2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2833307 16-Dec-2021 10:55

MikeB4:

sbiddle:

Everybody who's unvaxxed or not triple dosed with a booster (and even many of them possibly will do also) will get Omicron.. And then it's literally going to die out.

We're probably going to hit 50% of the worlds total cases being Omicron within a few days, and that's only going to accelerate.

What are your citations for that?

Earlier in the week the UK believed that Omicron case numbers at present were around 200,000 per day - which even on Tuesday was being laughed at by many. Today's new record official case numbers of 78,610 which are the highest of the pandemic so far are potentially showing that to be accurate due to lag. The spread is very clear just exponential once it starts and will be exactly the same in NZ once it arrives here.

Current global case numbers have been sitting at around 600,000 per day b ut have skyrocketed this week, and so far places like the UK can't even sequence cases fast enough to know what is and what isn't Omicron (official identified Omicron is around 10% of cases). 50% might even be on the low side within a week.

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bazzer

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#2833309 16-Dec-2021 10:57

Sup:

Batman:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/omicron-wave-covid-19-vaccine-pfizer-protection-hospitalisation-2378801

JOHANNESBURG: Two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine appear to have given 70 per cent protection against hospitalisation in South Africa in recent weeks, a major real-world study on the potential impact of Omicron showed on Tuesday (Dec 14), as the country battles a spike in infections linked to the new variant.

If this is accurate in a primarily vaccinated country like us, or say Australia....where there is less natural immunity.....thirty percent of infections needing hospital care would mean a very big number.

I don't think that is what that means. Without vaccination, not every infection leads to hospital care (I don't know what that number is). With vaccination, there is a further 70% reduction in hospitalisation.

MikeB4

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#2833311 16-Dec-2021 11:04

If your statement is accurate, then logic tells us that the government should not be even thinking about opening our international border. If they think we can "live" with Covid they are dreaming, decades of severe mismanagement of our health services means we cannot deal with it. The ministers has handed out some lose change this week which is too little (no pun intended) too late.

Sup

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#2833315 16-Dec-2021 11:14

frankv:

sbiddle:

Everybody who's unvaxxed or not triple dosed with a booster (and even many of them possibly will do also) will get Omicron.. And then it's literally going to die out.

Depends on your definition of "get", I suppose. Certainly everyone will be exposed to it at some point. Just like with Delta and other variants, vaccination is not 100% effective at preventing infection, so many will be weakly-to-asymptomatically infected, a few will need hospitalisation. A few of the many will get multiple infections, because infection is also not 100% effective at preventing re-infection. Probably some other mutations after Omicron will prove to be viable enough to become "variants of concern" and therefore get a Greek letter.

Interesting arguments today around the virus burning out due to herd immunity being generated rappidly by Omicron.

I am glad someone mentioned mutation of omicron, I don't want to be the messenger that gets shot first.

What does more cases mean people? It means enhanced rate of mutation. Which means if you are hoping the virus burns out, you are banking on this happening via a exponential number of opportunities for replication errors...and environmental pressure.

Viruses do burn out, we know this already, and or they create massive pools of herd immunity, so it is possible. But I do not like the way Covid 19 behaves generally, so I kind of expect this thing will keep going until we learn a new strategy. Perhaps we will need to release the patents eventually on a wide range of these technologies and treat whole countries in a systematized way with not just vaccines, but other therapeutics.

It seems we need to slow the train down first, massively reduce the rate of mutation. That will take a coordinated effort and some radical strategy.

That seems idealistic however such things are possible after years and years of plague.

Just keep swimming...

trig42

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#2833319 16-Dec-2021 11:20

I'm just hoping this thing mutates itself to the point it becomes another 'cold'.

How contagious is the common cold that we all get every year (though, I haven't had a cold for two years now - thanks to lockdowns)?

Sup

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#2833326 16-Dec-2021 11:35

bazzer:

I don't think that is what that means. Without vaccination, not every infection leads to hospital care (I don't know what that number is). With vaccination, there is a further 70% reduction in hospitalisation.

Thanks for the fact check bazzer you are quite right, that post is fundamentally flawed by not taking into account things like people who do not get omicron at all.

Just keep swimming...

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#2833383 16-Dec-2021 11:50

might get approval for the 5-11 vaccine before christmas https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300479496/covid19-medsafe-approval-for-pfizer-for-511s-could-come-within-days

hopefully along with when you can book for it

Sup

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#2833384 16-Dec-2021 11:51

trig42:

I'm just hoping this thing mutates itself to the point it becomes another 'cold'.

How contagious is the common cold that we all get every year (though, I haven't had a cold for two years now - thanks to lockdowns)?

Corona viruses that cause the common cold are highly infectious. We don't even know if some of these sniffles you get more than one time in any given year are the same virus, because we do not do surveillance testing.

Some people have cold symptoms four times a year. I know I have had multiple colds in a year.

We can always hope it gets milder. There is no selection pressure to do so. By the time your immune system beats Covid....it has already spread elsewhere / served its prime directive to use Star Trek lingo.

While we are in a science fiction themed conversation here....Covid does not care if it makes us seriously ill or we die from it, because it has already spread...there is no evolutionary pressure to change that behavior.

The idea of viruses becoming milder is largely over inflated. Most do not. We are surrounded by dozens of viruses that have stayed the same for a millennia. What changes is our immunity to some viruses, not so much the viruses themselves. The Rabbit virus myxomatosis is an example of a virus becoming milder...but we have HIV, West Nile, Ebola, Hepatitis, Cholera, and lots and lots of others that are just as nasty now as they ever were.

What would be interesting, if somewhat unethical, would be to see what happens if you dropped a cold Coronavirus on a naive population like the Sentinelese people and see whether the 'common' cold wipes out half the population.

Just keep swimming...

wellygary

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#2833385 16-Dec-2021 11:56

Batman:

might get approval for the 5-11 vaccine before christmas https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300479496/covid19-medsafe-approval-for-pfizer-for-511s-could-come-within-days

hopefully along with when you can book for it

Nah, Medsafe is just step one...

There is a few more steps before Cabinet to approve its roll out.. its at that stage they will announce the booking process,

Rikkitic

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#2833398 16-Dec-2021 12:37

Sup:

What would be interesting, if somewhat unethical, would be to see what happens if you dropped a cold Coronavirus on a naive population like the Sentinelese people and see whether the 'common' cold wipes out half the population.

Isn't that what happened to indigenous Americans after European explorers arrived? I think something similar also happened in Polynesia.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Oblivian

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#2833409 16-Dec-2021 13:06

Our bets are off for a bit...

From today the Ministry of Health is changing the way it gathers and releases the daily case 1pm updates.

This includes changing the time frames which daily case numbers cover. It is now going to a model to cover from midnight to midnight, as opposed to the previous 9am-9am model.

So a 'model. That we will know finites for up till the midnight. But still need to wait 11hrs to hear about. /headscratch/

KrazyKid

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#2833419 16-Dec-2021 13:16

The cut-off time may be midnight, but they ministry still won't get those results collated until the next morning after someone starts work.
Then they write the Press Release, add in the vax details, public health messages etc etc

12 hours lag is not to bad when it is really 4-5 working hours.

Scott3

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#2833420 16-Dec-2021 13:17

NSW:

1742 daily cases reported today:

"Admitted to hospital" has jumped a little. 192 reported today - has been sitting in the 150 - 166 ballpark for a while prior to this.

Scott3

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#2833426 16-Dec-2021 13:23

Medsafe provisional approval for pfizer vacicne in 5 - 11 year old's granted:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/127301508/covid19-pfizer-approved-for-children-aged-511

Still targeting to start the roll out before the end of Jan.

We are going to get the pediatric doses, rather than drawing less from adult doses.

Scott3

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#2833433 16-Dec-2021 13:31

Today case numbers:

Fifty-eight people are in hospital with Covid-19 and there are 91 new cases in the Delta outbreak.

There are new cases in Auckland (55), Waikato (7), Bay of Plenty (10), Lakes (1), Taranaki (16).

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300479721/covid19-58-people-in-hospital-four-in-intensive-care

Continued days below 100 cases are great given it is not the 14th day since we moved to the protection framework.

Overall trend seems to be declining cases in Auckland, and comparatively increasing cases in other regions. Given the very high vaccination rates in Auckland It seems probable this trend will continue.

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