Omicron

Laughing said:
The wave numbers are pretty consistent over the age groups, with a blip in the 70-79. Difficult to argue with numbers. We may well fare a bit better as well as we have higher vaccination rates.
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Hopefully so. There was a piece on the news last night from a hospital in London. They talked to a nurse who said that 9 of their 11 patients from the ward she was on were unvaccinated. She also said most of them were a lot younger than in previous waves. (She did also actually admit that it was difficult for the staff not to feel annoyed that they were treating unvaccinated patients).
 
Randy said:
I hope Andy hasn't labelled me and anti vaxxer with his initial response to that post. Sure sounded like it. If I was an anti vaxxer why would I have two jabs and the booster jab booked in for Monday morning? 🤔
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No he didn't do that, I was referring to bashing you for posting good news, is all. Andy might disagree but he isn't rude.
 
Cuthbert said:
Hopefully so. There was a piece on the news last night from a hospital in London. They talked to a nurse who said that 9 of their 11 patients from the ward she was on were unvaccinated. She also said most of them were a lot younger than in previous waves. (She did also actually admit that it was difficult for the staff not to feel annoyed that they were treating unvaccinated patients).
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I can understand them being annoyed. That's perfectly natural.
 
Possibly good but that data isn't separating cases by variants, just when variants were first spotted. I mean it's encouraging, but not time to claim victory yet. I suspect we will have a more reliable set of data in 4-6 weeks.
 
Randy said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1470468812512403460

Chise has liked this thread too. That crazy vaccine scientist she is.
Maybes @Billy Horner could break these graphs further down than Pieter has.
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I’m afraid this guy has just raised a massive red flag for me by retweeting a Jay Bhattacharya tweet. That completely discredited and dangerous fringe GBD loon! I’d been following Pieter and feeling almost like his data reporting was too good to be true and now I’m sure many, like me, will be slightly suspicious of his omicron commentary.
You can’t be retweeting GBD authors and expect to remain credible. Such a shame as I was clinging on to his daily figures with hope. I still hope he proves to be correct but it’s sad to see he may be part of the grift gang.
 
FabioPorkpie said:
I’m afraid this guy has just raised a massive red flag for me by retweeting a Jay Bhattacharya tweet. That completely discredited and dangerous fringe GBD loon! I’d been following Pieter and feeling almost like his data reporting was too good to be true and now I’m sure many, like me, will be slightly suspicious of his omicron commentary.
You can’t be retweeting GBD authors and expect to remain credible. Such a shame as I was clinging on to his daily figures with hope. I still hope he proves to be correct but it’s sad to see he may be part of the grift gang.
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Not sure if anyone follows this guy, but he seems to be pretty decent at SA analysis and thankfully, he sees glimmers of hope in the data as well. The more folk come to the same conclusions as Pieter, the happier we can be that there may be something in the ‘omicron will be milder‘ hope, whether due to inherent reduction of virulence or previously attained vax/infection immunity or a combo of both.
Still to soon to say though, but we should have a pretty good idea within a couple of weeks 🤞🤞.

 
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FabioPorkpie said:
Not sure if anyone follows this guy, but he seems to be pretty decent at SA analysis and thankfully, he sees glimmers of hope in the data as well. The more folk come to the same conclusions as Pieter, the happier we can be that there may be something in the ‘omicron will be milder‘ hope, whether due to inherent reduction of virulence or previously attained vax/infection immunity or a combo of both


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That’s a great piece. When will our global “leaders” take responsibility to globalise our public health strategies?
 
This work from the Gupta lab may also prove to be very important and for those looking for a bit of hope going forward, it’s worth a look.

Basically, it found a second plausible mechanism that may explain how omicron *might be milder. ( The other mechanism being about viral replication being much faster in the upper airway, hence increased transmissibility, but SLOWER than Delta in the lung tissue, where the real damage occurs).
Fingers crossed 🤞

https://twitter.com/x/status/1471941653376253955
 
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Laughing said:
I am going to respectfully disagree that the headline was used to counter the alternative. The headline should have reflected the findings, along wth the limited amount of data used to come to those findings. 15,000 omicron cases isn't a decent amount either Andy.

I wouldn't dismiss the research, nor what it is trying to achieve, the researchers didn't pick the headline, the FT did, or whomever they purchased the story from.

You can't clobber Randy for looking for good news then put that article up as a counter argument. "We'll all be fine" is as bad as "We're all doomed". To be fair I don't know that you have clobbered Randy, i can't remember which posters were.
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There's a big difference to headlines of "it's milder" to "we have no confirmation that it's milder", and then the latter backing that up with 15,000 cases worth of data. One is misleading, the other isn't.

Ones saying "we know", ones saying "we don't know", I didn't post one saying it's miles worse, as we don't know it's worse as there's no data to suggest that.

I wasn't clobbering anyone, I just said be careful. The article didn't say "we're all doomed"?
 
Randy said:
I hope Andy hasn't labelled me and anti vaxxer with his initial response to that post. Sure sounded like it. If I was an anti vaxxer why would I have two jabs and the booster jab booked in for Monday morning? 🤔
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Nah, I never said you're an anti-vaxer, but there's a lot of anti-vaxers sharing the same stories on line.

You seem happy to discuss it (and get the vax), they don't, very, very big difference.
 
Andy_W said:
There's a big difference to headlines of "it's milder" to "we have no confirmation that it's milder", and then the latter backing that up with 15,000 cases worth of data. One is misleading, the other isn't.

Ones saying "we know", ones saying "we don't know", I didn't post one saying it's miles worse, as we don't know it's worse as there's no data to suggest that.

I wasn't clobbering anyone, I just said be careful. The article didn't say "we're all doomed"?
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The headline is clearly and I suspect deliberatly misleading.
 
FabioPorkpie said:
This work from the Gupta lab may also prove to be very important and for those looking for a bit of hope going forward, it’s worth a look.

Basically, it found a second plausible mechanism that may explain how omicron *might be milder. ( The other mechanism being about viral replication being much faster in the upper airway, hence increased transmissibility, but SLOWER than Delta in the lung tissue, where the real damage occurs).
Fingers crossed 🤞

https://twitter.com/x/status/1471941653376253955
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I saw that last night and shared it in the 9am thread, it's good news if it pans out into the real world, but they do say they need to be cautious and need more data.

It's seemingly not panning out into our data yet (see thread below), but we still don't know either way, with good certainty yet, getting closer though!

 
People who take the jab then continue to spread the conspiracy theories are just either on a wind-up, attention seekers or are full on Frauds.
 
Andy_W said:
You think these two are both equal?

"Omicron is milder"

"No evidence’ Omicron less severe than Delta"

One is on the careless end of the spectrum, and one is right down the middle? I think they're worlds apart.
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That wasn't my point. There is evidence that Omicron is milder, just not in the limited UK data, which is what the report is based on. As I said, nothing wrong with the report nor it's findings, just the headline.
 
Laughing said:
That wasn't my point. There is evidence that Omicron is milder, just not in the limited UK data, which is what the report is based on. As I said, nothing wrong with the report nor it's findings, just the headline.
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There isn't, not yet anyway, not for headlines like that which are written for UK readers and shared by people in the UK, and have been for weeks. There's not enough evidence to have care free policies or actions etc.

In SA it largely "appears" milder, as more people have been infected/ vaccinated, prior to this wave coming. That doesn't mean it's milder though, it just means they now have better protection. Car crashes aren't milder now, we just added seat belts and air bags, which lessened the impact. If you take those protections away, the new results would be the same as the old results.

But, and it's a key but, as it infects more, and faster, there would be far greater potential to overwhelm healthcare, especially if there was no immunity through infection or vaccination. This pretty much would have doubled the IFR, like it did in India. There is potential to do far more damage, potential which the other strains did not have.
If we had Delta or Omicron in March 20, it could have been 5 to 10x the deaths, even if we did still lock down, had we not done that, it would have been even worse than that.

The FT headline compared 15,000 Omicron cases to 100,000 Delta cases in the UK, and it showed no difference up to now in severity, in the UK, it just showed we're better protected (which we are).

We've had good protection for ages, which is why Delta "appeared milder". It wasn't milder (it was worse), we had just vaccinated 30m people before it got here.

There are some new lab studies showing it might have less potential to cause disease in the lungs etc, which is great, but we're not really seeing it yet in UK data, hopefully we do.

Like I keep saying though, we don't know yet, the experts are saying we don't know yet, so I wouldn't be trusting any headlines saying "it's milder" or "it's miles worse", the right headlines are "we don't know yet".
 
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Andy_W said:
There isn't, not yet anyway, not for headlines like that which are written for UK readers and shared by people in the UK, and have been for weeks. There's not enough evidence to have care free policies or actions etc.

In SA it largely "appears" milder, as more people have been infected/ vaccinated, prior to this wave coming. That doesn't mean it's milder though, it just means they now have better protection. Car crashes aren't milder now, we just added seat belts and air bags, which lessened the impact. If you take those protections away, the new results would be the same as the old results.

But, and it's a key but, as it infects more, and faster, there would be far greater potential to overwhelm healthcare, especially if there was no immunity through infection or vaccination. This pretty much would have doubled the IFR, like it did in India. There is potential to do far more damage, potential which the other strains did not have.
If we had Delta or Omicron in March 20, it could have been 5 to 10x the deaths, even if we did still lock down, had we not done that, it would have been even worse than that.

The FT headline compared 15,000 Omicron cases to 100,000 cases in the UK, and it showed no difference up to now in severity, in the UK, it just showed we're better protected (which we are).

We've had good protection for ages, which is why Delta "appeared milder". It wasn't milder (it was worse), we had just vaccinated 30m people before it got here.

There are some new lab studies showing it might have less potential to cause disease in the lungs etc, which is great, but we're not really seeing it yet in UK data, hopefully we do.

Like I keep saying though, we don't know yet, the experts are saying we don't know yet, so I wouldn't be trusting any headlines saying "it's milder" or "it's miles worse", the right headlines are "we don't know yet".
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And once again Andy, that is not what I am saying. There is initial evidence, and more of it from SA than the UK. Everyone is dismissing SA for some reason, which I don't understand. When it comes to infectious disease they are one of the best equipped in the world to study and form opinions.

We aint gonna agree, you have an opinion, mine is a little different to yours. That headline is at best unbalanced. The wording is aimed at one thing only, and it isn't to encourage caution.
 
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