The editors of the Washington Post are worried about the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2:
The warnings are coming fast and furious. “Tidal wave,†said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant,†said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general. “I’m a lot more alarmed,†said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. A new wave of highly transmissible coronavirus is engulfing the world and will explode soon in the United States. It is vital to grasp what this means and how to respond.
Cases will rise fast. Omicron appears to transmit more rapidly than the delta variant, and it will almost certainly bring more breakthrough infections in people who are already vaccinated. Cornell University shut down its Ithaca, N.Y., campus after a covid-19 outbreak marked by a significant share of omicron cases, including in the fully vaccinated. (Though this omicron outbreak did not bring severe disease.) In South Africa, omicron rapidly overtook the delta variant, and omicron cases appear to be doubling every two days in Britain.
Such rapid transmission demands the United States double down on proven mitigation measures: face masks, distancing and improved ventilation. Rapid spread also poses a potential threat to hospitals already burdened by delta and battered by nearly two years of pandemic. “The sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems,†Dr. Tedros warned. Hospitals must prepare for another onslaught. And, critically, more people must get booster shots.
and insist that we should hope that the variant is a kitten but assume it will be a tiger. Unfortunately, they don’t elaborate on how they would differentiate those two poles or what policies would be put into place assuming it is “a tiger”. My sense is that their alarm encourages state and local leaders to impose (or reimpose) measures which are only effective at temporizing in self-defense.
I also wish we had a much better idea of the actual prevalence of COVID-19. My researches have mostly found models estimating presumed prevalence based on test positivity, mortality, etc. of which I’m skeptical.
I’m getting a booster shot tomorrow. I was skeptical of these when they were first announced — the “waning immunity” justification is not persuasive. More recent studies have shown a qualitatively better immune response with a 16 week delay btw/ first and second doses of an mRNA vaccine than with a 3-4 week delay. The presumed mechanism is affinity maturation.
It should be pointed out that Boris Johnson is facing a Tory rebellion in part based upon his handling of the pandemic and a pivot on vaccine passports.
One piece of bad news and one piece of good news.
Bad news, the preliminary data from Israel is that a 3rd booster also starts waning in efficiency against infections after 3/4 months. It adds to the growing pile of evidence that limited duration of protection against infection is an inherit property to these vaccines.
Good news, worldwide, even with 2 surges of infections in Aug/Sept and now, deaths have not seen a surge. So vaccines + infections are slowly building up population immunity.
I’m just wondering, given the following 3 facts
(1) 90% of hospitalizations continue to be in the 40+ age group.
(2) Vaccines aren’t shown to be very effective at preventing transmission / infections at a society wide level; but effective at preventing hospitalization
(3) There is an upcoming drug that is 70-90% effective against hospitalization
Wouldn’t the right course of action is to focus efforts at rapid frequent testing, mandating vaccines, and quick prescription of drugs to the 40+ age group. I know its political suicide to tell the middle age and the elderly they must be tested, vaccinated while children / youth can resume their lives, but this course of action could reduce hospitalizations by 70-90% while freeing half the population of the NPI burden’s of the pandemic.
Earlier this year, we discussed Trypanophobia, fear of shots. Probably need to think about germaphobia. I think there are a whole lot of people who have a goal of never getting infected with COVID-19, and exhibit a lot of anxiety about the possibility. I think this group tends to have sacrificed a lot to retain their purity and suffer existential dread that it was wasted effort. Also, probably not making a reasonable calculation of risk if vaccinated, including the possibility that the infection might improve immune response further.
@CuriousOnlooker, my comment wasn’t in response to yours, but the purpose of vaccination was to protect against severe disease. Using it to prevent infection is goal-posting moving and impossible over the long term.
A Kitten or a Tiger?
Are you f*cking kidding me? This is more like a dragon. We will be lucky to live to see CO2 destroy the Earth in eight years.
This is about power, and those with power will try to keep their power as long as possible.
The Brits presently believe that a resumption of fullscale lockdowns is imminent.
@PD Shaw.
You get to the crux of the matter. Preventing infection is the only explanation for universities like Cornell to go full remote-learning again.
1) There seem to be a lot of breakthrough infections with omicron for both people who have been vaccinated and those with a prior infection so dont think we know how much Omicron will do for us.
2) Lots of hospital systems are already overloaded even before we have a lot of omicron. Wont take a lot more hospitalizations to tilt some places over. We currently have over 100 pts sitting in the ED who need beds.
Steve
Presently, although there is considerable community spread of the omicron variant here in Illinois, the hospitals are not particularly burdened, cf. here.
State level stats are good but not as helpful right now since what we are seeing is more localized surges. Looking at the bed availability, ICU beds and number of ED holds for our network it is very heavily tilted towards our rural hospitals having more pts, for the size of the hospital, holding more people in the ED. Our northernmost rural hospital is 1/7th the size of our tertiary care, city hospital and is holding more people in the ED. Its ICU is full. They are shipping pts to our more urban places. (Urban being relative for us.) Our more urban place in the poor part of town with lots of Hispanics and blacks is holding almost no one.
Also, so far, this is more of a total bed crunch than ICU.
Steve
Returning to my Illinois example, the link I provided includes data at a finer granularity than the state level.
For reporting purposes the state is divided into 11 regions. If you mouse over each region in the map on that page it shows the ICU and ventilator usage for the area. Scrolling down the page a graphical depiction of the ICU and ventilator usage is shown. Bottom line: there’s a lot of ICU usage but very little of it is related to COVID-19.
In the left sidebar there is a link “Region Metrics”. On that page there is a map. If you click on one of the regions in that map, it shows hospital bed availability for that region. COVID-19 patients are increasing but so are non-COVID-19 patients.
For our home viewers, there are two words left out of most ICU numbers cited – staffed & because.
The number of staffed ICU beds is always less than the total number of actual ICU beds. Hospitals staff beds as needed, and therefore, ICU beds are always close to 100%.
A patient in the ICU with COVID is not the same as a patient in the ICU because of COVID. So, a person is in the ICU because of a car accident, but he/she is in the ICU with COVID.
Also, the death counts are for people who had few years to live, and few of the people saved will live long enough to experience the upcoming economic carnage.