New Covid variant *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[Wingingthis]

Can anyone talk some sense about how dangerous this is or is it just the media over exaggerating?

Interesting that the SA outbreak seems to be tailing off already, even though v noisy data (so need a few more days to really know).

And, so far no one dead from Omicron, although, if it really is that new, that would be expected (about a months lag).

My early beg is that this variant has been overblown. If I were still trading markets, I would be cautiously buying the dip.

V early days, though, to draw any conclusion.

Bet

Thanks @Karmdenswitme

I can’t see a breakdown by age in each Province in those figures, have I missed it?

This is the reference in the Washington Post article to the relevant data:

According to the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, which includes the heavily affected Gauteng Province, between Nov. 14 and 28, the age group with the highest total number of hospital admissions for covid were those under the age of 2. During those two weeks, 62 under-2-year-olds were admitted compared with 42 admissions for the ages 30 to 32.

@TheReluctantPhoenix

Interesting that the SA outbreak seems to be tailing off already, even though v noisy data (so need a few more days to really know).

And, so far no one dead from Omicron, although, if it really is that new, that would be expected (about a months lag).

My early beg is that this variant has been overblown. If I were still trading markets, I would be cautiously buying the dip.

V early days, though, to draw any conclusion.

Where did you get that information from? Sorry I've not seen it in any of the links here.

Twitter speculation:

"Get ready for a roller coaster. In 10 days you are almost certainly going to hear that Omicron has achieved near complete (>90%) immune evasion from vaccine antibodies. 2-3 months later you will be hear that some T-cell immunity is retained so it’s not as grim as anticipated"

"The ideal scenario is that Omicron is 1) mild, 2) provides cross-reactive T-cell immunity, and 3) is REALLY infectious. Then the world gets an involuntary “vaccination” by a mild strain"

twitter.com/CurlyJungleJake/status/1465261953991933955

@kirinm,

Just the usual, Corona Worldometer:

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/

Nov 23rd: 868 cases
Nov 24th: 1275
Nov 25th: 2465
Nov 26th: 2828
Nov 27th: 3220
Nov 28th: 2858
Nov 29th: 2273

As i said, way too early to draw any firm conclusions, but encouraging as far as it goes.

@manolantern where do these Twitter people get their info from?

The "get ready for a rollercoaster" guy, this is his Twitter bio

Bioengineer, computational immunologist, futurist, husband, father, entrepreneur. Founder & CEO of Centivax

I'm sure we could find differing opinions for far better qualified people

@Largethighsbadeyes

The "get ready for a rollercoaster" guy, this is his Twitter bio

Bioengineer, computational immunologist, futurist, husband, father, entrepreneur. Founder & CEO of Centivax

I'm sure we could find differing opinions for far better qualified people

Sorry then, probably falls under the category of "clickbait quotes from people with experience in some tangential area.".

Look at this guy's twitter feed. He has just been quoted in a piece for the FT so he can't be that wacky.

And I also see that he tweeted the following yesterday though:

Omicron: a few reasons not to panic. We have 2 years of tools to fight COV2 that we didn’t have before. Vaccines can be adapted in 100 days. Antiviral pills coming out likely cross. We have rapid viral testing. Doctors know COVID-19. We just need to attack with the tools we have.

Which sounds a lot less scary indeed.

I wonder why the scary one is doing the rounds on twitter...

I think he's kind of stating the bleeding obvious to a degree given the reaction around the world.

Plus if you read the second part of the tweet he makes alone, it reads very differently.

Just keep calm. Hold your nerve and be patient.

He also wrote this

edition.cnn.com/2021/11/29/opinions/fighting-omicron-variant-madad-glanville/index.html

I think the 90% comes from this

15 RBD mutations appear in the binding sites of 47 out of 50 neutralizing antibodies in a panel of crystal structures of all known neutralizing antibodies in complex with the RBD from the #PDB database. This is the data basis for #omicron escaping antibody immunity

But actually he has no other data to extrapolate the 90% from. I have a feeling he tweeted it and then has realised it effect!

This from France24 is not encouraging www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211130-moderna-boss-says-vaccines-likely-no-match-for-omicron-ft

I know the vaccines can be tweaked in 100 days - but that is three months and then it takes ages to get them adminstered.

@RedToothBrush

Look at this guy's twitter feed. He has just been quoted in a piece for the FT so he can't be that wacky.

And I also see that he tweeted the following yesterday though:

Omicron: a few reasons not to panic. We have 2 years of tools to fight COV2 that we didn’t have before. Vaccines can be adapted in 100 days. Antiviral pills coming out likely cross. We have rapid viral testing. Doctors know COVID-19. We just need to attack with the tools we have.

Which sounds a lot less scary indeed.

I wonder why the scary one is doing the rounds on twitter...

I think he's kind of stating the bleeding obvious to a degree given the reaction around the world.

Plus if you read the second part of the tweet he makes alone, it reads very differently.

Just keep calm. Hold your nerve and be patient.

But, and please tell me if I'm wrong, at the moment there isn't any reliable data regarding the severity of the variant? Ideally - mild symptoms but that isn't known yet?

I meant does the guy on Twitter say anything about the mildness (or not) of it?

@kirinm

I meant does the guy on Twitter say anything about the mildness (or not) of it?

He pretty much says if its really mild it could be a relatively good thing not a bad one. (stops the need for rolling out vaccines to poorer parts of the world to protect them from more severe variants of covid)

Which is something Ive seen others say.

We really are in the land of not knowing and the speculation has such a broad range from it being a relatively good thing to near world ending disaster (well not that serious but you get my point).

Because we are in that situation its pointless getting too drawn into any conclusions just yet. We have to wait and thats something that the modern world (and twitter in particular) struggle to cope with because we are all so used to instant gratification.

The usual outcome of when you have such extremes of possibility is that its usually much more of a moderate middle of the road outcome. So probably more problematic than Delta but not a disaster and could be useful in some parts of the world anyway.

As far as I am concerned every day that goes by and we aren't hearing of masses of omicron deaths is enough for now for me.

@RedToothBrush what's the odds my wedding taking place in two weeks time 😬

www.ft.com/content/27def1b9-b9c8-47a5-8e06-72e432e0838f

is good about Moderna - and the fact the tweaking vaccines is not necessarily the way forward either.

The fact that effectiveness is less was always to be expected though - and he also recommends boosters as well which is what we are doing

I think as well at the beginning we were hoping for a vaccine that was around 50-60% efficient - the fact we got them at 90% for the original was amazing because I think it means that it will come down to what we were expecting in the first place

[quote 1990butgrey]@RedToothBrush what's the odds my wedding taking place in two weeks time 😬[/quote]
Depends on if your wedding is in the uk or not!

Honestly i am still relatively confident about there not being a crunch on restrictions pre Christmas. The next review in England is on the 20th. I would be surprised if there were significant shift from government before then.

However what your venue and guest might do / say is a slightly different thing.

If there is a significant change in government tone pre Christmas i think that's when panic will start to rise

If there is going to be a problem in the uk it will be after Christmas is what ive been saying and what i still think holds up.

I think the things we will hear a lot about this week is rather a lot more omicron cases than feels good (hundreds will be flagged pretty quick), community transmission being significant, cases dating back at least a couple of weeks, trouble booking travel pcrs, lots more people stuffed for Christmas holidays because of other countries tightening up on restrictions (which was likely even without omicron being a factor) - particularly with issues for the 12 to 15 year old age group, delays in getting pcr results, concerns about the omicron pingdemic especially in schools and hospitals and quite a bit of resistance to new rules.

Thats going to be quite enough for the press to hyperventilate over without looking for signs that omicron is bad.

Having said all that, there's nothing like the announcement of a Johnson press conference about restrictions to work you up into a bit of a frenzy...

(kind of hoping its to clarify a number of things that were not really properly addressed on Friday rather than anything more sinister. Though i may prepare to deny i made that previous postkr claim i was drunk when i made it by 5.30pm tonight when we are all under immediate strict lockdown!)

@RedToothBrush thank you!

It's in the UK! We would understand if some people no longer felt comfortable coming. As long as we can get married and largely get the wedding we've paid (in full ) for! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

@RedToothBrush is there any possibility that mild infection should also be avoided in case it affects people long term, immunity to other illness, long Covid or neurological issues?

I had mild Covid (Delta I presume) and it was horrible enough for me to never want it again, what really unnerved me though was the loss of smell and taste, it was as though my brain had turned off a switch and within half an hour that was it for a week.

We’re clearly a long way from fully understanding omicron but am I right in thinking we shouldn’t rule out mild may = not good, considering how different it’s structure is to Delta?

It feels too soon to be throwing the Mild card around at this stage as it will only minimise Joe Publics perceptions of infection and attitudes to mitigation’s.

[quote Thewiseoneincognito]@RedToothBrush is there any possibility that mild infection should also be avoided in case it affects people long term, immunity to other illness, long Covid or neurological issues?

I had mild Covid (Delta I presume) and it was horrible enough for me to never want it again, what really unnerved me though was the loss of smell and taste, it was as though my brain had turned off a switch and within half an hour that was it for a week.

We’re clearly a long way from fully understanding omicron but am I right in thinking we shouldn’t rule out mild may = not good, considering how different it’s structure is to Delta?

It feels too soon to be throwing the Mild card around at this stage as it will only minimise Joe Publics perceptions of infection and attitudes to mitigation’s.[/quote]
Fuck knows!

Tbh its like anything - some people are at more risk than others even if something isnt serious for most people. It just depends on what 'rare' and 'very rare' means.

We can't eliminate the risk of vaccinations completely either though. Some people die from a reaction to them.

It also depends on what the term 'mild' actually means.

Again. Its not something that we are going to be able to easily avoid if transmission is higher than delta. Its just going to happen...

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]@kirinm,

Just the usual, Corona Worldometer:

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-africa/

Nov 23rd: 868 cases
Nov 24th: 1275
Nov 25th: 2465
Nov 26th: 2828
Nov 27th: 3220
Nov 28th: 2858
Nov 29th: 2273

As i said, way too early to draw any firm conclusions, but encouraging as far as it goes.[/quote]
You can't look at daily cases and expect to see a trend as they vary way too much day by day and depending if it is the weekend or not. Over 2 weeks the trend is definitely up.

The 7 day average for new cases is 4786 today compared to 582 one week ago.
www.google.com/search?q=covid+south+africa&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB866GB866&oq=covid+south+africa&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61l2j69i60.3496j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

@twosticksandanapple,

I don't need to be told to be cautious, when I have already said it is very early and noisy data!

The two week trend has no meaning, when the variant was only genotyped a few days ago.

Clearly the Omicron strain has caused a localised spike; that is not in question. If it is rabidly infectious though, we should see a clear increase in cases, which would overwhelm the daily noise.