Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

cow451 said:

Get vaccinated, use reasonable precautions and live.

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This. (Although the specifics will depend on what the rules are in one's country and the availability of vaccines.) I'm vaccinated and boosted (and will get vaccinated again if that seems like a good idea). We just had a half dozen people over for Thanksgiving (an American holiday). I go to work and to the store. I wear a good mask in stores and on mass transit, and I wear a mask if I'm with others at work (required by my workplace), where I also test myself once a week (also required).

We should continue to expect variants, and they will spread as fast as planes can fly and to the extent that people do or do not get vaccinated and take proper precautions. IOW, it is likely here to stay.

What happens when they run out of letters from the Greek alphabet?

Martinius said:

We should continue to expect variants, and they will spread as fast as planes can fly and to the extent that people do or do not get vaccinated and take proper precautions. IOW, it is likely here to stay.

What happens when they run out of letters from the Greek alphabet?

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We start with a list of EX President’s names.

godleadyoursoul said:

Some of you are way too hysterical. It's ironic how all of a sudden people care so much about death, yet people were dyting every single day prior to covid, and unless it's somebody close, nobody cares.. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T care, but we can't just stay in lock down forever, and then what happens when the next pandemic hits? do we just do this all over again? Even the premier where I live is saying we need to live with it and move on.. not that that's what's going to happen of course, but it just shows that at least some high ups know what we should be doing.

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This is disengenous, we already do what we can in many ways to help those dying from other things, also if your dying of covid only killed you and didn't fill hospitals it be a bit less severe a problem. The problem is while your dying your infecting other people and potentially killing those that needed treatment.

cow451 said:

We start with a list of EX President’s names.

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I have a feeling that Covdi19 Trump could be a game ender.

cow451 said:

We start with a list of EX President’s names.

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Interestingly, they skipped Nu because it can be confused with "new". and they skipped Xi because it is a common surname.

Tanj said:

Interestingly, they skipped Nu because it can be confused with "new". and they skipped Xi because it is a common surname.

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It would also require some anti-vaxxers learn to spell “Nu” and “Xi”.

Maybe characters from Harry Potter…..

sfs said:

But viruses don't consistently become less lethal on any kind of time scale that's of interest to us. Smallpox didn't. Measles didn't. And SARS-CoV-2 isn't very lethal to start with, so there's little selection pressure currently. So far all of the successful mutations have made it more dangerous, not less. It would be nice if that changed going forward, of course.

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In this case, so far even the scientist who first sounded the alarm described all of the cases they've seen as "extremely mild".

Thus far, there have been no reported deaths from the new variant
Omicron poses very high global risk, world must prepare -WHO

Fauci seemed to have a somewhat optimistic (albeit, cautiously) tone.
"Despite the unknowns of omicron, Fauci told Biden that he believes "existing vaccines are likely to provide a degree of protection against severe cases of COVID,"

So I think the hope is that, even if there is some vaccine evasion, if the cases of this remain confined to "mild", and vaccines offer some protective benefits on top of that, Omicron may not be the doomsday scenario some are amping it up to be.


Just from my own non-expert opinion, I would say my bigger concern wouldn't be the direct effects of Omicron itself (especially if the cases remain mild or asymptomatic, I guess a popular soccer team in Europe just had 14 people test positive for the variant?, 1 had mild symptoms, the rest were all asymptomatic - not sure of their vaccination stats for the team)...but, rather, if the fact that it's highly transmissible can lead to it fueling further variants that maybe aren't so tame if left to circulate in highly unvaccinated regions.

sfs said:

Instead, it might just reflect major amplification by one or more superspreading events. The phylogenetic tree of the samples that have been sequenced so far suggests that superspreading has played a role, but more data is needed.

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Having seen an updated tree, I no longer think it's likely that a small number of superspreading events explains Omicron's rapid spread. I am not happy about this variant.

godleadyoursoul said:

Now that we're going into a third year with this thing, at what point do we just say screw it and just live with it? it's beyond ridiculous already.

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Woodstock took place in a pandemic. But people were more rational then.

Desk trauma said:

Not when millions of avoidable deaths and the collapse of the medical system are shrugged at.

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What dystopian novel are you reading? Because that's not happening at all. In reality, hospitalizations and deaths are way down, and virtually nothing in Florida. They are higher in the more heavily vaccinated northeast though, interestingly.

Aldebaran said:

At this point, there have been enough patients to make news, and to cause New York to declare a state of emergency. But at the same point in time, doctors have seen enough to say this:

"Most of them are seeing very, very mild symptoms and none of them so far have admitted patients to surgeries. We have been able to treat these patients conservatively at home," she said.
S.African doctor says patients with Omicron variant have "very mild" symptoms

I haven't seen one word about any deaths either.

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Because it is highly contagious, it is prudent to alert countries about the situation. It is not known how severe it will be as the numbers of infected are not enough to make a clear statement. I f it turns out to be in the Delta range, these early warnings will have paid off. If not, then people can whine about being "scared".

If the authorities did nothing and it turned out badly, the same people would be whining about not being told.

RestoreTheJoy said:

What dystopian novel are you reading? Because that's not happening at all. In reality, hospitalizations and deaths are way down, and virtually nothing in Florida. They are higher in the more heavily vaccinated northeast though, interestingly.

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Ummm reality? Been a few places in the US where the systems got overwhelmed, people dying because they had to be transported hundreds of miles to a hospital that had room, people with strokes and such not getting post op treatment they need, cities running out of ambulances, need I go on>?

Some more recent links
Oxford University says no evidence yet that vaccines won't protect against severe disease from Omicron

And in a separate article:
Professor Calum Semple, a microbiologist from the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), struck a note of caution on the worldwide headlines around the new B.1.1.529 variant detected in South Africa

"This is not a disaster, and the headlines from some of my colleagues saying 'this is horrendous' I think are hugely overstating the situation,” Professor Semple told the BBC.

“Immunity from vaccination is still likely to protect you from severe disease. You might get a snuffle or a headache or a filthy cold but your chance of coming into hospital, or intensive care or sadly dying are greatly diminished by the vaccine and still will be going into the future," he said.

Professor Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said it is “too early” to be certain whether the new variant will be able to evade current vaccinations, something unlikely to be known for up to three weeks.

But he said that most of the mutations in Omicron are in the same parts of the spike protein as those in the other variants that have emerged.

“At least from a speculative point of view, we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against a new variant for serious disease, but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed. It’s extremely unlikely that a reboot of a pandemic in a vaccinated population like we saw last year is going to happen,” said Professor Pollard.

England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, told a local government panel that he remained more concerned about the risks posed by existing variants, describing the Delta epidemic as "undoubtedly the principal thing we need to concern ourselves with between now and Christmas".