What IS the fuss about omicron?

[GingerHouse]

In all seriousness, data shows that not a single person has died from omicron and that’s in countries that have low vaccine uptake too.

The virus is going to mutate all the time and as things are showing this variant is very contagious and the vaccine doesn’t work as well against it, but it’s mild to almost everybody.

I feel like this is mass panic and for what reason?! I understand wearing a mask where applicable to help reduce the spread but I just don’t get it! Is this going to happen every winter forevermore?

Very informative @Zotter. Thank you.

Where are they from. (No specs with me at the moment.)

@PrincessNutNuts

Very informative *@Zotter*. Thank you.

Where are they from. (No specs with me at the moment.)

I belatedly remembered I can enlarge Thank you.

Do you want to add them to the data thread? @Zotter

@kittensinthekitchen

Underlying health conditions that show potential evidence of being a risk factor for covid: (updated October 2021)

www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/underlyingconditions.html

Depression
Asthma

In September 2021, children with autism were added to the 'clinically vulnerable' group, and advised by the JCVI to have additional vaccinations than their peers. One in 100 children have a diagnosis of an ASD. They are statistically more likely to have an 'unfavourable outcome' to covid infection.

But, well, they were likely to die soon anyway, weren't they?

Not better, or worse, but just to add clarity and context to an element of this — the study around depression and mental health factors differentiated between ‘late life’ (people aged over 60) depression and anxiety, which did carry an increased risk of more severe outcomes, and ‘middle age’ (under 60) depression and anxiety, which did not.

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.684112/full

Pertinent point from conclusion:
[L]ate-life anxiety increased the risk of COVID-19 infection, and subjects with late-life depression had a higher risk of COVID-19 infection and a worse outcome from COVID-19 than those without late-life depression. Moreover, late-life depression comorbid with anxiety significantly increased the risk of COVID-19 infection compared to either disorder alone. However, middle-aged anxiety, middle-aged depression, and depression comorbid with anxiety were not associated with elevated risks of COVID-19 infection and COVID-19-related death.

This is not to argue that these things, or these people, don’t matter. But it’s important to be completely clear when throwing around information that is only partially accurate.

www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/covid-19-boris-johnson-over-reacting-to-omicron-and-creating-hysteria-south-african-doctor-dr-angelique-coetzee-says-12495876

Thoughts? It's really hard to form a picture on how serious it could be. I'm not trying to downplay what could potentially be a very serious situation, but surely by now DA would be seeing a lot more hospitalisation etc if it was more dangerous. I appreciate how PP have explained how it is a numbers game, but say if 0.5% of the population became ill from it, would SA not also be seeing increased admissions? I know their population is younger and they are not in winter, but even taking those factors into account it really does seem that omicron will be less troublesome than delta. Maybe I'm in denial being overly optimistic but I can't help but feel the UK are panicking unduly. For what it's worth I do think it's better to overreact than their usual dithering and realistically whatever the government do will create public division. But I do fear they will potentially create a shitstorm by having perfectly healthy people isolating which really will impact the NHS and is will what will cause unnecessary deaths as opposed to omicron.

@PrincessNutNuts

Do you want to add them to the data thread? *@Zotter*

Please feel free to add

Slide was from an APPG on Omicron variant.

Ps taken from this tweet twitter.com/miamalan/status/1470684357782392833?s=12

That's an interesting analysis of what we know so far, thanks for posting