South African medical association says Omicron variant causes ‘mild disease.’ | Hacker News Reader

South African medical association says Omicron variant causes ‘mild disease.’

indiatvnews.com

18 pointsvaadu13 comments

The WHO says this may be because of where the early infections were noticed, and that we'll need some more time to know for sure.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/u-k-buying-time-mideast-111736790....

> The initial reported infections were among university students, WHO said, adding that younger patients tend to have milder symptoms.

> “Understanding the level of severity of the omicron variant will take days to several weeks,” WHO said in a statement, adding that “there is currently no information to suggest that symptoms associated with omicron are different from those from other variants.”

Keep your fingers crossed that it holds. A rapidly spreading milder variant would be a bit of a godsend.

Isn't this how epidemics normally end? A mild but very infectious variant becomes dominant, as part of the disease fading into the background à la the flu?

Bad thing would be if the vaccine protects against it but not against a deadlier variant which would then become dominant. Et voilà we created our own doom.

edit: Why is this flagged? Because the evidence of mildness is insufficient or are people angry that we might be able to roam freely again? I am starting to get doubts that it is the latter...

“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home.”

Plus: “The official noted that hospitals have not been overburdened by Omicron patients and that the new strain is not been detected in vaccinated persons.”

So then why all the hysteria and banning of flights.

So a new strain isn’t allowed to spread before we know everything about it.

And yet the endgame will probably the same as that for all the other travel bans -- the variant will spread anyway.

Indeed, but if the travel bans give us a few more days to prepare it's not a bad thing. Maybe the Omicron variant is truly a nothing burger, but if it wasn't, just getting one extra week before it starts spreading more means the hospitals can start flushing non-urgent patients, testing centers can rehire workers to handle the higher load, etc...

To me what's more important is how fast we lift travel restrictions once we know that the situation is ok OR that the variant has spread enough that it would make no differences. If we "punish" South Africa for two months for a variant that only causes mild symptoms then it's an overreaction, if we lift is in 1-3 weeks then it's "better safe than sorry" and can understand the policy.

> the new strain is not been detected in vaccinated persons

...this part cannot be correct since a double digit number of people on that one flight that was posted about tested positive and were vaccinated.

People on the flight were vaccinate OR tested negative. Not both. Don't yet know if the cases were in the tested negative group or in the vaccinated group.

It is far too early to tell whether this variant is better or worse.

So it is like a natural vaccine that spreads itself to everyone for free?

No, not really. Milder symptoms is better, but it could still be worse than getting vaccinated and have long-term effects.

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