even more deadly variant. Omicron has displaced delta and it is unlikely that a variant that is more contagious and more deadly than omicron can displace omicron. Pretending that the last delta wave was as bad as it could have gotten is achingly naive. Omicron will bring about the end of COVID as pandemic, and will usher in COVID as endemic disease. This is not something I conjured because I am evil and/or a moron, as you seem to think. I listened to multiple informed opinions about it.

There is absolutely no reason to think there can't be another variant that's more dangerous. Diseases evolve to improve transmissibility. Covid does most of it's transmission before patients get substantially sick, thus evolution isn't going to drive it milder. We got lucky with Omicron, but that doesn't say the next variant will be less dangerous.

I am tired of talking about this and I have no interest in dissuading you or Elixir of anything. I believe and hope I am right and that by the end of this year we talk about covid about as much as we talk about the seasonal flu.

That's basically impossible. It's in wildlife and thus can't be stomped out, it's also far more deadly than the flu. It's also likely we will have more highly mutated jumps back from wildlife. This has changed the world, we will never be back to 2019.

 

[Metaphor]

The fact that you and Elixir have a sclerotic poverty of imagination and a limited understanding of counterfactuals is not my problem. The fact that you both appear to believe that the last delta wave would have been the last of COVID all together is an aggressively stupid thing to believe.

You're shooting down your own position. Variants come along that escape "beneficial" immunity. You're betting on a horse that isn't even in the race.

Other people are betting on a past race that didn't happen!

A variant was going to emerge after delta. It did. That variant was omicron. Of all the possible configurations of variants to emerge, omicron is not the most ideal (least awful) possible but its configuration is better than most possible configurations.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The real cause of the C19 problems is jet travel. C19 is usually mild and resembles other ordinary viral infections. By the time it was recognized, it was already on jets headed for crowded airports. Airports in Rome and New York and Rio and Johannesburg and everywhere else. It was a global epidemic, a novel viral infection, before anyone even knew it exists, much less how to deal with it. Not just deal with it medically, deal with it on a government policy level.
For all of human history, such infections would rarely spread beyond a tiny area. Because transportation was slow and rare. Since intercontinental jet travel probably isn't going anywhere, who knows what other infectious disasters are out there? Imagine a disease like AIDS, only more contagious. Very slow to incubate, but deadly and transmissible by air and touch.

Jets mean it spreads faster but what it did to Wuhan has nothing to do with airplanes.

 

[Metaphor]

There is absolutely no reason to think there can't be another variant that's more dangerous. Diseases evolve to improve transmissibility. Covid does most of it's transmission before patients get substantially sick, thus evolution isn't going to drive it milder. We got lucky with Omicron, but that doesn't say the next variant will be less dangerous.

Oh, so we 'got lucky' with omicron, but when I say the exact same thing, it's as if I fucking engineered COVID in Wuhan myself, such is the bile.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Legacy media still mute on John Hopkins study that found lockdowns etc to cause more harm than good;

A Johns Hopkins professor slammed his university and the mainstream media for downplaying a study conducted by economists at the university that found that COVID-19 lockdowns only reduced virus deaths by 0.2 percent. Dr. Martin Makary warned that 'people may already have their own narrative written' about the effectiveness of lockdowns in an interview with Tucker Carlson Wednesday night. 'Johns Hopkins itself did not even put out a press release about this study, and if you look at the media coverage, it's one of the biggest stories in the world today, and yet certain media outlets have not even covered it,' Makary told the Fox News host. Economists at the college carried out a meta-analysis and found that restrictions imposed in the spring of 2020 - including stay-at-home orders, compulsory masks and social distancing - only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2 percent. They warned that lockdowns caused 'enormous economic and social costs' and concluded that they were 'ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument' going forward.

Daily Mail

It's not being covered because they're recognizing it for what it is--shit.

1) Note that while they refer to "lockdown" they're really examining all NPIs.

2) It's designed to fail--they rigged it so it wouldn't see the successes.

3) Even if true all it's actually showing is that when you do a shitty job it doesn't work.

This is simply one of the myriad pieces of shit that have been flooding pre-print servers and then being trumped as "research" despite the fact that it hasn't gone through peer review.

 

[repoman]

I think what is going on is that the learned antibodies from the vaccine are being made by response to the omicron infection. The means the antibodies that ALSO are good to fight the nearly extinct delta will be make. Big whoop.

But these antibodies are not so good at fighting omicron and the body is often NOT making highly tailored anitbodies to omicron because it doesn't think it needs to.

So when a direct descendant to omicron comes along the people who got omicron AFTER original or delta covid infection or the current vaccines will have lost a bit of time to make omicron-like antibodies.

But someone getting omicron recently who was not vaxxed or previously infected would have had a higher chance of bad outcome, BUT would have also had a better chance of making more up to date antibodies.

Or you could give an omicron vaccine to those who are NOT verified to have had an omicron infection.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you are telling me to endorse the government forcing medical procedures on unwilling persons, solely for the benefit of others: I am not going to endorse that.

Then we have to get rid of the crime of driving under the influence because we can't actually figure out if someone is guilty without forcing medical procedures on unwilling persons solely for the benefit of others.

Incorrect. Omicron itself is reducing the likelihood that a more deadly virus that is just as contagious as omicron emerges. Omicron is occupying the biological niche.

Omicron has no ability to block something else from entering the niche.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They may be, but the waves will be less deadly than they would have been if this wave had been a delta mutation, for example. Being infected with omicron gives you protection against delta (and possibly other variants, including possible future variants), and omicron is occupying the biological niche that will hopefully crowd out deadlier variants. Indeed, just this morning I was reading that most of the people infected with omicron do not know it - the fatality rate is probably much lower than even 1/10 of delta.

[Citation needed]

Infection with Delta provides little protection against infection with Omicron, so why should we expect infection with Omicron to provide much protection against Delta?

 

[repoman]

They may be, but the waves will be less deadly than they would have been if this wave had been a delta mutation, for example. Being infected with omicron gives you protection against delta (and possibly other variants, including possible future variants), and omicron is occupying the biological niche that will hopefully crowd out deadlier variants. Indeed, just this morning I was reading that most of the people infected with omicron do not know it - the fatality rate is probably much lower than even 1/10 of delta.

[Citation needed]

Infection with Delta provides little protection against infection with Omicron, so why should we expect infection with Omicron to provide much protection against Delta?

read my post two above yours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

from there

 

[Metaphor]

Then we have to get rid of the crime of driving under the influence because we can't actually figure out if someone is guilty without forcing medical procedures on unwilling persons solely for the benefit of others.

Breathing into a breathalyser is not a medical procedure.

Omicron has no ability to block something else from entering the niche.

The ability for a COVID variant to enter and then take over omicron's niche is lower than omicron's ability to enter and take over delta's niche, because omicron crowded out delta with its virus-survival properties: it infected more people and was less likely to kill the host.

 

[Metaphor]

They may be, but the waves will be less deadly than they would have been if this wave had been a delta mutation, for example. Being infected with omicron gives you protection against delta (and possibly other variants, including possible future variants), and omicron is occupying the biological niche that will hopefully crowd out deadlier variants. Indeed, just this morning I was reading that most of the people infected with omicron do not know it - the fatality rate is probably much lower than even 1/10 of delta.

[Citation needed]

Infection with Delta provides little protection against infection with Omicron, so why should we expect infection with Omicron to provide much protection against Delta?

I don't care what you expect. It's a fact. I've already linked to sources in this thread, but:

Omicron may protect against Delta variant: Study - Times of India

South Africa-based researchers found that those who previously caught the Delta variant could contract Omicron, while those who get the Omicron strain

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Omicron infection appears to protect against Covid delta variant and could displace it, South Africa study finds

If omicron also proves less severe than delta, Covid infections could prove less disruptive to society, according to South African scientists.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Lockdowns don't work in the USA, because the USA is utterly pathetic at protecting its people against poverty.

If you want people to stay at home, you need to pay people to stay at home. Lockdowns don't work if they're all stick and no carrot.

I think was more a matter of the trumpets taking a screw-you approach.

Well illustrated by a thread elsewhere (now deleted, I can't link it.) It started with a complaint about a large party back when such things were forbidden. The homeowner was taking the position that there was no involuntary risk being imposed and thus no reason to prohibit his actions. The issue of the risk to the medical people that were treating the fools. His opinion was that they knew they signed up for the risk when they went to medical school, thus it doesn't matter. I never looked up the exact house involved but it was one of the most expensive parts of town.

We also see a huge difference in infection rates between Democrats and Republicans.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Legacy media still mute on John Hopkins study that found lockdowns etc to cause more harm than good;

A Johns Hopkins professor slammed his university and the mainstream media for downplaying a study conducted by economists at the university that found that COVID-19 lockdowns only reduced virus deaths by 0.2 percent. Dr. Martin Makary warned that 'people may already have their own narrative written' about the effectiveness of lockdowns in an interview with Tucker Carlson Wednesday night. 'Johns Hopkins itself did not even put out a press release about this study, and if you look at the media coverage, it's one of the biggest stories in the world today, and yet certain media outlets have not even covered it,' Makary told the Fox News host. Economists at the college carried out a meta-analysis and found that restrictions imposed in the spring of 2020 - including stay-at-home orders, compulsory masks and social distancing - only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2 percent. They warned that lockdowns caused 'enormous economic and social costs' and concluded that they were 'ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument' going forward.

Daily Mail

It's not being covered because they're recognizing it for what it is--shit.

1) Note that while they refer to "lockdown" they're really examining all NPIs.

2) It's designed to fail--they rigged it so it wouldn't see the successes.

3) Even if true all it's actually showing is that when you do a shitty job it doesn't work.

This is simply one of the myriad pieces of shit that have been flooding pre-print servers and then being trumped as "research" despite the fact that it hasn't gone through peer review.

It was also written by economists.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Elixir]

Omicron has 10% of the lethality of delta.

What a blessing. 10% the lethality, and SEVENTEEN TIMES the cases.
Only 1.7 times the deaths.
PRAYZA LOAD!

If someone wants to take on the task of teaching the statistically crippled why that's not a blessing, be my guest.