It’s not. There’s been no data so far to suggest there’s been some big drop in mortality benefit.
Nope. As was pointed out several days ago, I believe you are again confusing the difference between neutralizing antibodies and T cell immunity. Sufficient T cell immunity from double vaxxes should hopefully be enough to stave off bad outcomes from Omicron. Maybe I’m a few days early to wishcast that the lack of a rise in fatalities in the UK is promising, but you sure as shit are way early to be making “quite likely” predictions about mortality.
Lol, I love that you started with “two weeks” and then realized you needed to edit it to “almost two weeks.”
Edit; Lol and then deleted the whole thing.
Seems like a huge favorite to happen (because Florida), and a huge favorite for someone to show up with OMGICRON having just become contagious after catching it at Christmas.
why do you constantly do this?
Link?
Constantly?
In this case I’ve already cited upthread an expert on this very topic. Let’s hear from him:
Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London said: “This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infection or vaccination. This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health.”
55% of UK citizens are yet to have a booster.
Yeah that is not the headline from the article, but the link is correct. It’s the second headline in the nytimes live feed, (as of the time of this post).
Jalfrezi, the error you consistently make is taking out of context quotes (usually about the reduction in the antibody levels in sera from only twice-vaccinated individuals) and then extrapolate that out to doomcasting about fatalities. The fact that in the UK cases rose dramatically starting at the end of the summer but deaths did not rise in a corresponding manner is evidence of why what you are doing is incorrect. The loss of vaccine efficacy against infection does not mean that the vaccines are ineffective at staving off death. Your own national statistics bear that out.
Everything at this moment in time is speculation. Let’s see. Maybe we’ll be lucky and omicron will be less lethal than delta, maybe we won’t.
Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said a spike in cases of the Omicron variant was “scary,” while the country’s top medical official made clear the healthcare system could soon be swamped.
Case numbers are rapidly increasing in Canada, with several of the 10 provinces reporting big jumps as Omicron replaces Delta as the dominant variant.
“I know the record numbers we’re seeing in parts of the country are scary - but I also know we can get through this,” Trudeau tweeted, urging Canadians to get vaccinated and keep their distance from other people.
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos earlier urged provinces to impose more public health measures, and said Canada would once again require people returning home after foreign trips of less than 72 hours to produce a negative test.
UK breaks Covid record for third consecutive day with 93,045 new cases
The UK reported 93,045 new Covid cases today, breaking the daily record for the third consecutive day.
There were also 111 new Covid deaths reported and 7,611 patients in hospital, 875 of whom were on beds with ventilators.
It comes after yesterday there were 88,376 new cases reported and 78,610 new cases the day before, both breaking all previous pandemic records.
England reports 65 patients in hospital with Omicron
England had 65 patients in hospital with Omicron today, the UK Health Security Agency said.
The total number of deaths from the new variant in England remains unchanged at one, reports Reuters.
Risk of reinfection from Omicron more than five times higher than Delta, finds study
The risk of reinfection from Omicron is more than five times higher than Delta and shows no sign of being milder than the previous coronavirus variant, according to a study by Imperial College London.
The results, based on data from the UK Health Security Agency and Britain’s National Health Service, analysed people who tested positive for Covid-19 in a PCR test in England between 29 November and 11 December, reports Reuters.
“We find no evidence (for both risk of hospitalisation attendance and symptom status) of Omicron having different severity from Delta,” the study said, although it noted that data on hospitalisations remains very limited.
“Controlling for vaccine status, age, sex, ethnicity, asymptomatic status, region and specimen date, Omicron was associated with a 5.4-fold higher risk of reinfection compared with Delta,” the study, which was dated Dec. 16, added.
Imperial College said in a statement: “This implies that the protection against reinfection by Omicron afforded by past infection may be as low as 19%.” The institution also noted that the study had not yet been peer reviewed.
No, it’s not. Delta wasn’t even that lethal in the UK compared to previous waves as a function of deaths versus infections. Do you wonder why that is?
There has. The CDC rounds up various studies on waning starting around pg 14 here. Plus those initial South African numbers had VE against hospitalization down to 70%, which is good, but not that good. I’m sure you’ve got some No True Evidence routine lined up, maybe plan to draw some very clever semantik distinctions, but I don’t really give a shit. Boosters are extremely important, especially for high-risk people, and I think the shambolic rollout of them is going to be a costly mistake.
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What matters isn’t death rates but the total number of deaths plus long term effects. No one cares so much about a few days of feeling poorly.
Omicron is several times more infectious than delta. It would have to be the same factor less lethal to kill the same number of people, let alone fewer, and there’s absolutely no evidence to support this conjecture.
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You’re missing a lot of variables here.
Which variables?
Well, for starters, whether or not there is a reduction in the effectiveness of the vaccines in stopping death in Omicron versus Delta, how much of your population that is high risk and susceptible to death despite being vaccinated is left are two big ones. Again, your doom and gloom is belied by what happened in your country with delta. If increased infectivity was all that mattered then we should have seen more deaths with delta then with the previous waves. That is not what happened despite delta being really fucking infectious, and also being more deadly.
This is what was under discussion, not a new variable.
Death rate had been fairly consistent since autumn. No evidence that covid had burned its way through the next tier of vulnerable people yet (after the initial care homes scandal).
That’s one variable that turns out to be not relevant.
What are the other variables?
Exactly my point.
This was also rendered somewhat moot by the Pfizer announcement this afternoon. Gonna be some months before these vaccines are available anyways.