The data are preliminary but it’s not a completely unknown thing like you suggested. Based on what we know about other viruses it would be very weird if the booster didn’t help the spread of omicron.
Yeah it is putting me on severe tilt every time I see people on the internet confidently asserting that pathogens get less deadly over time. That didn’t happen, as far as we know, with the bubonic plague or smallpox and those were vastly scarier and more deadly pathogens than covid. “Viruses will become less deadly because that’s better for the virus” is teleological. There has to be actual selective pressure on the virus. The pressure on covid right now to be less deadly looks like “none whatsoever” to me, it has plenty of time to spread before killing its host and people won’t even cancel Christmas to avoid it. Meanwhile the pressure to evade immunity looks like “fucking heaps”. So that’s primarily what is going to be selected for, even at the cost of becoming deadlier.
After those studies on Omicron’s tendencies to live in the upper respiratory tract came out I was wondering if the less-deadly-over-time thing is actually true for respiratory viruses in particular. If a virus can become a specialist at living in the nose and throat, that’s good for the virus as it enhances transmissibility and it’s good for the host compared to having the thing gnawing on your lungs. So the selective pressure would be for transmissibility, with lower deadliness as a happy side-effect. But that’s completely speculative and it’s very plausible that Omicron is simply adapted for immune evasion and that it’s sheer luck that those adaptations also made it milder.
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Presumably people will change their behavior if it becomes increasingly deadly, though I agree with your overall point: in the short run there’s no guarantee that the next variant won’t be more dangerous and we can’t just hope it evolves away into something friendly. Being more transmissible and less deadly seems like a big win-win for Omicron.
It’s not an idiotic bet if you things are as completely unknown as you’ve suggested.
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I woke up with a soar throat one day last week and thought it was likely that I had the ‘cron. But an at-home test came up negative, and it didn’t seem worth it to wait in a huge line since I’m basically back to summer 2020 level of lockdown.
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Admitting that it’s a sucker’s bet while taking CN and I to task for overstating likelihood boosters prevent omicron infection seems like two thoughts that are awfully hard to reconcile. One might think you’re just being antagonistic for its own sake.
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My MIL is Pozzed. She is the single most careful COVID person I know, has barely left her house, vaxxed and boosted, always masked, etc.
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Isn’t this exactly the question the Danish study tried to examine?
ABSTRACT
In this brief communication we are showing original research results with early estimates from Danish nationwide databases of vaccine effectiveness (VE) against the novel SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) up to five months after a primary vaccination series with the BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines.
Our study provides evidence of protection against infection with the Omicron variant after completion of a primary vaccination series with the BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines; in particular, we found a VE against the Omicron variant of 55.2% (95% confidence interval (CI): 23.5 to 73.7%) and 36.7% (95% CI: 69.9 to 76.4%) for the BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccines, respectively, in the first month after primary vaccination. However, the VE is significantly lower than that against Delta infection and declines rapidly over just a few months. The VE is re-established upon revaccination with the BNT162b2 vaccine (54.6%, 95% CI: 30.4 to 70.4%).
Looks like the last couple days are getting backfilled and up to 170/130k cases. 7dma is now 200k through yesterday and going to rise some more through today’s data. These are the types of bets I really won’t mind losing if I do, at least it will be a down to the wire sweat.
The magic number is 256,226 on January 11th.
My WAG from all stuff I’ve read is that Omicron provides some meaningful protection against infection, but not enough to shed n95 masks for many indoor and crowded outdoor activities even with vax and rapid test and not enough to prevent household transmission without major mitigation (probably best to just rent an airbnb or something if possible to isolate). Also seems reasonably likely we will need another booster, perhaps as soon as 3 months out, to keep this level of protection.
I’d guess/bet Omicron boosted better than Delta unvaxxed but wouldn’t bet my life on it.
The faster people learn to love N95 masks the better off we will all be and the more normalcy we will be able to keep in 2022.
https://twitter.com/beingrealmac/status/1475509915607351300?s=20
https://twitter.com/IanSams/status/1475582582125436936?s=20
Capitalism will kill us all
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Guess he saw how his hardass stance on the unvaxxed didn’t go over well and is now going with a more spineless approach.
It’s not all about R. I can’t remember if I’ve posted about this or not, but I saw some comments from a specialist in disease spread modelling saying that Omicron is probably the fastest-spreading virus known to man. The R of measles is vastly higher, like 15 or something, but the generation time of measles is 11 days. The generation time of Omicron looks to be comfortably under 5 days. So Omicron has already gone through three exponential cycles while measles is still getting its shoes on.
Edit: To spell out my point, it can both be the case that Omicron spreads faster than previous variants and also that a single exposure is less likely to give you the virus than previous variants.
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This seems ridiculous.
I think he’s saying boosted Vs Omicron worse than 2 dose vaxxed Vs Delta for contracting the virus. I think that’s correct tbh.
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Of course it is. That is not inconsistent with boosters also substantially reducing your chances of getting infected.
They really, really needed to find a sharp and likeable person to take the lead on covid response. Not Andy Slavitt or Vivek Murthy. And Biden and Harris are awful at it. Mayor Pete would have been better. Is there no one who can handle this issue for them with charisma and credibility? Cause some of Biden’s comments are just face-palming drivel.
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Mayo Pete you say? The guy who used GOP talking points to shit on Medicare for All in the primary? The psychopath who has a resource map of Afghanistan in his living room? Let’s see what he’s been saying
Yeah, I’m thinking he also cares more about the economy than human life
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Yeah…I don’t know who. Just not who they’ve had. The line about this needing to be solved at the state level is just nuts.