Coronavirus Covid-19 - opšta tema

[Malkmus]

Nije mu dugo trebalo.

 

Ljubljana -- Slovenija je potvrdila prvi slučaj podvrste omikron soja BA.2, saopštila je šefica nacionalne laboratorije Tjaša Žohar Cretnik.

 

 

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(Zlurad napisao)

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Sa druge strane u Nemačkoj već 2 mesecima nema nikakvih velikih okupljanja, zakoni su prilično strogi za okupljanja, restorane, prevoz (po tramvajima, sbanovima upada prilično često kontrola i proverava da li si vakcinisan ili testiran da bi mogao da se voziš) 

Jbt, koliko smo mi decenijama iza normalnih država.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Malkmus

[gone fishing]

iza dežele smo 30 a iza švabije 100 godina

[mackenzie]

23 hours ago, vememah said:

Danska vs SAD: praktično isti rast udela omikrona, ali broj umrlih u SAD je trenutno 2,3x veći iako imaju osetno manje slučajeva zato što su daleko slabije vakcinisani.

 

The U.S. adult obesity rate stands at 42.4 percent

It is estimated that 10 –13% of the Danish population is overweight,

[vememah]

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Omicron variant of COVID may be the most contagious virus to ever exist, scientists say
The only rival for omicron in terms of known contagious viruses is the measles

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been undeniably bad, the extremely contagious omicron variant is setting scientific records. The mutant SARS-CoV-2 variant came seemingly out of nowhere, continues to have unknown origins and has so far spawned several ominous relatives including the so-called "Son of Omicron."

Now, scientists have revealed something particularly disturbing: The omicron variant is either the first or second most contagious virus known to humanity, depending on how you measure it.

The slight uncertainty between gold and silver place depends on how you define "most contagious of all time." If you do so by measuring the speed at which a disease spreads throughout the planet, then omicron is the clear winner.

"You can have an extraordinarily contagious virus, we see that right now with COVID," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Salon. "COVID is approaching the contagiousness of the virus that we think is the most contagious ever studied, namely the measles."

The measles virus was long considered the gold standard for contagiousness. The virus has a reproductive number (R0) that varies between 3.7 to 203.3, meaning that one infected person is apt to infect between 3.7 and 203.3 people. In the sixteenth century, two-thirds of the indigenous population of Cuba was killed by the disease.

Other scientists concurred with Schaffner's conclusion that is is approaching the contagiousness of measles.

"Omicron is certainly the most rapidly spreading virus among the ones we have been able to investigate at this level of detail," Dr. William Hanage, an epidemiologist and the co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University, told El Pais. 

As PolitiFact succinctly explained, "When measuring the speed of global spread, the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is the fastest in history, experts say." Yet things get murkier when you define contagiousness by how quickly a disease spreads between individuals. At that point, it starts facing steep competition from measles.

"One of the things about Omicron that is very different from all of the other variants of this COVID virus is that its transmissibility efficiency is at least twice what any of the other strains of this COVID virus has been," Deborah Hayes, president and CEO of The Christ Hospital, said during a briefing with reporters earlier this month. "It is a virus that spreads almost as, if not as, easily as measles."

Some argue that omicron does indeed spread faster and easier than measles. Dr. Roby Bhattacharyya, a physician and infectious disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital, told El Pais that omicron has an advantage over measles because of how it spreads. If you look at the amount of time which elapses between a person becomes infectious and the people they infect also become infectious, that takes an average of 12 days for the measles and only four or five days for omicron.

"One case of measles would cause 15 cases within 12 days. One case of omicron would give rise to another six at four days, 36 cases at eight days and 216 after 12 days," Bhattacharyya pointed out. This makes omicron unusually infectious even when compared to the measles — and certainly quite infectious if compared to the previous SARS-CoV-2 viruses that caused COVID-19.

"Omicron's reproductive number (R0) is estimated to be as high as 10, second only to the extremely infectious measles, mumps, pertussis, and varicella," Vanderbilt University's Dr. Sanjay Mishra and Dr. Jeremy Warner wrote in The Cancer Letter. "This compares to R0 of 2.5 for the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and ~5 for delta. Because this number is an exponential coefficient, a "doubling" of R0 portends for an extreme jump in infectiousness."

Even after omicron has left the scene, there are still lingering conditions for new mutant viruses like omicron to emerge.

"It's a certainty," Dr. William Haseltine, a biologist renowned for his work in confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, fighting anthrax and advancing knowledge of the human genome, told Salon earlier this month when asked if other variants should be expected. "It's not a fear. There will be more variants. It is as close to a certainty as you can get."

 

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/27/omicron-variant-of-may-be-the-most-contagious-to-ever-exist-scientists-say/

[vememah]

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Deepti Gurdasani

28 tweets • 7 min read

Really worried about the direction things are moving in globally. BA.2 and BA.1.1. seem to be sweeping to dominance in different regions rapidly. Pandemic growth has also resumed in many places including England, & more recently Gauteng. A thread looking at the current evidence.

Remember that the virus is continuously mutating and evolving. There are 4 sublineages of omicron currently identified BA.1, BA.2, BA.3, and BA.1.1. There are several differences between these. e.g. BA.1.1 has the R346K mutation additional to BA.1.

BA.2 differs on several positions. An important one for detection is the deletion that allowed us to initially detect omicron on some PCR tests as 'spike gene drop out' or SGTF. This means that BA.2 will *not* appear as SGTF (unlike BA.1 that does) 

BA.2 is now growing to dominance rapidly against a BA.1 background in many parts of the world - Denmark and Gauteng (where it is dominant now)- suggesting it has a growth advantage over BA.1. It has rapidly gained dominance in Denmark, where cases continue to rise.

Data from Denmark appear to suggest a considerable growth advantage - potentially 1.5 fold of BA.2 over BA.1. This will mean faster pandemic growth, and make it harder to contain this even with NPIs.

In Norway, *both* BA.2 and BA.1.1 seem to be rising against a BA.1 background - which is declining. This will be an important context to understand the relative advantages of BA.2 and BA.1.1 against each other given BA.1.1 is rapidly rising in the US as well.

BA.2 has become dominant in Gauteng, where cases
are rising again (just 2 months after the omicron outbreak).

In England BA.2 rising rapidly. B.1.1 has also been rising, but looks lie BA.2 is outcompeting all (not visible on this graph but can be seen in the SGTF ONS data in the linked tweet) - ~5.5% of cases and rising.

In the US, BA.1 seems to be being rapidly replaced by BA.1.1 in some states

So what we're seeing is newer sublineages of omicron outcompeting previous ones. The advantage of one over the other is unclear- it could be 1) escape (i.e. BA.2 or BA.1.1 escape immunity better) or 2) transmissibility 

The UKHSA data suggests vaccine efficacy is similar for BA.1 & BA.2 - this means that at least vaccines against the original virus are similarly protective against BA.1 and BA.2 (i.e. much lower VE than delta, but not different between the 2 sublineages)

Of course this doesn't really tell us about the protection to BA.2 infection among those who very recently got infected with BA.1. It'll be important to understand this, but it is possible that the advantage is being driven by increase in intrinsic transmissibility 

Overall, this isn't good- what we're seeing is rapid adaptation, and emergency of sublineages, fitter than the original, which means it becomes very hard to contain the pandemic, as the virus gets fitter. Bizarrely we're easing mitigations in England in the middle of this! 

Drops in cases have plateaued in England and cases are now at ~100K/day. And BA.2, which seems to have a significant growth advantage is rising to dominance, just as we have dropped plan B measures and school mitigations. What could possible go wrong? 

To make things worse, UKHSA vaccine report paints a dire picture with vaccine efficacy, even for severe disease waning significantly over time. Remember that a reduction in vaccine efficacy 96% to 88% (Delta 2 dose vs omicron booster) was a 3x increase in risk. 

Now, it seems that protection even against hospitalisation wanes even further at 10+ weeks. While 70-80% protection sounds great, remember this is a *huge* reduction from where we were with delta, and will have significant impact on hospitalisation rates at population level.

Protection against infection is even lower, and wanes even more. Even protection against mortality appears to wane, but lots of uncertainty around these estimates so need to be viewed with caution.

Overall, we seem to be in a continuing pandemic, with very high case numbers, 1,800 COVID-19 deaths/wk (no sign of these reducing yet). And fitter lineages on track to become dominant in the coming weeks, at the point we've eased all mitigations and cases are at 100K/day. 

The situation is dire across the world after all the claims of 'mildness' and endemicity. You just need to look across Europe, the US, and Israel to see that the cases have sadly translated into many people who have been severely ill and thousands of preventable deaths. 

In the middle of this bizarrely much of the media is talking about the pandemic as if it's over, when in fact there doesn't appear to be an end in sight - at least in much of the Western world which has massively screwed up it's response. 

To the 'but it's mild' cabal, unfortunately the sheer numbers of cases are translating to severe pressures on health systems and increase in the number of preventable deaths, as many of us said would happen (but were ignored).

Rather than acknowledging we need to adapt to this quickly by putting in place long-term measures like better ventilation, changing the way we work (more working from home), high grade masks in indoor & crowded spaces, we're continuing to be in denial. 

We can contain this- this is an airborne virus. Many countries have done this far more successfully than we have. But the biggest threat we face now isn't SARS-CoV-2. It's denial that we need change and long-term solutions. Denial will prolong the pandemic and kill many more. 

We need a suppression strategy. This level of illness, death, mass disruption of healthcare systems and education isn't something we can and should live with. We can do so much better. Why aren't we? We're still continuing to rely solely on vaccines even as we watch efficacy wane 

Every time a new variant of concern emerges our vaccines become less and less robust and durable, but we're doing nothing to manage the huge uncertainty associated with this. We need suppression strategies. Countries that have done this are doing *much* better. 

This is really the only way of 'living with it' that's sustainable and feasible. It's better for health, economy, society. Why aren't we doing this? An appeal to journalists- please stop platforming deniers. 

We need solutions, but we can't even discuss these if the narrative is 'it's over'. We need to move on from this part of narrative to discussing long-term solutions, but that needs us to stop normalising what is a pandemic and a crisis, so we can act. 

If you believe 'it's over', just look around you- talk to healthcare workers, teachers, parents, those living with long COVID, carers, clinically vulnerable people, frontline workers. It isn't over. Not by a long shot. 

 

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1487070531702693891.html

 

[vememah]

[vememah]

[vememah]

Nevakcinisani:

 

80+:
delta: 11,6%
omikron: 4,8%

za 59% manja smrtnost od omikrona nego od delte

 

60-79:
delta: 3,9%
omikron: 1,8%

za 54% manja smrtnost od omikrona nego od delte

 

Potpuno vakcinisani po osnovnom protokolu bez bustera:

 

80+:
delta: 4,7%, za 59% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih
omikron: 2,4%, upola manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih

za 49% manja smrtnost od omikrona nego od delte

 

60-79:
delta: 0,9%, za 77% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih
omikron: 0,4%, za 78% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih

za 56% manja smrtnost od omikrona nego od delte

 

Potpuno vakcinisani po osnovnom protokolu sa busterom:

 

80+:
delta: 3,8%, za 67% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih
omikron: 0,75%, za 84% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih

za 80% manja smrtnost od omikrona nego od delte

 

60-79:
delta: 1%, za 74% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih, čak nešto veća nego kod onih koji nisu primili buster, verovatno u granicama statističke greške
omikron: 0,1%, za 94% manja smrtnost nego kod nevakcinisanih

za 90% manja smrtnost od omikrona nego od delte

 

Zaključci: nevakcinisani i nebusterovani stariji od 60 umiru 50-60% manje nego što su umirali od delte, busterovani stariji od 60 umiru za 80-90% manje, buster za deltu nije značajan kod 60-79, a kod 80+ donosi malo smanjenje smrtnosti. Za razliku od toga, buster kod omikrona donosi vrlo značajno smanjenje smrtnosti u odnosu na samo osnovni protokol vakcinacije.

 

Edit: i još jedan način prikaza istih rezultata:

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by vememah

[vememah]

 

[vememah]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by vememah

[vememah]

 

[Gylfi]

@vememah jedan od heroja pandemije.

[MrIncredible]

Ja verujem da je u pitanju AI.

[Module]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/29/long-covid-study-finds-abnormality-in-lungs-that-could-explain-breathlessness

 

[vememah]