https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-afri...
And, as expected, it appears to be far less harmful than Delta, which was less harmful than the original novel cov2. This is how a virus evolves, it gets weaker, which allows it to spread faster. Dead people don't spread viruses. It looks from the data that we are finally at the end of this pandemic.
> And, as expected, it appears to be far less harmful than Delta
And the title said:
> Omicron infections appear no less severe than Delta
Hmm, somethings doesn't seem right? I assume you misread the title.
> This is how a virus evolves, it gets weaker, which allows it to spread faster. Dead people don't spread viruses.
Yes, viruses usually evolve to transmit better and the host and virus usually co-evolve to a less severe disease. But, this applies only to viruses that transmit after people get symptoms. If people spread the virus first for a few days and then get sick, there is no inherent evolutionary pressure to select for less severe virus variants. Even the original SarsCovII virus (let's say Wuhan variant) had already the capability to spread before symptom onset as well as after. So it is unclear, how this evolves further.
With a pre-symptomatic phase the selective pressure on the virus is towards more infectivity and longer pre-symptomatic phase. Not necessarily towards milder outcomes.
> Early data from the South African health ministry released last week found that only 1.7% of cases in the latest wave have resulted in hospitalizations so far, compared with 18% at the same point during the previous wave, which was dominated by the Delta variant. [0]
Their methodology also seems better than that used for the U.K. numbers in the article, which compared all past cases to current Omicron cases. I personally think that's a more complex comparison, with perhaps more room for confounding factors.
I assume the U.K. numbers are a week or two behind the numbers from South Africa. I assume more numbers will be forthcoming in another couple/few weeks, along with early numbers from more countries. Time will tell.
The post you replied to also mentioned that coronaviruses often evolve to be weaker because that helps them spread. I've seen experts say the same. You said:
> this applies only to viruses that transmit after people get symptoms
Are you saying that Covid-19 does not transmit after the onset of symptoms? Do you have a reference supporting that?
I found sources saying that Covid-19 may be transmissible starting two days before the onset of symptoms, but nothing saying that it stops when symptoms start. I found the CDC saying to isolate at least 10 days after symptom onset [1]. I would assume that those days of symptoms would be the optimal time to transmit a virus, such as when coughing, running, and sneezing. Are you saying that Covid-19 is only spread asymptomatically?
[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-africas-drop-daily-covid-14...
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isola...
Now Reuters is reporting on that research, and the results indicate that the initial hope was false. It doesn't make sense to then go back and point at South Africa to contradict the news. I guess you can disagree with the research conclusions, but then you need to critique the study methodology instead of just pointing at South Africa.
Also quoted from CDC's FAQ:
> "In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus that causes COVID-19."
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var...
Honestly I wasn’t aware that there was this much uncertainty at the time, I remember hearing that delta was affecting young people in India more strongly way back in early 2021
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/08/421171/how-dangerous-delta...
The thing is, it’s not straightforward to answer the question “was delta more severe/virulent than alpha or wild type” from directly comparing these raw statistics. The Delta wave in the UK (and US) was post vaccine rollout, so you can’t say from the raw numbers whether it’s the virus that changed, the demographics of people with infections, or vaccine rollout.
Analyses considering these confounding factors point to delta being more virulent, and towards the (thankfully!) lower fatality rate being mediated by vaccine efficacy and demographics.
This is the same situation we seem to possibly be in with omicron, but we still lack good data on how hard it hits the immunologically naive relative to previous variants
0: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Yeah, no. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
It's not just south Africa anymore.
Eg. https://www.sst.dk/en/english/corona-eng/status-of-the-epide....
I'm aware of today's deaths = 13. But this could still be the result of delta or an anomaly ( will follow up tomorrow and the rest of the week)
Fyi, Reuters COVID tracker is really nice!
Unfortunately it tracks deaths and not hospitalisations, but that seems to be declining too: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...
The reported ratio of detected cases to deaths is reducing, but this what you would expect during the rapid spreading phase, because of the long time lag between detected cases and eventual death.
We have to wait a few more weeks to find out what the true ratio is in the UK. It will emerge into statistical significance gradually, because some people die sooner than others, so expect a trickle of stories with varying shades of speculation.
Unfortunately data on Long Covid is harder to come by, and this is just as concerning due to the high case numbers, and the way it severely affects people while tending to be under-reported and undiagnosed.
Today Change in 24 hours
Hospitalised 579 +57> The Telegraph is engaged in outright propaganda
> Disgusting. Disgusting to spread it
"Overall, nearly 30 per cent of people currently in hospital with Covid are “incidental” cases - 1,813 out of 6,245 - the highest it has been since the NHS started releasing the figures in the summer.
The number of incidental Covid cases has been rising in recent weeks because omicron is far more infectious than delta, meaning that many people will be entering hospital unknowingly infected. In the previous week, December 7 to December 14 - when the vast majority of hospitalisations were still delta - some 59 per cent of the 289 weekly rise was primarily Covid.
Experts said it was important to treat the current hospital data with caution, while Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said: “This is not the same disease we were seeing a year ago. “The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago – intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely – that is now history in my view and I think…that’s likely to continue.""
That said, I believe we would be seeing higher rate of hospitalizations if this were as dangerous as the other variants.
The following argument is often completely ignored, even if Omicron hospitalizes only half as many percent of infected people as Delta, it will reach the same absolute number of hospital patients one doubling period later, which is around two to three days later for most countries. I.e. it doesn't matter for the question whether public health systems collapse if you don't stop the wave of infections.
Some smaller countries (or districts) also reported higher deaths of the vaccines themselves compared to Covid -- which isn't solid data to go by but it's still quite an interesting data point.
Your argument should go both ways for it to be objective.
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EDIT: And of course I immediately regret posting in a Covid thread. Even just trying to say there are shades of gray and I get immediately labelled and flagged.
Enjoy your echo chamber, guys. What an extremist age we are living in. :(
This was my last ever time I will be posting in any such thread (not only on HN). You won. Do sleep soundly knowing that there won't be any critical thinking process involved. Hope that "scientific" approach makes you happy.
And calling this a 'divisive topic' lends too much credence to anti-vax dogma
That’s crazy talk. European countries have virtually vaccinated their whole adult population with a number of deaths linked to the vaccine so low it’s negligible.
Yes, it's quite low. But so is the number of covid fatalities for young people, which is why many healthy young adults aren't enthusiastic about being forced to vaccinate themselves and their kids.
It would not surprise me to learn, once final, honest numbers are tallied up, that the vaccination caused as many negative outcomes as covid itself in the under 30 crowd.
That being said, neither number is probably significant.
I try to keep an open mind and observe objectively. Both "camps" have their pretty wild claims and at this point in time it's more of a religious war than anything else.
That's what an average guy like me is seeing. But feel free to keep citing the need for supporting evidence in an age where there are strong financial incentives to take one of the sides in this debate.
> But feel free to keep citing the need for supporting evidence in an age where there are strong financial incentives to take one of the sides in this debate
I can't speak to anything about your country or your experiences, but you've used an absolutely non-falsifiable (+ ludicrously non-scalable) anecdote as your "counter-argument" or whatever, while simultaneously denigrating the validity of any real supporting evidence that anyone might show. You call this a "debate" - what room have you left? Can I provide stats on the highly-monitored vaccine distribution in the US regarding death? Yes, sure (.0022%).
But to what end? When you also claim:
> No small amount of people died immediately after getting the vaccine."
What is "not a small amount", I guess? Percentage-wise, 0.0022% sure seems small. Hell, maybe it's 50x worse than that in reality, which would still be just around 1/10th of a single percent! But, again, how can we have a conversation when you yourself refuse to provide any evidence for your beliefs, and pre-dismiss all other evidence due to financial incentives? None, as far as I can tell.
Anecdotal evidences also shouldn't be swept under the rug either. It's not good science in the objective sense because "statistical significance" is a rather random construct (and several months ago there was even a good article about it posted here on HN with a pretty interesting discussion with mathematicians and statisticians).
I am out though. Seems even if somebody tries to argue in a less extremist way they are immediately labeled as loonies because they don't belong to the currently strongly believed state of things. Enjoy your echo chamber where posters saying "hey but this doesn't seem as clear and cut as you make it out to be" are labeled as conspiracy theorists or monsters.
What a sad, sad age has this become. :|
We'll see in another 5 or 10 years though. I am keeping my mind open. Do you?
You claimed "not small" amounts of deaths as a direct result of vaccine administration, then balked at being asked to provide any evidence to support this claim while seeming to pre-dismiss contrary evidence. That does not make it seem like you are keeping an open mind or acting in good faith.
> There is nuance and it's immediately screamed out of existence.
There is nuance, but not on the population-level efficacy and safety of the vaccines relative to the risk of COVID infection.
> Seems even if somebody tries to argue in a less extremist way they are immediately labeled as loonies
You're arguing in a more extremist way (i.e., making counter-factual and unsubstantiated claims, reacting with offense when asked to support them; strongly doubting verifiable evidence but amplifying the value of anecdotes). I don't think you're a loonie, or a monster. But you are wrong.
The virus and its symptoms are cut and dried alright. The experimental vaccines, not so much. But think what you will. I am giving up.
If hundreds of millions of administered doses under highly-observed and reported on outcomes from the world's most-respected (not perfect) public health agencies won't convince you, what will? It's been a year, and I believe there's only one vaccine ever to have emergent side effects after that time, and even then the median time to symptoms was <50 days (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11910-018-0851-5). Yet we have seen COVID definitely has side effects, and they have a much higher likelihood of persisting.
And if your response is "we won't know until it's been 5, 10, etc. number of years" then OK, fine, but the same then must hold for COVID itself. If I'm betting on the long-term effects to my health, does it not follow to choose the highly-researched vaccine with quantified minimal side effects vs. the highly-researched infection with worse side effects?
Now it's my turn to give up.
Didn't these same health agencies approve opioids saying they weren't dangerous or addictive? Then spend a decade trying to cover it up with the pharma companies? Then they got hired by the same company's whose drugs they approved? Today fentanyl overdoses are the number one cause of deaths for my age group (18-45 https://www.google.com/search?q=fentanyl+overdoses+number+on...) in the US. That is a direct result of these pharma companies and health agencies. All it took was a little bit of money and our lives became meaningless.
How can I trust any agency that was willing to kill me for a couple bucks?
If you are unsure what I am talking about (https://www.google.com/search?q=opioid%20epidemic%20document...). IMO HBO's Crime of the century does a good job of laying out just how ridiculous the whole thing is.