Will Omicron Leave Most of Us Immune? | Hacker News Reader

Will Omicron Leave Most of Us Immune?

theatlantic.com

21 pointsjpthurman13 comments

That is the outcome I expect to be most likely. Half my family is anti vaccine, and it is all painful politics.

Omicron is contagious enough to expect nearly everyone will be infected.

We call this mother nature's vaccine mandate program.

Was nice for everyone to have a laugh. So far a good portion have went through Omicron. I caught OG Covid very early on. From what I see Omicron is far less severe most of the time.

Time will tell, but I'm pretty convinced that the omicron wave will be the last _big_ disruptive wave. You can say that our immune system is a patchwork, but zo it is against other diseases as well. It's mostly the common denominator of the world population's immunity, which keeps rising, that will make or break global decline or decrease. Decline means it keeps declining until as good as neglectible.

I sort of doubt it given all the folks infected I know this time have either been vaccinated, or have been infected. It was a depressing realization I had yesterday.

Like the article I think the deaths may be part of the past, but we will continue to see more waves over the next decade. I also think these will be disruptive just do to the sheer numbers sick like omicron. Basically there is no end to April 2020.

You say infected, but were they severely ill? More than a "normal" influenza infection?

> You say infected, but were they severely ill? More than a "normal" influenza infection?

Aren't "normal" influenza infections pretty brutal (e.g. feeling really crappy for a couple days)? I wonder if the end state will be the immune-compromised will need to be on their toes forever, and the rest of the population will end up taking a lot more sick days on a regular basis.

Well, i truly believe covid has already evolved to the level of influenza (high spread, less deadly), our collective immune system just needs to catch up, which at the current rate of infections will be a matter of months. Since it appears so infectuous, everybody will get in contact, a lot will get infected, some of them moderately ill for several days. The more you got in contact earlier (naturally or via an injection), the less chance of getting severely ill. Covid will be an addition to the list of active diseases, but since it will compete with other viruses, the total amount of sick people will be the same as before the pandemic. I could be wrong, but mark my words . Good point about the immune compromised... those are/will still be in though waters, as with any infectuous disease though.

I think that analysis is spot on, we now have a second flu-like disease, that is very similar to the flu.

What remains to be done, is remove all these restrictions put in place and go back to treating Covid as we treat the flu.

That includes letting the COVID passport go and realise it's no longer needed. I'm looking at you Europe.

A lot of people label random illnesses "the flu" when they are very much not the flu. Vaccinated flu infections are a lot like you describe: fever, respiratory problems, stuffy nose, etc. for 2-3 days, if the vaccine is decently effective. Unvaccinated flu infections can give you a 101+ fever for up to a week, severe body aches that make doing anything painful, in addition to a stuffy nose, post-nasal drip, sometimes even gastrointestinal symptoms. Getting the flu when you aren't vaccinated can kick your ass for like 2 weeks, easy.

I got covid around Christmas, with two vaccines and a booster shot. Kicked my ass for like 3-4 days of very mild fever, and I also had body aches and all the other flulike crap. Took until this week for my lungs to feel like they're 100% again, though -- running has felt much harder than usual lately.

I, too, wonder if the immune-compromised are basically fucked in this timeline. With folks unwilling to wear masks in public spaces, you'd have to be crazy to expose an immune-compromised person to public events any time soon.

Studies indicate [1] that natural immunity and vaccine immunity are pretty similar in effectiveness and longevity:

“The immunity provided by vaccine and prior infection are both high but not complete (i.e., not 100%).

Multiple studies have shown that antibody titers correlate with protection at a population level, but protective titers at the individual level remain unknown.

Whereas there is a wide range in antibody titers in response to infection with SARS-CoV-2, completion of a primary vaccine series, especially with mRNA vaccines, typically leads to a more consistent and higher-titer initial antibody response.”

So considering that 70%+ of the US had been vaccinated, and something like 30-50% (with significant vaccine overlap) had already been infected before Omicron... I don't think Omicron is going to change the immunization game. Coronaviruses, like the common cold, seem pretty resistant to our immune system, both in terms of breadth of variants and capacity to elude existing resistances just a few months after initial infection. Unless we make some great leap in immune technology (a 100% efficacy vaccine, for instance), it seems like covid is going to become endemic, because it's simply too hard to eradicate. And it'll just keep circulating in the population, mutating, forever.

Anyway, curious if you have thoughts on this -- I just don't think we'll immunize our way out of covid based on what I just said. My best hope is that variants like Omicron that don't cause as many deaths/major symptoms start to dominate -- but considering covid typically spreads before it kills victims, the only pressure toward mild symptoms comes from the general pressure to avoid wasting energy killing your victims when you could spread instead.

Human behavior in the USA has me convinced that by the summer everyone is just going to start pretending covid doesn't exist again, and then next winter we're going to have a massive spike of another variant again. And we'll have to hope that one is less lethal than Omicron, since we'll have a hard time getting anybody to mask at all by then.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

>Anyway, curious if you have thoughts on this -- I just don't think we'll immunize our way out of covid based on what I just said. My best hope is that variants like Omicron that don't cause as many deaths/major symptoms start to dominate -- but considering covid typically spreads before it kills victims, the only pressure toward mild symptoms comes from the general pressure to avoid wasting energy killing your victims when you could spread instead.

That is exactly what i think is actually happening / happened, my case using other words. It has been like this for any other pandemic, the only difference is this time we were able to flatten/proloung the curve to some degree by means of prevention and healthcare.

According to latest CDC mmwr coming out of New York and California, it indicates a significant immune gain is to still be had in the purely vaccinated group: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

Over about a year, they also did not observe a statistically significant waning of natural immunity.

I'm more hopeful based on that.

Maybe I should be glad to have gotten Omicron, then. Curious how conflicting the research is on natural vs. vaccine immunity.

I'm wondering what research you have seen conflicting with this? As far as I'm aware this is the first CDC study that plainly studies vaccine status/prior infections impact on large scale. There were two widely publicized CDC studies with either very strange looking biases baked in (hospitalization prior) or it was done during an optimal vaccination window (within just few months of mass vaccination).

Who knows what Delta or Omicron will do relative to the O.G. for immunity but I'd be willing to bet its perty darn good (+/-25% O.G. vs unknown variant of future).

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