@Pat I'm holding a very cautious hope that omicron is less likely to put you in hospital than the previous variants. If that's the case, we want omicron to beat delta.
Yes, if Omicron induces strong immunity to the previous variants and is much less lethal and less virulent, then it would be a benefit to have it spread through the unvaxed population. However, the article said that 15 of the guy's friends all got sick, so it sounds like it's still fairly virulent because previous variants had significant non-symptomatic spread.
We just got to wait to see how bad it is as the numbers come in.
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bonifartius ๐ผ๐
@freemo just armchair thoughts: wouldn't it benefit everyone because a) they are โimmune then and b) natual immunity also includes antibodies and memory cells of all parts of the virus, not only the wuhan strain spikes, thereby reducing the attack surface for emerging variants? would be interesting how omikron fares in the lesser vaccinated european nations, especially those who had a huge number of cases with the older variants.
sidenote: it really grinds my gear that every new variant is touted as more deadly than the last, even of it doesn't really makes sense. the selection should favor "silent" infections imho.
@bonifartius
Its a bit more complicated than that. For starters immunity doesnt identify all parts of a virus. It only identifies parts of a virus that have a binding site on it. As far as i know thats just the spike protien for covid but i may be wrong.
As for immunity leading to reducing the attack surface, thats very much a myth that keeps circulating and its more complex than that. Studies show that when you introduce vaccines, or natural immunity, but do not approach herd immunity that you increase the chances of variants evolving. Therefore immunity is only effective at stoping the virus effectively id herd immunity can be reached first. So the two factors at play is the mutation rate of the virus pitted against the time it takes to approach herd immunity. Coronaviruses tend to evolve relatively quickly and as such its unlikely we could reach a herd immunity before it triggers a new strain.
Finally while you are right the new strains are not going to necessarily evolve towards being more deadly, they also arent neceseraly going to evolve towards being more silent. More often we see it evolve to be more contagious earlier in the infection leaving it to be as deadly as it "wants" to be later in the infection. Many viruses kill or disable you, or show symptoms at all, only after the most contagious part of their life cycle.
@zleap @Pat @trinsec
@freemo
> Its a bit more complicated than that. For starters immunity doesnt identify all parts of a virus. It only identifies parts of a virus that have a binding site on it. As far as i know thats just the spike protien for covid but i may be wrong.
for covid there are at least spike- and nucleocapsid-proteins for which antibodies are created.
> As for immunity leading to reducing the attack surface, thats very much a myth that keeps circulating and its more complex than that. Studies show that when you introduce vaccines, or natural immunity, but do not approach herd immunity that you increase the chances of variants evolving. Therefore immunity is only effective at stoping the virus effectively id herd immunity can be reached first. So the two factors at play is the mutation rate of the virus pitted against the time it takes to approach herd immunity. Coronaviruses tend to evolve relatively quickly and as such its unlikely we could reach a herd immunity before it triggers a new strain.
i meant herd immunity by "attack surface", yes. i think with the current vaccines we can't win the race as immunity wanes too fast (like you've wrote), it might would have been better to roll them out only for at risk groups to reduce the risk for selection around the vaccine. this point is moot though.
> Finally while you are right the new strains are not going to necessarily evolve towards being more deadly, they also arent neceseraly going to evolve towards being more silent. More often we see it evolve to be more contagious earlier in the infection leaving it to be as deadly as it "wants" to be later in the infection. Many viruses kill or disable you, or show symptoms at all, only after the most contagious part of their life cycle.
agreed! i just think it's the worst FUD i know if the WHO president says "deadly as ebola" about the omicron variant.
@bonifartius
The one constand with COVID no matter what side you are on is to exaggerate the facts beyond all recognition in your favor
@zleap @Pat @trinsec