Why would the SA doctor say the omicron is mild, if it isn’t?

[Pipecleaners]

Just that really…

Why would she tell the world’s media that it’s mild if she was exaggerating or whatever else?
She’s also said Boris Johnson’s response verges on ‘hysteria’ and calls for the UK to stay calm.

Because you need more evidence than the say so of one person.

It might be. She’s judging the effect based on the SA population, which is quite different to ours. Generally much younger and, though we have high levels of vaccination, they have higher levels of prior exposure which may have an effect on how immune systems fight this version off.
Hadn’t heard the ‘hysteria’ comment though.

I guess it affects SA tourism, trade etc if everyone shuns the country.

She’s one GP, sharing what she’s seeing. i don’t think it’s about if she’s telling the truth or not - it is not a robust evidence base for decision making and is why we have experts in immunology, viruses, epidemiology etc all working on this to take everything we know into account. Not just one person’s experience, she basically has anecdotes - that’s not to say she’s wrong and personally I hope she is right!

She’s the only one saying it from SA - where are the SA public health officials on this?

It is summer in SA, their population is younger than ours so maybe the impact is different.

I don’t think the issue is the mildness as such though, it’s the sheer numbers. If a small % of a bigger number end up needing ICU then the nhs is still fucked.

Because I think the data shows it is and milder still if you're vaccinated. The issue comes when you have so much of it across the population. So you have people who have underlying health conditions, older people (who often have naturally occurring other conditions purely due to age) plus unvaccinated with underlying/other health conditions are more likely to get it. Then there are a fixed number of a) hospital beds and b) in ICU specialist nurses (because the ICU beds are useless without specialist staff).

It's purely about scale. If 1% of infected people need hospital treatment, then if only 100 people in the population have the virus, it's not a problem. At the other end, if there are 1 million new infections a day, the hospitals can't possibly cope. And of course, that also means that other medical conditions that require ICU beds don't get a look in.

So it doesn't appear serious for almost everybody, but the "problem" is the number of people with it all at once vs number of beds/staff.

I think it's possible SA's experience is different to ours. For example, the average age of their population is 27 and they have far less obesity. So two of the groups badly affected by Covid don't really exist there.

Given how transmissible it is, it has to be extremely mild for that to mean it’s not still a problem. And it seems to be even more transmissible in the UK than in SA presumably partly because we are colder here and more indoors.

Errr because it is is mild in terms of its affect! And less people are dying of it. Its only the mass hysteria in the uk and the government.

Why do you believe everything you are being told in the UK and not read between the lines? Number of infections is far less important than number of deaths or even hospital admissions because of omni

Because they dont know. As others have said diffrent poplations, different healthcare.
It's very rare in science to take the opinion of a single medical professional. If she is correct ( andi am very hopefull that she is) then yes it may be the sign of the end of the pandemic but this strain is highly infectious ad with an estimated 1 million people being infected this month even a smaller percentage of those ending up in hospital could cripple the overwhelmed NHS.

I think we need to accept that it is going to be around for long time ( in some variation) and we need to pump shit tonne of money into the NHS to cope. This include training ( bring back substantial nrising nurseries for example) and then retaining healthcare professionals ( work with staff to prevent burn out, better conditions and pay) at all levels. But this is a big overhaul that I cant see the goverment doing

@Salxxxxxxxx

Why do you believe everything you are being told in the UK and not read between the lines? Number of infections is far less important than number of deaths or even hospital admissions because of omni

Hospitalisations and deaths come later than infections.

It would be bonkers to do nothing to limit infection when we have very little idea how many will translate into hospital admissions and deaths.

South Africa has a very different population to ours.

The population of SA is much younger than here. Young people do not suffer from C - 19 of all mutations as much as older people.

The people who were going to die of Covid in SA have already died. The people who remain are younger, healthier, or wealthy enough to shield in a way we would never be able tonand so it probably doesn’t matter whether they are vaccinated or not. This is why people are saying SA isn’t really a true reflection of whether Omicron is serious or not.

Doesn’t South Africa have a high rate of HIV though? So surely that would mean immune system issues?

Covid has always been a mild illness for most.

Unless we can verify that Omicron is both milder than Delta (quite possibly true) and the extent to which it causes severe illness and death (no-one knows this yet) we have to be cautious. As what we DO know is it is WAY, WAY more transmissible than previous variants and has the ability to partially evade vaccines.

I think you also have to be wary of the term 'mild'. Medically mild just means you arent in hospital on oxygen. Mild can still mean you are off sick from work for a couple of weeks. Not the end of the world if you get full sick pay but very different if you are left on SSP with bills to pay. Plus organisations cant afford to have large numbers of staff off sick at the same time.

Covid has always been mild for the overwhelming vast majority of people who get it. So it’s reasonable to assume that omicron will also be mild.

(1) even a 'mild' virus (defined medically as not needing hospitalisation) can cause huge problems on a population level eith regards to running public services etc

(2) there is some evidence that because SA has already had 3 waves with high numbers catching it in each wave, there is some level of virus recognition - our population may respond differently

(3) we have many many more older and more vunerable people - so again, our population level response to Omicron might be different to SA

People have been ringing in on LBC radio saying how ill they have felt for 10 to 14 days. They weren't at all vaccinated though.

I thought we were still waiting to find out

I had the same question and was looking up on the net yesterday and found this

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/14/south-africa-previous-infections-may-explain-omicron-hospitalisation-rate

@Pipecleaners

Doesn’t South Africa have a high rate of HIV though? So surely that would mean immune system issues?

From the UK HIV website "HIV if left untreated damages the immune system by reducing a person’s CD4 count (the white blood cells affected by HIV). Treatment stops this from happening, so people living with HIV on treatment often have good immune systems." So if there treated they have an effective immune system. For those who are untreated they are most likely high risk ( this website indicated that vaccines are effective even in this population) but how comparable this data set is to the UK is just not known yet. Also the UK are not the only country in the world reacting to this strain in this way several countries have shut their borders ( to UK travellers) due to it. Even in south Africa the strain is still relatively new so it's still a preliminary data set. From any preliminarybdata set you can begin to form ideas of what's happening but you cannot make wide sweeping statements.

@redferrari didn’t we have the same mutation exposure here though?

It's one GP talking about a handful of patients she has been involved with personally. Hardly the evidence to take decisions either way on.