Omicron extensively but incompletely escapes Pfizer vaccine neutralization
nature.com
nature.com
Note: less infectious here means intra-cell, it's still more transmissible than Delta.
Another thread summarizing what this means: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/147509796693972172...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/japan-covid-...
It also probably helps that like other asian countries they wear masks all the time, everywhere and without complaint.
Japan also currently doesn't let anyone in to the country.
Americans quite like splitting into factions, telling the other factions what the moral imperatives of the day are, and rebelling against what other factions tell them to do. It is a part of a somewhat broken sense of anti authoritarian bent which doesn’t recognize that authoritarian actions by your own group are equally problematic. Just a signal that once quite good ideology is degrading into something a bit strange, mostly just because of how information is distributed and education done.
And almost all Americans agree with this, because I didn’t actually name a political party. If there’s one thing that brings Americans together, it’s knowing that the other half is pure evil.
As an outsider, one of the US's core values is democracy and the democratic process.
Given the current push to undermine it, and the recent coup attempt intended to overthrow a democratically elected representative to install an authoritarian despot, and given the current level of support given to this dictatorial push, I have to say that from an outsider's perspective one side of America's political establishment clearly does not believe in American values.
Now, I don’t personally believe this. But I also think sovereign citizens are stupid. I still think both sovereign citizens and “big lie” proponents are trying to interpret and apply American values, even if I think they’re misguided. I hope to be able to convince “big lie” proponents to understand my worldview in that the current President was legitimately elected, but first I think it’s important to understand their position.
That blend of belief is shared by a subset of militants, but that's the result of the years-long propaganda campaign devised by the militant group's leadership in preparation for the election campaign.
We're talking about a política group which dedicated itself simultaneously to sabotage the election campaign by attacking voting methods believed to be disproportionally and massively favoured by other candidates , and included the preparation of a coup to overthrow the political regime to continue holding power.
The myth about fraudulent elections, which preceded the election by over a year, was made up by the militant group's leadership, and we should not interpret it as a reasonable and natural excuse to push a self-serving myth.
Which is false of course, but consider how you would react if there were serious election irregularities, and your current PM/President was effectively a pretender?
A lot of people angry about the election are, at least superficially, acting in 'good faith'. They think they are fighting 'for democracy'.
Don't discount how segregated US information clearing is - I was visiting a family member today and heard some of their Facebook feed videos, it was totally shocking. This person does not absorb any kind of mainstream news information.
All day every day, they hear misinformation about vaccines and the election, so it becomes easier to understand how they believe nonsense.
One particular video, from an Irish Politician and MD no less, made claims that Omicron was 'just the flu' etc. and deferred to both the Irish government and Medical System for legitimacy. It was a very convincing video that I suggest most regular people would be moved by it, even though to a keen observer it was clear they were lying.
Indeed, the very article upon which we are commenting is hard to parse, to the point where in the interest of Public Good I wish all of these articles had some kind of translation for us plebes, at least during a pandemic where in it's a 'war of information'.
Could you please explain how exactly the recent coup attempt intended to overthrow a democratically elected representative to install an authoritarian despot is not profoundly anti-democratic and thus anti-american, or how the coup was just a reflection of a "one-sided" coverage by the media? Regardless of how dissenting your view is, a coup to overthrow a democratically elected representative is still a coup.
--- "Take away our constitutional freedoms."
Right now, who is ordering who to stay home, to not go to the gym, to church, to a restaurant, to a private gathering - by force of law - and even imposing curfews?
For context, these might be some of the most broad and assertive challenges ever made on constitutional freedoms.
--- "They preach a hypocritical sense of morality while inflicting violence on those who cannot defend themselves."
There is one group of people in America who are killing themselves at 6x the rate of other Americans, and about 20x the rate of people of other countries.
They have hypocritically 'blamed' (at least in terms of populism) the issue on policing, which is very demonstrably not a direct cause, requiring police to pull back in many areas, and now we see the result, a 150% increase in violence among those same poor and vulnerable communities, that were already extremely violent. The major increase in lives lost is directly measurable in the thousands.
The #1 cause of death among this group, is violence from their own group.
Not 'some other group' assaulting them.
--- "They use gerrymandering and political tricks to hold on to power"
One group is trying to give voting rights to huge numbers of non-citizens at every level of government, because that group feels the new voters would vote for them, which is in terms of raw numbers, the most gigantic form of election gerrymandering ever conceived.
--- "Because of their incompetence, we’ve become a laughingstock on the world stage. "
New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire etc. are some of the worst hit by COVID in terms of deaths per capita, as for 'laughing stock' the Governor went down on sexual assault allegations, and charges of misrepresenting COVID information. Despite the careless populist rhetoric of some political fools, frankly, there isn't much of a serious political pattern across the nation in terms of outcomes - there's a pretty big 'obesity' pattern, which correlates strongly with race, but it also points to an issue in America overall vis-a-vis the rest of the world (i.e. obesity). But that isn't really a politically 'sided' issue so much.
...
I think you really did make the OP's point by pointing out how 'each side likes to blame the other' - I couldn't even fathom who you were talking about for sure.
However much I personally might support mask, separation and other restrictions, it's pretty oddly lacking in self awareness to talk about the 'Authoritarianism Of The Other Side' when literally politicians are ordering the most assertive transgressions of basic rights in history however legitimized or not.
As for Omicron ... we really don't know yet. Maybe this is the last real lockdown wave before lethality, treatments and vaccines provide enough protection.
The US has organized, in recent history, concentration camps based on the premise that national security was at stake.
More recently, the US employed secret prisons to torture people who were deemed persons of interest, both foreign and US citizens.
I'd figure that requiring basic personal higiene and public health measures, such as wearing a mask in public places to avoid spreading a disease which is already killed well over 800k US citizens, shouldn't even register as a concern regarding "constitutional freedoms". Yet, why is this only a concern, and the "most broad and assertive" one to boot, regarding constitutional rights in the US?
You see, that assertion does not pass any smell test. Think about it: any discussion, and complain, regarding the constitutionality of any policy is purely conceptual and abstract, and the conclusion is always absolute: either the constitution is violated, or it isn't.
Therefore, if anyone is honestly worried about the constitutional implications of a policy, they do not care if it affects everyone or even anyone. The discussion is purely conceptual: either the constitution is violated, and thus it must be upheld, or not.
With this in mind, any discussion on extrajudicial imprisonments, violations of the Geneva convention, and even extrajudicial assassinations, feature at the top of any concern.
And not whether you need to wash your hands or wear a face mask.
Think about it: how many times did the constitutionality of jailing people for pooping on the street was discussed in an election? Did fining people for not picking up their dog's poop ever became a divisive political talking point? Did you ever saw radical militant groups threatening with political action for being barred from urinating in public? Never, right?
This is the important part. They aren't worried about the constitution, they're worried that they have to do something they don't want to.
(I fully agree with their satirical point however ... it's just the wording of the examples was a bit off in my purview.)
After listening to a family member scroll through some shocking Facebook tirades today, I'm ready to believe a lot of Americans will believe almost anything about the 'other side', it's tragic.
It’s rather easy to come up with these. Take “your party believes in inflicting violence on innocent children.” The replies would be “But they broke the law, and we need to send them back to their own country” and “Embryos are not yet children.” But both sides are appalled at how the other can hate little children so much.
Im ok with the repercussions that society may face (eg, higher covid counts etc) to avoid such a society. Call me a monster but I want my daughter to know a world much more similar to what I knew 2 years ago than the one in black mirror, which I believe we tend to be accelerating towards.
Luckily my country is also a representative republic where we can vote for what policies we want. (Although I certainly have issues with the many ways my vote is subverted or rendered less-than others votes based on land.)
I think you have your causality mixed up a bit.
When I was younger I would take my coat off in the cold early spring to protest the fact that it hadn't warmed up enough, and, mostly in jest, insist that it was taking your coat off that harked warmer weather (when obviously the reverse is true).
In this case you are trying to do this same with masks, hasten the end of something you don't like by pretending it isn't happening. Unfortunately this ultimately makes a worse world for the both of you.
You obviously aren't the "monster", the monster is the thing that scares you so much you lose all reason, and confuse your causal arrows so much.
It's unfortunate that the world is in a state of decline right now, and I understand wanting to turn it back. But like all people who have tried to stop change by resisting you only ultimately end up making it worse.
It's because you can't accept the way the world is changing that it will progress this way faster.
Walking in the world barefoot is a natural and normal thing. We should all probably be doing more of it, not shaming people for it.
The issue is mostly one of public health that has materially adverse affects on others.
Maybe it would be like driving on the highway without snowtires in the winter: it's reckless and you're going to hurt people. I think if most of us saw that happening (it happens) it kind of makes you mad to see how irresponsible it is.
Also the commentor above wrote about 'voting' concerning masks - it's not such a simple issue.
Democracy is not a 'Tyranny of the Majority'. It's why we have Constitutions etc.. Requiring people to do stuff in the normal course of their day is a pretty big step, we have to be mindful of regulating normative behaviours. It's easy to let rights slide away, we should have a bit better of a process for these kinds of things, and maybe tuck in a couple of laws after this is over for that purpose because the Courts don't have a lot to work with on a lot of these things.
2. Covid can spread asymptomatically. Again, if you were sincerely interested in understanding this topic, you would know that extremely basic fact.
3. You have no way to know whether you were exposed to someone with Covid or not, unless you are never around other people. If you're never around other people, masks are a moot point, anyway.
4. We have been forced to wear (sometimes uncomfortable) clothing in public places due to fear for a long time. Women can't go into restaurants topless, even if it's not a city law. Fear-based or not, you don't get to decide whether you wear a mask on private land.
If you really want to parrot that line, the very least you need to do is get informed about the issue you're trying to discuss.
Vaccines are safe and effective in training your immune system to handle a COVID-19 infection. That's how vaccines work. They are not, nor they ever were, a silver bullet that stops everyone from catching the disease and transmitting it to everyone the come across.
To put it very clearly and unambiguously to you, vaccines don't stop the virus from spreading, they only improve your chances of not dying from it.
Also, it's disingenuous to pretend that the current generation of vaccines, which was developed for the original Wuhan strain, also have the same effectiveness against subsequent strains such as the Delta and now Omicron strains.
Your blend of vocal ignorance is tiring. It feels like you're arguing in bad faith. A brief one-minute read on the topic is enough to clear up any possible misconception regarding the topic. Is that too much to ask?
The primary goal of masks is to reduce transmission.
The primary goal of vaccines is to reduce deaths.
Vaccines reduce deaths very well, but they only modestly reduce transmission. Using both together is much more effective and inexpensive than only using vaccines or natural immunity.
If people can just stop their BS, get vaxxed, cover their face, and avoid gatherings, the pandemic would be over in a month, and we wouldn't need to do all this shit, would we?
Even if your personal assertion regarding the effectiveness of facial masks in containing COVID spread had any bearing in reality, don't you believe that such a low effort/high reward move is well justified given the current public health scenario, and more importantly the need to avoid escalating to higher-impact measures?
This irrational opposition to facial masks reads like ranting against other basic personal higiene etiquette, such as covering coughs and sneezes.
> This irrational opposition to facial masks reads like ranting against covering coughs and sneezes.
To me, it feels more like if you got told to keep your mouth covered all the time because sometimes you suddenly cough or sneeze.
Don't you believe that reducing or outright eliminating the chance that a single person you come across to not experience hospitalization or death due to covid constitutes a worthy reward given the tradeoff?
> Also, do you wear glasses?
Why do you feel this is relevant?
I agree that reducing the risk constitutes a reward. I don't agree it constitutes a high reward, since the reduction is only marginal.
> > Also, do you wear glasses?
> Why do you feel this is relevant?
Based on this response, I assume that you don't wear glasses, or you'd know exactly why it's relevant: masks make them fog up all the time.
I suggest you review your definition of "marginal". Even the use of low-effecriveness cloth masks have been observed as reducing the symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 by about 9%, and in the outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt it was associated with a 70% reduced risk of infection.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
I also couldn't help notice how you base your personal assertions in no evidence or observation, and instead you simply repeat your baseless assertions without any substance. Do you feel this conveys any relevance to these personal beliefs?
I think his is actually misleading.
The vaccines significantly reduce transmission overall - mostly due to the fact people are much less likely to get COVID in the first place if they are vaccinated.
Where you can maybe have a point, is that people who are vaccinated - who do get COVID - may transmit it at the same rate as those who were unvaccinated and infected. Maybe.
But this is a secondary effect to the first order issue, which is that vaccines significantly reduce infections in the first place, and therefore reduces R0.
Yes, cloth masks are marginal, but they are at least 'another layer' of protection.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
Explain yourself, give me reasoning and talk to me about pros and cons of various things and we can probably get along very well.
Now there's a problem here. While you can debate such things with me and you and and many other people, there are also a lot of people out there that just do not respond at all to that. I would argue it's actually most people and that is what politicians have to deal with. That sucks for you and me.
I think wearing a mask indoors makes absolute sense. We can debate whether a cloth, surgical mask or N95 mask are in order but some type of mask that goes over mouth _and_ nose just makes sense given the airborne nature of this and other viruses. I will readily admit that I always found it weird seeing Asians running around w/ a surgical mask when they think they're sick w/ something but I've come to realize that it just made sense. They're doing the right thing.
I don't think putting alcohol on my hands multiple times a day is great for my skin or the natural skin bacterial flora at all but I really like the fact that I've seen less people run past the hand sanitizer at the store than people leaving the washrooms without washing their hands.
Are you telling me that you're one of those people that go to the toilet and don't wash up? I'm sorry but I don't want to second hand touch your junk! Ever!
Can you please point out precisely which OP's point you feel classifies as "misinformation"?
https://m.dw.com/en/how-japans-mask-culture-may-have-saved-l...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Genetic-factor...
Also, underreporting and asymptomatic rates are much higher than initially assumed.
I’d be skeptical.
There has a been a “savior” strain that a lot of us have been hoping for which is: extremely transmissible, and relatively benign. So far it seems like omicron could be that, but I haven’t actually seen good data on mortality yet.
If anybody has good mortality data I would love to see it.
The problem is that there's so many factors to isolate (testing rates, vaccination rates, behavior changes, demographics of the infected population, etc.) that it is hard to get a precise number yet.
Of course, even if it's less severe, it's also more infectious which could make overall outcomes worse.
Days suggests 2,5 days instead of 8,5 days and that gives a lot of wiggle room.
Edit: it's not because of deaths...
( That's where the stat came from)
Yes I know influenza isn't a corona virus. My point partly being we've become complacent at just how dangerous SARS-CoV-2 is and its variants are probably worse, but at the very least they're more transmissible.
I think omicron is seen as less severe because so many people have had at least one shot of the vaccine. It's slamming anyone who is not vaccinated at all most ICUs are 75% un-vaccinated, the remaining two shot no booster, or two shots plus a booster, or two shots plus booster but elderly and sick. It's like MMR vaccine nobody is asking why doesn't everyone have measles, mumps, and rubella - because nearly everyone has been vaccinated for those.
The "more transmissible" may be partially confounded by novelty. E.g. what's influenza's R0 in an immunologically naive population? Who knows.
Vaccination doesn't fully answer what the equilibrium transmissibility will be. either, because there's things like mucosal immunity.
> I think omicron is seen as less severe because so many people have had at least one shot of the vaccine.
So far the (weak) evidence we have points to both:
- A somewhat lower severity of infection from omicron than delta regardless of vaccination status.
- Moderate protection against severe disease from a 2 shot mRNA vaccine series, and pretty good protection against severe disease after a recent 3rd booster shot.
So, that is, it's not one or the other, it's both: Omicron is probably less severe overall and has its severity reduced further by vaccination.
MMR is similarly effective at infection vs. mumps as the mRNA vaccines are against infection with pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2.
Transmission is a harder question: if you prevent infection in a bunch of people, but also create more asymptomatic people who are likely to go out and about: which effect wins out?
Looks like death rates are climbing in jurisdictions who were on the leading edge of the Omicron wave. If I had to guess, it's significantly better if infected than Delta, but still much worse than we're used to dealing with with influenza.
> There has a been a “savior” strain that a lot of us have been hoping for which is: extremely transmissible, and relatively benign.
This is only able to have any benefit to the extent that it also is strongly and durably protective against infection from other variants.
I'm hopeful that things go much better this time around, both because vaccines are still somewhat protective and it looks somewhat less dangerous than Delta.
(To be clear I also wonder when it is time to return “to normal” but I disagree this is some kind of media propaganda. I think it’s too dismissive to assume there aren’t significant populations that have reasonable desires to continue to aim for mitigating policies like masking.)
Second, the immunocompromised have always had problems navigating society. It sucks, but the best we can (reasonably) do long term is to stay home when sick, and practice good hygiene in public places.
Third, I think the media and the "desires to continue mitigation" go hand in hand. The fact that you keep being worried about kids indicate that you tend to follow mainstream media, or particular people on Twitter, where you're fed the same narrative. It's a powerful tool.
Finally, if the media stopped reporting on Covid tomorrow, or even started calling it "seasonal flu" instead while reporting 10% of the amount they do now, the fears in people would subside and things would go back to normal. It's a negative feedback loop.
I think you’re projecting. I don’t really care about Covid; I’m not in a risk category. But I’m not so blind to my own bias that I can’t acknowledge that other people who feel more worried than I do might have reasonable arguments to be more worried! I’m merely arguing against vague dismissals as if there are no reasonably worried people who are taking their own personal evaluation of the danger they and their loved ones are in during a pandemic.
Additionally, please note you have no argument towards the fact that there are millions of immunocompromised individuals except to shrug and go “oh well”. This is not an adequate reason to dismiss that millions of individuals and their loved ones might advocate very reasonably for their benefit and safety so that they’re not shut in/excluded from society for multiple years due to everyone else refusing to practice basic mitigation like masking and vaccination during a pandemic.
I'm mainly trying to define/understand the fear, because I'm still not getting it and think it's irrational and overblown. Moreso now with Omicron.
> I’m not so blind to my own bias that I can’t acknowledge that other people who feel more worried than I do
I live under the same roof with an 83 year old. I've had two jabs, because I was under the false impression that vaccination would prevent transmission. I am sick and tired of having people call me selfish (I know you didn't!).
Immunocompromised people are, as I acknowledged before, a problem in this equation. But we as a society have always had to accept a certain level of risk, and inconvenience to minorities.
We could have every document/sign/book ever produced done in braille as well, but that would be considered an enormous waste of energy and resources. Are blind people worth any less than people with vision? Most would argue no (aside from economists). Blind (or otherwise impaired) people will inherently have inconveniences compared to their healthy counterparts. We should strive to remove their suffering, but we cannot go about our lives engineering everything tailored to every handicapped group.
We've simply gotten another coronavirus in circulation and it's nastier than the ones we had before. Naturally, as I see it, this should lead us to accept a higher level of risk in our daily lives (like when we started using cars instead of horses for transportation) instead of trying to irrationally cling to the previous one. Overall mortality raised by some 0.1-0.3% or whatever percentage and we need to accept it.
Of course everyone in a risk group should go get vaccinated ASAP. I assume many also overestimate their own health. But I still think it's wrong to shun and shame them and lock them out from society.
Instead we should be able to have reasonable discussions about things, like we're having here right now (I think), but instead I see ideas like vaccine mandates for everyone in the US, including all children and those with previous infections, which is just insane, and there is no open debate allowed about this. And this censorship only leads to stronger echo chambers, exacerbating the problem to begin with.
If we could be open and honest we might come to a conclusion together that there's no point in mandating vaccines for young men or children and we should instead focus on the elderly and the risk groups. Point out to people that there are risks of myocarditis but they're small in comparison to the risks of Covid, for most people. Now you can barely say anything negative about anything without getting "canceled" or "deplatformed". That's what I'm mainly worried about. And also why I the mainstream view is so skewed. Anyone who has any kind of skepticism/criticism is an "anti-vaxxer", which is countered by more censoring, shaming, whatnot. Creating a world of division where we have two people, the ones who are compassionate, and the ones who don't give a fuck about the rest of the world and only themselves. The truth is more nuanced than that.
Sorry about the rant. :D
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
> Parents often can and will do whatever they can to protect their child...
I'd adjust that to "parents can and will do whatever they think will protect their child based on whatever the current wisdom (or scary headline) suggests".
Consider parents not letting their kids go trick or treating because they don't want to roll the dice on someone putting a razor blade in their candy. As a result, their kid will never eat a razor blade (though really they almost certainly never would have anyway), but what's the cost of missing out on that experience? Even if missing the experience is costly, maybe it ends up being a win because the kid now has a better relationship with sugary garbage food as an adult? Seeing the whole picture is difficult.
The furniture thing seems straightforward to me. I'd feel relatively confident that we won't learn anything surprising in the coming years about pros/cons of anchoring a book shelf to the wall. You can make that decision today with pretty good confidence that you understand the risk profile (and it seems like all upside, especially since its reversible anyway).
What are the odds that we don't learn something surprising in the next year about covid, the vaccines, the interaction between the two, any new variants, etc? It seems reasonable to me to make the same "even from low chances of danger" argument about skipping the vaccines for kids.
Everyone is going to do their best, and some people are going to be wrong. The confidence that I see people having that they're the ones who are going to be right is baffling to me (edit: in general, not talking about you specifically).
Once kids go from toddlers to starting walking and understanding the world around them though I think it's very important to teach them to be careful about - but actively use - things like knives, scissors, hot stoves etc. Then you don't have to constantly worry about them and they'll grow up to be capable and responsible individuals.
So yeah, I suppose my initial reaction was more towards the latter point of helicopter parenting, not the first one of protecting toddlers.
The critical piece for a “savior” strain would be granting immunity to other less-benign strains. It’s still very early on, but so far it doesn’t look like Omicron has that feature as people are reportedly contracting both Omicron and Delta:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698080#29699001
Without providing protection against other strains, it’s just another transmissible disease in addition to what we had before.
I don’t think it’s been long enough that anyone will have reliable enough data to form a solid conclusion.
The good news is that prior immunity seems to be very protective against severe outcomes, and that’s been clear for a bit
By the same token, does infection with omicron have any impact on your likelihood to catch Delta or other variants? The inverse appears to be vanishingly small.
The UK had a high infection rate of Delta, so it's still mixed data there.
So Omicron is reinfecting people but it’s not as severe, not only because of specific mutations, but because most people have already been infected / vaccinated multiple times.
This would also apply to other diseases. So if someone has been infected with e.g. the flu 5 times, it debunks this theory. IIRC there are multiple common colds which would explain why some people get sick with cold almost every year (and even then infections tend to be spread out). Anecdotally there was one time i was infected with some sort of stomach bug 4 times in a short span, but i’ve never had a stomach bug since then.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03796-6
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03826-3
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021
The question is if you get omicron can you then turn around and get delta which is still out there, just being out-competed at the moment.
On Google, the top results seem to say that yes you can get both. But the data looks very preliminary.
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/can-you-get-infected-omicron...
> Can you get Omicron after previous infection with Delta? Yes. UK studies into Omicron have also suggested that previous Covid infection provides poor protection against the new strain.
https://www.wxyz.com/news/health/ask-dr-nandi/can-you-get-in...
> epidemiology experts have indicated that people could get infected with both delta and omicron together. We’ve seen co-infection before. Two studies — one in Brazil and one in France — have researched patients infected with two different strains of the virus at the same time.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25678686...
> Already had COVID? You can still get infected with the omicron variant.
https://whyy.org/articles/what-do-we-know-about-omicron-toda...
> what was clear from that is people who have recovered from previous COVID-19 disease can get infected with omicron
I suppose there's some limited displacement effect e.g. if you have Omicron and self isolate you can't catch Delta during your self isolation period?
Not really. If Delta's Rt is greatly reduced because lots of people have immunity, Omicron can show up with a much higher Rt and grow in case numbers. It doesn't need to further reduce Delta's Rt to "win".
I.e. even if R0 among those naive to the variants is similar, once you have 2/3rds of people who can't get Delta because of vaccination or prior infection and that can get Omicron, ... Omicron is going to win. And it looks like Omicron may be more contagious than Delta at baseline, so it's even quicker.
Otherwise, we could say something like "COVID outcompetes the flu".
I don't think we have the data on Omicron vs Delta yet as you say.
I mean, it does, but ... we don't really know that Omicron is outcompeting Delta in that sense. We know that Omicron case counts are growing, relative to Delta, but we don't know how well Omicron prevents later infection by Delta, etc.
You asked "Wouldn't the fact that it's outcompeting Delta imply that there is some cross immunity?" The only fact that we have right now is that Omicron is growing quicker than Delta, not that Omicron is somehow suppressing Delta with cross-immunity.
> Otherwise, we could say something like "COVID outcompetes the flu".
Well--- COVID causing everyone to be careful, combined with influenza's lower Rt due to not being novel, really put a dent in influenza. So even then, without cross-immunity, you can have growth in one suppress growth in the other.
If you are infected with omicron and are isolated, can you be infected by Delta from say...a shoe that picked it up days ago?
Answer: No, but that doesn't mean either disappear in the short term.
Researchers mix diluted blood plasma with viral samples, and then see whether it can grow in cell cultures. They figure out the concentration of plasma needed to neutralize all the virus.
2 doses of the vaccine produces plasma that can still neutralize the virus, but it requires 20x as much plasma on average. In turn, this means that the virus is more likely to be able to replicate and infect new cells before all the virus is neutralized.
However:
- There is still antibody efficacy against the virus, just not nearly as much.
- Memory B cells have a head-start at further developing specific immunity to new variants.
- This ignores the effect of T-cell mediated immunity.
- This mentions evidence that people who were previously infected and vaccinated have good neutralizing titers against Omicron.
- Other evidence suggests people who are boosted have much better neutralization titers against Omicron. That is, boosting doesn't just increase the number of antibodies, but increases the breadth of antibody protection.
Is there any way to know whether that increased breadth of antibody protection isn't coming from a post vaccination exposure that wasn't tested for not tested? Since vaccinated people aren't generally required to do asymptomatic testing, let alone symptomatic testing in many places.
It's complicated! The short answer I gave elsewhere: B cells aggressively replicate and mutate in response to pathogens, and those that match are selected for. Repeating this process gets more B cells, but also broader varieties of resultant antibodies matching not just the original pathogen but things that are close to it.
> Is there any way to know whether that increased breadth of antibody protection isn't coming from a post vaccination exposure that wasn't tested for not tested?
Yes. We collect plasma from people, and then test it against a variety of variants in assays. We have plenty of old plasma to do this with.
Indeed, there's some evidence that many people who were both infected with SARS-CoV-1 and subsequently vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 may have exceptionally broad immunity to coronaviruses, not isolated to just SARS-CoV variants but also to wild-type coronaviruses circulating in animals and human coronaviruses causing the common cold.
> they select for the spike protein of the original variant and ignore others
Repeated exposure causes you to get many different kinds of antibodies that react against many things like the original spike protein. There's ample research showing that a 2 shot (and 3 shot) series of mRNA vaccination creates a very broad response that cross-reacts to many spike protein variants.
Reaction against the spike protein is best, because this binding doesn't just activate the rest of the immune system, but it's neutralizing against the virus: it prevents its entry into cells.
Compare this figure:
https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/jama/...
Many convalescent (prior infected) individuals had very low neutralization activity against variants. All vaccinated individuals had good neutralization titers against all variants measured in this study, though they were still definitely better against A.1 than other types.
> whereas natural infection generates a broader response that will target a variety of proteins.
Natural infection will generate a variety of nucleocapsid antibodies, too (against non-spike portions of the virus).
This is a mixed bag: it means the immune system can be activated and it also means that the immune system will try and break down things that have antibodies bound elsewhere on the virus... but the spike antibodies around that could directly prevent infection of new cells are less effective against variants.
And as for immunity from infection, your body makes antibodies for the prefusion spike (the free floating form that infects cells), the post fusion spike (after it binds to ACE2), and the nucleocapsid. Since prefusion spikes are what bind to cells for entry, you’d want your immune system focused entirely on attacking that vector. China’s sinovac vaccine generates nucleocapsid antibodies and it’s failing in the face of omicron.
Against Delta, if you compare a vaccinated population with 2 doses of the mRNA vaccine against an equivalent unvaccinated population that ended up with 100 infections, with about 70 people having symptoms and 10 people with severe illness, you'd expect:
* 60 people who would have otherwise been infected to show no evidence of infection. That is, the vaccine is so strongly neutralizing that a large proportion of people that would otherwise be infected show no evidence of virtal replication at all.
* Another 30 people or so to end up infected, without symptoms. The virus replicated some in their cells, but the severity of the disease before an immune response was mounted was so low that it went unnoticed. Note that this number has not changed too much from the unvaccinated population.
* About 10 people with symptoms, of whom 1 has severe illness.
You could view this as mostly shifting severity "downwards" -- some people who would have been infected ending up not; some people who would have had symptoms instead just being infected; some people who would have had severe illness instead just having symptoms.
From a pure mechanical view: if an infected cell produces 1000 copies of the virus, ordinarily resulting in 50 other cells being infected... and antibodies from a vaccine glom up on spike proteins and reduce this 50 number to 10-- the virus still grows in your body, but the rest of your immune system has a whole lot longer to react before illness becomes severe. And this ignores other benefits from vaccination (earlier mobilization of immune system, T-cell mediated immunity, training of B cell lines to target spike proteins resulting in faster maturation of variant-specific antibodies, etc). So even if the antibody concentration and affinity isn't quite sufficient it's still a benefit.
The opposite is the case.
No vetting of that Israeli study, no peer review, no competent efforts to account for bias in the sample, and it just does not hold up to scrutiny when compared to other results.
32.39 cases / 100,000 people double vaccinated vs 31.93 / 100k of the unvaccinated.
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0...
The vaccines don't seem to confer any lasting difference.
One concern with observational studies: people who choose vaccination don't behave exactly the same as people who don't. They may assume more risks out of perceived safety. They may also be more likely to test or seek medical care. This is why, at a minimum, you need case control to start to believe the conclusions.
In any case, we have actual case control studies showing mRNA vaccine efficacy against illness and particularly against severe illness from Omicron. They disagree on the amounts, and in some cases the numbers are not thrilling (30%), but there's no studies so far implying no efficacy.
The study we're discussing here concludes its abstract with: "These data support the notion that, provided high neutralization capacity is elicited by vaccination/boosting approaches, reasonable effectiveness against Omicron may be maintained."
I think you could give out 2 doses of a strong laxative and show it statistically protects sick people against covid too. If you take out the weakest, the rest will seem to do better.
Edit: Disclaimer at the top of the page says technical difficulty.
The effect is caused by the age data ending in mid-October, before the spike we're looking at in mid-December. So, the age-segregated data couldn't show that spike at all.
Why would we expect vaccine derived coronavirus-19 immunity to be substantially longer than natural other-coronavirus immunity, which we know to be months, not years.
That is, we know of many vaccines where the protection from vaccination is greater than the protection from prior infection. It looks like that is true of COVID vaccines, both by observational / case control data and from data comparing antibody neutralizing titers between convalescent plasma and vaccinated individuals.. e.g. https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/jama/...
For any given patient--- who knows. There could be one person somewhere who'd get no benefit from vaccination and a huge benefit from prior infection. We can only know about the superiority of vaccination to prior infection in aggregate, but the effect is real.
Edit to add: the fact that vaccine + previous natural infection has a better immune response over just the vaccine likely has to do with the rest of the virus being more similar to older variants of the virus and your body recognizing some other part of the virus versus the spike itself.
This may be a factor. But, repeated exposure means more breadth of antibodies. B cells aggressively replicate and mutate in response to pathogens, and those that match are selected for. Repeating this process gets more B cells, but also broader varieties of resultant antibodies matching not just the original pathogen but things that are close to it. This is why:
* 1 dose of mRNA was pretty effective against B.1.1.7, but not very effective against Delta, which had some immune escape mutations.
* 2 doses of mRNA vaccines targeted at B.1.1.7 were pretty effective against Delta, but only slightly effective against Omicron, which had a lot of (different) immune escape mutations.
* 3 doses of mRNA vaccines targeted at B.1.1.7 seem pretty effective against Omicron.
That being said, I'm going off the preliminary study that shows that vaccine >= infection for older variants whereas vaccine + infection >> vaccine for omicron.
As an aside, I've got three shots of Moderna in me and I caught omicron during the covidtastrophe a few weeks ago. It was extremely mild but I'm now resigned to the idea that vaccines are an assurance against getting actually sick more than a silver bullet.
More exposure basically means broader protection-- whether it's exposure through infection, vaccination, etc.
Whatever you're exposed to, the compliment and quantity of antibodies widens and is drawn towards whatever you're exposed to. You end up with antibodies that bind against whatever you're exposed to in many different ways-- many of which will be cross-reactive against other variants.
Obviously, it'd be nice if we had a omicron-based booster, because it would be broadening the protection more in that direction.
> As an aside, I've got three shots of Moderna in me and I caught omicron during the covidtastrophe a few weeks ago.
Sorry to hear that. We still have relatively little data, but it looks our best current guesses are:
* Vs. Delta: 2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna: about 60-70% effective against infection, 80-90% effective against symptoms, and 95%+ effective against severe illness.
* Vs. Omicron: 2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna: ???% (poor) effective against infection, 30% effective against symptoms, 50-70% effective against severe illness. 3 doses of Pfizer/Moderna: ???% (maybe moderate) efficacy against infection, 60%??? effective against symptoms (evidence quality poor), 85% effective against severe illness. It also looks like this is short lived and sloping down relatively fast.
In any case, you're protected every step of the way: Less likely to become infected, less likely to become symptomatic if infected, and less likely to develop severe illness if symptomatic.
One interesting epidemiological question is: vaccinated people are pretty likely to be asymptomatic with Omicron, so they may be more likely to spread it.
On the other hand, these "leaky vaccines" have already prevented a massive amount of mortality. Yes, the duration and quality of protection, even boosted, against Omicron is unfortunate... but even 2 doses can still be expected to save a high number of lives from Omicron.
Here's also some analysis about this effect with Omicron, which seems honest about the limitations: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/theres-something-antigeni...
This is not supported by any evidence.
(4 in 18 months with boosters every decade)
Are you up to date on your boosters for DPT? I don't know anyone who has maintained that.
Though this is only looking at the drop in vaccine efficacy with respect to symptomatic infections, two shots of an mRNA still might give decent protection against severe disease; don't know if there is a change with this.
There's not. Severe disease is caused by your body attacking your own lungs because the virus did so much damage between initial infection and your body recognizing the problem. Vaccines, any vaccine, dramatically shortens the time between initial infection and immune response. Shorter duration == less damage to your body in that time.
I think the "reasonable effectiveness" part speaks for itself. My reading of the "provided high neutralization capacity" part is that, we know vaccines lose effectiveness over time, so the "reasonable effectiveness" has a caveat of "provided you get a booster, and possibly regular boosters in the future".
Certainly I get the argument, various arguments actually, for vaccinating Africa, etc., but this isn't a very good version of that argument.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
It would appear that mass vaccination had a minimal effect on the already low case fatality rate. I think it’s getting harder and harder to justify lockdowns and forced masking.
Why would one focus on any impact on the case fatality rate? A lot of vaccination's benefit is preventing infections and cases in the first place, isn't it?
That graph is also misleading, because it's looking at the cumulative case fatality rate, not the fatality rate at a given point in time. That is, it's the ratio between the red and purple lines on this graph. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-deaths-and-cas...
This winter should mark the end of any and all restrictions regarding the Corona virus.
The spread was happening in confined spaces from symptomatic individuals in nursing homes and hospitals.
It's because the spread would overpopulate hospitals and because of that there would be a lack of beds and ventilators.
Also, over occupation means urgent surgeries have to be postponed.
The current question is if lockdowns are required if the severity is way down.
It just takes a while since they want to be sure of data coming in.
Just relax ... It will take some weeks/months to confirm, if omicron is mostly harmless.
Quarantine the sick and those that came in contact with them is a another measure to prevent the spread, but it's not an effective one when the hospitals are going to be overcrowded or when the healthcare system is about to collapse.
Just look at what happened to Italy / New York.
This is actually pretty basic stuff, you should already know this after almost 2 years.
Eg. In Belgium you were free to run, walk, sport everywhere outdoors. People bought a lot of homegym machines too.
Additionally, the self-claimed strongest man of Belgium just died of delta because he was also in denial out COVID.
Yeah, he was in the ICU but wanted to be released since he could handle it... Died within 3 weeks before a fight ( match)
Ps. Yes, his wife even said it's not COVID but just his lungs "suddenly".
Odds of winning are approximately 1 in 14 million.
Population of Belgium 12 million.
Strongest man in Belgium one in 12 million.
It would take you about half a year to count up to 12 million.
And even than, the strongest man was probably a very large man who abused steroids. At that size, size is probably inversely related to life expectancy.
So I wouldn't make too much of the apparent risk, based on that one individual.
Just in case, the core issue is that healthy people aren't immune to COVID-19 ( and mostly delta), even if they/you would like to think that.
You should really look into the basics of why COVID is dangerous.
It's your immune system having a too strong reaction to a new virus and damaging itselves and the lungs severely, even until death.