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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

I find this fascinating in comparison with the situation here in the UK where about 70% of the population are triple vaccinated. Omicron is everywhere, literally. Anecdotally I would say 80-90% of households with school aged kids have had Omicron since the beginning of January and it’s still doing the rounds. We now have no restrictions and even during the peak in Jan/Feb it was very very minimal.

There will be no more restrictions here at all unless something drastic happens later in the year with a new variant.

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Omnicron in particular is so low impact that the response is primarily political, especially when you have vaccines and some pre existing immunity.

Countries can choose to pretty much ignore it or go crazy over it as the politicians and Twitter demand.

We just got bored of it in the UK and moved onto Boris’s parties and now Ukraine.

Omicron could be the best thing that happened -- a mild, very infectious variant that gives everyone NATURAL herd immunity to the entire coronavirus family. Why are politicians so afraid of it?

While I agree with your statement. If you look at the present condition of medical facilities in Hong Kong, and imagine that situation reaching 1.4 billion people in a relatively short time. Also these people unlike many Westerner's probably don't have anti bodies from previous Covid-19 infections.

Because a large number of people are dying.

I don't know about politicians, but I can tell you why I'm not rejoicing quite yet.

Number 1:

While it is milder, it will still kill a lot of people. Yes they're mostly elderly, or they are immunocompromised and have other health issues already, but for those people it still means premature death, and for their families and friends it's still a loss of a loved one.

Number 2:

Long Covid is still not understood. The prevalence, impact and cause is too nebulous. It can manifest itself 6 to 12 months after first infection, so there's not been data about Omicron for it yet, since we're only starting to approach some people recovering on the 6 month mark. There's conflicting predictions of it affecting 5% to 30% of everyone (all age) who gets COVID. And it looks like sometimes the effect are dehabilitating, where people can't even go to work. So while it's nice Omicron doesn't kill you, it isn't clear if it will make you unhealthy and suffer from chronic problems for the rest of your life, and possibly shorten your lifespan. We also don't know if the chances of long COVID exist each time you get Covid, so even if it were 5% but you get it year over year, and each year it's 5% chance, it might be a matter of time till we all have long COVID.

Number 3:

Healthcare capacity and supplies. Even though the percentages of cases that need medical care is smaller, if too many people get it at the same.time, the total number of people needing medical care could be quite large and breach the healthcare capacity.

Number 4:

Cost on the economy. When people say it's mild, it's often still like getting the flu, which means you're off work for 3 to 10 days. If everyone gets it once or twice a year, and if people get it all at the same time, it means supply chain issues, delayed business, it just puts pressure everywhere on the economy.

It's not mild, just milder than Delta. It's a deadly disease that's killing people.

"a mild, very infectious variant that gives everyone NATURAL herd immunity to the entire coronavirus family."

If this was even remotely true everyone would be doing Covid parties now like they've done measles parties decades ago.

It's not. Getting Omicron doesn't give you any herd immunity at all, let alone against "the entire coronavirus family". That's beyond ludicrous.

In the US, Omicron has killed more people than Delta.

Omicron is slightly less deadly than Delta, but it's much more transmissible. That, combined with a lack of preventive measures, made this winter's Omicron wave the second most deadly wave in the US since the pandemic began.

There's already a notable new variant circulating. It's called Omicron BA.2, sometimes "Stealth Omicron" because it is not as easily identified as Omicron BA.1.

Looking at the UK figures, although there was a Jan/Feb peak, it's not clear that wave is mostly in the past. All the headline figures are currently rising - infections, hospitalisations and deaths - and the infection rate has risen again to nearly where it was at the start of Feb. It may continue past the peak figure in Jan.

The start of the new rises coincides with the end of basic restrictions - like wearing masks on public transport and in shops, social distancing, and working at home when possible. Up to that point the figures were dropping. So it looks like strong evidence that something about the restrictions was really working.

Politically, new restrictions may be unlikely, but the quite strong circumstantial evidence that they worked, the now rising figures, and the government's plan to stop almost all testing at the end of this month, seem in stark contrast to the government's prior "follow the science" line.

> looks like strong evidence that something about the restrictions was really working. ...in stark contrast to the government's prior "follow the science" line.

Restrictions absolutely do reduce the rate of spread. But that's not the debate at hand.

It's accepted by all experts Covid is here to stay, like cold and flu viruses. With or without lock downs. The debate is whether we still need to "flatten the curve" to relieve hospital resources.

Eradication of Covid is not the goal or even realistically possible.

eradication hasn’t been realistically possible since early 2020.

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