Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

by jefftk • 5 years ago

292 362 5 years ago

covid.cdc.gov

tibbar• 5 years ago

This is with the "Nowcast" projections on. You can disable them in the page, and this shows a measured 0.7% of cases (less than one percent) as Omicron. That's some aggressive projection model...

Mountain_Skies• 5 years ago

Probably no worse than the Imperial College London model that was used at the beginning of the pandemic to seed the response path we're all on.

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

Agreed, I think it's important to highlight that the 73% is a projection.

That said, to be clear, the 0.7% is what was measured the week of 12/4, not more recently.

ehsankia• 5 years ago

Is there a place where we can see the raw count of samples that were sequenced in the last week and what % of them were Omicron vs Delta?

throw8932894• 5 years ago

CDC should remove note about Newcast from website. It gives wrong impression and may confuse people.

ISL3• 5 years ago

If you disable "Nowcast", you go two weeks backward in time. The CDC is doing its very best to give you information here.

I've been making Covid-projections since ~May using these data. This is the first time I've seen them emerge on a day other than Tuesday in months -- they got this one to market because it matters.

It is my ongoing impression that the people behind these projections are doing the very best they can with the very best data available in the US. If you compare last-week's data in today's release with those released last week, you'll see a substantial refinement as new sequencing data roll in. If you're forecasting covid-trends in the US, this is one of the very best resources you've got.

(Also, shout-out to the UK HSA. When the next variant comes, I hope we've gotten our latency and reporting up to your daily Omicron-report and weekly Technical Briefing level. Y'all are helping the whole world, too.)

dragontamer9• 5 years ago

If you compare last-week's data in today's release with those released last week, you'll see a substantial refinement as new sequencing data roll in.

They're doing their best, but these "Nowcast" numbers are horribly unreliable. Fortunately, that's not a big deal but hear my whole post out...

Last week, two weeks ago was Nowcast as 2.something%. Now the revised numbers is like 11% for two weeks ago.

To be fair: the error bars were like 0.1% to 16% on that estimate (so they "weren't wrong"... but with error bars this huge, there's no point trying to get into the nitty gritty). But even today, we can see the "73% Nowcast estimate" as an error bar of 35% to 95%.

---------

The error bars are huge, but given the rate at which Omicron outcompetes Delta, we know that Omicron is doubling in roughly every 3 days. With an estimate of 30% (smallest case scenario for Omicron), we'll be at 99.9% by next week. It doesn't matter if we're at 30% today or 95% today. 99.9% Omicron is certain in the near future.

We don't know if we're at 30% now or 95% now. But the era of Omicron dominance is among us right now, or maybe even a few days ago. That's incredibly important news, we may not know the exact time or day, but this is the best advanced warning we're gonna get.

Omicron is here. Hopefully we all know what the new rules are by now...

beervirus• 5 years ago

Nobody’s impugning their honesty. Just pointing out that this is a model, not data.

asdfasgasdgasdg3• 5 years ago

95% CI includes 35%-95% . . . with intervals that wide, the statistic seems to be questionably useful.

kristjansson• 5 years ago

For a variant that represented 0.0% percent of cases a few weeks ago, that CI is pretty astounding.

tapland• 5 years ago

The news articles stating this number are refering to data for the week ending the 11th. I can't get that data through the link, only the week ending the 4th of December with a low estimate. iOS, Sweden. Anyone else having that issue?

walterbell17• 5 years ago

785 Omicron cases in Denmark, Dec 16 report for Nov 22 to Dec 7, Table 2, https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...

  0% fatal, 0.13% ICU, 1.2% hospital
  4.3% Covid-recovered 
  76% double vax, 7% booster
  14% unvax, 2% single vax
  77% no travel history

Edit: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/18/politics/white-house-omicron-...

Some of Biden's advisers are encouraging the administration to begin discussing publicly how to live alongside a virus that shows no signs of disappearing ... Steering public attention away from the total number of infections and toward serious cases only -- as some Biden advisers have encouraged -- could prove a challenge after nearly two years of intense focus on the pandemic's every up and down.

Edit2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633899

The CDC’s Nowcast algorithm has some kind of bug, and the prevalence of Omicron nationwide wasn’t really 73% in the week ending December 18. Take that to the bank ... You will see this walked back. The CDC will explain what happened. The Twitter experts will have to walk back their initial tweets. The press will have to publish a new round of articles clarifying their prior wave of headlines. It might happen tomorrow, later this week, or some time next week, but it will happen. This result won’t stand.

make_it_sure• 5 years ago

14 deaths in UK so far, ICU and deaths are a lagging indicator.

walterbell17• 5 years ago

Would be good to see category percentages for UK cases.

listless2• 5 years ago

Because of COVID or with COVID when they died?

Why is it so damn difficult to figure out what’s really happening? I’ve read about 10 stories today all telling me I should be very worried about Omicron and not a single one has any data.

thehappypm• 5 years ago

14 total is very low, the UK was averaging over 100 deaths per day in October.

taurath2• 5 years ago

Know any comparisons vs delta??

walterbell17• 5 years ago

19,137 Delta cases in Denmark, also from Table 2 in same doc.

  0.07% fatal, 0.11% ICU, 1.5% hospital
  0.9% Covid-recovered 
  50% double vax, 3% booster
  44% unvax, 3% single vax

ars2• 5 years ago

These numbers are very difficult to interpret without knowing the base - how much of the population is in each category.

Also booster vs double vax - is that just that the shot is more recent, or does 3 shots make a qualitative difference?

walterbell17• 5 years ago

how much of the population is in each category

Denmark population is 5.8 million people, https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/denmark-popul...

booster vs double vax - is that just that the shot is more recent, or does 3 shots make a qualitative difference?

Probably the former. There are many papers which show declining efficacy each month. Mass-vaccination campaigns in each country probably means that # of shots can be used to determine recency.

foolfoolz• 5 years ago

does it really matter? you have a choice to get the vaccine.

i think these numbers should end the pandemic completely. we have a virus that’s contagious. if you take available medicine it won’t kill you. that’s baseline where we were 2 years ago

seoaeu• 5 years ago

Against delta, the early research showed 2 doses + boosters to be more effective than the original 2 dose series ever were. For instance, [0] shows them being 20x more effective compared to the control group with two vaccine doses (which corresponds to something like 60x better than someone completely unvaccinated)

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

roenxi2• 5 years ago

Yeah, but it is really too early to tell. The cases in that update are largely in young people (age <= 65) and it takes about a week from symptom onset to end up in hospital. That data seems to be as at 9 Dec, even if the hospitalisations were high the data would not necessarily show them.

walterbell17• 5 years ago

South Africa, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/s-africa-...

Only 1.7% of identified Covid-19 cases were admitted to hospital in the second week of infections in the fourth wave, compared with 19% in the same week of the third delta-driven wave ... Health officials presented evidence that the strain may be milder, and that infections may already be peaking in the country’s most populous province, Gauteng.

Hong Kong, https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-c...

The researchers found that Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infects and multiplies 70 times faster than the Delta variant and original SARS-CoV-2 in human bronchus, which may explain why Omicron may transmit faster between humans than previous variants. Their study also showed that the Omicron infection in the lung is significantly lower than the original SARS-CoV-2, which may be an indicator of lower disease severity.

If the Hong Kong report is accurate, could regular nasal washing slow viral replication, e.g. in early stages of infection? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620312

pbreit2• 5 years ago

No it's not. All indications are that omicron is much milder.

Animats• 5 years ago

Those are good numbers. Early, yes, but good.

smnrchrds• 5 years ago

Not great, not terrible.

dmitryminkovsky• 5 years ago

Why is the unvaccinated number so much lower? Is the population highly vaccinated?

walterbell17• 5 years ago

Unclear why unvax Omicron infection is 14%, when unvax Delta infection is 44%, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633440

ip26• 5 years ago

Yes, 80% vaccinated three months ago: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/10/1036136246/covid-denmark-eu-r...

orforforof• 5 years ago

According to Table 2 their sample had 8,199 unvaccinated and 9,269 vaccinated. It seems odd that more cases were found in the vaccinated people, can anyone suggest why? Statistical anomaly?

Edit: I misread the table, I thought column 1 was number of subjects. The replies explain well why the # of cases would be larger for the (larger) vaccinated population.

awhitby• 5 years ago

It's obviously possible that this is a bad nowcast (as argued in Edit2 of the parent), but there are other possibilities.

I suspect the % of tests that are of asymptomatic people is much higher than a few weeks ago, because of travel plans and publicity around omicron. If omicron does produce milder symptoms (either inherently or because more omicron cases are breakthrough and mitigated by vaccination) then it could be that a higher proportion of omicron cases are now being tested (and some fraction sequenced), relative to delta, compared with a few weeks ago.

littlestymaar2• 5 years ago

The press will have to publish a new round of articles clarifying their prior wave of headlines. It might happen tomorrow, later this week, or some time next week, but it will happen. This result won’t stand.

Well since the doubling time of the omicron incidence seams to be below 2 days (worldwide result estimates between 1.4 and 2.2), even if it wasn't the case last Friday, Omicron has probably passed the 73% threshold since then so I don't think anyone would bother retracting their writings.

6tZAfJuXT2LL• 5 years ago

Here are more up to date numbers from Denmark in English and Danish: https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/covid19/omikron/statusr...

23038 Omicron cases in total. On December 15 44.1% of confirmed cases were Omicron.

The last page has a comparison with Delta on hospitalizations. It finds 1.4% of Delta infections led to hospitalizations compared to 0.5% for Omicron. However, this could be due to the fact that most of the Omicron cases were reported in the last week, and haven't yet 'had the time' to lead to hospitalizations.

There's also a lot more infected who has received two or three doses compared to Delta.

hef198984• 5 years ago

There's also a lot more infected who has received two or three doses compared to Delta.

Might be. At this point I am not motivated to dig into the numbers any more. The important questions, in that regard, for those that are interested is: How many of these of confirmed Omicron cases are double, how many are triple vaccinated? How many people overall are vaccinated? How many confirmed Omicron cases are unvaccinated? Followed by looking at the timeline between positive test / Omicron confirmation and hospitalization and ultimately death.

I said it in 2020, in early 2021 and will say it until the day it changes: That nobody in charge is able to give weekly briefings based on hard numbers, properly explaining those I have close to zero confidence the people in charge have this thing under control. And this lack of explanation is one, IMHO the, root cause of the confusion and frustration out there.

Gene_Parmesan2• 5 years ago

Steering public attention away from the total number of infections and toward serious cases only -- as some Biden advisers have encouraged -- could prove a challenge after nearly two years of intense focus on the pandemic's every up and down.

At some point this definitely needs to happen. I don't know whether now is that time. But at some point, this thing is going endemic. Reporting purely on case numbers ad infinitum is just going to cause warning fatigue, and people are going to stop listening. Again, I'm not saying I think now is the time to make this transition. But I recall watching a nightly news report over Thanksgiving saying that in vaccinated adults, the rate of hospitalization with Delta-variant breakthrough infections at that point was... 0.0 in 10,000. That's not to say no one is going to the hospital; obviously that's not true.

But we run the very real risk of making people stop listening to the warnings. It's like those who live in hurricane regions; after years of hearing "better put your SSN on your arm so we can identify your body," and then evacuating - and coming back with nothing amiss because the storm missed you by 100 miles - they stop listening. And when the big storm does hit, they don't evac because they just roll their eyes and think "Oh, not this again."

Obviously you can't stop warning people about incoming hurricanes. And just like in COVID, there are serious complications with hurricane forecasting that cause overwarning to be necessary to some extent. But if there's a serious COVID variant that is actually a ruthless killer that arises, we will need people to listen.

I was reading yesterday that the Omicron wave appears to have already peaked in South Africa, just 3 weeks after its identification, and they expect it to peak here by end of January. That is significantly shorter than Delta. On top of that, they are finding the Omicron cases much milder than Delta. They seem to believe that Omicron has migrated out of the lungs and into the upper respiratory tract, where it is less dangerous but better able to spread. A researcher quoted in the article called it a "best-case scenario."

Yet we are still having warnings as if the apocalypse is about to come.

Again, I don't know what the right timing is for this, and until we figure it out I'm 100% on board with listening to the CDC. But - we don't report on the daily number of cold cases because the cold is part of life. And if/when COVID becomes something that is a mild upper respiratory infection for the near-entirety of non-immuno-compromised people, I think continuing to report daily on how many thousands of new cases we have serves no purpose other than continuing to stoke fear.*

And because this is important context for some sorts of people, I am an extremely progressive liberal who is steadfastly continuing to wear masks in public, and have been booster-ed for 2 weeks now.

*(This is a concern of mine because, as we know from 9/11 and the terror alert warning system that we now know was totally bogus, but had to deal with on the nightly news for years, there are elements in this country who are happy to take advantage of tragedies to stoke fear.)

rsfern• 5 years ago

Somewhat of a counterpoint: the CDC has tracked the flu through the flusurv network for almost 20 years now (starting 2003/4 season). Popular reporting on how the flu season was going has been pretty common, though obviously with much less intensity and ubiquity.

Especially in severe outbreaks it’s been normal to have this kind of warning publication, see https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/12/5776320...

Anyway I agree that we collectively at some point have to stop over-reporting on Covid, but I don’t think it makes sense to drop it back to zero. At this point even with vaccines and developing therapeutics it doesn’t seem likely to become less of a health concern than the flu any time soon

ryathal• 5 years ago

It's likely to get phased out with the midterm elections. Covid panic is no longer politically expedient.

pelasaco• 5 years ago

So looks like - as expected - the Virus is getting "weaker" i.e adapting itself better to your host, without killing it, or is it to early to come up too a conclusion? I read the same report from different countries too...

dataflow• 5 years ago

Update: https://www.axios.com/cdc-slashes-estimate-omicron-proportio...

jfim2• 5 years ago

Those are some really wide 95% confidence intervals. As it is right now:

  Delta 26.6%, 95% CI: 5.1%-65.8%
  Omicron 73.2%, 95% CI: 34.0%-94.9%
  Others 0.1%, 95% CI: 0.0-0.4%

That's not to say that Omicron isn't the majority of COVID cases (it probably is), but compared with previous weeks the intervals are really huge.

dragontamer9• 5 years ago

Not really.

Last week, the error bars were 0.1% to 16%, which was much more uncertainty IMO.

This Nowcast model is "only" a 3x fold from lowest to highest. Sooooo... this is actually a lot more accurate and certain than last week's prediction.

ianai2• 5 years ago

Right, that’s pretty much how a 7 day in the future prediction is going to look when rates can double daily. The pattern fits from SA data roughly though. But that’s not ceterus paribus, etc.

jfim2• 5 years ago

It really depends on the question.

My observation was from the standpoint of "is omicron the most prevalent variant," which this week's data suggests probably, but it could go either way. Last week's error bars would suggest that the answer to that question would be "very unlikely."

As you point out, a 95% CI of 0.1% to 16% is also huge.

ISL3• 5 years ago

CDC refines the measurements as sequencing results are reported. After about two weeks, the numbers settle down to near their final precision/value.

walrus012• 5 years ago

google "new york coronavirus" and look at the massive past 10 day spike in the new cases chart. This isn't going to end well.

walterbell17• 5 years ago

New case count arrivals should be normalized against sampling rate, there's been a massive increase in NYC test collection capacity via mobile vans and testing tents on sidewalks.

dragontamer9• 5 years ago

Sampling rate needs to be normalized against percent-positivity. NYC has gone from 3% positive to 8% positive, suggesting that NYC is missing half of its results compared to before.

Remember: the flu is among us. A lot of these tests should be returning negative because the flu is spreading like normal.

giarc3• 5 years ago

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#testi...

Positivity rate reaching 8%. 3 day lag.

parkingrift2• 5 years ago

Anecdotal, obviously, but I haven’t seen any new testing sites in Manhattan. The vans and tents have been there for months. The only change I’ve noticed is the lines.

I walk past two tent sites on my way to the gym every single day. Been there for months now. I’ve never seen any significant queue until this week.

ipqk• 5 years ago

There may be an increase in collection, but it's backlogged by actual labs doing the work. If you look at the last few days, there's been no real increase in test numbers. We've really hit our limit in daily testing, but positivity keeps going up.

walrus012• 5 years ago

New case count arrivals should be normalized against sampling rate, there's been a massive increase in NYC test collection capacity via mobile vans and testing tents on sidewalks.

those have been around since spring 2021 everywhere in the city, the amount of vans and testing tents is not higher now than it was mid summer.

stjohnswarts4• 5 years ago

That's just one variable, are hospitalization rates going up at a similar rate? That's the critical and undeniably most important number for setting policy.

kesor• 5 years ago

Wait ... how come when you turn the "Nowcast prediction model" into OFF then there are zero Omicron cases in the US?

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Check the dates.

gargarplex• 5 years ago

I am mostly concerned about the mutations coming out of the Omicron contagion than the Omicron variant itself.

UncleOxidant2• 5 years ago

A valid concern. Omicron is apparently mutating faster than previous variants - less genomically stable. https://twitter.com/_b_meyer/status/1470124417749557248?s=20

machinelearning• 5 years ago

Source?

stjohnswarts4• 5 years ago

Do you have a source? I follow covid news stuff pretty closely and saw nothing like that.

bruce5119• 5 years ago

I am not a doctor, but the numbers for this varient seem encouraging.

Because hospitalizations, and deaths, trend later than infections, definitive conclusions are still some weeks away. However all the data coming out of South Africa is encouraging.

First, South Africa has about 25% vaccination coverage. With coverage skewing older.

Infections are up [1],but hospitalizations are flat, and so are deaths.

It's likely that the infection rate is grossly under-reported, especially among those without symptoms, as tests are (relatively) expensive. Annecdodally reasonably high percentages of asymptomatic infection is being detected in people being "randomly" tested (eg tested for travel and other-hospital reasons)

It is also crowding out delta, which is still present, but decreasing.

All in all travel bans may have been counter-productive (as well as ineffective) allowing time for more delta infections, and ultimately more deaths to take place.

It's still too early to be definitive, but this may indeed be the varient we all need - one which is super contagious, but also super weak, priming immune systems against earlier varient.

IF (and its a very big IF) this varient is non-fatal, then the faster and wider it spreads the better. We need to super-nova this thing, not a red dwarf.

[1] https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

amildie• 5 years ago

Encouraging why?

A month from now a new vaccine-escaping variant could emerge from some squirrel in Haiti that's a billion times more transmissible than Omicron and a thousand times more lethal than Delta.

The fact that this particular variant isn't an absolute catastrophe doesn't mean that a new devastating variant isn't around the corner.

wussboy• 5 years ago

But that has never not been true in every time and in every place. Why get existential dread about it now?

ianai2• 5 years ago

First death from omicron in US wasn’t vaccinated per breaking news just now.

bandana• 5 years ago

I've heard that the Pangolin variant could be 10x more potent than the Haitian squirrel variant. Why is everyone still going out, lock us down now !

fragmede• 5 years ago

There's not yet any sign that it's less dangerous than delta, and a more infectious but equally lethal virus is going to kill a ton more people owing to the higher infection rate, especially among the unvaxxed or unboosted. It's a bit counter-intuitive, and we'll see what the real-world numbers bear out if you don't believe the models, but immunologist twitter's on the grim side right now.

umanwizard• 5 years ago

and a more infectious but equally lethal virus is going to kill a ton more people owing to the higher infection rate

Not necessarily, if the less infectious one was already infectious enough that nearly everyone was going to get it eventually.

Archelaos• 5 years ago

owing to the higher infection rate

This. Just to emphasize the point: As long as the number of cases continues to rise, the situation will become more and more threatening, even if the falatity rate when infectied is low. It just takes longer. But it is harder to get it under control.

In other words: a low infection rate combined with a high fatality (per infection) rate would be better than a high infection rate combined with a low fatality (per infection) rate.

stjohnswarts4• 5 years ago

I'm really afraid it will mutate into something more serious as well as being as virulent as it current is. That would be really really bad.

bruce5119• 5 years ago

There are lots of signs that it's less dangerous than delta, but too early to make definitive conclusions.

However hospitals are reporting fewer numbers,shorter stays, etc, so the signs we do have are encouraging.

sAbakumoff• 5 years ago

There is the sign! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/omicron-found-...

oneoff7862• 5 years ago

There's not yet any sign that it's less dangerous than delta, and a more infectious but equally lethal virus is going to kill a ton more people

This is only true if it’s a novel virus

throwhauser• 5 years ago

We need to super-nova this thing

Is there a precedent for "us" doing this? Surely some pandemics have "super-nova'ed" themselves, but having "us" encourage faster and wider spread as policy seems risky and unusual.

Consultant324522• 5 years ago

People used to throw chicken pox parties to infect their kids at a young age because, while there is some risk to the young, it's much more dangerous to get chicken pox as an older person.

Do you know any other diseases where there's virtually no risk to young children but very high risk to the elderly?

bruce5119• 5 years ago

I'm not going to go so far as to say we throw Covid infection parties :) But things like travel restrictions, should (and in some cases are) being lifted.

I appreciate the need for govts to be seen to do something "new variant? quick, lock the borders..", but as data emerges that this is "the one to get" there's no need to inhibit the economy in the name of public health, when that inhibition leads to a worse, not better outcome.

Our best case scenario right now is that a) the virus spreads really fast, and b) it's not lethal (or at least no more lethal than anything else in life.)

Ultimately we all need to build up immunity from this thing - whether that's via vaccines or contractions everyone is free to take their pick. but 5 years from now we'll all have anti-bodies for it one way or the other...

bigodbiel• 5 years ago

i agree, no lockdowns or travel bans, but less drastic NPIs seem to be the way

nostrademons3• 5 years ago

Hospitalizations are not flat. They're doubling roughly every week [1], and are at close to 50% of their Delta peak [2].

[1] https://www.nicd.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/NICD-COVID...

[2] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-updat...

runeks• 5 years ago

The first link seems to show a flattening. Where are you seeing a doubling per week here?

sweezyjeezy• 5 years ago

Comparing the relative effect on a low vaccination coverage country with a high one seems slightly irrelevant no? i.e. delta variant is much less of a hospital burden in a high vaccinated country, therefore the relative danger of omicron could be much higher. If omicron was truly 'super weak' - wouldn't you expect to see the SA numbers go down?

j2bax• 5 years ago

I’ll continue to lean more cautious than optimistic with a variant that has the potential to start re-infecting our mostly vaccinated elderly populations at alarming rates. Our hospitals and medical staff need a reprieve as they already have a concerning backlog of non Covid related treatments.

streetcat1• 5 years ago

The main question is not the death or even hospitalization, but rather if you get long covid.

zapataband1• 5 years ago

Yeah most people are not talking about the long term effects of having your body fight covid... oh well, rich people can't get richer if we slow down the economy.

lghh• 5 years ago

Actually, if we "slow down the economy" it would likely adversely affect the lower income bracket blue collar workers and other wage earners who have to be at work in person, but no longer can. I suspect most HN-goers (on average very well off) can just work from home.

droidist2• 5 years ago

We slowed down the economy in 2020 and the rich only got richer faster.

icelancer• 5 years ago

Amazon isn't hurting because of shutting down businesses. Small business owners are dying in droves. Slowing down the economy just means centralizing purchases to large corporations.

giarc3• 5 years ago

Agree, as a young, healthy person with access to top level care (Canada) I'm not really worried about death or long hospitalization, I'm worried about long COVID. I've heard many stories of people losing taste/smell for a long time and when it does come back their senses are all messed up and what used to taste great now tastes terrible. Also stories of people that were active prior and can no longer do any exercise. I have a coworker who is a bit older, but has been off work for a few months with long COVID symptoms. That's all my real concern.

ethbr02• 5 years ago

I might get a ton of flak for this, but I discount the frequency of long Covid by a substantial amount. Not the severity, mind you, but the amount of people it's actually physiologically affecting.

If you can increase UFO sightings by telling everyone that UFOs exist and talking about UFOs... well, then what do you get from a global trauma with high and continuous uncertainty, that requires uncommon expertise to parse, on the news 24/7?

Forlien• 5 years ago

Per https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/long-covid-much-more-t..., it sounds like long term physical and mental impacts can stay with people who get hospitalized by the flu. Why are you more worried about long COVID than persistent effects of diseases that have been around longer like the flu?

somedude895• 5 years ago

when it does come back their senses are all messed up and what used to taste great now tastes terrible.

From what I've read, even that goes back to normal after a while. From my own experience, that's exactly what happened. I couldn't smell or taste anything for around 3 weeks, then coffee tasted like rotten bananas for around two months and ultimately everything went back to normal. I guess I got lucky on the other symptoms like tiredness and being short of breath, because I never had those to begin with.

swader9994• 5 years ago

The FLCCC protocol for long covid has had a lot of good results. I fixed my three and a half month bout in the spring with it. One dose of ivermectin and I felt better in a few hours and cured all the symptoms in five days with four more doses. The only remaining symptom of chest inflammation resolved with prednisone.

divbzero2• 5 years ago

Yes, among symptomatic cases we really need statistics of not only hospitalized vs. not hospitalized but also severe vs. mild.

aeternum• 5 years ago

Long Covid is hard to accurately track. Most of the studies rely on self-reported symptoms, very hard to apply scientific rigor.

desine• 5 years ago

Is "long covid" anything other than post-viral fatigue syndrome? I still haven't seen anything to imply it's different than any other virus, in that regard.

Not that I want it, but giving it a new name just seems like more fear stoking.

CTDOCodebases• 5 years ago

Yeah there’s a whole bunch of things. As someone who enjoys eating and drinking coffee parosmia would have to be the worst.

https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/09/paro...

arpa• 5 years ago

Well, it does mess with angiotensin receptors, which are all over, controlling the blood flow pretty much everywhere. That's why there's loss of smell, "covid toes", and multiple organs affected in high viral load cases, especially those with high blood flow... Brain is one of these organs, and neurological damage has been documented.

Covid? nein, danke. Vaccines, yes, please.

manmal• 5 years ago

There are researchers who believe long covid is related to blood platelet microclotting, inducing hypoxia in tissues. Remains to be seen whether this holds up.

swader9994• 5 years ago

For me the symptoms were brain fog, weird sense of smell, headache, heart issues, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, cough, fatigue, fatigue after light exertion.

andrew_• 5 years ago

Counterpoint: https://theprepared.com/blog/73-of-covid-cases-arent-omicron...

littlestymaar2• 5 years ago

In this post there's a good point about this figure being a projection and not a measurement, but we do have actual measurements that do not require full sequencing of the virus to recognize omicron but just a PCR test. From [1]:

To gain insight into the spread of the Omicron variant in our community, we are working with a large number of partners to track S-gene target failures (SGTFs). SGTFs are a feature of the TaqPath PCR assay that fails to detect the spike gene of certain variants of interest due to a deletion in these viruses' spike gene. Most Omicron sequences have this deletion while most Delta sequences do not. As a result, the proportion of SGTF in positive tests can be used to estimate the prevalence of Omicron.

Worse, the key part of the reasoning is problematic: (emphasis mine)

Assuming, as data has indicated, that Delta cases stayed approximately constant during this time, these numbers correspond to Omicron case numbers growing approximately twenty fold in one week, a doubling time of approximately thirty six hours, sustained over a two week period.
This is out of touch with what we know about Omicron. Responsible estimates of the growth rates of Omicron in populations with better data (like the UK and Denmark) and prior data on the USA, have suggested doubling times in the range of TWO TO FOUR DAYS. This has caused us (and the real experts) to characterize its rate of growth as “explosive,” and to say in late November and early December that it might attain dominance in the USA in a matter of weeks. And that’s all true. But a doubling time of 36 hours, sustained for over two weeks, is out of step with all the other data. It’s not credible.

Even if 36 hours is a bit lower than most (but not all) measurement, it's not that far of the reality, while the “2 to 4 days” discussed in the article is too optimistic. A few example of doubling times:

San Diego: 1.4 days [1], in the different regions of the UK, the doubling time varies from 1.5 to 2.2 days (median: 1.6 days) [2]. In France, the estimated doubling time varies from 1.6 to 2.2 days.

Excerpt from [2]:

We are observing doubling time central estimates of less than 2 days for every region except the South West. This may be related to poor PCR gene target reporting coverage in this region.

Oh, and in this sentence, just click on his link (which now includes data from yesterday and completely defeats his argument)

And this points to another big problem. These numbers don’t comport with the national case numbers and what we know about how variants interact[link to 3]. While huge case surges have been seen in the states in Region 2, which was already 2.4% Omicron in the latest measurements (the week ending December 4), as well as other Omicron-dominant areas like the UK, they haven’t been seen in most states elsewhere in the country. This pattern was also seen as Delta took over from Alpha in the USA this summer, but we’re not seeing it in most of the USA now.

[1] https://searchcovid.info/dashboards/omicron-estimates/ [2]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... page 6. [3]: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+covid+cases

NicoJuicy• 5 years ago

A lot of speculation.

Is there a way to know the average hospital duration in SA for people without a previous infection?

I know the current data in SA says it went from 8,5 days to 2,5 days.

The variable currently, if the data can be cross-referenced to other countries, is the high infection rate of delta in SA.

Excluding previously infected from hospital stay would create an educated guess in my eyes. If it stays <3,5 days for example, that would seem like good news.

rblatz2• 5 years ago

So at this point what percent of people testing positive are actually tracked? It’s still a giant pain to get a covid test and requires at least one day lead time to get scheduled in at the pharmacy. It’s so much easier to pop in to that same pharmacy and get a rapid test for $10 and do it at home.

nobrains• 5 years ago

These are projections. Click on "Nowcast Off" and it will only show actuals, which is a completely different picture (very little Omicron percentage).

ravel-bar-foo• 5 years ago

Korea is already seeing a significant uptick (doubling week on week) in imported Covid cases, mostly from the US.

mcgin2• 5 years ago

London is right after South Africa at the vanguard of Omicron. It seems it's hospitalisation rates are only now starting to emerge.

https://i.redd.it/92wwp9jp8q681.png

HatchedLake721• 5 years ago

Have you got a link to Reddit source of the image?

mcgin2• 5 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK/comments/rkrjwv/londo...

randomsearch2• 5 years ago

As everyone keeps posting about SA and saying omicron is relatively harmless, here’s the only scientific study I’ve found on the topic, in the BMJ:

“After adjusting for vaccination status, the risk of hospital admission for newly diagnosed adults is 29% lower than in the first wave,”

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n3104

With a doubling time of two days, this reduction in the probability of hospitalisation seems irrelevant in preventing the overwhelming of health systems. As others have pointed out, experts on Twitter seem very very worried and I’m more inclined to go with them (and the exponential function) than with my antivaxxer friend’s posts on Facebook.

Here in the U.K. it already looks to me like London’s hospitals are going to be overwhelmed; I don’t understand why everyone isn’t panicking and we’re not already in a lockdown.

benjaminwootton5• 5 years ago

We aren’t “already in a lockdown” for reasons including (but not limited to) the multi £billion cost, the harm to mental and physical health, civil liberties, the fact that people are responding to guidance, the fact that we have more than 100 million jabs issued, the fact that the modelling has been repeatedly wrong etc.

If lockdowns were a free lunch then sure, let’s have them all the time!

We have not seen a long term exponential growth anywhere in the world yet. Until that happens we are hiding from the bogeyman based on modelling which has repeatedly been proven incorrect (speaking from a UK perspective).

edanm• 5 years ago

Has the modeling been wrong? Or have all the measures you wrote about above worked and prevented the "worst case scenarios" of the models?

maxehmookau5• 5 years ago

I don't disagree with most of what you say, however I do want to point out that "mental health" is something that commentators and politicians on the right have only recently actually started to care about, especially in the UK.

Mental health services in the UK have seen decades of real-terms cuts by parliaments of all colours. Getting mental health support on the NHS is next-to-impossible in a meaningful timeframe so watching anybody in parliament say "lockdown bad. mental health important." is outrageous.

Say you're anti-lockdown if you are (not you, OP), but don't for a second let Conservative MPs make you believe that they actually care about the nation's mental health.

randomsearch2• 5 years ago

based on modelling which has repeatedly been proven incorrect

it's absolutely not about modelling, it's about real-world stats in this case. you can just see the numbers.

but as for modelling, I believe the Imperial group predicted "worst case 300K dead" for the pandemic. The UK is already halfway there by official stats, never mind excess deaths. Certainly it's hard to model complex systems but it's not really plausible to argue that they haven't got it right to a first approximation.

It's not about arbitrary lockdowns, it's about looking at the evidence in front of you and wonder how "the multi billion cost, the harm to mental health" might compare to an overflowing A&E room and many many preventable deaths just because we didn't lockdown a week earlier.

I think we're not in a lockdown because the Tory backbenchers don't want to be, and Boris Johnson cares more about his political career than science, the NHS, or saving lives. That doesn't surprise me much, but what does surprise me is the sheer number of intelligent people seemingly ignoring the evidence.

saiya-jin2• 5 years ago

I don’t understand why everyone isn’t panicking and we’re not already in a lockdown.

Not argumenting with rest, but this has rather simple explanation - people are fed up with literally everything covid-related. 1.5 years of existential dread coming from all directions will drain and numb most. Politicians are still voted into their position.

Locking everybody at home for a long time, repeatedly, without any real solution in sight (the best vaccines work a bit for 6 months and then they're practically gone). That's a hard sell in democracy.

I'd say protect the weak properly, have the current vaccination restrictions on everybody, but otherwise let the rest get on with their lives. Even if it means some will die. From my perspective its criminal to fuck up children's future even if it would protect their grandparents a bit more.

evgen• 5 years ago

I'd say protect the weak properly, have the current vaccination restrictions on everybody, but otherwise let the rest get on with their lives. Even if it means some will die. From my perspective its criminal to fuck up children's future even if it would protect their grandparents a bit more.

If you are going to go this path then you also need to say that the unvaccinated do not receive covid treatment beyond meds they can take home and stay out of hospitals. The primary concern has not been just how many will die, but the effects of those who do not die upon the rest of the medical system. We must be allowed to deny care to those who choose to put themselves and others at risk to keep medical resources available for everyone else.

vixen99• 5 years ago

To my mind, the following is more of a cause for concern long term: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.14.472719v1.... 'Striking Antibody Evasion Manifested by the Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2'. We have a situation in which there is mass escape of virus able to resist specifically-induced antibodies. What might be the long-term result of this, given natural selection and virus survival of the fittest?

tim3332• 5 years ago

We're probably heading for a common cold like situation.

tim3332• 5 years ago

I haven't read the bmj study but a lot of this stuff is pretty bad in terms of predicting anything. I did read the Imperial one and it was awful as in based on almost no data.

The best real world guide is looking at places like South Africa and hospitalisation has been pretty modest.

Some SA data https://twitter.com/pieterstreicher/status/14726238938317291...

Excess mortality almost unchanged https://twitter.com/tomtom_m/status/1471137212502847490

oneoff7862• 5 years ago

You may feel differently if you didn’t classify any dissenting opinion as siding with the anti vaxxers on Facebook.

Disease does not spread exponentially after an initial period. It never does. It obviously and observably has not done so with the past two years of covid data. It rapidly caps off as it reaches the edges of the social graph.

chronofar• 5 years ago

experts on Twitter seem very very worried and I’m more inclined to go with them (and the exponential function) than with my antivaxxer friend’s posts on Facebook.

I wouldn’t give a lot of heed to either of those groups, they’re both avenues where nuance is discarded in favor of fervor for the sake of memes. You’ve chosen panic, as I suspect your party of choice has, as your fervor of choice, but that doesn’t mean everyone sees the same fire you do requiring the largest of firehoses whose dousing will cause all sorts of collateral damage.

There is more at play than pure epidemiology, though that is for sure a factor for consideration.

meepmorp• 5 years ago

I don’t understand why everyone isn’t panicking and we’re not already in a lockdown.

In no small part, because of a couple weeks of daily revelations about how utterly brazen the Government was in flouting the lockdown restrictions. You can't really cancel Christmas after pictures surface of you having a fucking garden party at number 10 at the height of the lockdown. BoJo's saving his skin, and he's fine letting the bodies hit the floor.

blindmute• 5 years ago

Nobody cares man. Lock yourself down if you're so panicked and leave the rest of us alone.

_djo_5• 5 years ago

And yet the damaging travel ban against Southern Africa remains in place, even against recommendations by key US scientists...

coryfklein• 5 years ago

Since I don't see anyone else mentioning it here, I thought I'd call out Zvi.

With all the constant noise around covid coverage, it's been such a huge relief that Zvi has been able to provide the excellent summaries that he does at least once a week. It's nearly impossible for every individual to spend enough time to parse through the deluge of information and parse the signal from the noise.

Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week

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