Will omicron end the pandemic more quickly?

[Florelei]

After we have managed to get through this hideous wave are things expected to be more normal?

I don’t see how we can have high levels of cases indefinitely. Surely there’s got to come a point when we reach some sort of equilibrium and can resume a form of normality?

I think Prof Chris Whitty said because Omicron peaks very quickly he expects it to fall very quickly too. However I'm now wondering 'how' it will fall without a lockdown. If it's very easily spread why should the numbers fall? I don't really understand!

However I'm now wondering 'how' it will fall without a lockdown. If it's very easily spread why should the numbers fall? I don't really understand

It should spread through the entire population very quickly. Once you’ve had Omicron you should be immune to it.

I think January are February are going to be a total shit show with businesses and services closing due to staff sickness. Maybe more normal for Spring? Hopefully?

The issue here is the vaccine escape. If everyone can be infected (or reinfected) the pool of people needed to "end the pandemic" is massive again.
Even with rates of 3000 per 100,000 (the worst currently affected borough) it would take about 30 weeks to infect everyone, by which time the first affected might well be vulnerable to reinfection.
Infection rates are never smooth, and when rates are high people change their behaviour, which is why we have waves.
Also, people have vastly different amounts of exposure. Some people meet hundreds of people a day, others might not see anyone in a week.
There's no way to know when the pandemic will end, it's an arms race between vaccines and mutations, all we can do is stay as safe as we can while protecting our mental health until we find an equilibrium and Covid becomes endemic.

However I'm now wondering 'how' it will fall without a lockdown. If it's very easily spread why should the numbers fall? I don't really understand

You develop immunity!

Apparently catching omicron even confers immunity against delta. But it doesn't work the other way round.

by which time the first affected might well be vulnerable to reinfection

That seems very unlikely.

The immune escape only applies to the current vaccines as they are still target the old original version of covid.

Actually catching omicron and developing immunity is likely to lead to long lasting immunity.

@WhenSheWasBad

However I'm now wondering 'how' it will fall without a lockdown. If it's very easily spread why should the numbers fall? I don't really understand

It should spread through the entire population very quickly. Once you’ve had Omicron you should be immune to it.

I think January are February are going to be a total shit show with businesses and services closing due to staff sickness. Maybe more normal for Spring? Hopefully?

Are you immune though ,what if there is another varient ? My son tested positive for COVID just over a week ago this is his second time ,he last had it in July ,he was fine both times it's just the isolation is a pita ,he's just turned 15 and has also had his first vaccine ,but he still caught it twice .

I think the experts are saying this is the end basically of the pandemic, the issue is of course vaccinations in poorer countries, which can prolong it.

@imstilljenny2

I think Prof Chris Whitty said because Omicron peaks very quickly he expects it to fall very quickly too. However I'm now wondering 'how' it will fall without a lockdown. If it's very easily spread why should the numbers fall? I don't really understand!

Lockdowns deliberately prolong the pandemic - they’re specifically designed to do that by spreading out the number of infections

We ARE in a normal situation. People ALWAYS have colds this time of year (a term which encompasses many mutations of similar virus types). Most mild, some worse.

Just look around you right now and imagine; if you had never heard of covid on the news, if there was no such thing as LFT’s and no masks on people - would you actually think we were in a terrifying pandemic? Or just good old fashioned winter?

I’m not denying that covid wasn’t ravaging through at the start. But this is what viruses do. They constantly mutate and therefore weaken over time.

When a new variant arises that is more transmissable it replaces the existing pathogen, as seen in South Africa and now here - 90% of C19 cases in the U.K. are now Omicron. As transmissability increases, virulence usually (but not always) falls. So Omicron may be our best Christmas present ever. Left unchecked the wave will be through the UK by January 22 to 29 and we can rebuild the economy. Lockdown either by legislation or fear will merely flatten and elongate the wave. I doubt in a vaccinated population we will end up with many fewer infections but we will end up with more unemployment and poverty.

None of this obviates the need to identify and protect the immunosuppressed, something the UK and many other countries have paid little attention to. And the need to provide paxlovid which reduces serious symptoms in 80% but has still not been licensed in the UK.

The only argument against simply doing nothing (after all that is what we do with flu which resulted in 43000 UK admissions in 2017/18 - far more than the admissions from Omicron) is that hospitals remain a major source of infection. Staff do not wear FFP3 masks and we are mixing patients in A and E and on open wards so there will be a lot of NHS staff isolating although I doubt the numbers will be so high as to stop the care of emergencies, and elective surgery sadly is already a basket case.

There will be new variants developing all the time as the vast majority of the world's population are not vaccinated. I believe that if you catch CV19 when you are vaccinated you overcome it more quickly and it has less time to develop a variant, so fewer vaccinatd people = more chance for new variants to arise.

A future variant might be as easily transmissable as omicron but be more deadly, and it will get spread to the UK.

So no, I would say that the pandemic as a whole is not going to end with omicron.

Are you immune though ,what if there is another varient ? My son tested positive for COVID just over a week ago this is his second time ,he last had it in July ,he was fine both times it's just the isolation is a pita ,he's just turned 15 and has also had his first vaccine ,but he still caught it twice

x2boys

Sorry your son got it twice. Sounds likely he caught Delta in summer and Omicron last week.
I’m hopeful things are better in spring. But who knows when another variant is going to occur. I’d be up for a yearly (or even twice yearly) booster. I get a flu jab every year, not upset if I need a Covid one too.

@WhenSheWasBad

Are you immune though ,what if there is another varient ? My son tested positive for COVID just over a week ago this is his second time ,he last had it in July ,he was fine both times it's just the isolation is a pita ,he's just turned 15 and has also had his first vaccine ,but he still caught it twice

x2boys

Sorry your son got it twice. Sounds likely he caught Delta in summer and Omicron last week.
I’m hopeful things are better in spring. But who knows when another variant is going to occur. I’d be up for a yearly (or even twice yearly) booster. I get a flu jab every year, not upset if I need a Covid one too.

Yes me too I have had both my vaccines and booster so personally would take yearly booster etc if necessary

I don't think there's any immunity to covid. You can catch it more than once. I know people who have caught it 3 times. Omicron can breakthrough vaccines so even the vaccinated are vulnerable. This pandemic will continue until the whole world is vaccinated (like smallpox) with a vaccine that is good enough to prevent breakthroughs. Until then we will go through the entire Greek alphabet and more. It won't go away by itself. People who think that are high on "hopium".

@imstilljenny2

It will run out of hosts pretty quickly if it's that virulent

@gogohm yes that makes sense.

It doesn't matter if people catch more than once, or catch more than one strain, as long as it's not severe which it won't be for most when its no longer a novel virus.

It's wrong to say there's no immunity to covid. It's just not a hundred percent.
So like other circulating human coronaviruses.
The common colds can also have a terrible effect when they arrive in populations with no previous exposure.

The only other circulating coronaviruses apart from covid are SARS and MERS (both deadly). After the millions of people who have died from covid worldwide I don't think it's fair to compare it to a common cold.

That's simply not true.🤨

@StillNo

We ARE in a normal situation. People ALWAYS have colds this time of year (a term which encompasses many mutations of similar virus types). Most mild, some worse.

Just look around you right now and imagine; if you had never heard of covid on the news, if there was no such thing as LFT’s and no masks on people - would you actually think we were in a terrifying pandemic? Or just good old fashioned winter?

I’m not denying that covid wasn’t ravaging through at the start. But this is what viruses do. They constantly mutate and therefore weaken over time.

That's a good point and food for thought.

Is there any data showing if this wave is causing more hospitalisations and deaths than we'd have in a bad flu season?

Also interesting the other poster saying omricon immunises against delta but not vice versa.

Not sure about us all developing immunity.. I had Covid this time last year before vaccinations, not sure what variant it was but it was before Delta so not that.

I’ve since been double vaxxed and boosted and now have Covid again. Confirmed yesterday. Happy Christmas to me..

I don't know but I bloody hope so

But are you going to get pneumonia and need the hospital?

The pandemic will not be ended “medically”- either through vaccine or infection acquired immunity. But I do think omicron, given the seemingly much lower mortality, is probably a threshold we’re crossing into “an ending”.

What we will see, I think probably by summer 2022, is that if omicron continues to be the dominant and milder strain, the pandemic will end politically (eg. as with flu, RSV, colds etc we will only test the very ill to ascertain best treatment; no self isolation; no testing in the community etc) and socially- ie we will accept the changes to legal rules/guidance and will organically find new social “rules” or norms- eg I think mask wearing in winter is likely to become a thing for many. Probably people will take more care with hygiene around any respiratory illness etc.

As with the Spanish flu- the population got fatigued by restrictions etc before the pandemic ended, and then with the end of the war, society was just ready for all of the
misery to be over- and just gradually stopped paying it so much attention. Spanish flu never went away though- rates gradually decreased ofc & the virus mutated, but every annual flu we have today is a descendant of that strain.

Imagine it will be the same with covid and we’ll just have “cold flu & covid” season. And as with colds and flu, most will be fine, some will get very sick, and lesser % will die. Treatments will get better, as will vaccines, and hopefully fewer and fewer will die. We’lol have good years and bad years, as with flu.

And hopefully there will be a govt enquiry at
some point!!!