Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[DGuller]

It's not surprising that a more contagious disease is falling off more quickly, the fire is basically eating through its fuel rapidly.

[Berkut]

I heard someone saying that the initial thought is that Omicron is more transmissible across the vaccine barrier because it has evolved the spike protein. But its that spike protein that lets the virus attach and invade the cells. So the modified spike protein is letting Omicron evade the mRNA vaccines, but at the same time makes the virus less dangerous.

Sounded pretty speculative to me, but I really do find this shit fascinating. It's all engineering at the end of the day.

[Josquius]

Would be nice if I can wait it out.
Kind of worried about what I heard the other day of 2 vaccines being virtually useless vs omicron.
I remember it takes a little while to feel shitty post vaccine right? May be able to gamble and squeeze the 3rd in somewhere at the start of Jan.

[Admiral Yi]

I thought most people who felt shitty felt shitty the day after.  No?

[Berkut]

I felt really tired the next day, but otherwise pretty ok.

[Eddie Teach]

I heard someone saying that the initial thought is that Omicron is more transmissible across the vaccine barrier because it has evolved the spike protein. But its that spike protein that lets the virus attach and invade the cells. So the modified spike protein is letting Omicron evade the mRNA vaccines, but at the same time makes the virus less dangerous.

Sounded pretty speculative to me, but I really do find this shit fascinating. It's all engineering at the end of the day.

Performed by engineers who lack two brain cells to rub together. Makes you thimk.

[Berkut]

I heard someone saying that the initial thought is that Omicron is more transmissible across the vaccine barrier because it has evolved the spike protein. But its that spike protein that lets the virus attach and invade the cells. So the modified spike protein is letting Omicron evade the mRNA vaccines, but at the same time makes the virus less dangerous.

Sounded pretty speculative to me, but I really do find this shit fascinating. It's all engineering at the end of the day.

Performed by engineers who lack two brain cells to rub together. Makes you thimk.

Evolution is a rather cool thing.

It really is amazing what you can accomplish when you have a couple million monkeys randomly typing away....

[mongers]

I heard someone saying that the initial thought is that Omicron is more transmissible across the vaccine barrier because it has evolved the spike protein. But its that spike protein that lets the virus attach and invade the cells. So the modified spike protein is letting Omicron evade the mRNA vaccines, but at the same time makes the virus less dangerous.

Sounded pretty speculative to me, but I really do find this shit fascinating. It's all engineering at the end of the day.

Performed by engineers who lack two brain cells to rub together. Makes you thimk.

Evolution is a rather cool thing.

It really is amazing what you can accomplish when you have a couple million monkeys randomly typing away....

... Languish?

[DGuller]

A couple of million?  Maybe if you count the anonymous lurkers, but they're not doing a whole lot of typing.

[mongers]

A couple of million?  Maybe if you count the anonymous lurkers, but they're not doing a whole lot of typing.

Well DG it's good to see you picking up the slack.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't it possible that simply everyone in regular contact with other people have already caught it? We have had vaccination and several waves already, so there has to be a reduction of number of severe cases from the fresh wave, and even in a country with excellent testing like the UK you are bound to miss a lot of cases.

Yeah - and there is the "wall" of immunity. Denmark has a similarly high level of vaccinations, South Africa has far lower (but this isn't a supply issue, it's hesitancy) but has had very serious waves of past infection. I still don't think it's clear what's the omicron-intrinsic lower severity v previous infected/vaccinated people.

While this variant is better at re-infecting, there are reasons to think that what it has gained in immune escape, it's lost in severity. In Denmark and Scotland there are more omicron cases among vaccinated populations than delta for example. The Scottish analysis also indicates that there is even adjusting for vaccination there's a significant reduction in hospitalisations from omicron. But it's really difficult because we don't necessarily know if people have previously had it. Today we'll get new data from the UK of hospital testing and it'll be interesting to see if the previous trend holds that positive covid tests in hospital is about 50/50 admissions for covid/incidental positives from admissions for other issues.

And it looks like we're peaking in London (admissions are still rising).

There's lots of caveats and uncertainty which is not going to be helped by the next fortnight of lots of holidays which basically means any data from about tomorrow is uselss until the start of January. We're not out of the woods. But lots of things from Scotland, England, Denmark and South Africa are all pointing in the same direction. And obviously there's all sorts of issues with but the raw, unadjusted (just some of the issues) Scottish data is pretty striking:


Obviously we don't know what it'll look like when it hits a country with few previous infections or low vaccination rates - or very low booster rates and waning vaccines.

Broadly I think there's a few reasons to think the focus should really be on booster shots - and watching Israel as the most early vaccinated country to see when boosters start waving and when we are likely to need a fourth dose. This time it would be nice if we started preparing for the fourth dose now rather than the farce of being so slow on boosters shots when we know Israel had to roll them out in June/July because of waning effectiveness. No doubt we'll wait until September anyway

[Josquius]

Shame there's no quick and easy way to check your variant (I think?).
As for me the worry is not so much catching covid and dying but having to quarantine and all that shit. Fair enough if it's a deadly version but thinking a month or two down the line it feels a bit much for a drastically weakened version.

[Grey Fox]

Shame there's no quick and easy way to check your variant (I think?).
As for me the worry is not so much catching covid and dying but having to quarantine and all that shit. Fair enough if it's a deadly version but thinking a month or two down the line it feels a bit much for a drastically weakened version.

10 day quarantine goes fast. It really wasn't that bad.

[Josquius]

Mixed news here
BBC News - Omicron up to 70% less likely to need hospital care
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59769969
More confirmation of omicron being weaker...

But those boosters only last 10 weeks....

Shame there's no quick and easy way to check your variant (I think?).
As for me the worry is not so much catching covid and dying but having to quarantine and all that shit. Fair enough if it's a deadly version but thinking a month or two down the line it feels a bit much for a drastically weakened version.

10 day quarantine goes fast. It really wasn't that bad.

Not being able to travel would suck. And my partner has to go to work.

[Barrister]

Shame there's no quick and easy way to check your variant (I think?).
As for me the worry is not so much catching covid and dying but having to quarantine and all that shit. Fair enough if it's a deadly version but thinking a month or two down the line it feels a bit much for a drastically weakened version.

10 day quarantine goes fast. It really wasn't that bad.

Lies.  We did a 14 day quarantine last year when my wife tested positive.

It seriously sucked.