First UK Death Recorded With Omicron Variant (bbc.com) 179
Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: At least one person in the UK has died with the Omicron coronavirus variant, the prime minister has said. Boris Johnson said the new variant was also resulting in hospital admissions, and the "best thing" people could do was get their booster jab. Health Secretary Sajid Javid told MPs Omicron now represented 20% of cases in England. The PM has set a new target for all adults in England to be offered a booster by the end of the month. Mr Johnson said on Monday that people needed to recognize "the sheer pace at which [Omicron] accelerates through the population" and that they should set aside the idea that Omicron was a milder variant.
The UK recorded 54,661 new coronavirus cases on Monday, as well as 38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. There are 4,713 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant but Mr Javid said the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) estimated the current number of daily infections was around 200,000. Omicron has risen to more than 44% of cases in London and is expected to become the dominant variant in the city in the next 48 hours, he said.
The UK recorded 54,661 new coronavirus cases on Monday, as well as 38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. There are 4,713 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant but Mr Javid said the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) estimated the current number of daily infections was around 200,000. Omicron has risen to more than 44% of cases in London and is expected to become the dominant variant in the city in the next 48 hours, he said.
Panic (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of wild speculation on very little data.
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Wild speculation? Isn't that why we all come here?
I come here for the pointless bickering, but you do you.
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No you don't!!
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We actually have a lot of data: thousands of people infected and one single death "with", not "because of", the omicron (actually "xi", but I digress) variant. As the South African doctors told us, it's really mild.
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
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A lot of wild speculation on very little data.
Are you serious? There are tons of data from almost 2 years of this virus running wild. I can understand you skepticism if it was only UK who came with statements like this but other countries are saying the exact same.
He was talking about the Omicron mutation specifically not COVID in general.
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A lot of wild speculation on very little data.
Are you serious? There are tons of data from almost 2 years of this virus running wild. I can understand you skepticism if it was only UK who came with statements like this but other countries are saying the exact same.
He was talking about the Omicron mutation specifically not COVID in general.
I know -- but they of course use historical data to predict the future spread of Omicron. Even if the data sample for Omicron seems small they have plenty of data points for this variant to compare it with how other variants have behaved in the past.
38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an intriguing statistic. We need stats that are relevant and consistent worldwide which relate to portions of the population. 1000 deaths in India is not equivalent to 1000 deaths in Switzerland. Deaths per thousand or per million can be relevant. Otherwise we are just throwing meaningless numbers around.
We might do well to note that different jurisdictions may deliberately obfuscate their stats. Even in the US there are varying efforts to manipulate statistics, with Florida in particular being accused of hiding deaths and hospitalization numbers.
I'm becoming exhausted with the futile display of meaningless numbers and percentages from authority figures and talking heads in the media. Yes, it's a hot-button issue but no, don't use it to incite panic or concern when you don't have any relevant information to add.
Re:38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test (Score:5, Insightful)
And while we're at it, I only really care about deaths in vaccinated populations.
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I care about deaths among the unvaccinated because of how it may affect the 2022 midterms.
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And while we're at it, I only really care about deaths in vaccinated populations.
Yeah fuck kids and cancer patients.
That's the problem with not caring about deaths in the unvaccinated populations. Sure the majority are raging morons, unfortunately not all of them are and they can kill the less fortunate ones.
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Yeah fuck kids and cancer patients.
Let me guess your IQ is somewhere around 85? Barely able to read, but somehow magically be able to write?
That's the problem with not caring about deaths in the unvaccinated populations.
No, the problem are idiots like you who deliberately misunderstand, or pretend to misunderstand simple statements.
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Let me guess your IQ is somewhere around 85? Barely able to read, but somehow magically be able to write?
It's not that I can't read, it's that I can also THINK.
You see you might write a simple statement, but that statement has logical implications. I don't think you are uncaring about kids and cancer patients. You might think the intentionally vaccinated people deserve what they get; they may do you should care if they're dying in droves because they will spread infections to people who can't get vaccinated
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And while we're at it, I only really care about deaths in vaccinated populations.
You'll care about all those unvaccinated in hospital and filling the ICU if you or your loved ones have a heart attack or car accident and are waiting in the corridor for a bed.
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I'm becoming exhausted with the futile display of meaningless numbers and percentages from authority figures and talking heads in the media.
Then turn off the news. You don't have your eyelids forced open clockwork orange style, compelling you to ingest limitless quantities of covid related news.
Anyway this is the UK not the USA. I have no current reasons to seriously doubt the official figures. From the two weeks of info, it looks to be increasing about 50% per day which is very, very bad.
Yes, it's a hot-b
Re:38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test (Score:4, Informative)
Re:38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test (Score:5, Informative)
It's important to understand why the government is pushing this story right now. It's distraction from a major scandal they are caught up in, including the man at the top Boris Johnson.
Last Christmas the UK was in lockdown. Mixing households was banned, even for xmas parties. People couldn't attend the funerals of family members, or visit dying relatives in hospital. Sacrifices were made to try to control the UK's biggest COVID wave, with the death toll reaching six digits.
Meanwhile, the government and civil service were partying. It was illegal and a slap in the face to anyone who obeyed the rules, but they did it anyway. In fact there were several parties, one of which we have photographic proof that Johnson attended. Before the photo was released, he claimed there were no parties. Afterwards he said that no rules had been broken. Today he's downgraded to that to "I have been advised that no rules were broken".
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The only way to stop the Tories from breaking the law & their own rules is to prosecute them. That's the only thing they understand. Anything else it just hot air to them.
I wouldn't count on that... the Tories are trying hard to change the laws so they can't be charged with anything.
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Meanwhile, the government and civil service were partying. It was illegal and a slap in the face to anyone who obeyed the rules, but they did it anyway.
To any non Brit watching: no the police won't be prosecuting. You see, according to our Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab (notable for being somewhat vague on the idea that Britain is an island), the police don't investigate retrospective crimes.
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I contend that the "party scandal" is itself a distraction. Are politicians corrupt hypocrites? Is water wet? The party is a year old faux pas and the kerfuffle over it is overshadowing the fact that parliament is debating a law that would give the home secretary the right to strip Britons of their citizenship [theconversation.com].
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Sadly stripping British citizens of their citizenship doesn't seem to bother many Tory voters. The parties do.
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Yep, numerous Democrats were caught doing the same thing in the US, such as Gavin Newsome. Dr. Deborah Birx was also caught mixing households at Thanksgiving last year after telling people not to, then claimed they hadn't really done what they did. It was pathetic. We also have videos of Democrats quickly putting their masks on to take a picture, then taking them back off.
Re: 38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test (Score:3)
I think the people who voted for Brexit will gladly own up to it: they don't see it as a failing.
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Not to put too fine a point to it, but you probably mean "Especially in the US", since the US is about the only country in "The West" where the virus is incredibly politicized and the political climate there is probably one of the worst polarized ones.
Of course they learned this from the UK, but the UK isn't anywhere near as bad currently.
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I'm becoming exhausted with the futile display of meaningless numbers and percentages from authority figures and talking heads in the media
You and me both, bro.
So I take my info from scientific papers, not the media, who you can depend on to place their political slants on it.
Because the science is a lot better than that. And even some of the papers cited by the stupid show some insight, like the now retracted ivermectin paper. REtracted, het still cited by the subnormals.
In the end, I just get the vaccinations, be careful, and carry on.
Because short of hiring a posse of moonsuited guards the AK's, and willing to use them, we can't
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Note that the person who accused Florida officials of "hiding deaths" later claimed that wasn't true.
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
Florida's response:
https://www.flgov.com/2021/05/... [flgov.com]
Jones' own response:
https://twitter.com/maxnordau/... [twitter.com]
12/24/2020 "The woman who told me to delete cases and deaths is now blaming DOCTORS for the death backlog."
5/20/2021 "Deleting deaths was never something I was asked to do. I've never claimed it was."
She claimed a year ago that someone told her to delete deaths, then said
Re:38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test (Score:5, Informative)
Why are you picking on Florida? Florida has 25 Covid treatment centres. If you would get sick with Covid, then you better be in Florida.
The reason Florida is singled out is because of Governor Death Sentence's deliberate obfuscation of the number of deaths in Florida. In June he ordered all county health departments to stop reporting their covid numbers.
However, the CDC was still receiving those numbers and reporting them on their own site. A quick study shows Florida's "official" numbers are 15 times less [acasignups.net] than what they should be.
The fact Florida has so many treatment centers for covid, using a $4,000 treatment rather than a $15 shot, should make one ask serious questions why they need so many treatment centers.
Note "with", not "of" (Score:3, Interesting)
Looking at south african data it seems this variant is less dangerous than the Delta variant so I'm not quite sure why there's a febrile panic that seems to be emanating from governments about this. A fast spreading mild variant is surely a good thing as it'll bring immunity even to the anti vaxxers whether they want it or not.
Re: Note "with", not "of" (Score:2)
A fast spreading mild variant is surely a good thing as it'll bring immunity even to the anti vaxxers whether they want it or not.
I'm hoping it will go this way too, but I have my doubts. If the COVID vaccines and delta variant give poor immunity to the omicron variant, then it seems like a stretch to expect omicron to give good immunity to other variants. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed -- maybe immune systems will get sensitized to some other part of the omicron variant that is shared with others?
So anyway, the big question that I haven't seen answered anywhere is, "does omicron confer immunity to other variants?"
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Looking at south african data it seems this variant is less dangerous than the Delta variant so I'm not quite sure why there's a febrile panic that seems to be emanating from governments about this. A fast spreading mild variant is surely a good thing as it'll bring immunity even to the anti vaxxers whether they want it or not.
There is no indication yet, catching this variant will protect you from Delta.
It may not 'vaxx' them. You might just as easily end up catching both. Too early to tell.
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A fast spreading mild variant is surely a good thing
Mildness is good. It is also good that it displaces more severe variants, as long as they induce mutual immunity.
The problem is that Omicron may spread faster than our medical facilities can cope.
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If it really is as mild as its seem they probably won't have much to cope with.
Re:Note "with", not "of" (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's the fact that serious illness and death follow with a significant delay. With 50% day-on-day exponential growth, the huge majority of cases that you see are fresh ones that haven't become serious YET.
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Well, not recently, anyway. Seems to me that the K-T event was an asteroid hitting the Earth. And Vredefort, of course. Meteor Crater in AZ. In descending order of size.
And that's not even counting the ones that we can't find because they've been sucked into a subduction zone long before a bunch of mostly hairless apes decided to make books about that sort of thing.
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UK Stats are very vague. (Score:3, Informative)
We have two problems with the UK reporting of Covid deaths.
Firstly there is “with not of”. Say you have a massive stroke, and are admitted to hospital for what is pretty much end of life care. While you are dying, you catch Covid in the hospital. You are now a Covid statistic. You died “with Covid”. I know someone who actually died of liver cancer 6 months ago - they caught Covid in the hospice, and were chalked up as a Covid victim.
Secondly there is the “28 days”. You could get a positive Covid test, recover, and then be run over by a car three weeks later. Congratulations, you died of Covid. When you think of the natural death rate for very elderly people, the chance of them dying in a 28 day period is certainly non-zero.
I’m absolutely not saying that this isn’t serious and that people don’t die of it - it is, and they do. But the headline numbers in the UK are misleading.
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This applies to basically all the statistics we see world-wide. As I have repeatedly stated, there is zero sense in measuring anything other than the increase in death rate over-all.
Then we have a problem with interpreting that data, because, as has been noted, the pre-pandemic death rate dropped rather suddenly (not hugely, but enough to fuck up the statistics) for about 2 or 3 years prior to the pandemic. This means we should have expected an increase in death rate anyway - especially with a dramaticall
Re:UK Stats are very vague. (Score:4, Insightful)
The number of deaths recorded as with covid-19 and the excess deaths above the average for the time of year are roughly the same
The within 28 days is to try and eliminate people who died with not of
The stats say the numbers are accurate (at least in the UK)
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The number of deaths recorded as with covid-19 and the excess deaths above the average for the time of year are roughly the same
Hmm, that might be the case but it is a suspicious coincidence. For example, during previous lockdowns, there were less deaths from people travelling about. Similarly we would expect some higher level of deaths from reduced primary care. I can't see how using excess deaths can avoid the accuracy issues that the 28 day definition gives.
I recall the ONS did a study on cause of death and did find the numbers overestimated deaths from COVID but I can't remember by how much. However, their rationale for continui
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*Due to Covid induced brain fog making you wander into traffic.
Whereas if the same thing happens on day 29. Phew, it wasn't covid.
*Substitute any long covid related death.
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And the statistics doesn't count case
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While the numbers may not be perfect, they do at least provide a simple and internationally comparable number we can look at. Even if it's +/-10k deaths, that's still a lower range of around 135k and upper range of around 155k. It's bad either way.
If anything, the 28 rule tends to reduce the numbers. COVID does long term damage to many people, and particularly if they are frail or have other health problems it can lead to a significant shortening of their life, but still be outside the 28 day limit.
It also
Conspiracy theory is very poor. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have two problems with the UK reporting of Covid deaths.
Firstly there is “with not of”. Say you have a massive stroke, and are admitted to hospital for what is pretty much end of life care. While you are dying, you catch Covid in the hospital. You are now a Covid statistic. You died “with Covid”. I know someone who actually died of liver cancer 6 months ago - they caught Covid in the hospice, and were chalked up as a Covid victim.
Secondly there is the “28 days”. You could get a positive Covid test, recover, and then be run over by a car three weeks later. Congratulations, you died of Covid. When you think of the natural death rate for very elderly people, the chance of them dying in a 28 day period is certainly non-zero.
I’m absolutely not saying that this isn’t serious and that people don’t die of it - it is, and they do. But the headline numbers in the UK are misleading.
Sorry, but that is utter bullshit.
If you die of blunt force trauma your death will be listed as blunt force trauma regardless of if you had COVID.
You're parroting an old and utterly stupid conspiracy theory. First consider that the number of medical professionals that would be required to lie about people dying from deaths unrelated to COVID being listed as COVID. Not a single one of them has come out and said it. If they did, they'd be lauded as heroes. Also you clearly don't know any medical professionals, they have trouble keeping their opinions to themselves, especially if they've been asked to do something they'd consider wrong or unethical.
Beyond the medical professionals, the number of administrators in multiple organisations, the NHS (National Health Service), ONS (Office for National Statistics) and the Tory Party itself come to mind who'd also have to be in on this plan to make every death a COVID death... not a single whistleblower has come forth.
The reason it is "with", not "of" is simple. The cause of death is going to be listed as something like a respiratory failure because that is the actual condition that killed you... a respiratory failure in someone with COVID 19... You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to determine COVID was the underlying cause of that one.
Now if there is any ambiguity, the case will be referred for a post mortem. Most post mortems can be performed without cutting the body open.
So I find it very hard to believe that someone who had a motorcyle accident and died of their injuries is going to be listed as a COVID death.
https://www.bmj.com/content/37... [bmj.com] - As I said, medical professionals tend not to hold back when they think what you're saying is BS.
Unfortunately (Score:2)
So there is this one death comes from a case that was infected quite a while ago. With the exponential growth, and the number of deaths being based on the infections of three weeks ago, the danger will be always underestimated. I think we are aiming in the UK at everyone who is unvaccinated being infected in late Ja
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The average British person doesn't understand exponential growth.
What I find weird is how nobody seems to 'understand' exponential growth. If we still had exponential growth from the other variants, there would be more virus than atoms on the planet right now.
The SIR model is only asymptotically exponential during the very earliest part of the curve. After that it stops being exponential at an increasing rate. Indeed, for the bulk of the curve's cycle it is closer to linear than exponential. So it is quite bizarre when people keep trying to doom and gloom the exponential
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Much ado about...not very much... (Score:2, Insightful)
One death from Omicron, in a country of over 60 million, makes the news? Seriously? I understand the media wants to keep those clicks coming, but this is ridiculous...
Corona is a serious disease, but - now that we have effective vaccinations - it's time for life to return to (mostly) normal.
Also: WTF is this doing on Slashdot? Is there absolutely nothing happening in the tech world? No new release of iOS, no attacks using log4shell? No NFT heists?
Re:Much ado about...not very much... (Score:5, Insightful)
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the majority of whom had the first two vaccinations
Hmm ... kinda important fact neglected by the other commenters here?
"I only care about the vaccinated, let the unvaccinated die!"
"Um, they are vaccinated."
"Um ... Trump Trump Fox News something something!"
(and I post this as someone with two shots back in March/April)
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(and I post this as someone with two shots back in March/April)
In many places you wouldn't count as vaccinated anymore...
You should get a booster.
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One death from Omicron, in a country of over 60 million, makes the news?
bradley13's post from the 5th of March, 2020:
"One death from COVID-19, in a country of over 60 million, makes the news?"
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One death from Omicron, in a country of over 60 million, makes the news? Seriously? I understand the media wants to keep those clicks coming, but this is ridiculous...
Corona is a serious disease, but - now that we have effective vaccinations - it's time for life to return to (mostly) normal.
Also: WTF is this doing on Slashdot? Is there absolutely nothing happening in the tech world? No new release of iOS, no attacks using log4shell? No NFT heists?
Firstly it's bioscience, which is of interest to quite a few nerds. Secondly, as a UK resident, we like to be informed about this. We don't have regular mass shootings or insurrections so we can afford to have more variety to our news. We also don't tend to panic, we know it's a single death at this juncture. The only one's panicking are the conspiracy theorist loons who are trying to say it's the second comming of Iosif Hitler or something equally daft, the rest of us are happy simply to be informed on th
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That's the way its been around here for a good while now....and we never did lockdowns, etc.
Pretty much no one wears a mask anymore, except the elderly here and there and of course still mandated on US domestic flights.
But for the most part, my life and most of those I know have been pretty much normal since getting vaccine last April.
Who died? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to know who died. What age, what comorbidities are there, and their general health state.
Why was this article a 20 minute read, and not one mention of "WHO" exactly is this one person that they know he, or she, died from the new strain?
Not even in passing?
Re:Who died? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. As it was *with* COVID, we do not even know if the virus caused the death or whether it just happened to be present by coincidence.
I get the feeling that although the public statement was literally true, a lot of what we are hearing from the Govt. is to try and coerce as many people as possible to get vaccinated/boosted so we can return to some semblance of normality. If I was in charge, I admit I would be giving serious consideration to these kind of tactics. Also, will Omicron be the last variant of concern? Who knows, but the better vaccinated a population is, the more likely it is to be able to withstand any further epidemics...
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It doesn't really matter. Omicron will become the dominant variant in a few weeks, many more people will die. The first isn't really very interesting, only the data from thousands of deaths.
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I would like to know who died. What age, what comorbidities are there, and their general health state.
Why? If you're going to excuse a death away surely you can do it already some other way.
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I would like to know who died. What age, what comorbidities are there, and their general health state.
Why was this article a 20 minute read, and not one mention of "WHO" exactly is this one person that they know he, or she, died from the new strain?
Not even in passing?
This is because you have a right to privacy here in the UK, as does your family.
So unless it's under specific conditions (I.E. a conviction (where the court has not ordered the name withheld), in the public interest and a few others), news publications are expected to give the person their privacy and can be sued for not doing so. So papers can report what happened but are expected not to name and shame.
aka (Score:2)
Re:aka (Score:4, Informative)
not a single person has died *from* the Omicron variant? Because if they could say otherwise, they would.
Or alternatively "government cover up, they are only counting people who were sequenced with omicron, there are lots of other deaths of people who weren't sequenced not included". Most positive samples aren't suitable for genetic sequencing and most samples that are don't get sequenced. Especially early in Omicron they weren't looking for any particular signal in the PCR tests so they will have missed many.
The honest truth is that this is a COVID death by the UK standard quick measure of COVID deaths (died within 28 days of a positive test). That's not perfect in either direction but we also have a slow measure by the ONS based on death certificates and the 28 days method has been shown to be a bit of an underestimate but pretty good and pretty much reflective of deaths. Instead of spreading paranoia and misinformation, please either make sure you get a statistics education then read up in detail or start listening to people who have.
WITH, not OF Omicron (Score:2)
Unsurprising (Score:2)
set aside the idea Omicron was a milder variant? (Score:2)
Johnson said "they should set aside the idea that Omicron was a milder variant"
What an asinine thing to say. This is why people no longer trust government.
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Johnson said "they should set aside the idea that Omicron was a milder variant"
What an asinine thing to say. This is why people no longer trust government.
So where is your peer reviewed study Mr expert?
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It doesn't require a peer reviewed study to get his attitude ... 'shut up and do as you're told'
Re:Still haven't seen any omicron mortality rates (Score:4, Interesting)
But I suspect they are much lower than Delta
Indeed. According to the statistics in TFS, Omicron is 20% of cases but 5% of fatalities.
Part of that may be that many Omicron cases are in the early stages of infection, but still, it appears to be milder.
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Re: Still haven't seen any omicron mortality rates (Score:2)
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20 had it. One died. I'll take my chances.
No, 20% of all cases in GB are Omicron. And GB has many more than just 100 cases total.
Re: Still haven't seen any omicron mortality rate (Score:2)
I knew I read 200k somewhere...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59... [bbc.com]
Re: Still haven't seen any omicron mortality rates (Score:4, Interesting)
20 had it. One died. I'll take my chances.
Deaths follow approximately two weeks after cases. Two weeks ago there were fewer than 20 cases of omicron detected in the UK.
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Dude, D&D, do you even?!
So you accept the chance of ending up pushing daisies on a nat1 of a d20 saving throw?! Without being able to know your constitution modifier, unless *maybe* that it's not negative if you're young enough and you don't have any other illnesses that you know of? Good luck with that...
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Dude, D&D, do you even?!
So you accept the chance of ending up pushing daisies on a nat1 of a d20 saving throw?! Without being able to know your constitution modifier, unless *maybe* that it's not negative if you're young enough and you don't have any other illnesses that you know of? Good luck with that...
I just lost a good friend over the weekend. A great guy, but he played the odds. Early 50's, in good health - yeah, no vaccinations for me - it's just the sniffles.
I guess the good part is he only lasted a week after admission to the hospital. A little less time to suffer.
He leaves behind family and friends who are both sad, and also quite angry at him for choosing a stupid and foolish hill to die on.
It's like seat belts on a car. You may never need them, but if you do, they can save your life.
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Part of that may be that many Omicron cases are in the early stages of infection, but still, it appears to be milder
10 days ago there were 85 infections counted in the UK, yesterday it was 4,700. About 49 out of 50 are in the very early stages. The majority of cases are in the first three days.
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Omicron is also more adept in infecting children - or, at least, making them symptomatic.
As for South Africa, I remember most of the early cases were people already vaccinated - and vaccines have extremely high success against severe COVID forms.
As for detection, it seems it takes a longer time between infection and detection via COViD tests (compared to Delta) - anecdotal evidence, one case from 20+ returned from South Africa tested positive with Omicron 8 days after the return flight.
Re:Still haven't seen any omicron mortality rates (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually the first Omicron fatality - anywhere - I've seen reported.
Why aren't doctors telling us the truth about viral mutation - that mutated strains tend to be less and less powerful?
Maybe because politicians control the narrative, which is sustained by their ability to cause panic in the far-too-compliant masses.
Because it isn't true.
Alpha was worse than the original strain.
So was Beta.
So was Gamma.
So was Delta.
Probably many others also were but got outcompeted by Delta. I'm not sure why you think they weren't all worse.
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This is actually the first Omicron fatality - anywhere - I've seen reported.
Why aren't doctors telling us the truth about viral mutation - that mutated strains tend to be less and less powerful?
Maybe because politicians control the narrative, which is sustained by their ability to cause panic in the far-too-compliant masses.
Because it isn't true.
Alpha was worse than the original strain.
So was Beta.
So was Gamma.
So was Delta.
Probably many others also were but got outcompeted by Delta. I'm not sure why you think they weren't all worse.
Actually delta was less severe (as in terms of hospitalization and deaths per case) but spread much faster.
But overall you're right that it is not automatic that mutations (variants) get less severe. We seriously dodged a bullet with Delta becoming the dominant strain, despite it spreading faster it was less severe in more cases. If something like Beta (AKA the Kent strain) became dominant, that one was much worse than the original strain so we would have seen more death and hospitalization.
So we're h
Re:Still haven't seen any omicron mortality rates (Score:4, Informative)
Actually delta was less severe (as in terms of hospitalization and deaths per case) but spread much faster.
That's not what the wiki says [wikipedia.org]
More spread. More hospitalization. Higher mortality.
If something like Beta (AKA the Kent strain) became dominant, that one was much worse than the original strain so we would have seen more death and hospitalization.
Beta was South Africa.
Alpha was Kent.
Alpha was better at evading vaccinations. So we maybe dodged a bullet with Delta outcompeting it. Delta was still better at everything else but vaccine evasion.
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This is actually the first Omicron fatality - anywhere - I've seen reported.
Why aren't doctors telling us the truth about viral mutation - that mutated strains tend to be less and less powerful?
Maybe because politicians control the narrative, which is sustained by their ability to cause panic in the far-too-compliant masses.
Because they get modded down if they do, and they have families to feed!!! LOL.
But seriously, I did hear some doctors and scientists explain exactly that very early on -- that that's the normal course of these things -- that in order to spread faster, which is to their advantage, viruses have to evolve to become milder, because the worse you have something, the more you stay home, too ill to move, and so it is a dead end for the virus, so evolutionary selection drives the virus to become milder, so it can
Re:Here it comes! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Here it comes! (Score:5, Informative)
Well it did rise from 20% to more than 44% in only 1 paragraph.
"Omicron now represented 20% of cases in England"
"Omicron has risen to more than 44% of cases in London"
London is a subset of England. What this means is that outside of London, Omicron represents less than 20% of cases, so the combined value results in 20%. Basically, it's taken over fastest where the population is most dense.
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Basically, it's taken over fastest where the population is most dense.
Or perhaps it spread in London first because of more connections to the rest of the world.
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With, not "of" Omicron. The headline are careful to make that distinction, and we should, too.
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BOHICA indeed. So far, more people die from choking on peanuts, so lets cancel Christmas and force people to wear masks 24/7 and also while eating (drink with a straw is allowed), since that will reduce the peanut choking deaths.
As I wrote before, most people don't understand exponential growth, and most people don't understand that Covid takes three weeks to kill you.
Re:Here it comes! (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Already concerning is the latest report from Denmark [files.ssi.dk]. Of COVID cases from 22 November to 12 December (cutoff for the report), there's a higher percentage hospitalized with Omicron than other strains - despite:
* The vast majority of the Omicron cases having just been diagnosed very recently, and not having had time to worsen
* The lion's share of Omicron cases being in the 20-29yo group, with few in the high-risk 64+ group.
One offsetting factor, though:
* 24% of the Omicron cases were discovered in hospital >48 hours after admission, and thus the hospitalization may have been for something else. But even still, that only brings the numbers down to "similar" to other strains, and that's before taking into account the two major factors above.
Many officials in South Africa have been pushing hard on this whole "mild" thing (based on anecdotes with no accounting for age, time for conditions to worsen, immortal time bias, or past infection / vax status) because they were mad about the travel bans - often making said "mild" claims just sentences before railing against the travel bans. But there seems little reason to actually suspect it. Furthermore, given how fast it's growing, it would have to be *vastly* milder, by an order of magnitude, to not have a worse wave.
Re:Here it comes! (Score:5, Funny)
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"More infectious but milder" is not an anecdote, but the observations that are coming in from all over the place. It shows up as an increasing disconnect between the number of new cases and the count of new deaths.
Worldwide: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
In your country: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
Re:Here it comes! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's honestly staggering that we're nearly two years into the pandemic and some people STILL don't understand that you don't die the instant you get infected - that there's a multiweek lag, and the faster case growth is, the more dramatic the apparent lag.
Re:Here it comes! (Score:4, Insightful)
(On top of all of the other factors you have to control for, such as age (quite young in this wave so far), comorbidities, previous infection (grown since the last wave), vaccination status (massively grown since the last wave), amount of hospital overloading (outcomes are better the less overloading there is), and about a dozen other things)
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Hell, where I live, we never had any lockdowns.