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Covid 19 #43: Oh Omicron, oh Omicron, how numerous are thy spike proteins.


A Horse Named Stranger

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An interesting and older twitter thread. I agree with most of what it was said there. I'd add that secrecy, IP protections, favoritism for a few companies and their tech as well as lack of international collaboration (solving the pandemic for profit) have all led to the vaccine hesitancy and to keep the crisis going on.

 

 

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Regarding our new Omicron friend. Here you can find a page of the Rt estimates for transmission in four countries. While Rt for Delta is about one in all of them, Rt for Omicron is ~3 in Germany, ~4 in S. Africa and US and a whooping Rt~5 for the UK. Despite the considerable immunity wall.  We are going to see a lockdown in UK, sooner than many expected. Other European countries will follow shortly thereafter.

https://github.com/blab/rt-from-frequency-dynamics/tree/master/results/omicron-countries

EDIT: Some estimates say that Norway may face 300k cases a day by Christmas and UK up to a million. 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

Regarding our new Omicron friend. Here you can find a page of the Rt estimates for transmission in four countries. While Rt for Delta is about one in all of them, Rt for Omicron is ~3 in Germany, ~4 in S. Africa and US and a whooping Rt~5 for the UK. Despite the considerable immunity wall.  We are going to see a lockdown in UK, sooner than many expected. Other European countries will follow shortly thereafter.

https://github.com/blab/rt-from-frequency-dynamics/tree/master/results/omicron-countries

EDIT: Some estimates say that Norway may face 300k cases a day by Christmas and UK up to a million. 

 

 

the main reason R is so high in the UK is most people where vaccinated with AZ  which really is not at all effective against Omnicom in preventing infection.   However most people who had the AZ have now received a Booster or will have had one by the endo of this week.   Under 30's were not given AZ.   so this should soon have an impact on the R number.   How much remains to be seen.

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Very noble. But meaningless unless you can be more specific.

Is it more reasonable than the goal of making it so absolutely no one with immunity problems dies ever? 
Do you understand that most people pushing the vaccine mandates understand vaccines don’t make people immoral?

Also to be more specific; The goal of most Vaccine mandates and passports are good when they can cause less death and suffering in a society. 
 

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

You genuinely believe it's possible to do so , keep every single person boosted to max level every single year for eternity? Even in one country? You seriously think that is possible?

Hmm I think perhaps you may have posted this right when I clarified by editing a little.

I think the vast majority—-90+ Can be a reasonable goal for some countries. Why not the UK?

Take you; is there anything in particular reason that’ll make you totally incapable of getting another booster shot in say six months or next month? 

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Answer the question. Is there a flu vaccine mandate in the UK?

I’ll show you the same courtesy if you answer mine.;).

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Nope. Its not mandated in the UK. 

Huh from quick googling it appears I was mistaken. They stopped doing that. Probably shouldn’t have though imho lol

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Its pretty simple mate, just go look at the data from the UK. 

Can you not find any credible studies to bolster your accusation? I’ll take this question as a concession. That rhymed lol.

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18 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

the main reason R is so high in the UK is most people where vaccinated with AZ  which really is not at all effective against Omnicom in preventing infection.   However most people who had the AZ have now received a Booster or will have had one by the endo of this week.   Under 30's were not given AZ.   so this should soon have an impact on the R number.   How much remains to be seen.

How do you explain Norway or Denmark? Both are facing considerable Delta waves and Omicron is climbing right over them at high speed. Despite the supposedly "inferior" vaccine, UK has greater natural immunity than those countries. Boosters will lessen the problem but the wave is coming faster than any possible damping effect. I think UK will lock down before the end of the week.

 

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11 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

How do you explain Norway or Denmark? Both are facing considerable Delta waves and Omicron is climbing right over them at high speed. Despite the supposedly "inferior" vaccine, UK has greater natural immunity than those countries. Boosters will lessen the problem but the wave is coming faster than any possible damping effect. I think UK will lock down before the end of the week.

 

I've not been watching Norway or Denmark to know their history and comment.

As to the UK locking down.  It might be what we need to do, But Boris won't fully lock down this year.  politically he can't afford to after the parties last xmas.

 

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12 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

 I think UK will lock down before the end of the week.

It might happen, I wouldn't be surprised. Whether it is necessary is another matter. Deaths and hospitalisations have remained steady for a while, and even with a lag its suspected that Omicron might have been with us for longer than we think. I don't think the data is there yet that this variant is milder, but it could be, and we have a highly vaccinated population, and as you say already existing natural immunity. Our Sage bods have been pushing out alarming figures in terms of case numbers they have modelled, but they have a notorious history of massively over inflating numbers and their models are usually wildly out of whack with what happens in real life. 

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1 hour ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

the main reason R is so high in the UK is most people where vaccinated with AZ  which really is not at all effective against Omnicom in preventing infection.   However most people who had the AZ have now received a Booster or will have had one by the endo of this week.   Under 30's were not given AZ.   so this should soon have an impact on the R number.   How much remains to be seen.

Do we know the different percentages of who got what vaccine? Moderna crew checking in.

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45 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Do we know the different percentages of who got what vaccine? Moderna crew checking in.

Unfortunately I can only find all the vaccines Lumped together.

I do know the very first people vaccinated was Pfizer as that was approved first, but we had a lot more AZ vaccines in comparison.     So most people then ended up getting AZ at least until the under 30's or under 40's (not sure which) due to the blood clotting risk started getting the vaccine.  

 

The only data I can find is on vaccine orders in total up to the 2nd December (so including boosters which is all Pfizer or Moderna)

Pfizer  189m

AZ 100m

moderna 77m

 

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

Do we know the different percentages of who got what vaccine? Moderna crew checking in.

If you're asking about efficacy, Moderna has consistently been (a little) better than Pfizer, AZ or J&J against Delta.  Not a lot of data yet on Moderna vs Omicron, because Moderna is almost exclusively used in the US and there haven't been any US studies on Omicron released.  But preliminary indications (so take with a grain of salt) is that AZ is particularly ineffective against Omicron, while Pfizer is decent, but less good than it was vs Delta.  I expect Moderna to be similar or slightly better than Pfizer (they are very similar vaccines), but that's just a guess. 

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I’d have to look at the last thread to see when Canada announced it found the first three cases of Omicron. I think it was last week but it may have been the week before. Yesterday Ontario announced that half the new cases are Omicron. We had 1,536 cases. Canada had 4,149 cases, with 1,628 in Quebec and very low numbers out west. It will be interesting to see how fast it spreads across the country.

The daily average of deaths is currently 20. The peak back in January was about 160.

I just look at the weekly trend (7 day number) of cases in the world, and it is stunning to see the UK with 359,583 new cases, Poland with 154,952 and Canada with 28,675 (but a big jump from the previous 7 days, 22,102). The UK doesn’t even have twice our population. As much as the pandemic has driven everyone here crazy, we are doing relatively well. Hell, Norway only has 5.5 M people and had 33,133 new cases, up from 25,813 the previous 7 day period.

I’m absolutely certain we’re going to see a huge jump as well.

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6 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

because there would be less people in hospital with Covid and as a result free up beds staff and resources for needs and allow treatment to resume for these people.   What we are doing now is telling them to fuck off and die.

We could also invest to increase the capacity of "beds, staff and resources", in order to adjust to the new reality in which Covid is a thing that exists. Crazy idea, I know.

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23 minutes ago, Gorn said:

We could also invest to increase the capacity of "beds, staff and resources", in order to adjust to the new reality in which Covid is a thing that exists. Crazy idea, I know.

we should absolutely do that, but probably won't.  As I said earlier that is not something that can happen quickly.  Beds and resources yes maybe.  Staff take years to train.    We kinda need some action between Now and when we have this extra staff.   

 

The lack of doctors and nurses being trained today really is a problem for after the government of the next election not the current one.

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41 minutes ago, Gorn said:

We could also invest to increase the capacity of "beds, staff and resources", in order to adjust to the new reality in which Covid is a thing that exists. Crazy idea, I know.

You of course have a point here. There has been some criticism in Germany (and also in Netherlands) how some policies during the last 10 years or so, have led to a decline in the hospital capacity, particularly in small towns. At the same time there has been literally zero effort during the last two years to increase capability, by adding resources or fast-tracking personal training.

True be told. Nobody wants to end in the hospital regardless of the conditions, but it is expected that many will and regardless the hospital capacity in a country, this can be overwhelmed at some point. None of this is an excuse to not add capacity. Now we have exhausted health care personal that are leaving in droves for new horizons. I don't fault them.

Neither there has been sufficient investments in addressing other factors. How many hospitalization and deaths could have been avoided by suitable and affordable treatments for obesity, diabetes, hypertension, etc? Conditions known to increase the risk of severe covid.  Increasing the awareness about these conditions would have avoided a lot of pain and more importantly, it would have increased the trust in public health ahead the deployment of vaccines.  Nothing. Nada.

What about something, anything that could reduce the burden of severe disease. I'm not talking about HCQ, Ivermectin and other snake oils. Vitamin D? I've been hearing of it since 1 1/2 year, it doesn't hurt and might help. There have been a large number of cheap and probably harmless early treatments that might shave the hospitalization rates (I won't mention them here). Is there no interest on them? Same here. Rollout of some of these things would have given the perception that your health is important.

Unfortunately I don't think there is honest debate here, neither from the health authorities and of course not from deniers. The true is that COVID will remain with us, coming every year with waves, every year a sizable portion of the at risk population will be hospitalized and die, shaving life expectancy in our countries. How governments will respond every year to that? To save lives, they won't let the others live?

While big pharmaceutical firms are being treated with silk gloves, citizens are increasingly treated with the short end of the stick.

 

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The increase of hospital capacity has been curiously absent in the Covid response of most countries. Sure, some of that is on the private sector, but there are still ways that governments can improve the situation, both in the short and the long term. A couple of ideas off the top of my head:

- Drastically increasing immigration quotas for doctors and nurses

- Providing scholarships for medical schools, in order to nudge undecided 18-year-olds towards that career

- Subsidizing private sector to increase capacity

Sure, some of those might not bear fruit for years, but let's make a start at least.

My suspicion is that there is resistance from bean counters behind the scenes, who are having fits at the idea of hospital capacity being unused for certain parts of the year.

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34 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

You of course have a point here. There has been some criticism in Germany (and also in Netherlands) how some policies during the last 10 years or so, have led to a decline in the hospital capacity, particularly in small towns. At the same time there has been literally zero effort during the last two years to increase capability, by adding resources or fast-tracking personal training.

True be told. Nobody wants to end in the hospital regardless of the conditions, but it is expected that many will and regardless the hospital capacity in a country, this can be overwhelmed at some point. None of this is an excuse to not add capacity. Now we have exhausted health care personal that are leaving in droves for new horizons. I don't fault them.

Funny because Germany was held up as the model the UK needed to be following at the beginning of the pandemic by many here. I do think our NHS could do with a bit of a rethink and taking what works from somewhere like Germany and the continent would be helpful. 

The UK has a surge capacity to deal with flu waves, and we should probably upscale everything as much as we can to deal with the new reality that we will he having Covid waves forever. 

36 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

How many hospitalization and deaths could have been avoided by suitable and affordable treatments for obesity, diabetes, hypertension, etc? Conditions known to increase the risk of severe covid.  Increasing the awareness about these conditions would have avoided a lot of pain and more importantly, it would have increased the trust in public health ahead the deployment of vaccines.  Nothing. Nada.

I think it is incredibly difficult for governments to make huge differences to things like obesity levels, because peoples eating and exercise habits are particular to each individual and based on any number of factors. Its hard to say that any measures to limit obesity really work well, especially when its fiddling at the edges like placing chocolate on different aisles in supermarkets. While it would be useful if less people were obese and more healthy, its probably unrealistic to think its something that changes in the short term.

41 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

Unfortunately I don't think there is honest debate here, neither from the health authorities and of course not from deniers. The true is that COVID will remain with us, coming every year with waves, every year a sizable portion of the at risk population will be hospitalized and die, shaving life expectancy in our countries. How governments will respond every year to that? To save lives, they won't let the others live?


Agree. We pretty much know that the virus is endemic now, but that hasn't really filtered down to policy decisions or government behaviour. It's obviously difficult politically to admit this that we have to live with Covid rather than eliminate it. Its usually met with howls of derision if politicians even mention it. But its the reality of the thing now. We should understand that in a reasonably well vaccinated country the situation is very different to when the outbreak started and act accordingly.
 

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3 minutes ago, Gorn said:

The increase of hospital capacity has been curiously absent in the Covid response of most countries. Sure, some of that is on the private sector, but there are still ways that governments can improve the situation, both in the short and the long term. A couple of ideas off the top of my head:

- Drastically increasing immigration quotas for doctors and nurses

- Providing scholarships for medical schools, in order to nudge undecided 18-year-olds towards that career

- Subsidizing private sector to increase capacity

Sure, some of those might not bear fruit for years, but let's make a start at least.

My suspicion is that there is resistance from bean counters behind the scenes, who are having fits at the idea of hospital capacity being unused for certain parts of the year.

In the UK at least  Increasing immigration quotas is difficult due to Brexit, the hostile environment and political leanings of the current government.  We may want the healthcare worker but we will make things difficult for their partner or kids to also come over.   We also lost many of our health professionals who simply back to the EU.  we also have the problem that many nations want more health care workers and we are not an attractive option compared to other countries.

 

Scholarships for medical  well we do have the NHS Bursary for those studying to work in the NHS,  IIRC our government cut the amount offered.  Publicly U Turned,  then kept the cut.  So yeah we should do more here,  although this is a long term thing and will not show immediate effect other than costs.

 

We seem to do a lot of subsidising the private sector to give contracts to Tory Chums for not much results.

 

You won't get any arguments from me that we need to invest in healthcare at a far greater level than we currently do.  but we also need to do stuff to help now while waiting for the effects of that future investment.

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21 minutes ago, Gorn said:

The increase of hospital capacity has been curiously absent in the Covid response of most countries.

So increasing is permanently is tough - but there are increases in other ways - this is generally done by increasing beds - ie using endoscopy suits and operating theater recovery spaces as ICU beds. In addition, you also cancel elective procedures etc to try and free up more beds. Lastly, beds will mean nothing if you don't have staff - this is where medical staff is redeployed from their day jobs to help in the ICU or respiratory wards. However, there are a finite number of ICU nurses & doctors - which means that nurses are looking after more patients than they usually do in ICU. Most ICUs have one patient to one nurse, or two patients to 1 nurse ratio - however, during the peaks in the UK, that ratio went up a lot higher ( 1:5 etc), hence why the argument that they were likely not receiving optimal ICU level care ( years and years of underfunding the NHS has consequences)

Also - the private sector cannot take the sick patients because the hospitals do not have with the staff or the equipment to deal with them.

11 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

In the UK at least  Increasing immigration quotas is difficult due to Brexit, the hostile environment and political leanings of the current government.  We may want the healthcare worker but we will make things difficult for their partner or kids to also come over.  

Yeah - since Brexit - the government has realized they've massively erred and shot themselves in the foot by turning away healthcare professionals from the EU, therefore, they have eased as many immigration barriers as possible to try and get people from outside the EU - making  immigration fees cheaper, putting all doctors under the 'shortage occupation list' so they get easier to recruit. However, like you say, the hostile environment makes it harder for immigrant doctors here in a lot of ways which means many will leave in the future. The Brexit racists allowing more immigrants in to fill these gaps, thereby making immigration easier does amuse me though.

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