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Comment by monological | Hacker News Reader

But now we’ll be able to reach herd immunity. Very mild and highly transmissible. This is the best possible outcome.

I've been watching over both my parents the past week. Both Omicron cases.

"Very mild" is... not accurate. It hasn't hospitalized them, but even without quarantining, they'd be incapable of living anything like a normal life.

The common cold it most certainly IS NOT.

(Both are double vaxxed and boosted, btw)

Was it worse than a flu for them, or roughly similar?

Normal flu for my dad, a bit worse than that from mom. She basically hasn't gotten out of bed for about 8 days except to use the bathroom.

Gee, 8 days is a lot, yeah that feels like worse than a flu. I hope they both feel better soon.

How old are they?

Early 70s, but in good health generally

Thanks for sharing. I hope they feel better soon.

Keep in mind, that between the "like the flu" and "mild" designator, folks are dismissing the severity of Omicron. But we must keep in mind that "mild" is in reference to "severe" which entails death and ground glass lungs.

The pandemic has taught me how little people care about words;

"Asymptomatic" now means "just a low grade fever", or "a cough that didn't take me to the hospital"

"Allergies" now means "I can barely breathe no matter what environment and I'm tired like I'm taking Claritin, just ignore the color of my sputum or my cough."

"It's just the cold or flu" now means "I'm just sick for a week, and I should definitely socialize like normal"

Very mild is exceptionally accurate. It’s a nothing burger even for unvaccinated people.

Then why are our hospitals overloaded with covid patients?

They aren’t

Are you suggesting that the footage of crowded hospitals and horror stories from my own family members who work in healthcare are entirely fabricated?

Medical community Covid "mild" is a far cry from common cold "mild".

I had a "mild" Covid Original Flavour. I "only" had a 103 fever for 3 weeks, swellings in places I didn't know could swell, and had my stamina shot to shit. It's been just over a year and I'm just now beginning to feel like I can start bringing myself back to pre-Covid healthiness levels.

And all that is "mild". I didn't lose my sense of smell. I didn't lose oxygenation. I never had to go to the emergency room.

There's no reason to believe that we'll achieve herd immunity to anything beyond Omicron. There's a reason Flu vaccines are a thing you get every year, even if you've had the flu.

I don't get the flu vaccine every year.

Once you reach a certain age, you really should.

There will be no real herd immunity effect to protect those who lack immunity. Instead virtually everyone is just going to get infected, and most survivors will retain cellular immunity which gives them significant protection against severe symptoms during later reinfections.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Fortunately the current vaccines and other therapies are pretty effective at preventing deaths.

Herd immunity has been predicted since about May 2020 (in Sweden) and there is always far too optimism about it. We now know that a recovered infection does not produce permanent immunity.

There's no guarantee of that. Omicron seems to be exceptionally capable of infecting both those who had the current vaccines and/or previous variants.

Maybe Omicron provides immunity to Rho (or whatever is coming), but it may provide no protection to Sigma.

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