Whenever they quote scientists, however, it sounds more like "We don't know, so better safe than sorry."
Are there any HN readers who know a thing or two about biotech that could shed light on the science of what we know and the current risk of this variant?
- The World Health Organization cautioned countries against hastily imposing travel restrictions linked to Omicron, saying they should take a “risk-based and scientific approach”. It would take several weeks to determine the variant’s transmissibility and the effectiveness of vaccines and therapeutics against it, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said, noting that 100 sequences of the variant have been reported so far. People should continue to wear masks whenever possible, avoid large gatherings, ventilate rooms and maintain hand hygiene, he added.
- South Africa condemned the decision of other countries to impose travel restrictions as ‘unjustified’. The health minister, Joe Phaahla, Phaahla said South Africa was acting with transparency, and that travel bans introduced by a number of countries against southern African nations are “completely against the norms and standards” of the WHO. Phaahla called on all South Africans over the age of 12 to come forward and receive the vaccine, which he said remained a “major bulwark” against infection and severe illness.
- South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa will discuss reimposing lockdown restrictions at a meeting on Sunday, as the country scrambles to assess the potential for Omicron to unleash a deadly fourth wave. As I’ve mentioned above, the government appealed for people to get jabbed as soon as possible - only around 35% of South Africans have been vaccinated.I'm not saying that restricting travel is necessarily the right approach (though it probably is), but nothing in your comment really strikes me as compelling evidence that it's the wrong approach.
> Taking a risk-averse approach in a highly risky and uncertain situation isn't inconsistent with the WHO's recommendation to take a "risk-based and scientific approach."
South Africa interpreted the WHO's statements as being against imposing travel bans. The first sentence of your comment implies you agree that that's what they meant. It's either that, or the WHO's statements are meaningless verbiage.
This looks like the events of early 2020 repeating.
[0] https://www.foxnews.com/media/who-china-taiwan-interview
I linked fox because it was the first link to pop up but the same news was picked by several other national and international outlets across the political spectrum.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/senior-who-adv...
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/who-taiwan-bruce-aylward
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8172031/WHO-officia...
A very bad outcome (which we don't have enough information to rule out) is hospitals being overwhelmed with sick people, so that some patients are left untreated, with a greatly increased rate of dying as a result. The reason this is possible is because there are a large number of mutations in this variant, which might allow it to bypass people's immunity. This can make immunity acquired through previous infection or vaccination ineffective.
People that claim this kind of stuff "just makes sense" aren't taking into consideration the second order effects on human behavior that might make things even worse. For example closing outdoor parks probably made things much worse because people would meet inside instead...
Health professionals were factoring in second order effects. The problem is that there isn't a wealth of research or evidence which shows which option is more likely to work. So a lot of at least in the early days was trial/error.
What would do know is that increased mobility translates to increased cases. And so opening parks whilst much safer than being inside results in increased mobility as people need transport to/from those parks.
If you didn't have that quarantine they would be out in the wild infecting people. Not what you want when many parts of our country e.g. Western Australia had zero community transmissions.
Without some sort of travel bans there is no way you could manage that level of inflow.
BioNTech/Pfizer already said that they need 90-100 days to put together an entirely new vaccine.
The infrastructure for distribution is already in place given that the 1st vaccination round is not over yet and people who had the first round are now getting boosters.
The Merck/Pfizer pill should not be affected by mutations given that it's oriented at the effects. They are both approved in the US and are about to be approved in Europe, the US purchased 10M doses in advance.
Masks , temp check, vaccination status check are already commonplace.
THIS IS NOT US GOING BACK TO MARCH 2020. EVEN IN THE WORST CASE SCENARIO.
They're working on it [2]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w [2] https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-o...
A biostatistician friend of mine pointed me to this relatively optimistic Twitter thread [2], though this response [3] is much more pessimistic.
[0] https://kalshi.com/markets/VOHC-001
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-i...
[2] https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005676842184705
[3] https://twitter.com/theodora_nyc/status/1464257411582148608
I'll come back to this message in 10 years to see how history looks at this situation.
* Government declares war on this thing and pays people to work as nurses
* Don't ventilate people
* Focus more on treatments early, spray and pray with drugs that already exist
* US centric. US is huge. All hospitals won't get over run. Only in certain parts of country. Move people out of big cities and into mid west
* Focus only on older people quarantine. Everyone still keeps their jobs and everyone can help their older neighbor or older family members financially.
* Start fitness surveillance on people. Only people eat well and work out can get "passports" to go places.
* Government calls it like it is, declares war on obesity, gives everyone a peloton and you have to ride it every night. If you have BMI over a certain amount you have to quarantine. Fast food is banned, smoking is banned, soft drinks are banned. McDonalds and other fast food restaurants pay for treatment and everyone killed by Covid. Deaths would be similar to a bad flu season since only generally healthy people would get it.
Some of those are more tongue and cheek.
Again though this would have been similar to Hong Kong flu if it hit 40 years ago. Humans basically killed themselves, especially in the US. We were on a collision course with something like this for the last 30 years.
People said we didn't do enough sooner or we didn't see this coming. Na, it had been coming for decades.
At first the healthcare system was overwhelmed. Then Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell posted his rebellion video to YouTube, which said, essentially, “why are we following terrible advice to ventilate early? This is very bad medicine.” (I think Dr. Kyle-Sidell had previously only intubated patients who were actually in respiratory distress, and thought the non-distressed patients whose lungs he was damaging actually had something sort of like HAPE.)
After the rebellion video ventilations fell off a cliff. The media stopped telling us how many ventilators we were short, because they weren’t needed anymore.
I came across the doctor’s letter in a medical journal. Don’t think the observation about hypocapnia was ever followed up on: https://twitter.com/taxicabjesus/status/1455405908826091520
First of all, how would we lockdown? Completely ignoring any mental health effects, I don't see how lockdowns are sustainable, because of the economic implications and how they affect education. How the fuck are we going to produce goods and raise children without (minimal, masked) in-person interaction?
But the virus seems so transmissible, that anything below a full lockdown will almost useless. The virus could be so transmissible that even if people only go shopping and to work, and wear masks, it will still spread to everyone. Even if it's not that transmissible, I don't see how governments can institute anything near full lockdowns without something like martial law, because people are not going to want to lock down. So with an R0 > 9 it's going to spread fast.
Then if the virus is remotely dangerous, hospitals will be significantly more overwhelmed. Considering that hospitals had to triage from the last two outbreaks - I can't imagine how many people would die.
Fortunately, the worst-case scenario is still very unlikely. The virus does seem to be very transmissible. But it also seems like vaccines still prevent hospitalization and death, and the virus itself might be less deadly. The probability for any mutation to completely break resistance from a vaccine / prior infections is very, very low.
Lastly, there's still a chance we can contain and eradicate this variant. That's why scientists are holding emergency meetings, countries are rapidly instituting travel bans and infected people / regions will probably be quarantined. We have hindsight that we didn't in 2020, and we even have technology to do fast testing and contact tracing. So there's a chance that your life may not be infected by this variant at all.
My back-of-the-hand barely-estimated odds are something like:
50% chance it's similar to, a little more prevalent than Delta, with similar immune escape. A slightly worse version of the current problem. 25% chance it turns out to be way more dangerous than Delta for some reason (requires a new vaccine, more deadly, way way more infectious etc). 25% chance it ends up being no big deal/not worse than delta/less deadly/little to no immune escape
But this is based on how these things have seemed to shake out over the last two years, not any sure science. Don't rely on me.
But I also said I agreed with the precautions being taken, so what's the issue?
That's the real problem here. Turning off the TV and stopping reading the news, crafted precisely to generate anxiety, is the solution. It will probably be a nothingburger, but the media need something to divert from the "mysterious" heart attacks. Remember, two years ago covid was presented as a very deadly virus and it turned out to be only dangerous for a very specific and small segment of the population (70+ yo and obese people).
b) Delta strain of COVID is affecting younger people at increasing rates [1] and at least here in Australia we are seeing hospitalisations with far more young people than in the past.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-07/delta-variant-of-covi...
Your link is pure fake news. It's an article trying to pass a known side effect of the mRNA medication (myocarditis) as stemming from the virus. Also it's from the press of an authoritarian country that is deporting people into camps...
b) Australia is not an authoritarian country by any definition and ABC News is highly respected as an independent news source.
One continued ray of hope: Paxlovid, the upcoming Pfizer drug, is designed against a viral protease and so we would not expect this variant to decrease this drug’s efficacy.
I have no idea how concerned you should be.
I've been staying out of such conversations. I have enough trouble getting taken seriously.
Biohackers aren't omniscient. This really sounds like you are hoping to hear from con artists and charlatans just to get some kind of reassurance.
I don't think that's a good thing to hope for, much less ask for.
It's a crap-shoot, We and other infection able animals are mere in vevo 'petri dishes' for the RNA which is highly mutable.
'An infinite number of Monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters', So it is a Chance and Probability game.
Infinite Monkey theorem - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA
The hypothesis that 'as viruses mutate they become more infectious but less deadly',
and wildfires will burn themselves out, only work when there is limited fuel, i.e. small communities with limited travel,
hence the lock-down/lock-out option is prudent at this time.
I'll take my chances. I will not trust the Federal government's dishonest "experts".