The Omicron variant

You have to know what is false before you start trying to debunk anything Tony. You don’t know what is true or false no more than i do about the severity of Omicron. I was just relaying some soundbites. There does seem to be something in it, but we’ll both know for sure in a few weeks.

Good news is this variant looks to be a mild disease... in those vaccinated and better still if boosted .

However if it is 2 to 3 times more infectious than Delta which has already caused problem numbers in hospitalisations here and other countries in the unvaccinated , we are in for a bad few months here .

And the numbers in SA have not stabilised as some are saying . They have an IT glitch and a massive backlog waiting to be sorted ,so who knows what their numbers are at now .

Nobody is under the illusion that there's only 10 cases in Ireland. Even before the travel restrictions were brought in, people accepted it was well seeded in Ireland and the EU.

https://twitter.com/lrossouw/status/1470125208459694080?s=20

Despite the news in South Africa of late reporting , rough 7 day averages aren't showing mad short intervals between doubling in cases. Even less so in Gauteng.

Of course it's not beyond that's there's more yet to reported such like what happened with the antigens at the beginning of this wave.

Hey Leftwaffe...just while you're 'having to laugh at Ireland' there...just an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-teeny-tiny-teensy-weesny point of error.... your post should read 'essentially a cold' - and not 'essential a cold'....( I mean that is seriously bad Leftwaffe... you need Grammarly...there's no shame in it)...yeah but so anyway! You're saying Omicron is just a cold? Good man yourself Leftwaffe! I hope you don't get it!

Stay safe Pope

I guess I’m just wondering how a (hopefully) mild illness and high infection rate amongst healthcare workers will allow us to ease restrictions. If it turns out to be mild and we all hope it is, there will be a clamouring from the public to open up and probably righty so.

Far from underestimating Covid and the data behind it, but it all just feels “makey uppy” at this stage. The new variant is infinite amount of times more infectious than the last new variant that was infinite times… rinse and repeat. One minute Omicron is putting people in hospital, one click later it will end the pandemic. I think most people (internet excluded) are just bored of it all now.

I think it's worth considering why people are being cautious about the evidence of Omicron being milder.

It seems that Omicron is evasive to antibodies from prior infection and vaccination. This means there are large numbers of Omicron infections in those vaccinated and previously infected. Those people tend to have mild disease because the rest of their immune system can fight off the infection. But there are still the "naive" to consider.

The first unknown is what happens in a population whose immunity is more vaccine acquired then infection acquired. Countries which have controlled COVID well and vaccinated widely, like Norway. If vaccine immunity is weaker with Omicron, then the SA experience, which is based on a population with very high levels of recent infection, won't translate.

Secondly, there's the issue of what happens in countries which have controlled COVID well and not achieved widespread vaccination. Are there many of those? Don't know, because many low vax countries don't test much either. Many of them have had recent Delta waves (e.g. Bulgaria) but have those infected enough people to protect against an Omicron spike? Don't know.

I suspect Ireland will be OK objectively but with our creaky health service who knows.

I think we should boost away out of caution but also have hope in depth of immunity. I just don't believe our immune systems are crap enough to have bathed in spike proteins two or three times and fail to deal with another variant.

What I have least trust in is the government sitting on their hands if and when the exponential part of the Omicron curve starts to bite, particularly after last year's experience.

I've a quiet enough Christmas planned but if the schools are closed in January I'll take the kids and go somewhere sunny, cos there's no way we're doing Q1 2021 again. That almost broke them. South Africa seems quite appealing.

Over 30s from this morning. Getting mine this afternoon.

How's that Omicron death count looking today Lumen?