Nah, it means true herd immunity would be damn near impossible under current conditions. It doesn’t mean that we all will get it. We’ve damn near eradicated diseases with far higher R0… but even if the vaccine is 95%+ long term in a 4-5 vaccine series it doesn’t matter because of the population isn’t taking the vaccine like we would need.
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Would need more information.
Do we have any idea how likely the early variants were to cause re-infection? Because it seemed to be pretty low. And double pretty low is still pretty low.
Studies put protection from reinfection at around the 85-90% mark, so 10-15% chance of reinfection. The hazard ratio they found was 2.4, so that would be 24 to 36% chance of reinfection, so 64 to 76% protection. Obviously this is all very handwavy.
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Saw this showing the findings visually.
Think this was for prior infections vs vaccines, so not apples to apples for a vaxxed populace, but would indicate that this variant will have plenty of tinder to burn through even in a population that was hit extremely hard by a prior infection wave barring the populace putting pretty stringent NPI in place.
Vaccine efficiency and reinfection severity two key pieces of data to come but will take a bit. Hopefully vaxxes hold up a little better and reinfection/infection of vaxxed is lower severity, but we just can’t know yet.
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Thanks for the heads up. Just got my niece enrolled. My sister (very pro-vax and is eager to get her 3 year old daughter vaccinated) asked me to listen to this and give her my thoughts. I won’t be able to listen for a bit but if any of you smart people are bored and want to listen for me, please feel free.
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Got my covid booster shot today. The walgreens I went to was so busy I saw 3 people get super pissed at the pharmacy workers. One guy said “I’m fucking done with this” to a cashier and stormed off but he forgot some papers on the counter and had to come back a few seconds later for them lolol
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I want my omicron vaccine and I want it right now.
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Meanwhile some people will go to incredible lengths to keep themselves in danger
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Laval is where the French degens are from in Letterkenny, so that checks out.
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Man, that Moderna vaccine is sticking around in me much longer than Pfizer. Pfizer, each time I just had a sore arm and a bit of drowsiness the next day. This booster, I’m on two nights of waking up hot all the time, and once last night with violent shivers that were super weird. Doesn’t matter, got boosted.
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Yeah anecdotally the worst side effects of the vax that I hear come from people who got the Moderna shots. Not sure if that means anything though.
I’m on Moderna x3 and the booster was about half as bad as the second shot for me (probably because it was literally half a normal shot). The second shot knocked me out of commission for 2 days and left me with brain fog for a third. The booster just made me feel bleh for a day. Didn’t even get a fever.
so seeing more and more reports about less illness from omicron. Still too soon, but hopeful.
Also, one of my colleagues was hypothesizing that coronaviruses should face evolutionary pressure to be less deadly, as dead and not moving people don’t spread a lot of viral material. Seems hopeful, but plausible.
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A bunch of people have posted this exact hypothesis on unstuck over the last couple of years.
Over the long run there’s a selection pressure for it to be less lethal like normal coronaviruses, but I don’t know if we’re talking years or decades for that to happen.
Sure but happening so quickly because of that pressure wouldn’t be expected… and that affect hasn’t been observed for other viruses.
Time isn’t necessarily the important factor here right? It should be more of a function of people infected/spread/etc. Since a billion people have caught this thing that seems like a lot of chances to change.
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The violent shivers were the real treat, glad at least I know I’m not the only one that had that
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Obviously there are plenty of such factors to consider.
It was just weird to read, “My colleague just hypothesized something that we’ve been talking about for years”.
The bigger pressure in viruses is for a big lag between infection and death where you can spread it. The original SARS hit hard and fast, so it got eradicated pretty quickly. Covid usually has ample opportunity to spread prior to killing or incapacitating anyone, so being a little less deadly or incapacitating is going to make much less of a difference on the overall spread, which is ultimately what is being selected for.
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