Omicron Update: Nov 27 | Hacker News Reader

Omicron Update: Nov 27

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

144 points0x008185 comments

Wow: "There were two flights from South Africa that landed in Amsterdam late last night. Upon arrival, all 600 passengers were tested on the tarmac and 61 tests came back positive. A 10% prevalence rate on a flight is unbelievably high. [...] Especially given all passengers were negative before take off."

Hopefully there was some contact between them before the flight to help explain that.

> Like defies imagination (as Bergstrom said).

Could there be another source for this?

Hasn’t uniformity in test / detection standards been a source in region to region variability in some instances?

My suspicion is falsified test results. Since there is no control over lab results nor any verification, falsifying test results is trivial. ...easier than even getting the test even if you think you are negative.

This is why travel bans need to be much much more rapid in response to outbreaks.

As fast as this virus spreads, I suspect travel bans are useless. By the time you discovery an outbreak, it's already circulating in your population.

Reasoning from purely a physical system perspective, I'm confident that a travel "ban" will slow its spread, especially the earlier you enforce it.

But agreed it will never be 100% effective.

The question remains is the slowing worth the ban? Bans are painful, but any slowing will buy professionals more time to study it and begin targetted mitigations, and while the total infected is smaller than otherwise.

Trade-offs...

Also due to unequal sequencing efforts, countries like South Africa and England get travel bans for being the first to find such a variant.

We're banning the messenger.

So far 13 have tested positive for Omicron.

From the local Dutch rules and news: Not all required testing. Fully vaccinated EU citizens could be on that flight without being tested. They changed the rules to require testing for everyone after these two flights were already in the air.

Out of the 61 positive tests, today 13 were confirmed to be the omicron variant.

The comment that passengers were "negative before take-off" is largely false. Only non-vaccinated passengers were required to show a negative PCR test (max 48h old) or RAG test (max 24h old), vaccinated passengers were allowed to board without any restrictions.

Source (in Dutch): https://nos.nl/l/2407382

Note: that source states 13 of those 61 people are confirmed to have the Omikron variant.

And for completeness, the sequencing hasn't finished yet so that number may still rise.

Primary source for all figures mentioned so far: https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/coronavariant-omikron-tot-nu-toe-...

How, is there a new test for Omicron variant? And is it available in the US?

No, it’s confirmed via sequencing. But the Omicron variant has a qPCR dropout like Alpha had, so you can identify likely cases from PCR tests and then use sequencing to verify.

So 50 others were flying presumably infected with standard or unknown variants, but since they are vaccinated it would have gone unchecked?

All passengers on any flight leaving South Africa must show a negative PCR test, including those who have been vaccinated.

Source: https://www.gov.za/covid-19/individuals-and-households/trave...

Ah thanks. That sorts out why the passengers were tested despite dutch regulations.

That’s confusingly worded and not enforced. I can confirm that fully vaccinated people flying from South Africa to the Netherlands did not need negative PCR tests until this week. You’re only required to fill in a declaration of vaccination status on the South African side.

Source: I did the trip in late October, and colleagues just returned in mid-November. None of us had to have negative PCR or any other tests.

On today’s episode of BBC World Service podcast they interviewed a canadian journalist who flew on one of those flights and she said that they as passangers were not asked to get tested before boarding.

She said she only tested herself since her following flight from AMS mandated it.

And receiving a negative test does not rule out being positive. The false negative rates - even for pcr - are high double digits (and depend on the phase of the infection). Lots of good research proving it, and yet not widely publicized.

And a third of passengers were not wearing masks during the flight despite it being mandatory.

It's just security theater, we pretend to obey the rules, and they pretend to check.

Based on…? I’ve been on 4 Delta flights in the last 3 months and the flight attendants were militant about masks. They told a woman in front of me on one flight that if they had to tell her to keep it above her nose a third time she was going to be banned from future delta flights.

From personal experience, KLM is quite lax about it.

You tried Delta flights but you didn't try Omicron flights :-)

its never too early for humour

Regardless of airlines, masks come off for drinks and snacks. They remain off as long as you look like you're still sipping on that coffee and when you're done, they're usually only loosely enforced back on. It really is a big joke.

The only explanation I can think of is that "especially given all passengers were negative" is false.

An interesting thought experiment is, what's the correct public health response if it appears that Omicron is more contagious but less serious than Delta, and catching Omicron is mutually exclusive with catching Delta or any other strain.

I know I wouldn't want to be the public health people trying to wrestle with the pros and cons of response in this kind of setup, must be really tricky to get things even close to right.

That's the big question. A theory that this already happened in Japan was posted here in the last few weeks.

Those are big "ifs", and especially "catching Omicron is mutually exclusive with catching Delta or any other strain" seems a bit unlikely. Namely, if there's a mutated strain which is resistant to vaccines targeting the previous strain, then it also implies that it's likely that the immune response from one won't fit the other much, just as previously with different strains of flu allowing reinfection.

Could quite possibly be true, although the article presents very preliminary evidence that we do not have vaccine escape (or not complete, anyway).

I mean the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission/infection for Delta (or Alpha) either, it just makes the symptoms milder.

Edit: For whomever downvoted, here you go:

> Prior to the emergence of the delta variant, it was reported that the risk of symptomatic cases in household contacts of vaccinated cases was about 50% lower than that among household contacts of unvaccinated cases(22). However, the impact of vaccination on reducing transmission in the context of the more transmissible delta variant appears to be lower(23).

https://www.who.int/news/item/24-11-2021-interim-statement-o...

And/or: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Interesting, but not especially relevant. Omicron has biologists worried because it appears to be different enough that it may be able to evade the immune defenses that we have to the existing SARS-Cov-2 strains. The thing they are afraid of is that you can catch both viruses, and get the disease twice.

Your first statement is based on a misquote from a health official, and your second quote is false. If indeed there is some antibody evasion then you could catch both variants at once or sequentially.

It’s a thought experiment, not a factual statement.

How about this thought experiment: what if we had no PCR tests. We would not care about asymptomatic or mild cases.

I’ve wondered about this too. How many past pandemics has similar mutations? We have no idea. Maybe less. Maybe more.

In that way this pandemic is probably providing a treasure trove of data for calibrating models on how past diseases may have progressed.

Soon we won't: https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert...

That’s not what that means. It’s just the withdrawal of PCR assays that can only detect SARS-CoV-2 in favour of newer assays that can detect both it and Influenza A/B.

Ah, last time I looked there were no other PCRs available. I see now a new EUA for Flu SC2.

We would still worry because of their ability to spread to people more at risk

Even if Omicron is less serious than delta, we can't strictly consider it harmless. Nor can we rule out the possibility of a new deadlier variant created if Omicron keep spreading.

Yep exactly part of the problem, if such a thing occurred you'd be weighing off a short term apparent gain with a very real risk of it leading to more problems down the line.

I'm curious about this, too. I wonder, does a more mild variant mean a reduced risk of long-term complications?

I kind of skimmed the article, was there a mention of the mortality or long-haul rate that I might have missed? Since viruses mutate to become less deadly with time, we would expect later variants to be less dangerous than earlier ones. Without knowing the mortality rate of Omicron it's hard to do any useful risk analysis.

It's too early to say, but the on-the-ground anecdotal reports suggest it is not particularly severe or lethal, based on observations so far. But it will take weeks to start knowing about mortality and months to see evidence of long illness.

The best case scenario is that the mutations that make it more infectious also make it less virulent/lethal, and the super-early evidence suggests that is at least possibly true of this variant.

Severe illness and hospitalizations lag infections by weeks, so the initial data is biased.

Deaths lag on the order of two months.

    > Deaths lag on the order of two months

Pure BS.

People clearly don’t die immediately after infection. Consider that most people dying in North America were being kept alive on a ventilator.

Not sure why a two month lag is so hard to believe.

Those people would be classified as hospitalized inside two months though.

While true, its highly unlikely Omicron actually exploded into existence in the last 2 weeks. It's likely been circulating for months and we've just now discovered it.

I wrote "weeks to start knowing about mortality".

Obviously, more time will bring more complete knowledge.

Viruses don't necessarily become less deadly over time. That's just a frequent side effect of natural selection. Living people without debilitating symptoms are better spreaders. But the COVID virus already tends to be spreadable before the illness peaks.

But yeah, other than the virus flaming out completely, the second best scenario is an extremely mild variant dominating and yielding immunity to all the others.

I tend to disagree. I think we have it wrong when we think of infected or not. I think the reality of it is many slight exposures over periods of time where people's bodies have higher immunity and lower immunity towards things. For example if I am breathing covid at a rate of 5% of everyone else and I don't get "infected" but I get a few particles that replicate but don't take hold - I probably will get labeled one of the "asymptomic" folks. Compare that to someone that get's a mouth full of it - will probably get sick because of the viral load.

When there's a crap-ton of it in the air, even without a mask say at a public park where you're standing far away from someone - someone's covid particles are probably being inhaled - again, since the virus is now "everywhere" it offers a chance for more people to get that slight infection that doesn't take hold. And I say slight because while there's a lot, it's spread over a a large area due to wind, so it's like getting a 1% infection instead of the 100% indoor infection.

there’s not a ‘crap-ton’ of (active) covid floating around in the air, super-especially not outside. the virus is relatively fragile and falls apart rapidly due to a variety of natural and man-made forces. moreover, outside, there is a shit-ton of air for the virus to dissipate into far away from any and all people. active virus can only really concentrate to threshold infectious levels when in face-to-face conversation due to continuous exposure of active virus (before it falls apart due to external forces).

with that said, yes, getting a lot of under-threshold exposure can build immunity without getting sick (i.e., asymptomatic infection). this is a mechanism that’s often used by our bodies to develop novel disease resistance, but has been suppressed for public discussion for largely mediopolitical reasons.

I don't think it's suppressed. Who hasn't heard about viral load at this point? It's just poorly understood.

it’s not just ignorance. many people find the idea that ‘exposure to a little viral load trains the immune system without overloading it’ to be a very dangerous one worthy of suppression, even though it’s common and natural, because it throws into question the rhetoric buttressing current mandates. it’s never even whispered by democrats or their sympathetic media, for example. folks highly supportive of mandates, evidenced by voting/moderation patterns here and on social media, as another.

It's not being suppressed. Policy needs to have a basis in research and scientific consensus, and my understanding is that there is not currently a great deal of research on exposure to small amounts of virus on humans, in real life conditions. For one thing, there are major ethics and safety issues to studying this. For another, viruses don't all behave the same.

The effect that viruses mutate to become less deadly over time only counts for a specific subset of viruses.

The evolutionary goal for a virus is to have more copies of itself. Killing a patient 3 days after infecting them is a poor strategy for this, so the only option for these kinds of super deadly viruses is either kill a population outright and die out with the population (dead people don't spread viruses), OR if the virus is lucky it will mutate into a less deadly variant to be able to spread to more people.

The specific subset of viruses that will evolve to become less deadly have two properties:

1) They kill quickly

2) They kill most people

The problem with Covid is that it doesn't have these properties. It's only deadly for approximately 1% of the population, so it will continue spreading even if it ends up killing the host, because for every 100 people only 1 has stopped spreading.

The other problem is that Covid doesn't kill quickly, if I recall correctly, most people die after week 2-3. Covid will spread even before the host is symptomatic, so again there is no evolutionary advantage to mutate away this trait.

1) if people with mild or no symptoms keep moving among the population, but people with severe symptoms stay at home, then there would be a strong evolutionary pressure to cause milder symptoms

2) "dead people don't spread viruses"...UNLESS it's a zombie virus

The mildness or severity of symptoms is determined after the period of maximum contagiousness.

What you are talking about sounds nice in theory but it doesn’t really add up based on how this virus works. If anything there is a pretty strong argument the other way… a more contagious version of covid will probably have a higher viral load and this probably lead to higher chance of serious disease be (like delta).

Your 1) only matters if transmission is related to symptoms. If the virus is transmissible for a while before the symptoms like Covid, symptom severity matters less (pre-symptom R-value gains outweigh post-symptom R-value losses). Reductively, if you’ve already infected your social circle pre-symptoms, what happens next is much less relevant to the virus’ lifecycle.

Even if symptoms don't impact transmission directly, if you're out circulating in the population (as opposed to self-isolating or in the hospital), you'll be able to infect more people.

Unless, of course, self-isolation or quarantine are entirely ineffective, which is not totally out of the question but I think people staying at home probably do spread it at least a bit less than people headed to the grocery store.

Viruses simply diversify through mutation. They can be more or less infectious, more or less deadly, etc in any combination and selection pressure over the long term tends to lead to less deadly more infectious variants dominating. In the mean time more dangerous variants can do a lot of damage.

What the Spanish Flu, most deaths occurred in the second and third waves from more virulent and deadly variants.

Do predators mutate to the point where they live in symbiosis with prey? No. Not always. While symbiosis exists it is erroneous to think that this is always the outcome. In fact, in biology cooperation is just a side effect. Competition is the norm.

Every biological entity on the face of the earth only cooperates because it helps them better compete.

"A 10% prevalence rate on a flight is unbelievably high. Like defies imagination..."

No, it isn't. Past experiments (aimed at measuring the impact of elderberry on cold virus resistance, btw) found about 10% of people on a flight getting infected with a respiratory virus.

https://ergo-log.com/elderberries-help-against-colds.html

It wasn't a coronavirus, but my point is that a respiratory virus spreading to 10% of the people on a flight is so common, the researchers could just pick a normal plane flight and find 10% infection. So, for a virus to spread to 10% of the people on a plane flight is not "unbelievably high", it's apparently not uncommonly seen for other respiratory viruses.

You only test positive on PCR after a few days (at least for the Delta variant). So the infections can't really have happened on the plane, but before. And at that point 10% would be unbelievably high if the people on the plane were all independent and not in previous contact.

It's a bit hard to put this number into context though if you don't know anything about the passengers. It would be much more plausible if e.g. a large part of the passengers were in the same hotel before or something like that.

Unless Omicron is different, which is possible and consistent with other evidence. It's spreading 500% faster than the original strain did; Delta was only 70% faster. The two asymptomatic Hong Kong patients both have sky-high viral loads.

That's why this data is so alarming. Either you've got a 10%+ base rate in the population and they all skipped (or false-negative) a pre-boarding PCR test. Or Omicron spreads fast enough that it can infect 10% of a plane during a 12-hour flight and multiply enough to show up on a PCR test upon landing. Or the 61 cases knew each other beforehand (same hotel, same tour) and it's bad for that travel operator but better for public health, which is why they're trying to get the facts on that.

But, if it's actually true that symptoms are milder than those of Delta (which has been the indication), should we be embracing Omicron with open arms?

Just hypothesizing here - it'll take a good while until we have actual useful data.

When I saw someone with a cold going on the same plane as myself, I could be 100% sure I will get off of the plane with a cold... So it seems like sensationalising indeed, at least from my anecdotal experience.

Yeah anecdotally I’ve hopped on a couple planes this year where masking is required. Normally my wife and I get sick from the plane. But since we’ve been wearing KN95s the whole time starting when we get to the airport we haven’t been getting sick at all.

Could be that they wouldn't let someone with a visible cold on a plane. It wasn't the case in the past.

The study you are linking to was not comparing flying to not flying, only two different groups flying. Consider that the baseline rate of colds in a seven day window (their before travel to after travel survey window) is very high:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914a5.htm

Interesting! I had no idea it was that high normally.

Think the most recent update is that 13 people were invected with omicron in The Netherlands are confirmed. See also: https://nltimes.nl/2021/11/28/rivm-13-covid-infections-linke...

If it remains at that number, that's a serious blunder of the testing concepts.

If it turns out that 60ish people went on the same trip, or stayed in the same hotel and subsequently caught a new, even more contagious variant, roughly at the same time, it is easy to assume that they tested negative on departure and positive on arrival. But if they caught it on different occasions, it is highly probable that they did not test negative at all.

Netherlands don't require a negative test to fly if you're fully vaccinated and not from a 'designated high risk area'

https://www.government.nl/topics/coronavirus-covid-19/visiti...

Until Omicron was announced there were no current countries on that list as Delta had already spread everywhere.

This situation seems a lot like two years ago with the CDC saying "there are no confirmed cases in the US", while it looking really likely that the virus has already established itself here and we simply haven't tested for it.

I wish they would just come out and be honest about the situation. It was frustrating two years ago and they're frustratingly silent now too.

I want to agree with you, but I would be very careful not to fall into paranoia. It's easy and destructive.

The CDC is probably silent because they're slow and inefficient, so they have nothing very certain to say. If there's dishonesty, it's not the main theme.

Furthermore, there are talented people at the CDC. Plenty of those.

If they don't get a lot of work or communication done, it's organizational inefficiency.

GP: > This situation seems a lot like two years ago with the CDC saying "there are no confirmed cases in the US"

P: > I would be very careful not to fall into paranoia. It's easy and destructive.

Two years ago, paranoia might have helped. (Although considering how many places are now starting to abandon the zero-COVID goal, it might not have worked forever).

My mom was paranoid because she’s what I (lovingly) dub a ‘doom cult Christian’ because she is using the foretold apocalypse as an excuse to get into ‘prepping’ as a hobby.

She got into it in earnest about 4 years ago, and sends me and my siblings low hundred or thousands view YouTube videos saying all kinds of crazy stuff with a biblical spin.

I think COVID was a sign for her that she’s on the right path.

Honestly, I haven’t dug in too greatly. I recently heard that most Christian groups are run by troll farms. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was caught in one of these schemes.

Zero covid? You mean eliminate it?

That was never a goal, anywhere.

Looks like many people think that is the goal now.

I come from a place that has a lot of vaccinated people, ICUs have been at 4% since may and still there is an increase in restrictions because of a recent uptake in cases which don't result in hospitalisation since a lot of people, as I said, took the vaccine.

It depends on the populations. School, colder weather and the resumption of winter sports like basketball have contributed to a spike in many areas. Many are breakthrough cases.

My son’s school, which has had 2 cases through early November, had 20% of the student body positive.

There isn't a lot of information on how the vaccines impact the contagion rates, and people are really afraid of numbers growing so quickly that ICUs go from mostly empty into overflowing again without time to react.

A lot of people sick but well enough that they don't need a hospital means a lot of people possibly transmitting the disease.

There is a point on the other extreme too, in that the people that get into an ICU overwhelmingly refused to vaccinate, and it isn't fair to disrupt the entire society because of them. But well, the pandemics is full of unfair situations, and refusing treatment to people with unrelated diseases because ICUs are full isn't fair either. Everybody is in a crazy game of balancing things the best possible way without full information.

"Why China is still trying to achieve zero Covid":

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59257496

"Why has Australia switched tack on Covid zero?":

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58406526

"‘Zero Covid’ strategies are being abandoned as the highly infectious delta variant dominates":

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/zero-covid-strategies-abando...

("New Zealand has become the latest country to abandon a zero Covid strategy"... "This zero Covid strategy, also employed by the likes of China and Taiwan...")

Well in Canada, zero covid was never a goal. The only goal was to keep spread low enough, so that hospitals could cope, and buy some time until vaccines came out.

How could any sane person think zero covid was possible??

Let's say you manage to vaccinate 100% of Canada. Great. Now you .. what? Close the borders forever?

And closing means no truckers, pilots entering??

And on top of that, there is always a resoviour in the wild...

The news literally makes stuff up these days. What sane government would think covid would vanish?

Quebec's current plan is to let it flow through the population now. If you aren't vaccinated, that's on you. If you are, well, we're done with lockdowns. We've done all we can.

And so kids now wear no masks on school.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/end-of-mask-mand...

Of course, no one is really puzzled, the news needs a story.

Not sure what you're getting at. You said zero covid was never a goal anywhere. And the above poster showed you were wrong.

Every time I listened to live conferences with the prime minster, or a premier, there was never, ever any talk of zero covid.

The local media however, seemed to think it was a goal.

Thus, I am often hesitant to accept the media blathering on about such nonsense, and generally suspect hyped and click baitish behaviour.

I suppose a few crazy places thought this was possible, although I cannot imagine why, so I suppose I am wrong with my all encompassing statement.

>Two years ago, paranoia might have helped.

That's an easy statement to make two years later. Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, we know a lot of things that would have helped.

When you make evidence-based decisions, you are going to get some things wrong. The only way around that is to gather more evidence, and that takes time (and loads of money.)

> The only way around that is to gather more evidence...

That begs the question as to whether an evidence-based approach is the right approach in all circumstances.

Another way around it is to not fully rely on an evidence-based approach, and take precautions before the evidence comes in. In some circumstances (e.g. rapid spread of an poorly understood disease) waiting for an evidence-based decision before taking precautions might be too slow.

Finding that the disease is spreading rapidly and taking precautions as a result is making an evidence-based decision. You seem to be repeating my point here.

The issue is that they really didn't know how rapidly it was spreading at the beginning.

I don't think they're necessarily being dishonest, just misleading probably unintentionally.

Speaking of paranoia, I think their poor communication led to plenty of paranoia two years ago, and it seems like there's plenty of paranoia now again.

I think being more truthful and communicative would lead to less paranoia, not more.

Being slow and inefficient in the middle of a war is the same destructive result as being dishonest or malicious. It still costs lives. It doesn't matter that there was no malicious intent.

It still does harm, but you treat it differently.

I mean, they are saying all they know right? Fauci has come out saying he expects Omicron to be present in the US already, but he is explicit that it is a guess. CDC could formally say it is probably here, but like most large organizations are being conservative with their language.

I only hope if they DO receive word of the variant they make it known quickly. The nature of the PCR assay suggests it is easy to detect.

Sequencing efforts are quite decentralized. If it hasn't been detected yet, either organizations haven't reported it to the CDC yet or it's still below the limit of detection.

That's a true statement and does not exclude that undetected cases possibly exist. To claim that CDC are going to be shown to be wrong is what feeds the "See, they tell us different things!" narrative. Of course CDC will say, if and when Omicon appears in the US, that there are detected cases.

I believe it is impossible for the government to be honest with the public in anyway. Too many competing interest trying to "manage" the public response from too many angles like Stock Market, Politics, Panic, etc.

They are simply incapable of giving the public the unvarnished truth, as such I think we the public need to be looking to non-governmental sources for the actual truth. This becomes a problem because historically that has been the role of journalism sadly today journalists have the exact same competing interests thus are also incapable of telling the public the truth.

I dont know the solution, but truth is the causality of the current age of information.

> I wish they would just come out and be honest about the situation.

Isn't this honest? You want them to speculate, but what's the point?

Don't we all already know Omicron is likely already here? So what does the CDC add? What we really need to know is how serious it is -- how deadly X how infectious -- and the CDC doesn't know that (yet).

According to the South African doctor who first discovered the variant[1], it produces generally mild symptoms, and is not deadly.

[1]:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-59450988

Covid too generally produces mild symptoms, but sometimes kills.

> None of this changes what you can to do right now: Ventilate spaces. Use masks. Test if you have symptoms.

To add; Supplement vitamin D, exercise, and eat healthily.

Most non-fit people (including myself) won't get fit in a couple of months, so this is slightly too optimistic.

It's very encouraging that they can detect this variant with PCR tests and don't need to run genetic sequencing. This should allow much earlier, even retroactive detection.

Every time I hear the word Omicron, I have to stop myself saying "Om-ni-cron".

Apparently that's the title of a movie "A cognitive science student enlists the aid of a paranormal psychologist to investigate a demonic conspiracy".

That name would REALLY have got people going. :)

https://archive.md/wip/0EPC4

It's just a summary of the news. There's zero new information or analysis.

Here’s a take that’s a little less hyperbolic: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-symptoms-mild-doc...

The doctor notes that the patients she has seen have all been young, healthy men, with a very small sampling set. I'm not sure how much to read into that at this point, as every variant of COVID would average out to "mild" to non-existent symptoms across most of the population, but causes enough mayhem with a small percentage to become trouble at scale. Given the effective "punishment" of South Africa for being vigilant and detecting the variant, she's also incentivized to lean towards optimism.

Who knows. Maybe it'll end up raging across the population with little downside and the end result might be advantageous. We can't know yet.

the only hope that pills from Merk & Phizer could really reduce risk of hospitalization & death. otherwise we are poised for new lockdowns.

Merck pill has already failed at 35%. This table seems be otherwise valid: https://c19early.com/

That table has known problems. For example, see this recent discussion of a thorough analysis of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29249686

Monoclonal treatments will also not work well with new variants.

Goldman Slams Omicron Panic: “This Mutation Is Unlikely To Be More Malicious; No Reason For Portfolio Changes.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/goldman-slams-omicron-pani...

I’m with Goldman on this one. Delta dip buyers were rewarded, and Omicron dip buyers will be rewarded as well.

In any case, a serious variant is only going to postpone the Fed’s tapering and hiking schedule, and could lead to more stimulus. Both of those things are a tailwind for equities. Omicron being less serious than expected would also be a tailwind for equities.

Maybe it’s just me, but this comment seems so macabre. Like ambulance chasing. “So, lots of people are going to die, but I intend to make some money of it so that’s okay.”

On the contrary, he is betting there won't be as many deaths as expected. It's an optimist position.

...framed in a financial context.

Can we stop having moral judgements as comments on HN and acknowledge everyone has their own morality. The stock market could dip for a number of reasons. I don't particularly think its helpful trying to point out every time someone violates your personal moral lines e.g. don't buy stock when the market crashes for reason x, don't buy stock y etc.

Besides, this interpretation of the ops comment was different for me, if the virus is less deadly and people shouldn't panic sell, fewer people die and loose money, don't they.

I think constant moral judgment can have a chilling effect. But to throw it out altogether is not the solution (it’s certainly not working at 4chan).

Claiming that everyone has their own morality is only true in the sense that no two snowflakes are alike. It may be correct at the molecular level, but snowflakes are more similar than they are different. So too with human morality. Mine may be slightly different than yours, but the overlap is huge and consistent.

I think perhaps more importantly (and the reason I made the comment in the first place), morality is contextual and easily influenced. If we never talk about it, no one knows what sorts of behaviours are appropriate. So I talked about it to put a peg in the ground. You may disagree and that’s fine. You drive your peg in to the ground somewhere else. But knowing there are two pegs is important.

People are going to die no matter what, how is trying to forecast the stock market macabre? I’m saying I think it will be less serious than the panic in the media would have us believe.

It’s not even close to ambulance chasing, c’mon now. I’m not trying to profit off individual deaths, I’m attempting to forecast how the market will respond to new information. You act like I’m betting on COVID death pools.

Zerohedge? Seriously? We might as well read the Weekly World News to see what Batboy thinks about it

Zerohedge is not any less reliable than CNN, or NBC these days

Take that for what you will, but...

I take it for being a patently and demonstrably absurd statement.

Only if you are in an echo chamber and believe CNN is reporting accurate news

I'll keep living my life as I always have. Death comes for all. I won't be living in fear. But I welcome all you to do as you please. All the fear is mildly amusing to me at this point. Boosters forever.

it's up to you how to live and die, but it's not up to you to decide it for other people by spreading deadly virus around.

You speak as if you have the power to lock him up if he has coronavirus. Unless he lives in Australia, you don’t.

More and more countries make smart decisions. Today Switzerland voted YES for covid certificates[1]. The Netherlands will effectively do the same in 1 week - it won't be enough to get tested to enter a museum, cinema, or restaurant, you will have to be vaccinated or recovered[2]. Hopefully at some point unvaccinated won't be able to go outside!

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/28/tensions-swiss...

[2] - https://nltimes.nl/2021/11/12/netherlands-will-start-2g-coro...

Sounds like witch hunt.

I live in South Africa and feel a bit under siege by the sudden restrictions on travel. I hope the panic is an overreaction as I am really over this virus now.

Silly me always thought that epsilon came after delta.

I guess omicron sounds like a very dangerous micro organism

Epsilon does come after delta. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Epsilon_variant

I've never left the pandemic and have continued to wear and will continue to wear a surgical grade N95 mask (also stops liquid basically) around anyone that isn't my wife (and she the same) for the rest of our lives.

Masks are the only thing that has the ability to stop this and beautifully also allow for the economy to run full swing. I think the democrats should back off of vaccination goals and just get mask goals perfected.

Large numbers of people won't wear masks. Source: flown domestic flights in the US recently -- numerous people sitting without masks on, charring to flight attendants who did nothing.

Italy has a confirmed case from a guy who brought it back from Mozambique. Gave it to five family members already. https://www.italy24news.com/local/280042.html For the record he had received two doses of a vaccine..a detail suspiciously left out of CNN and other media reports as it doesn't fit the narrative.

What is the narrative? Getting vaccinated reduces the probability of transmission? I hate CNN myself but lets try to be fair.

Isn't it obvious? The narrative is that the vaccine continues to works (period - No more thinking allowed for the audience), thus they omit that someone who caught and transmitted to new variant was fully vaccinated.

The truth is nuanced, but CNN doesn't like to report nuances because it detracts from their oversimplified narrative.

The vaccine reduces hospitalization and death, not transmission with new variants. That's why the CDC changed its mask guidance over the summer.

Why do you say that? Vaccines provides some immunity not 100%. If you are not sick you cannot transmit it.

Whoa. This goes against common sense. Stop and think for a bit: How would there be transmission going on in the world at all if there were no asymptomatic spread?

This is false. Vaccines reduce transmission. What we've seen is Delta et al is the rate as which they reduce transmission is not nearly as good as they did for previous variants.

They reduce at around 33% with Delta. Used to be 50% with Alpha. Not any breathtaking amount.

Nobody ever said the vaccination will stop transmission. It reduces the symptoms and hospitalisation rate (successfully).

No news or political organization deals in nuance. If you think CNN or Covid coverage is some exception worth focusing on, you're likely falling for it on everything else.

How long ago was the second shot? There's a reason why Europe accelerated the start of the Booster vaccinations (third shots). Unfortunately there's still a lot of people that didn't receive their first shot willingly although it's freely available.

Sometimes people die in car crashes despite having seatbelts on. does that mean seatbelts are useless?

Fun fact: omicron is anagram of moronic. Someone is trying to subtly tell us something?

There was an excellent post/thread on 4chan where they discussed the symptoms (tired, muscle aches) and how easily this variant spread. It was determined that this might be "the one", where the virus has mutated for maximum survival and this variant becomes no more serious than a bad cold for young/healthy folks. Of course the old/morbidly obese/metabolically broken, type II diabetes/high BP and heart problems still need to be worried but that's true for even the Flu or any nasty virus.

I look at it this way, there is no escape. We will all get it eventually. I'm vaccinated and healthy for whatever that is worth.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/28/somos-cuba/#omishambles

> where the virus has mutated for maximum survival and this variant becomes no more serious than a bad cold for young/healthy folks.

I think this idea is overly optimistic and can be misleading.

Maximum survivability of the virus does not necessarily coincide with with it being no 'more serious than a bad cold'. It often means the virus can not have traits which make spreading harder. Like killing the infected too quickly or having noticeable symptoms the lead the infected to be isolated.

I can imagine many long term side effects that do not effect the virus's survival in the short term and therefore will not be weeded through natural selection in a reasonable timeframe. Any side effect which is not detectable for a long time like early onset of cognitive decline in old age or shorting life span by 1-5 years would seem to fit.

There is no guarantee the final form of the virus will end up similar common cold.

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