Omicron New Variant Thread 2 *title edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[Thewiseoneincognito]

Continuation of the last thread

I have omicron right now as does everyone else in my household, despite careful self-isolation after the first positive. It feels similar to but less severe/alarming than the bog standard alpha Covid I had in March 2020. But then I was the only person who was ill. This seems to spread like wildfire.

Total loss of taste and smell, wiped out, very mild cough (less dry and racking than the first time round, more chesty), muscle aches (but not the scary chest pain, like pleurisy, or slight difficulty breathing). Had two Pfizer vaccines, husband had two AstraZeneca. Feels exactly as I would expect a reinfection with a milder strain, two years on, to be, i.e. as if the vaccines made no difference whatsoever.

I'm not panicking at all, just clarifying the numbers being discussed.

That sort of number remains a possibility.

We need contingency planning to take it into account.

We can't continually panic about the virus - we need to recognise that life must move back to normality. The country went through various lock downs in order to protect the elderly and vulnerable. This was so the NHS could deal with covid. The impact was that the young became vulnerable in a different way - mental health of teenagers and young people detected, those with preventable diseases have either had their treatment delayed or not been diagnosed in time. It sounds unfeeling but many of those in care homes were due to the regulations protected and were able to live longer - weeks, months or maybe years - but the quality of life was poor anyway, some with alzimers did not know what was happening even before the virus.

We should not in my view have another round of regulations destroying the lives of the majority - we need to let children and young people get back to normality. If people want to shield that is their choice. We have created a climate of fear and panic this is not healthy.

Twelly, I do understand what you are saying but the hospitals will quickly fill up with elderly and vulnerable and there won’t be availability for treating everyone. So what you are actually saying is that you want a triage system where perhaps anyone over x age or with certain underlying conditions is refused treatment. So that the hospitals aren’t overwhelmed and normal treatments can continue. All the elderly grandparents would be told sorry we can’t treat you just stay at home, I am not sure how many of the public would agree to this system going ahead?

No i don't think we should panic.

I think we should contingency plan for a very large wave of infections and all options need to be on the table.

@hopsalong

I have omicron right now as does everyone else in my household, despite careful self-isolation after the first positive. It feels similar to but less severe/alarming than the bog standard alpha Covid I had in March 2020. But then I was the only person who was ill. This seems to spread like wildfire.

Total loss of taste and smell, wiped out, very mild cough (less dry and racking than the first time round, more chesty), muscle aches (but not the scary chest pain, like pleurisy, or slight difficulty breathing). Had two Pfizer vaccines, husband had two AstraZeneca. Feels exactly as I would expect a reinfection with a milder strain, two years on, to be, i.e. as if the vaccines made no difference whatsoever.

That's interesting. I hope you all feel better soon!

@Turquoisesol

Twelly, I do understand what you are saying but the hospitals will quickly fill up with elderly and vulnerable and there won’t be availability for treating everyone. So what you are actually saying is that you want a triage system where perhaps anyone over x age or with certain underlying conditions is refused treatment. So that the hospitals aren’t overwhelmed and normal treatments can continue. All the elderly grandparents would be told sorry we can’t treat you just stay at home, I am not sure how many of the public would agree to this system going ahead?

I don't want to write off anyone over a certain age but resources are limited normally - so decisions are made about ITU beds and operations. In my view what has happened is that Covid has become the total priority in every action - not just health care but in every way of life. We have excluded any other priority. I don't believe this is the right way to proceed I think that there are lots of priories and we need to balance competing pressures. On a point regarding grandparents - I think there is a difference between the active and those at home looking after themselves to those in a care home. Those at home are able to isolate and protect themselves - although I am not sure that being isolate for a year or two on and off is good for them in the long term

@hopsalong

Obviously this is none of my business so I totally understand if you don't answer but was your alpha infection confirmed by pcr? And has your omicron infection been confirmed too?

I'm asking for very genuine reasons (elderly PIL had covid in 2020 and they are worried about Omicron).

No worries if you don't reply to these rather intrusive questions.

@hopsalong

I have omicron right now as does everyone else in my household, despite careful self-isolation after the first positive. It feels similar to but less severe/alarming than the bog standard alpha Covid I had in March 2020. But then I was the only person who was ill. This seems to spread like wildfire.

Total loss of taste and smell, wiped out, very mild cough (less dry and racking than the first time round, more chesty), muscle aches (but not the scary chest pain, like pleurisy, or slight difficulty breathing). Had two Pfizer vaccines, husband had two AstraZeneca. Feels exactly as I would expect a reinfection with a milder strain, two years on, to be, i.e. as if the vaccines made no difference whatsoever.

I'm sorry you're poorly. But don't you think it makes complete sense that your infection feels a bit milder given that you are vaccinated and had previous infection? I don't understand why you would extrapolate from this that the variant is milder - Occam's razor and all that.

I'm not extrapolating from my symptoms to the idea that the variant is milder; this is only based on what I'd read. My own infection is milder but I would expect it to be milder given that I've already had Covid. I still feel pretty grotty, though, so it's hard to see what difference the vaccine has made. It didn't stop me getting it, transmitting it, or being about as ill as I would have been without it (for a number of other reasons I am also in much better underlying health than in 2020)!

Omicron confirmed. Didn't do a PCR test in March 2020 (not available), but was antibody positive in the summer of 2020.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I hope you are on the mend soon.

Have we got the testing capacity to establish such high numbers contracting omricon ?

Indeed what % do we think might not report positive LFTs ?

Obviously this is none of my business so I totally understand if you don't answer but was your alpha infection confirmed by pcr? And has your omicron infection been confirmed too?

Pedantic I know, but Alpha variant didn't appear until late 2020 and drove last winter's wave. Any March 2020 infections would have been caused by the original, and by comparison far less transmissible, Wuhan variant.

@peridito

Have we got the testing capacity to establish such high numbers contracting omricon ?

Indeed what % do we think might not report positive LFTs ?

Or not test at all!

@peridito

Have we got the testing capacity to establish such high numbers contracting omricon ?

Indeed what % do we think might not report positive LFTs ?

I would imagine the government would tell people to stop getting confirmatory PCRs if necessary. Most people would just do LFTs. Whether they'd report them or not, I'm not so sure

@peridito

Have we got the testing capacity to establish such high numbers contracting omricon ?

Indeed what % do we think might not report positive LFTs ?

And won't EVERY sample have to be analysed for variant type - at least in the short term while we have Delta and Omicron spreading simultaneously. If we don't, we won't know which variant is causing which illness.

Maybe the NHS needs to drop the ideal of everything being free and start charging for certain things.

People keep using "What about people who do dangerous sports?" as a reason why nobody should ever be charged for the NHS as a result of personal choices, but there's precedent for this already.

Mountain rescue, for example, is generally free, but in many countries if you choose to climb a mountain off-season when all the warning messages have been put out there, you can indeed be billed for rescue costs.

If there were some kind of extreme sport which was causing floods of injuries at a particular time of year to the extent that it was actually clogging up hospitals and denying other people their treatment, then yes of course we bloody well would be thinking about either making the sport illegal or introducing some system where you get billed for your choices.

Maybe the NHS needs to drop the ideal of everything being free and start charging for certain things.

Perhaps

@Kokeshi123

Maybe the NHS needs to drop the ideal of everything being free and start charging for certain things.

People keep using "What about people who do dangerous sports?" as a reason why nobody should ever be charged for the NHS as a result of personal choices, but there's precedent for this already.

Mountain rescue, for example, is generally free, but in many countries if you choose to climb a mountain off-season when all the warning messages have been put out there, you can indeed be billed for rescue costs.

If there were some kind of extreme sport which was causing floods of injuries at a particular time of year to the extent that it was actually clogging up hospitals and denying other people their treatment, then yes of course we bloody well would be thinking about either making the sport illegal or introducing some system where you get billed for your choices.

I get your point but in the grand scheme of things very few people require mountain rescue services. Much more common to be injured falling down the stairs, for example.

I get your point but in the grand scheme of things very few people require mountain rescue services.

That's kind of my point.
If huge, huge numbers of people every winter were requiring hospitalization for some ridiculous winter sport, to the point that hospital services were being significantly taken up with them for several months and other operations and procedures were being delayed or cancelled to make room for the sports injury patients, trust me, we'd either see the banhammer being wielded over the sport in question, or we'd see demands for the sports enthusiasts themselves to be billed for their treatment.

I agree it could be a slippery slope, but then everything we've done over the past 22 months is a slippery slope. School closures are a slippery slope (what's to stop them happening again and again?), lockdowns are a slippery slope (what if they become normalized as a way to deal with all sorts of things)....

It's not clear why the NHS is the only institution in the UK which is somehow expected to function according to the same rules as normal, even in a pandemic.

I think that if we see significant difficulties next winter, there will be a strong push to "do something" about the vax refusers-either billing them or pushing them to the bottom of the treatment queue. I know it seems a bit shocking now, but then I never ever imagined we'd have vax passports and things like that eitherthe idea would have been shocking to me a year ago. I think it will happen, should the NHS continue to struggle next winter. People's patience will have run out.

I'm hoping that by next winter the worst difficulties will be over, however, as the whole population will probably have enough immunity to "mostly" prevent severe disease.

@containsnuts There's no need to know which strain of infection everyone has on an individual level. And we only need to do PCR tests or a sequencing on a proportion of them to know how many infections each are causing overall.

@Turquoisesol
Nicola sturgeon say the cases are doubling every 2 days. I just did a quick calc and that means we would go from 100 cases to 1.6 million in a month
Not would but could as nobody knows what path Omicron will take - least of all Sturgeon. This thread has degenerated from a well-balanced exchange of info and thoughts to the usual doom mongering.

@Kokeshi123

Maybe the NHS needs to drop the ideal of everything being free and start charging for certain things.

People keep using "What about people who do dangerous sports?" as a reason why nobody should ever be charged for the NHS as a result of personal choices, but there's precedent for this already.

Mountain rescue, for example, is generally free, but in many countries if you choose to climb a mountain off-season when all the warning messages have been put out there, you can indeed be billed for rescue costs.

If there were some kind of extreme sport which was causing floods of injuries at a particular time of year to the extent that it was actually clogging up hospitals and denying other people their treatment, then yes of course we bloody well would be thinking about either making the sport illegal or introducing some system where you get billed for your choices.

Extreme sports don't account for a huge % of NHS expenditure. For starters the number of people who do them is relatively small. Compare with the huge number of football players who end up injured and in A & E. So you ask 'should we get anyone who has a sporting injury to pay for their health care?' and the response would be many adults and kids would simply stop doing sport - and the lifestyle change would mean they would put on weight and their overall health in the long term would be poorer...

I think we have to be aware that the sheer number of cases we are looking at means we either have quite a few restrictions over leisure venues/ or some sort of lockdown or we will end up with a critical infrastructure issue and a massive triage problem (which we might end up with anyway already). School closures are either going to be planned or spontaneous but they will happen.

Its not really much of a choice. Its a situation we can't avoid. We can't just 'carry on'.

I don't think a lot of people are grasping the issue here.

The assumption that is 'just mild' so we can all carry on our merry way doesn't address that mild might still mean you are dog rough and in bed at home or the sheer scale of numbers. Particularly if AZ (particularly in the 40 to 50 age band as this is a parent age band) leaves us more exposed to a higher number of infections compared to other western countries in the first place.

A mass wave of flu can cause staffing issues and government plan critical crisis management for this situation. The public don't really seem to have an awareness of this.

If i was communications for the government instead of spending all my time of the fucking Christmas party scandal, i should be getting this message out, that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place with a Hobson's Choice.

The tone of things this week will be interesting.

Im not scaremongering here. I can read numbers and they are not good.

[quote Billandben444]@Turquoisesol
Nicola sturgeon say the cases are doubling every 2 days. I just did a quick calc and that means we would go from 100 cases to 1.6 million in a month
Not would but could as nobody knows what path Omicron will take - least of all Sturgeon. This thread has degenerated from a well-balanced exchange of info and thoughts to the usual doom mongering.[/quote]
Even if things slow down very quickly in terms of growth of cases (which doesn't happen abruptly) we still have enough of a problem on our hands with the angle of tragectory of case load thats worrying enough.