Omicron Time

I've got a simpler, though stupider, analysis.

The variants of concern (as defined by WHO) thus-far are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and now Omicron. (The others were "variants of interest", but never graduated to a higher status than that).

So about 50% of the variants of concern (Alpha and Delta) became dominant in their time. The other 50% were concerning with their respective "superpowers", but were outcompeted by the others.

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So I give 50/50 odds that Omicron becomes dominant.

Maybe a bad analysis, but hey, everything is bad analysis right now until we get better data.

Note: there are many, many variants, including "Delta Plus" variants (offspring of Delta), Lambda, and other variants who grabbed the headlines. Gamma in particular took over South America (graduating into a Variant of Concern), but never managed to spread further than that.

Lambda also spread rapidly in South America, but also was vanquished by Delta.

So very high spread in a local area does not necessarily mean it will spread rapidly in other settings (especially since Delta seems so good at outcompeting all these variants).

What if new variants inevitably emerge given global mutations and lackluster vaccinations?

most "artificial origin" hypotheses centre around a lab-leak.

The number of scenarios where the new variant is engineered are vastly reduced, since it's less likely that this variant is a lab leak.

Other scenarios can still be within the realm of plausibility, but there are fewer of them.

Just to be pedantic. Covid-19 is the disease, not the virus. SARS-COV-2 is the virus.

Since every household that has a pet has additional hosts, there is no way to meaningfully reduce the number of hosts.

Median time to death from onset of symptoms ~18.5 days: https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/covid-19-symptoms-prog...

Median time for first symptoms is ~4.5 days: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-guida...

Within a week, we should start to have a decent picture WRT severity. Obviously, as time goes by, that picture will only get clearer.

While data is lacking, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that the symptoms are the same as the common cold for the unvaccinated. Vaccines have both reduced spread and more importantly yet reduced deaths. The strategy moving forward is to both continue to press the vaccination strategy as well as mass manufacture new antivirals so we can save as many of those too short sighted to vaccinate despite themselves. It's also liable that we will be stuck with another shot in 2022.

The strategy of just let it wash over us so we can get back to normal is not quite as horrifying as it was in 2020 when it meant hundreds of millions of damaged bodies and 3 million dead but it remains ridiculous. The unvaccinated who are liable to experience something no better than earlier strains aren't evenly distributed and areas where they are concentrated are especially vulnerable to their health care systems being overwhelmed but the truth is even in areas where ONLY 1 in 3 is unvaccinated we don't have the capacity for much of the population to linger in the hospital for weeks or months before deciding whether to die or not.

We don't have enough antivirals manufactured yet nor do we know the long term outlook of survivors even after we can manufacture more. We don't even know if they will be as effective with the new strain!

We don't have such a healthy economy that we can afford to go through another covid induced slump and believe me if deaths and illness start going up we will have another big ass slump whether an official lock down is declared or not.

For at least 2022 covid is going to be a substantial workplace hazard and it is absolutely reasonable that if someone gets sick at work and experiences substantial costs, disability, or death they treat it just like a workplace accident and if we do that then mandates become the only tenable option to reduce liability and OSHA will be only a convenient excuse for your employer is in fact doing to cover their own asses.

From the perspective of a worker why should I work at a place that wont even make you get a shot so you don't murder me. It seems to me a lot like letting you drive the forklift drunk an entirely unnecessary risk. It's a sellers market and I can sell my labor elsewhere.

I don't believe there's something along the lines of a conspiracy or anything nearly as dramatic as that, but it does surprise me how little the whole 'enragement is engagement' dynamic gets brought up in discussions around COVID coverage. Half the world being scared shitless of COVID and the other half being scared shitless of being plunged into yet another lockdown means lots of people doomscrolling news sites past ad after ad. There's no real incentive not to sensationalise things, if later things turned out to be not so bad as the media outlet claimed they a) still get their ad revenue and b) nobody will care in a week's time when the next inevitable scandal happens and the news cycle moves on. If they choose to be cautious and not sensationalise things and it later turns out to be worse than reported then that's a lot of panicky, desperate scrolling not to get a slice of. I'm actually flirting with the belief that the post-War on Terror 24/7 news cycle combined with the above incentives is doing Western society a huge amount of avoidable harm.

I'm not sure how this issue can be solved to be honest, while my go-to answer is to have a strictly apolitical regulatory board which can demand retractions are published (after a transparent investigation) with the same headline prominence and ad spend as the initial article or video that was deemed to be alarmist or misleading but that has problems in itself; such a system introduces a "who is fit to determine objective truth?" debate where the regulatory board could determine 2 + 2 = 5 and there'd be very little that could be done to oppose this obvious falsehood.

Why is that supposed to be an antivaxer argument? It doesn’t mean an effective vaccine eliminates variant formation.

I don't think it's an antivaxer argument but if you develop the reasoning it really becomes somewhat controversial.

The problem is that vaccines are not completely effective (efficacy goes down with time, is lower against new variants, there are breakthrough infections, etc.) so variant formation is not completely supressed.

Everything being equal (given one exposed or even one infected person) you may have less variant formation with vaccines. But when you have more infections you will end up having more variants.

That the number of infections would increase as people's behaviour adapted to the lower fatality rate was not unexpected: people take more risks because the prognosis of an infection is not so bad anyway, once infected they may have a mild, undiagnosed evolution and still contribution propagation...

And it's no longer an hypothetical scenario. In many European countries there are more infections now than ever before.

Yeah, I'm not sure how what the other commenter is saying follows from what Lowe wrote.

Anti-antivaxer, i think.

Over 700,000 (edit it’s now 800,000) dead Americans is about 20x as bad as the flu even with all of these measures, that’s huge. But even that understates the difference when you measure years of life lost.

The flu typically kills the extreme elderly or people with extremely compromised immune systems. Aka they might die at 94 vs 95. COVID on the other kills people who are relatively much healthier, someone that dies at 75 vs 95 lost 20 years not 1.

This is also why people 70+ are almost fully vaccinated in the US. For that age range it’s an extremely serious disease with a high chance of killing them after infection.

> why don't we just accept it as part of our lives like we did with the flu?

Because several areas are very near 100% hospital capacity with COVID patients still, and a COVID ICU visit is much more demanding from a timespan and resource perspective in terms of staff and equipment. We can't risk relaxing restrictions when hospitals are unable to bear an increase in patients.

From a cynical point of view, COVID policy is about protecting infrastructure - and only save lives as a side effect.

This is why many places had specific policy for essential services and essential workers, daycare and schooling, transportation, - as well as putting restrictions on private industry which in some countries has become significantly more centralized like meat processing.

Currently in The Netherlands the hospitals are bracing for "code black" which means there are not enough beds and staff in the hospitals to treat everyone who needs it. Doctors will have to decide who gets treated and who doesn't - they will have to choose who lives and who dies.

What's more, regular care and non-urgent surgeries are put on hold, increasing the risk that patients experience more severe symptoms. Nurses and doctors are burned out and consider leaving their jobs.

That's why we can't "just accept it".

> Yes, covid is a little bit more deadly, but other than, why don't we just accept it as part of our lives like we did with the flu?

Primarily because our health infrastructure has no capacity as is. Most places are really struggling, both with space and staff. Add to that the PTSD a lot of healthcare workers will be dealing with for decades to come.

And losing 1-3% of our total population isn't great.

But to your point: we will end up living with COVID as an endemic, so long as more people get vaccinated. We need to look at global vaccination rates beyond just local ones, too, as variants will continue to mutate throughout the world. With the vast, vast majority of folks winding up in the hospital being unvaccinated--taking up space, time and money--we're going to be struggling for a while.

And COVID patients are impacting the capacity for people to get routine check ups, and in some locations emergency work, done. It's bad for everyone. Until the numbers are low enough that our doctors and nurses aren't being pushed beyond their limit, we can't consider it sustainable.

> I still don't get what makes covid different from the flu. Yes, covid is a little bit more deadly, but other than, why don't we just accept it as part of our lives like we did with the flu?

The additional amount of hospitalizations from COVID19 is crushing our hospitals, even with some vaccine support. A number of states have run out of hospital beds in the August 2021 COVID19 Delta-variant surge.

Fortunately, we've got vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and dexamethasone today compared to March 2020. With all of these new techniques, the death rate has dropped, and treatment of COVID19 has gotten easier.

Still, we're stressing our hospitals to severe limits in parts of the country. We'd ideally want more slack, so that our nurses / doctors can get a well deserved break from this pandemic.

Fear sells.

The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the vaccines aren't very effective in people with malfunctioning immune systems.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...