If omicron symptoms are so mild

[Mistletoeandwhineing]

To not understand what the panic is about?

Have been watching regular updates from Dr John Campbell, very level headed and knowledgeable. Current evidence seems to be looking very positive. I realise we need to wait a little longer to be sure, but overall it’s looking to be very mild and possibly actually a good thing for immunity. Or am I wrong?
Feel like I’m living in a parallel universe

I’m waiting for PCR results as tested positive on LFT yesterday, I’m pretty sure it’s Omicron from the descriptions of it. I don’t feel too bad more like I have a cold with a very mild headache

They don’t know if it’s milder than delta, yet. Better to e cautions. Mild doesn’t necessarily mean a sniffle. People can still be admitted to hospital and if it’s all at once( tsunami effect) then we won’t get a look in at hospital for A&E treatment when we have an RTA or heart attack for sample.

@maddening

I do think it is the catchiness of it, the r rate is around 4 apparently, the more people with weak immune systems who receive it the more chance that a virus is alive, mutating and spreading, so more chance of a ultra spreader with more symptoms developing and communicating across the population.

We're not meant to have spotted that.

There will be future variants.

There is no particular evolutionary advantage to virus for it to produce a less severe disease - because it's infectious before sypmtoms, so has moved on before the old host has consequences. There is a huge evolutionary imperative to evade immunity and to be very transmissible.

So if we are to live with civic, we need to become skilled at using targeted restrictions in as agile a way as possible whilst new variants are assessed. And we need vaccines, and major surge capacity for both manufacture (when a new one is needed) and delivery.

It is the fact Omicron is far more infectious, the vaccines are not so effective than they are to Delta. The may not be so severe, but if millions get itt there will be many that become very ill.
My DD is an intensive care nurse and her unit is full of patients with Omicron this weekend.

I agree with @RedToothBrush and the biggest problem is you have 2 competing problems.

The first is that even a small percentage of a very large number. Take 1m the number thrown around 0.5% is 5000. And that is a huge concern.

The second problem is one of the ways you stop spread is by isolating but if you have too many people isolating at the same time you cannot run services. We have already stopped isolating contacts again in England for Omicron - are we going to have to stop isolating even if you have it once you feel better.

Which then means more people get it. So it is going to be finding and hoping for a balance on both sides to manage the way through.

Which is why at the moment everything has been thrown at Boosters. I just wish it had been said as soon as possible rather than give an impossible target

It’s not just the virus itself; it’s the knock on effect for everything else. If hospitals are clogged up with people with covid, then loads of other ops and procedures have to be cancelled and put loads of other people at risk (cancer treatments etc). Do try and educate yourself a bit.

We don’t know, and we do t know the effect on I vacc people, and 50% of hospital cases are now Omicron in the U.K. so if it is much more transmissible then the hospitals are going to be rammed - at a time when hospitals are already busy.

It’s also worth bearing mind that a clinical definition of “mild” may mean “in hospital: needs oxygen, but not mechanical ventilation”. That’s very different to how most of us define “mild”.

All the vulnerable have had boosters already so I don’t fully understand the panic either.

If a million people get this new variant a portion will still get very sick, the higher number of cases the higher chance of people dying. A small portion of a million is still a large number…(I think that’s what the panic is? But who really knows)

@Nappyvalley15

On the hospital capacity issue - the crisis in social care greatly contributes to this. I read last week that 10% hospital beds are being used by patients who can't be moved on because of the lack of care package/carers. I am not sure how this is being sorted out.

This is a a good point but I haven't seen much reporting on this.

As pps have said, think about it in terms of how many people might catch it from a single gathering. So 1 hospital ward, 1 class at school, 1 evening in a bar. The cases might be mild but it will still mean that they can’t work.

This from Tim Spector

It follows a 60th birthday in Somerset where 14 of 18 guests tested positive for the new variant despite everyone being double jabbed and some people having had their booster.

In addition, all guests had taken a lateral flow test 24 hours beforehand that was negative.

The stark reality is the dead do not need hospital beds. It's those that are sick and either need hospital treatment or are too ill to work that will bring the economy down.

If even 20% of the workforce can't work due to illness or self isolation (and can't wfh) we are screwed on an economic basis.

If I didn't listen regularly to Dr John Campbell and Dr Tim Spector I would be feeling really depressed. The media sensationalises everything and by far the majority do not listen to these people and inform themselves properly. Which I find bewildering to be honest.

There are multiple cases like this emerging.

It means in effect a lockdown won't work because key workers could still be screwed anyway.
Vaccine passports wont work because you can be reinfected by omicron, the incubation period is so short and because vaccines won't necessarily stop you getting it.
And it means lateral flows (and pcrs to a lesser extent) become less trust worthy as a result - meaning in situations where they are used to help protect the vulnerable they may not do so.
It seems omicron is more likely to create superspreader events which take out whole departments in a single go.

All of this adds up to the restrictions we've used up to this point becoming much less effective, perhaps to the point of worthlessness.
Restrictions are merely delaying an inevitable wave anyway.

This leaves us maybe only with boosters as a viable strategy since formal lockdowns have unintended side effects anyway.

Its a picture which is a mess.

This has been explained so many times, I’m not sure why people still don’t get it and keep posting the same threads asking the same question.

On the hospital capacity issue - the crisis in social care greatly contributes to this. I read last week that 10% hospital beds are being used by patients who can't be moved on because of the lack of care package/carers. I am not sure how this is being sorted out.

This is a a good point but I haven't seen much reporting on this.

I’m not sure where either of you have been for the last two decades or so if you haven’t seen this reported. This is not a new problem

This leaves us maybe only with boosters as a viable strategy since formal lockdowns have unintended side effects anyway.

I’m still waiting to hear someone give me an example of something that is a lock down problem that wouldn’t have been made worse by not locking down.

@BoredZelda

This has been explained so many times, I’m not sure why people still don’t get it and keep posting the same threads asking the same question.

Ach, be kind. The OPs aren't to know its been posted before; it's always a 'new poster' 😉

@BoredZelda @kittensinthekitchen No, not a new poster, name change. I don’t generally read the covid threads as I said above, because it heightens my anxiety. Thank you for all the posters discussing it in a fair way and with useful explanations.

@GreenFingersWouldBeHandy Patronising much?

@Guacamole001

If I didn't listen regularly to Dr John Campbell and Dr Tim Spector I would be feeling really depressed. The media sensationalises everything and by far the majority do not listen to these people and inform themselves properly. Which I find bewildering to be honest.

John Campbell is a nurse. Tim Spector is reporting worrying facts on twitter.

@milkyaqua What worrying facts?

Case numbers. Infection time is very rapid, at around 48 hours. R = 4.13, so much higher than previously. Doubling time of case numbers is 2.5 days. Data shows approximately 10% of covid cases in UK are Omicron; which suggests there are about 8,000 active cases in the community. It's all on his twitter.

I stopped listening to John Campbell when he went down the ivermectin rabbit hole and started spouting a whole load of misinformation. I thought it was such a shame as he used to be measured. He doesn't have the expertise to be going into depth on these things though, he's not a virologist or epidemiologist, not even a doctor.

It is confusing at the moment OP with contradictory reports. One of the issues with SA reports is that over the pandemic they've consistently had excess deaths hugely over their reported covid deaths, and it's happening again (it doubled in the last week of November, I think that's the most recent report we've got.) They also have to pay for tests so that excludes a good percentage of the population who can't afford it. Evidence shows hospital admissions are rising but it's too early to know in terms of real world data. I really hope it's as mild as people are saying but can still see the issue of numbers here. Original covid for eg is a multitude of times milder than say Ebola yet caused millions more deaths - it's just maths.

@speakout that's interesting about your dds ICU being full of Omicron patients. It doesn't seem to chime with official reports of just a few hospitalised at the moment? Are these patients all diagnosed with Omicron? Just interested as to what she's seeing here. I'm very sorry for her and her fellow healthcare professionals in all of this.