Coronavirus thread

[André]

What you can conclude is, that COVID spreads more easily than flu.

That's what I have heard. Flu is contracted through direct contact of another person's droplets (yecch). Covid can be contracted through aerosols, which disperse more freely in the air. If someone goes out for a smoke and you can smell him from 6 feet you can also inhale his covid fumes...

[Karl Henning]

That's what I have heard. Flu is contracted through direct contact of another person's droplets (yecch). Covid can be contracted through aerosols, which disperse more freely in the air. If someone goes out for a smoke and you can smell him from 6 feet you can also inhale his covid fumes...

Some disinformers would still have you believe that "COVID is just like the flu."

[Holden]

That's what I have heard. Flu is contracted through direct contact of another person's droplets (yecch). Covid can be contracted through aerosols, which disperse more freely in the air. If someone goes out for a smoke and you can smell him from 6 feet you can also inhale his covid fumes...

Can we please check our facts before posting suppositions. Yes, physical contact with flu droplets such as shaking someone's hand is a well known transmission method but it's not the only one. Aerosol transmission of influenza is a fact as this scholarly (and probably peer reviewed) article shows.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682679/

[Holden]

What I'm going to post highlights the disinformation and fearmongering by our media. The child concerned has already been classified as a Covid19 death, despite that fact that there is no autopsy at this point. The fact that he wasn't diagnosed until he had died strongly suggests that he displayed no Covid19 symptoms. The article also hints that other deaths, where the person has had Covid, does not necessarily mean that it was the virus that killed them. It's the headline that is deliberately misleading that concerns me. Lucy Xia, you should have your arse kicked for this piece of scurrilous press.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300481147/covid19-child-under-10-becomes-youngest-case-to-die

[Spotted Horses]

The official line was "COVID displaced the flu" like the flu took a year off. It can't have been due to isolation as flu spreads very easily and people still managed to catch COVID.

The original covid-19 virus was 10 times more contagious than the flu. The delta variant was said to be 4 times more contagious than the original covid-19 virus.

[Karl Henning]

An old friend of mine, early on in the pandemic, said to me, "coronavirus has been around, read your Listerine bottle," entirely missing the adjective novel in the phrase novel coronavirus ... probably my first direct experience of a misguided amateur epidemiologist in the COVID-19 epoch. My friend is not actually dull-witted, but he is a Trump supporter, and his head is clearly planted in the right-wing disinformation ecosystem.

[Szykneij]

An old friend of mine, early on in the pandemic, said to me, "coronavirus has been around, read your Listerine bottle," entirely missing the adjective novel in the phrase novel coronavirus ... probably my first direct experience of a misguided amateur epidemiologist in the COVID-19 epoch. My friend is not actually dull-witted, but he is a Trump supporter, and his head is clearly planted in the right-wing disinformation ecosystem.

I'm sure I was exposed to a multitude of coronaviruses during my decades of teaching. My wishful thinking hopes that gives me some stronger protection against COVID-19. I believe the scientific jury is undecided on that one.

[Karl Henning]

Is it the cold, the flu or covid? What to know amid rapid spread of omicron

[Karl Henning]

Study finds no evidence Omicron cases are less severe than Delta

[Irons]

Study finds no evidence Omicron cases are less severe than Delta

In that case we are going to hell in a handcart. A perfect storm with Omicron being highly transmissible.

[Mandryka]

In that case we are going to hell in a handcart. A perfect storm with Omicron being highly transmissible.

Not necessarily. It all depends how much headroom there is in the health system, how well other basic service provision can stand up to all the inevitable absences, how many people can be immunised with vaccines, and crucially how the public will behave - self motivated caution is already clicking in. The public's behaviour will determine the doubling time.

But I think this much is true whatever happens - the next couple of months will probably be a challenge the likes of which I've never seen before.

[Florestan]

Study finds no evidence Omicron cases are less severe than Delta

Any study which involves Neil Ferguson should be taken with a grain of salt.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/professor-lockdown-modeler-resigns-in-disgrace/

[Karl Henning]

Study finds no evidence Omicron cases are less severe than Delta

By Naomi Kresge Bloomberg,Updated December 17, 2021, 9:10 a.m.

A previous COVID-19 recovery provides little shield against infection with the Omicron variant, a research team from Imperial College London showed in a large study that underlines the importance of booster shots.

Having had COVID probably only offers 19% protection against Omicron, the study showed on Friday. That was roughly in line with two doses of vaccine, which the team estimated were as much as 20% effective against Omicron. Adding a booster dose helped dramatically, blocking an estimated 55% to 80% of symptomatic cases.

The Imperial College London team analyzed all the PCR test-confirmed COVID cases in England between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11, making it one of the most expansive examinations yet at Omicron's potential to evade the body's defenses. The results were in line with the picture emerging of the variant's capacity to elude protection from previous infection or inoculation and spread faster than previous iterations of the virus.

There was no evidence of Omicron cases being less severe than Delta, based on the proportion of people testing positive who had symptoms or went to the hospital, the team said.

Just how severe Omicron cases will be remains unclear. It's too soon to say how hospitalizations will play out in the UK. In South Africa, which announced the discovery of the variant on Nov. 25, authorities said on Friday the rate of hospitalizations seems to be lower than during the country's earlier wave of Delta infections.

Europe is bracing for an Omicron-driven fifth wave of infections even as intensive-care units in many areas remain filled with patients sick with the Delta variant. Some governments are already imposing new measures in an effort to slow the Omicron wave and buy time for booster campaigns to gear up.

The proportion of Omicron among all COVID cases was probably doubling every two days up to Dec. 11, the UK team said, estimating that every person infected with the variant passed it on to more than three other people.

[SimonNZ]

What I'm going to post highlights the disinformation and fearmongering by our media. The child concerned has already been classified as a Covid19 death, despite that fact that there is no autopsy at this point. The fact that he wasn't diagnosed until he had died strongly suggests that he displayed no Covid19 symptoms. The article also hints that other deaths, where the person has had Covid, does not necessarily mean that it was the virus that killed them. It's the headline that is deliberately misleading that concerns me. Lucy Xia, you should have your arse kicked for this piece of scurrilous press.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300481147/covid19-child-under-10-becomes-youngest-case-to-die

The article wasn't slandering anyone nor doing so with low language, so I don't know where you,re getting "scurrilous " from.

And the other day you were praising Stuff for printing an article you thought fearless and of rare honesty. So which one is it? (Actually it's neither - its completely bland and light).

[Holden]

The article wasn't slandering anyone nor doing so with low language, so I don't know where you,re getting "scurrilous " from.

And the other day you were praising Stuff for printing an article you thought fearless and of rare honesty. So which one is it? (Actually it's neither - its completely bland and light).

It's not necessarily Stuff, it's the individual reporter though who is responsible for the headline, rhe author or the editor? I praised Stuff the other day because they actually produced a decent piece of journalism for once. It didn't take long for them to revert to type. I should have used deceitful instead of scurrilous.

[Que]

The Netherlands is probably heading for a "full lockdown" (full shutdown except for essential services), after an expert committee has adviced to do so. Govt announcement later today. Earlier it was already decided that schools will close a week ahead of the Christmas holidays.

Omicron is spreading like wildfire and the hope is to slow it down.
According to the Dutch CDC (RIVM) the indications from the UK are that previous vaccines will offer insufficient protection against Omicron, with the exception of a "booster". Their position is that there are no indications that Omicron variant is either less or more harmful than the Delta variant. But because of the (relative) ineffectiveness of existing vaccines, Omicron presents an immediate thread.

What isn't helpful is that the Netherlands is behind with its booster programme...

[Karl Henning]

The CEO of Southwest Airlines testified masks don't do 'much' on planes. He's since been diagnosed with COVID. — 9:38 a.m.
By Shannon Larson, Globe Staff

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly tested positive for the coronavirus, the airline confirmed on Friday, just days after appearing at a Senate hearing where he and another airline leader questioned whether passengers needed to wear masks on planes.

US has over-counted the number of partly vaccinated Americans, state officials warn — 8:50 a.m.
By Bloomberg

The US government has over-counted the number of Americans who are at least partly vaccinated against the coronavirus, state officials warn, meaning millions more people are unprotected as the pandemic's winter surge gathers steam.

Omicron and holidays unleash scramble for coronavirus tests across the US — 8:40 a.m.
By The Washington Post

Coronavirus testing was a breeze when J.D. Schroeder traveled to Abu Dhabi and Mexico this fall. Not so much at home in Pennsylvania when he felt sick Wednesday and found out he had been exposed.

UK considers new COVID measures as hospitalizations rise — 6:32 a.m.
By Bloomberg

The UK is considering a two-week ban on people in England gathering indoors after Christmas to slow the Omicron variant's spread, the Times reported, citing people it didn't identify.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson hasn't approved the plan, and advisers are waiting for more data about the new strain, the newspaper said. Johnson wants to review the impact of measures imposed over the past week, and may see no need to tighten rules further.

[Florestan]

Christmas and New Year's Eve is traditionally a time of the year when lots of Romanians come home from abroad where they live to spend the holidays with their family and friends. Romanian authorities thought it would be a good idea if this year upon their airport arrival they be officially checked for vaccination status and their whereabouts during their stay be officially registered so as to be easily traceable just in case anything goes wrong. The result, for 24 hours a day and several days in a row, has been this:



Now you tell me two things: (1) if one single person in that picture is infected, what should we expect in two weeks time? and (2) how can such a government be trusted they do their best to protect our health?

[Karl Henning]

We Know Enough About Omicron to Know That We're in Trouble

More data will soon be coming in. But how much do they really matter?

By Sarah Zhang

Updated at 12:00 p.m. ET on December 17, 2021

A lot has changed for Omicron in just two weeks. At December's onset, the variant was barely present in Europe, showing up in 1 to 2 percent of COVID cases. Now it's accounting for 72 percent of new cases in London, where everybody seems to know somebody with COVID. In the U.K. and Denmark, Omicron case numbers are doubling every other day. The same exponential growth is happening—or will happen—in the United States too, just in time for the holidays.

What seemed likely earlier this month is now quite certain: A big Omicron wave is coming, on top of an already substantial Delta wave. There are still some unknowns about the variant, such as exactly how severe these cases will be. But we know enough about Omicron to understand that the time to act is now. "If we wait until our hospitals look like they're starting to fill," says Lauren Ancel Meyers, the director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, "then it will be too late."

The most intriguing unknown—the one in which we might like to place our hopes—is whether Omicron could be milder than Delta. But a milder, more transmissible virus can easily sicken so many people that it ends up increasing hospitalizations and deaths on the whole. Here is some simple math to explain the danger: Suppose we have two viruses, one that is twice as transmissible as the other. (For the record, Omicron is currently three to five times as transmissible as Delta in the U.K.—though that number is likely to fall over time.) And suppose it takes five days between a person's getting infected and their infecting others. After 30 days, the more transmissible virus is now causing 26, or 64, times as many new cases as the less transmissible one. Exponentials are one hell of a growth hack. If we are banking on the idea that Omicron is more mild to get us through winter, then we had better hope that it's really, really mild.

Vaccines will lower the proportion of hospitalizations quite a bit in those extra cases, especially because Omicron is infecting lots of vaccinated people. But it's a long climb down that exponential curve. Moreover, when so many cases pile up all at once, their effects start spilling over into the lives of those who aren't sick. If Omicron runs through a workplace it may present a temporary inconvenience. But if that workplace is a school, then the school will have to close, disrupting the lives of every child and parent. If that workplace is a hospital, then doctors and nurses are unable to work. This has been an issue in South Africa, where Omicron is already dominant and nearly 20 percent of the health-care staff have COVID. Even if most of these cases are mild, huge numbers of people getting sick all at once will alter everyday reality.

Not every case will be mild, though, and even a small hospitalization rate on top of a huge case number will be a big number. With Delta, "we were already headed for a bad winter," says Roby Bhattacharyya, an infectious-diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Now, as my colleague Ed Yong reports, Omicron could push a collapsing health-care system further into disaster. Hospitals are already dealing with the flu and other winter viruses. They're already canceling elective surgeries. After another year of pandemic burnout, they simply may not have the staff to create the surge capacity that barely got us through last winter. Overtaxed hospitals mean care gets worse for everyone with COVID—but also everyone with a broken hip or a stroke or a baby that urgently needs to be delivered. Omicron's transmissibility is a danger because high levels of COVID cases come with these second-order consequences that transcend the risk to individuals.

If there are no changes to behavior or policy, this year's winter wave would peak at about double the hospitalizations of last winter at its worst, and 20 percent more deaths, according to the most pessimistic of projections from Meyers and her team at the University of Texas at Austin. The team gamed out a total of 18 scenarios, based on different guesses for the variant's inherent transmissibility and immune escape, booster uptake, and the vaccines' effectiveness against hospitalization and death. The most optimistic projection sees a caseload similar to last winter's, but hospitalizations and deaths at about half of where they were back then, assuming the vaccines keep up their very high protection against severe illness.

Vaccine protection against severe illness should be more durable than it is against infection, but may still take a hit. Very preliminary data from South Africa's largest health insurer suggest that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were 70 percent effective at preventing hospitalization from Omicron infections, down from 93 percent before. If that holds, it's a "huge decrease," Meyers says, and one that matches the assumptions of her team's grimmer—but not grimmest—projections. When they modeled scenarios where vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization dropped by about that much, they saw a difference of tens of thousands of deaths.

The available evidence on Omicron's inherent severity is likely to be biased in ways that make it appear more promising. First of all, hospitalizations lag infections. "Omicron has been around for three weeks," Bhattacharyya says. "But so many of those infections have happened in the last one week of those three because of exponential growth." Second, the first people infected may skew young and are thus more likely to have mild cases regardless of the variant. And third, some of the mildness attributed to the virus may result instead from existing immunity. In South Africa, where doctors are reporting relatively low hospitalizations compared with previous waves, many cases are probably reinfections, given that the majority of people there have had COVID before. The South Africa health-insurer data suggest that Omicron might carry a 29 percent lower risk of hospitalization than the original virus, when adjusted for risk factors including age, sex, vaccination status, and documented prior infection—but many prior infections may be undocumented, which would make the reduction in risk seem bigger than it really is. (A recent analysis of early U.K. cases found "at most, limited changes in severity compared with Delta.") Meanwhile, Omicron is "going to spread so fast that to wait until we have definitive answers will be to wait too long," Bhattacharyya says. "If it's anything but the best-case scenario, and we wait to find out, it's going to be too late to mitigate the worst."

Another unknown is where Omicron's tendency to spread more quickly than Delta comes from. Is it inherently more transmissible, better at evading immunity, or both? And how much of one or the other? "We don't understand the new equilibrium," says Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at Roskilde University, in Denmark. In the long run, if Omicron's advantage is largely based on immune escape, then Delta and Omicron could co-circulate like multiple lineages of the flu, says Katia Koelle, an evolutionary virologist at Emory University. Getting sick with one variant might not give you much protection from the other. But if Omicron has advantages in both immune escape and transmission, then Delta could eventually go extinct.

Either way, in the short run, we will have a massive number of Omicron cases on top of a massive number of Delta cases. Together they will infect huge numbers of people, vaccinated or not, and burden an already overburdened health-care system. Boosters, social distancing, rapid testing, and masks can slow down this impact. We will know more about Omicron soon, but we already know enough.

[Karl Henning]

Don't Be Surprised When You Get Omicron