COVID-19: Chapter 9 - OMGicron

I think it’s a great approach to running a Little League team or a Cub Scout troop or a lemonade stand.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1468701930507620367

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I get that it’s hard to know things before testing them, but shit, I sure do wish someone at. Pfizer or Moderna would have thought to test a third shot earlier. It’s such a huge effect even with the original formula that I would have hoped someone would have noticed so that we would be considering 3 shots fully vaccinated, and potentially the 4th a booster

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yeah this was a huge fucking mistake, if I/my wife/friend don’t get sick itll be a miracle, 20% masked in a state with a shit ton of cases, packed, ugh. We’re all fucked forever.

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Yes the standard is going to be 3 now with a possible variant specific booster sometime in 2022 if Omicron or ? Is a real problem.

Also good LOL on this trip— colleague brought some filter paper discs. Pulled out the box, brand:Omicron. Good thing they didn’t open his bag, someone would have freaked for sure.

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Are you boosted + 14 days? If so, you probably wont’ get it. If not, well, you wont’ have a bad outcome anyway.

Yeah so about the scary article posted a few weeks ago about all the toddlers in hospitals in South Africa:

Cliffs: Lots of kids in hospitals for other reasons then test positive for Covid. A ton of people especially kids in South Africa has Covid right now, which makes sense given that the kids aren’t vaccinated. This does not mean the kids are going to the hospital because of Covid, and they are certainly not dying or having severe outcomes.

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I mean let’s not get crazy now, these doctors on the approval boards have plans this Christmas. We certainly can’t ask them to delay those plans. What’s an extra thousand deaths a day for a few weeks compared to Christmas? That golf isn’t going to play itself.

Appears that my school has decided to extend the winter vacation ever so slightly.

It was supposed to begin on the 23rd. Now, it will begin on the 21st. I was planning to fly out on the 22nd. So it makes almost no difference to me.

Nice but it still sucks ass. Changing my flight out is a bit impractical as it gives me one spare day whereas not having to work Monday would allow me to fly out on the 19th, giving me more time to spend in America.

I guess the lone benefit is that now my departure on the 22nd is no longer considered unpaid time off.

EDIT: And I can’t change the flight out anyway. Just an extra day to chill before the flight.

In fairness, Christmases have already caused truckloads of COVID death and are going to toss thousands upon thousands of more bodies on the pile, so let ‘em bake some cookies for Santa.

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Are they showing steroids for the “body” picture lol?

Probably just B12 shots or something.

Pretty decent summary of what we know so far:

Nothing new to avid readers of this thread I don’t think, but having it all in one place is good.

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https://twitter.com/nicd_sa/status/1468988899401912333?s=21

Not very good.

Yeah, I think we can be pretty confident at this point that this spreads faster than delta, at least in a population with a low vaccination rate.

Severe illness in South Africa’s Omicron outbreak lower than in past waves, initial data suggests

Early hospital data from South Africa shows fewer than a third of patients admitted for Covid during the latest wave linked to the Omicron variant are suffering severe illness, compared with two thirds in the early stages of the last two waves, Reuters reports.

Data released by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) for Tshwane , the metropolitan area which includes Pretoria where the first suspected Omicron outbreak occurred, showed 1,633 admissions in public and private hospitals for Covid between 14 November and 8 December.

Of those, 31% were severe cases – defined as patients needing oxygen or mechanical ventilation – compared with 66% early in the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and 67% in the early weeks of the first.

South African scientists first sounded the alarm on the Omicron variant late last month, when they noticed it had an unusually large number of mutations, especially on the spike protein that the virus uses to enter human cells.

Since then, they have been urgently trying to figure out whether the mutations make Omicron more transmissible or more severe, and the extent to which they can help it blunt protection from vaccines or past Covid infection.

The NICD cautioned that the study had some inherent limitations – it is not yet peer-reviewed – and that severe cases could rise as the fourth wave gets going.

“It may take a few weeks for hospitalisation outcomes to accumulate,” the report said.

The report also said nothing about whether the patients studied had been vaccinated, so it wasn’t clear to what extent higher vaccine coverage was keeping symptoms milder.

Early evidence suggests Omicron is far more transmissible than any previous variant, but that symptoms may be less severe, with lower levels of hospitalisation, especially in vaccinated patients.

South Africa reported nearly 20,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a record since the Omicron variant was detected, and a further 36 Covid-related deaths.

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Numbers have dropped in the Czech Republic over the last week. However, reports of omicron spreading in Brno (second largest city in CR). So, I’m not sure how long this decline will last.

Nice, that’s nice. My 16 year old is into finals so I think I probably have to wait a week, but then I’m getting them boosted.

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Rich countries could hoard vaccines :astonished:

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Pretty disgraceful - and will come back and bite us imo.

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Mutation paradise in Africa