Omicron Variant: Early Analysis

Can someone clarify this part for me please? I find it incredibly hard to trust an author who starts a supposedly serious article with such sensationalist bullshit.

At this stage the virus has been found we know almost nothing else yet. And quoting Feigl-Ding is like quoting the exact opposite of a virus denier. Everything he ever sees is evidence that the sky is falling.

Vaccination rate in South Africa is only about 24% of the pop.

Just off the top of my head some of the things that would have caused the even the Alpha variant to spike:

We've just finished local elections i.e standing in long queues for an hour or two and the political rallies just before then.

Its summer and almost the end of the school year so lots of parties. I went to my kid's school carol thing this week. Outdoors but still 200 people all close together without masks. This included the hairdresser/epidemiologist mom who has done the research on why the vaccine is bad. (We have our share of idiots).

All the office parties are getting held now before everyone leaves for holidays or the government locks everyone down for Christmas. Think buffet style queue all using the same serving spoons, no hand sanitizing, questionable hygiene anyway after a few beers.

· Became dominant strain in South Africa in like a week (way faster than Delta). Must be either a superspreader event, much more transmissible, or much more evasive of antibodies.

· No real data on that cause, and no evidence for increased lethality. Will find out in next 1-2 weeks probably. Decent chance this becomes dominant worldwide and US soon, but not clear if that will be a problem or not.

· The one worrying data we know is the variant has a lot more mutations than other variants, which would make it likely to evade vaccine/antibody treatments – but not necessarily the other kinds of treatments.

· WHO not recommending countries to limit travel. Also problematic that vaccines aren't updating for new variants, and good chance FDA will be the bottleneck there.

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Do we need informed amateurs? Yes. But the crucial test is still whether they are accepted or promoted by the professionals. Zeynep Tufekci was vocalizing concerns that many professionals had, which is why her criticisms of health policy worked out.

In contrast, I have an extremely nerdy friend who has thinks it's her job to explain things to people, and thus writes deeply researched, well-footnoted blog posts about COVID, which are quite often wrong.

I for one can't tell what sort of person this is. But I also know that I'm not good at tagging facts with epistemic certainty. If I read a thing in a blog post it will probably stick, but I'll forget where I got that. So the simple solution it to not read it.

I think when it comes to writing explainers, it's 2021 and we have a wealth of resources and can wait for the professionals, including scientists who blog part time. I suggest that more people should be like me, and ignore the laypeople, indeed even most of the journalism, at least during the initial stages.

The way viruses normally work is that they evolve to be less deadly over time, and this evolution happens quite quickly. The less deadly strains spread quicker (because carriers aren't walled up in bed), and by the time the deadly strains get to people, they already have partial immunity after catching the less deadly strains.

Anyway, something has clearly changed. Coronaviruses have been around since forever, now we are getting more and more super spreaders appearing, seemingly, out of nowhere. As far as I can tell, the only thing that is different now than in the past that could be causing this is the lockdowns.