COVID-19: Chapter 9 - OMGicron

Derposphere is running wild with a Danish pre-print that can be seen as evidence the unvaccinated are safer from omicron than the vaccinated.

Is there any analysis specifically rebutting this point?

*About half of those hospitalizations were for kids under age 5, who are not eligible to be vaccinated.

But among the rest, in the most recent week, none of the admitted kids ages 5-11, and just a third of the kids ages 12-17, were fully vaccinated.*

I wonder if the recency of 5-11 year old vax vs 12-17 is the difference here.

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While that’s true, it looks like the absolute numbers are still low and the under 18 are still the least likely to be hospitalized, even though they’re also the least likely to be vaccinated. So that’s probably good. And it doesn’t look like youth hospitalizations are increasing as a fraction of those admitted compared to Delta.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily

What is the actual suggestion here of what to do differently?

Not let the children die, obviously.

Well, ok, but I feel like it would be easier to just not chant “mild”.

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https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1474139286840696836?s=21

The negative estimates in the final period arguably suggest different behaviour and/or exposure patterns in the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts causing underestimation of the VE. This was likely the result of Omicron spreading rapidly initially through single (super-spreading) events causing many infections among young, vaccinated individuals.

That, and the unvaccinated might have some immunity from an asymptomatic or mild and undiagnosed infection.

Undisclosed immunity won’t account for the effect size here. As best I understand their methodology, they’re just comparing the percentages of pozzed people in various vaccination cohorts to population percentages. The problem with doing this is that similar people tend to congregate together. Like if Unstuck lived in a commune in Copenhagen and one of us got pozzed, the conclusion of the resulting outbreak would be that vaccinated people are like 500 times more likely to be pozzed, because everyone in Unstuck is vaccinated. The idea is that a similar thing is going on to a lesser extent. We need more data, but the idea that unvaccinated are less susceptible is implausible, we have no known mechanism that would account for this.

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It’s not even clearly true. From the article:

The state did not break down exactly how sick those kids are, though, or whether ICU admissions or fatalities have increased as well.

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It wouldn’t account for the size of the effect but it would contribute directionally I think. Probably the paper is right and it’s mostly young vaccinated people gathering together.

I meant that it seems true that hospitalizations of kids increased significantly, not that the kids were necessarily dying.

Probably ought to close the schools just to be safe. If it saves a single child…

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Had our Xmas dinner and our first at home tests as we had a 2 year old visiting. Looking at people taking the test I have serious doubts about it being accurate as none of them liked putting that swab up their nose far enough. All test negative and despite numbers rising fast in NSW I expect that was a true result but I am glad I don’t have a child who can’t be vaxed yet or an immunocompromised person depending on those test when doing some socialising during the holidays.

You don’t have to put the swab up as far with the antigen tests. Just enough so that the tip of the q-tip is completely in your nose.

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Not attacking the friendly felllow I’m replying to here, but whoever is responsible for the prevailing false dichotomy here that says “aww you want to save the life of just a single kid or immunocompromised person by shutting down the entire world economy and locking every human into a 6x6 prison cell” should be loaded into a rocket and blasted into the sun.

That there is absolutely no middle ground between completely shuttering all schools/businesses and not playing 100,000 person games of public human centipede is completely tilting the shit out of me this weekend.

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Well said.

I’m one for full transparency so here it is: woke up with a slight runny nose, congestion, and headache. Took a test which was positive.

I knew the risks in going to the wedding so I’m not surprised or upset. So far symptoms seem like nothing more than a slight head cold.

Fully vaxxed + boosted. You can throw it in my face if you want.

Just going to stay hydrated and at home. My wife still tested negative.

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When Delta was reported to be “as contagious as chickenpox” people began taking basic NPI more seriously and there was discussion about the need for masking up even when outside. Because there have been so many reports of the mild effects of Omicron among the vaccinated it feels like a lot of the same people who suddenly took Delta more seriously have now decided to YOLO it up instead of continuing with basic NPI. It would at least be nice to continue with masks etc. to try to keep hospital capacity open for kids who can’t be vaccinated.

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