Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but it is really too early to tell. The cases in that update are largely in young people (age <= 65) and it takes about a week from symptom onset to end up in hospital. That data seems to be as at 9 Dec, even if the hospitalisations were high the data would not necessarily show them.

View on HN

South Africa, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/s-africa-...

> Only 1.7% of identified Covid-19 cases were admitted to hospital in the second week of infections in the fourth wave, compared with 19% in the same week of the third delta-driven wave ... Health officials presented evidence that the strain may be milder, and that infections may already be peaking in the country’s most populous province, Gauteng.

Hong Kong, https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-c...

> The researchers found that Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infects and multiplies 70 times faster than the Delta variant and original SARS-CoV-2 in human bronchus, which may explain why Omicron may transmit faster between humans than previous variants. Their study also showed that the Omicron infection in the lung is significantly lower than the original SARS-CoV-2, which may be an indicator of lower disease severity.

If the Hong Kong report is accurate, could regular nasal washing slow viral replication, e.g. in early stages of infection? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620312

80% of SA has already been infected and thus has some measure of immunity and prior culling, as well as an average age 1-2 decades younger than most developed nations

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-18/deaths-da...

Nice to see natural immunity being recognized as a talking point, although the Danish sample shows prior infection is much more protective against Delta than Omicron.

What percentage of US and UK have already been infected?

We know that natural immunity (don’t forget it’s not forever - it doesn’t protect against sufficient mutations) is going to happen so the idea that it isn’t recognize or wasn’t recognized is incorrect. What we are concerned about is how many people have to die from a preventable disease while this herd immunity naturally comes to bear.

It isn’t recognized in the sense that you can show a vax card to get in a restaurant or on a flight, but not proof of previous infection.

As far as I know the US is the only country that for some reason doesn't think it matters if you are recovered. Israel, EU, others all seem to recognize it. Why the US does not, is not clear to me.

The problem in the US is that it became a political issue and both sides don’t want to lose face by ceding even an inch

Other nations aren’t owned by pharmaceutical companies.

True, about so many issues.

Perhaps to discourage 'covid parties' or other purposeful contractions of the virus.

Which makes sense for a lot of reasons.

1) Allowing a prior infection will lead to idiots having COVID parties to get tested.

2) Natural immunity is more variant-specific.

3) Tests are binary, but viral load determines natural response. The amount of viral load and natural response you need to fight off future infections and the amount to trigger a positive result are almost certainly not the same concentration.

4) Tests, unlike needles in the arm, have false positives.

>2) Natural immunity is more variant-specific.

How is it more variant specific? The gene therapy shots only expose you to the spike protein, whereas natural infection gives you exposure to the whole virus. As we see with omnicron, this variant has evolved so that the spike protein is the most changed aspect about it.

The spike protein, even through Omicron, is the most stable part. Your stupid body can pick up on any feature of the virus, and any other identifier is worse than the spike protein against the natural waves of different variants. Even if Omicron is worse than against natural immunity (something I would not concede, but will for the sake of this sentence) you're likely to have gotten COVID more times naturally than someone who was vaccinated over the past year.

Since there is literally no downside, get the fucking vaccine.

> Since there is literally no downside

There are downsides for recipients of bad batches.

Public VAERS data is reporting inter-batch variances where 90+% of adverse side effects are happening in 5% of batches. VAERS data is noisy, see site videos for more discussion, but extreme inter-batch variances across all three vendors is not expected. EU regulators have previously expressed concern about inter-batch manufacturing variance.

http://howbad.info

> http://howbad.info

Wow. People die and get seriously ill but it seems stupidly irresponsible to assume some correlation between that outcome and a vaccine batch absent other sorts of analysis.

I entered mine and i see: the longer ago i got the shot, the higher number of deaths and serious illness. I.e. The correlation seems to be higher number of deaths as time increases.

Tried to access that site, and my internet provider (AT&T Fiber) marked it as a spam site and wouldn’t let me proceed unless I added it to a whitelist in my router. Very odd.

What makes you think I didn't get it?

>any other identifier is worse than the spike protein against the natural waves of different variants

Source?

In my country it is if the infection is less than 6 month ago. And count as a first vaccination, so you can only take half a moderna after a prior infection.

In Germany you can. I am sure that's true for many regions. However, the granted protection status doesn't last as long as full vaccination.

I believe some countries do recognize it (Germany maybe?)

Yes, in EU people who have recovered from Covid get the EU digital certificate.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/coronavirus/eu-d...

But France revoked the Passe Sanitaire and mutated it into a Vaccinal Pass, meaning you can’t get it using a PCR test or a previous infection, only the vaccine will be accepted.

You need to get one booster shot after your infection in France to get a pass (instead of two shots for the usual vaccination course). That has always been the case.

In France you get a pass for ~6 months after covid recovery, then one booster shot is indeed required.

But with vaccination, you get a pass for ~7 months, then (from Jan 2022) you also need a booster shot...

https://www.gouvernement.fr/info-coronavirus/pass-sanitaire

The prime minister announced 2 days ago that the Passe Sanitaire will be changed into a Passe Vaccinal, meaning PCR tests won’t be able to get it.

Yes, definitely the case in Germany.

First, this is not totally accurate -- you can board flights with literally no proof of anything, and international travel often does permit an affidavit of prior infection.

Second, just get a vaccine, jfc. Been infected? Great, now you're even more immune. Do one easy thing for your fellow humans. Can't? Plenty of documentable, obtainable exceptions. Won't? Fine. Don't avail yourself of the luxuries which are the result of humans working together to build something. Easy.

Why not base policy on science and data rather than an apeal to "unity"

The virus is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. Pretty much everyone will eventually be infected (if they don't die from something else first).

https://www.sciencealert.com/delta-variant-means-we-can-rule...

Measles is way more infectious and does achieve herd immunity at around 95% vaccinated.

Question is, can we get 95% immunity to Covid, as opposed to “benign but still infectious”.

The measles vaccine more or less protects you for the rest of your life, although a single refreshment might be sensible. Flu and covid vaccines would need constant adaptation and you will never reach that in a globalized world.

Yes, plus the Covid vaccine doesn’t seem to give much immunity against infection and spreading, so the whole game is off.

What can prevent it? Certainly not the current vaccines.

Current mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease and death of all widely circulating variants, including omicron

> highly effective

Varies by # of months since last dose, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSZMtSPX3iE

Dec 20, https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/12/20/omicron-3-vaccine-d...

> COVID-19 vaccines will not be enough to withstand the Omicron variant, warned the CEO of BioNTech, the German company behind the mRNA vaccine produced with Pfizer. "We must be aware that even triple-vaccinated are likely to transmit the disease…It is obvious we are far from 95 per cent effectiveness that we obtained against the initial virus."

I was responding to the above question about preventing death not infection.

He's talking about preventing infection.

>> What we are concerned about is how many people have to die from a preventable disease

> What can prevent it?

Thus my answer.

The CDC estimated that 45% of Americans had been infected as of September 2021, so probably closer to 50% by now.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

That's insane. The # here in Ontario, Canada is just over 4%.

There is a lot of variability in numbers due to testing rates.

Singapore and British Colombia have the same number of people (~5M). Singapore tested every suspected case and only recently stopped that. They have strict measures to enter the country and have had quite strict covid restrictions (and still do!) such as no dining in, masks in all public spaces, etc.

BC had some restrictions, but no where near Singapore. Mask adoption was good but not consistent. Currently very few restrictions.

Yet Singapore reports 280,000 total cases and BC 225,000.

I’d suggest BC’s number is likely double what’s reported, if not 3x.

Can we have the numbers in cases per 100,000? And maybe an explanation why BC's numbers are supposed to 3x higher than what is reported?

Populations are comparable. And just what I said - BC had less testing, that’s why they had fewer total cases. Either that or restrictions and masks don’t work because Singapore was better than BC on both counts. They had a “circuit breaker” for a while where you couldn’t leave your house in 2020.

It's easy to plot test positivity vs known cases and see how they co-relate over time. Apart from the first wave in March 2020, test positivity has tracked fairly well with case numbers here in Ontario. There's been enough testing capacity since at least Sept 2020 to track at least 4000 cases a day.

And if there's significant cases being missed in testing, they'd show up in hospitalization and ICU statistics. And there's been no anomalies there.

There is a group of people who really want to consider "natural immunity" as equivalent to vaccinated. But here in Canada at least the previously infected are a very small percentage of the population, at least in a way we can confirm with test results.

Wouldn't you need percentage of positive test to draw any conclusions of the impact the number of tests has on reported cases? And the testing strategy?

Yes you would. I don’t have the energy to dig that data up or even know if it’s available, but suffice to say that Singapore would quarantine and test entire housing blocks, I’m going to guess Singapore had much more extensive testing.

Singapore had effective contact tracing and at least in the beginning would do mass testing to trace each and every case.

That wasn’t the case in BC.

Good, so it is reasonable to assume the BC underreported more then Singapore. Still quite a stretch to claim it is by a factor of three, don't you think?

Well the 3x was entirely pulled out of my ass, so yes, it’s a stretch.

But just based off the entirely different approaches I’d think BC is at least 2x it’s reported numbers?

But you’re right, you could dig into number of tests, how tests were triggered, etc and come up with a much better estimate.

To the coronavirus, that sounds like an opportunity.

To a suitably changed virus any population of a certain size and density is an opportunity.

4% is the estimate or known cases?

Known cases, positive test results only. But even if you doubled or tripled you'd be nowhere near 45%.

Assuming 2x or 3x is a reasonable factor between reported cases and total infections. US current official CDC estimates are 4x, and Canada has a lower testing rate (almost half) than the US. Earlier on, US estimated infections were 10x the reported count. Some studies for other developed countries have estimates that approach 30x. IMO, 8x doesn't seem like an unreasonable WAG given this.

I searched Canada's official resources, but I couldn't find anywhere that they publish their own estimates.

2x-3x anomaly would show up as distortions and fluctuations in both test positivity rates and in ICU/hospital rates. There's no such anomalies in the Ontario data, not since the first wave in March/April 2020 when testing was extremely limited. I pull the data daily from Ontario's public data API and graph and track it in a spreadsheet, I'm pretty familiar with what's there.

1/3 of americans as of a few months ago

https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...

That's as of end of 2020, before the big waves this year (IIRC more people have died of Covid in the US in 2021 than in 2020).

More recent CDC estimate suggests the total number of infections is closer to 146 million[1]. I'm not sure how they are handling repeat infections, but nonetheless it sounds like their model has the US population at higher than 1/3 infected.

1 - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Also in Guateng, ~75% of adults are vaccinated. That's better than most parts of the US and even a lot of places in Europe. There's just more <18 year olds in SA.

You are making an assumption that is dubious . Please link to the study or statistic by a reputable source that we, South African have had 80% infection rates.

i literally linked a citation at the bottom of the post

That first quote makes the same error as your initial comment! The Omicron wave grew faster, and with faster growth, a greater proportion of your cases are too recent to have been hospitalized

> If the Hong Kong report is accurate, could regular nasal washing slow viral replication, e.g. in early stages of infection? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620312

There is also evidence that certain mouth rinses reduce infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab [1] though without a trial it’s hard to know how that translates to real world transmission.

[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0817/10/3/272

The Spectator Covid Tracker for Omicron is interesting: https://data.spectator.co.uk/category/south-africa

No it's not. All indications are that omicron is much milder.

I really am not sure why you got downvoted. Here is a NYMag article that supports what you're saying: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/and-now-for-the-good...

It hasn't been a month since the Omicron variant was reported to the WHO. All the indications could point any way and we wouldn't have solid evidence yet - it takes time for the disease to play out. NYMag can't magic solid evidence into existence when it doesn't really exist, especially from a week ago. This is the same sort of thing as got the "its just a flu" type mutterings while the pandemic was ramping up.

It might be a lot milder, and that would be nice. But if it turns out to be about the same then the speed of its spread is scary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com