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Comment by Bellend | Hacker News Reader

As someone else mentioned and I agree that I hope we are at the end of covid lockdown potential but is that realistic?

Is it pure luck that Omicron is more transmissible but apparently less severe than Delta? What is to stop the next variant being more transmissible than Omicron but 10 times more deadly?

I know news outlets are really bad for clickbait titles, but I read yesterday that a new variant was detected in South France in the last few days? When will the carnival end and what does it mean?

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As far as I understand that's not likely because the it would be maladaptive for the virus. If there were a really deadly variant in South Africa, then 1) it wouldn't spread as fast because viruses need live hosts to spread and 2) people would change their behavior before it reached the entire world.

That is, Omicron is mild so people likely didn't change their behavior too much. If you saw a lot of people around you going to the hospital, you would likely stop going out so much. (Some people knew many people going to the hospital during the pandemic; others saw none for years. The infection was very unevenly distributed. On HN I expect most people are remote workers and know few people getting infected.)

It depends whether it confers immunity to other variants, and how long it lasts.

If it’s good at that, it is so transmissible that quickly everyone will get it (the fabled “herd immunity”) and new variants, unless they break the mould, won’t have a large enough population of o sustain themselves in.

Otherwise, maybe we’ll enter into some kind of equilibrium, where there’s enough of not-terrible Omicron to keep everyone “topped up”, equivalent to permanently high vaccination levels.

Or, none of our happens and as you say, the next variant is more transmissible and more deadly, and we’re screwed again.

Re France, new variants pop up all the time, if it’s the same one I read about, there’s no indication that it’s special right now so for now I’d say clickbait.

It's pretty much pure luck that Omicron isn't more severe than Delta, and it's not clear that it's a lot less severe though that'll be clear in the data in another month. I suspect in 20 years this thing will look more like measles in that high levels of vaccination starting in childhood + rapid response on outbreaks will make it a negligible risk at a personal level. Who knows though, anyone promising certainty is probably trying to sell you something.

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