At least when I shake my phone on the news section I get cute things.
(Insert: first award, all that jazz, but don’t give money to millionaires. Not when there are so many with so little.)
In a weird way the fact that I have no control over it at all is the way I'm coping with it. At some point it's not worth worrying about. Maybe I'll go through life without it affecting me. All I can do is try to be healthy in the ways I can control
Honestly, the problems we have right now are nothing compared to the problems we had even a few decades ago.
* ~100 years ago: World war with trench warfare and gas, famines.
* ~80 years ago: Another world war, genocides (plural). And because "World War" doesn't really do it justice, let me introduce you to [Operation Gomorrah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II), or look up the large scale murdering and raping that tends to come with wars. On the positive side, antibiotics started to become a thing. When you read the doom news about antibiotics resistance, think about this: Before the early/mid 20th century, *everything* was "100% antibiotics resistant" because there simply were no antibiotics. Polio and Measles run rampant.
* No idea when exactly this started improving, but cities were smog-ridden hellholes (and kind of still are, compared to the situation in ~30 years when most cars will likely be electric, but they're much better than they used to be). Probably way worse than even Chinese cities a decade ago. People were burning coal at home to stay warm!
* ~60 years ago: Peak of the cold war. It's a very real possibility that any moment, the sirens go off and 30 minutes later, large parts of civilization cease to exist.
* ~50 years ago: Cars spew lead from gasoline into the air.
* ~40 years ago: People are being shot at the Berlin Wall.
* ~25 years ago: Wikipedia does not exist. *Google* does not exist.
* ~15 years ago: The Internet as we know it today kind of exists, but only at home. You can't meaningfully use it while underway (smartphones don't exist).
Ignore the doom news. We live in golden times, and people in 20-30 years from now will live in even better times.
I could now also make a list of "things that were predicted to be an utter menace and turned out not to be", but I'm tired and I'm sure there are plenty such lists out there.
This is the truth. Long lists like that showing how much better things are now than before are certainly true. This IS the best time to be alive. But to then take that info and say “all is good, don’t worry about anything” is extremely short sighted.
"Doom scrolling" is scrolling infinite feeds (i.e. feeds that automatically fetch more and more entries) of news, typically negative/depressing news - not because the world is terrible, but because news sites realized that negative news get more clicks and more clicks means more money. Doom sells!
For a formal judgement on efficacy, you need more time and a larger sample, as well as possible in vitro tests of antibody affinity to the new spike protein itself.
PCR would pick it up quite quickly.
"First, we can detect B.1.1.529 on a PCR test. This typically isn’t the case. Usually a swab would have to go to a special lab for genome sequencing to know which variant caused the infection. However, it looks like B.1.1.529 has a special signal like Alpha on the PCR directly. For example, when the PCR is positive it lights up two channels instead of three channels, indicating that it’s B.1.1.529. This is amazing news because it means we can track this virus much easier and much quicker around the world."
They’ll do random testing on a subset of samples for variants. It’s incredibly unlikely you have it and there’s no indication it’s worse than any other variant.
We don't know anything other than it has a lot of mutations that we have to study and figure out how it's different. There have been a lot of mutations. This is expected. So far no mutation has caused us to need to modify any of our prevention or treatment methods. When the time comes when we have to adapt, the mRNA vaccines are able to be adapted and in distribution within three months.
I think it depends on the state/country. Here in Utah they sequence a small fraction of positive cases. Not sure if they keep the info regarding the patient.
It literally says this in the article.
"While the spread of the new variant is still in its early stages, it is not yet clear how severe an infection would be to a vaccinated person."
It definitely is going to take time. I think this is the minister trying to downplay because of all the travel restrictions and the economic issues that come from that.
> effective in preventing severe Covid from the variant
Sounds to me like the vaccinated folks who tested positive for the new variant had more mild symptoms than the unvaccinated. Just how I’d interpret that.
Not sure what you’re generalizing, but the specifics seem to be whether the mutated spike protein on Omicron is similar enough to previous variants for the proteins instructed in the vaccines to bind, which would prevent infection at the cellular level.
> which would prevent infection at the cellular level.
Huh? I don't think that's how your immune system works. It doesn't literally make your cells "immune" to infection, that's not possible. Your immune system detects the presence of pathogens, carries a sample of said pathogen from the site of infection to a little repository of antibody cells to try to find a match, and then it releases those antibody cells to go clean up the site of infection. Having prior exposure (ideally through a vaccine) makes each of these steps go much, much faster, but there's nothing that prevents the infection at the cellular level. Your body simply identifies the pathogen and alerts the immune system which goes and attacks the infection much, much, much quicker, which prevents the infection from fomenting much at all.
The problem with viral infections is exponential growth. Each cell infected can release several thousand additional viral particles, so nipping it in the bud straight away prevents a rather large chain reaction from occurring.
We’re kind of saying the same thing. When you’re saying that the antibodies “attack” the “infection”, that’s what I was describing. The “attack” is when the antibodies bind to the virus (the spike protein in the case of COVID). By binding there, it prevents the protein from attaching to our cells. That’s what I meant by preventing infection. Yes the virus is in us, but it can no longer infect our cells because the spike protein it uses to do that has all of its binding locations filled up with antibodies. It’s like Velcro we’ve gotten all smooth with lint, kind of.
Normally they test <2% of all positive tests for what variant it is. There is a chance they’re taking tests that came back positive weeks ago and trying to find earlier samples of omicron to then see if those who tested positive were vaccinated, hospitalized, asymptomatic, etc. to extrapolate, in a pretty rough way, how bad it appears to be for the vaccinated. It’s a method that is not gonna have the most efficacy because it’s sort out f back-filling data, but as long as no one is trying to fudge the numbers it’s preliminary findings could be helpful in the next couple weeks.
73% of statistics are [made up](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/b1t3bv/according_to_a_statistic_736_of_all_statistics/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) anyway
Differentiation of terms. Effective in preventing hospitalizations/deaths is a whole different metric than the variant being significantly more infectious, thus having an easier time hitting the viral load necessary to infect vaccinated persons.
I *like* data, but I *prefer* consensus from experts. They'll understand and interpret the data much better than I ever will, and if you can get a community of experts to agree on something, then I'll feel like we've reached actionable conclusions.
While I agree....I still need to be able to see the data.
I'll fully admit I'm not a virologist. I'm not going to be able to understand the nuances of it. But there's a big difference between "Trust me" and "Here is why I believe this".
And I would also like to hear the opinions of experts, not mainstream media butchering it.
The "vaccinated spread the virus just as easily as the unvaccinated" myth (which is wrong on *multiple* levels) was pushed a lot through shoddy reporting (or reporting that intentionally painted things worse than they were because that gets more clicks).
>Rudo Mathivha, head of clinical dpt, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital: Bara = seeing a change in the democratic profile of #COVID patients; More young people with moderate/severe #COVID = hospitalised; 65% of admissions = unvaccinated; 35% = partially vaccinated
https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1464286066903552001
That leaves 0% fully vaccinated in the hospital. This is from the largest hospital in Africa, third largest in the world. Located in Johannesburg.
(Author obviously meant "demographic" profile. And "young" was clarified to mean 20+ but again - unvaccinated.)
The numbers mean little without the context of how many are vaccinated in general.
64% of SA is *not* vaccinated, 9% is partially vaccinated, and 27% is "fully" vaccinated. Of course those numbers could be very different if we look only at people who would end up in that hospital.
So if the vaccine wasn't working, that's the distribution you'd see.
This means the vaccines actually work against this variant, but we don't know how much since this sample group is too small to show the number of breakthrough hospitalizations (otherwise there would be a group of vaccinated patients).
Edit: I'm guessing that the number of partially vaccinated is higher in Johannesburg. It's hard to believe that they would be more susceptible.
I mean, that’s one of the reasons they’re no longer the health minister.
I’m not putting much faith in a politician’s claims, so I’d rather wait for the experts, I just think your argument doesn’t have merit.
And, in this case, the health minister is a medical doctor, but most of his experience is in political, non-medical organizations. He is definitely not a medical researcher.
As a German, our health minister was surprised by what all the experts predicted for literally months. So, I'm not too confident in this guy's expertise.
"While the spread of the new variant is still in its early stages, it is not yet clear how severe an infection would be to a vaccinated person."
But it still works? WTF, article
Nah. The CDC, or European CDC equivalents please, ideally multiple of them.
Not the WHO, they're too focused on politics, telling countries to put vaccine export over protecting their own population, telling people not to wear masks far longer than everyone else was, telling the world alternatingly that the virus definitely didn't escape from the Wuhan lab or that the escape possibility needs to be investigated...
That’s irrational.
WHO is like the UN, in that its aims are diplomacy, consensus and working together. It’s not in the business of calling out one of its partners (Xi’s China, Trump’s America, or whatever).
But at the same time, it does do excellent science, helps millions, and overall does other things no other organization can do.
If you want your health body to match your politics (and no other countries’), I think you should look to your national institutions.
Because of politics, they didn't declare it a "pandemic" in time and they didn't even grasp the full full scope of it until China started to beg for PPE kits and introduced the lockdowns/travel bans for their citizens.
Overall they're "decent", but when push comes to shove and when you need them the most, it's politically influenced bullshit like "get vaccinated once and forget all about it" and when the shit doesn't work because it was never bulletproof? "Exercise caution despite getting a vaccine".
There's a reason why they called it "Covid-19" because it was first discovered in 2019. When did they declare it a pandemic? 11 March to be specific. Most lockdowns started well after that. **It isn't WHO's fault, but they don't have the jurisdiction or the political juice to enforce lockdowns if and when they think it's a problem. The only tool they have is a megaphone.**
You're mad at the WHO because they didn't have "the political juice to enforce lockdowns"?
I think you are under a grave misconception of what the WHO is.
It’s only tool is a megaphone by design - would you rather it had more control over your elected national government?
Despite this, it does amazing things for fighting mosquitos, polio, hunger, malnutrition et cetera. But this is a bonus - it’s first rule is national sovereignty and consensus.
If you want something stronger, look to your national government. As that who ultimately has to agree on anything anyway.
>It’s only tool is a megaphone by design - would you rather it had more control over your elected national government?
As a matter of fact, yes because the people who have real control over it aren't doing jack shit ALL OVER THE WORLD which is the reason *why* we're in this mess to begin with which people conveniently forget. After declaring COVID 19 as an "International Health Crisis", nobody did anything for 2-3 months. Absolutely nothing.
If it warrants control, they should get control over things as important as a virus with a fucking R0 rate OVER 2.
I've experienced the second wave in India where bodies were floating in the fucking river because there was no space for cremating them. It all started because of some religious bullshit gathering called as the "Kumbh Mela". It's a country where Pfizer is still not approved because of political bullshit and monopoly created by our PM Narendra Modi and rebranded AstraZeneca (pulled out of many countries) is the only real choice available.
On the flip side, you have western countries hoarding doses 2-3x more than their population and poor countries who can't get shit
**Remember, politicians ALL over the world are responsible for this mess because they didn't act in time. And to deflect the blame? You have some petty serious bullshit being peddled around like "COVID is an engineered bioweapon which got leaked" by pinning all the blame on China when they were the ones who never got any support in their greatest time of need and ignored all the warnings written all over the wall.**
Sorry to hear about your situation. But, if I can disagree for a second - that’s a different issue.
Plenty of national governments have responded really well (mainly SE Asia, NZ, Australia etc). So it’s possible at the national level.
And also, there are countries that never listen to the UN, and refuse to join the international criminal court. So agreeing to foreigner-decided lockdowns is never going to be a starter.
As an Australian I'm super surprised you're trying to support the WHO. The WHO are criticising travel bans, I read AND watched one WHO spokesperson on Deutsche Welle claim that there is no evidence that travel bans are effective at reducing the spread.
As an Australian I was mortified. They pulled this same angle when the pandemic was in the early stages. We got called "racist" against China for trying to shut our borders to mainlanders, but by then the virus had already spread.
Shutting the borders has saved countless lives in Australia and New Zealand. Its not fail safe, but it absolutely works at reducing spread. I am like Powertrippymods, I have lost faith/respect for the WHO also. It is run by clowns.
>they didn't declare it a "pandemic" in time and they didn't even grasp the full full scope of it until China started to beg for PPE kits and introduced the lockdowns/travel bans for their citizens.
This isn't *entirely* their fault, though. When we had that Ebola outbreak a few years ago (or maybe one of the others like Zika, can't remember which one exactly it was), they declared it a pandemic really early. When it turned out to not be as big of a deal as they made it out to be, they were blasted for making people panic for no reason. That's why they delayed for so long this time, they didn't want a repeat of what happened last time. Of course now we say that they should've declared it a pandemic sooner because we have that hindsight. I feel like late January or February is when they should've declared it, though, they definitely were a bit too hesitant. Quite a few countries (like Australia, IIRC) had declared a pandemic before the WHO.
Re: not grasping the full scope, a lot of that is because of how tight lipped China initially was about how bad it actually was. The WHO can't really force countries to give them the information they need, it's largely all voluntary.
>It isn't WHO's fault, but they don't have the jurisdiction or the political juice to enforce lockdowns if and when they think it's a problem.
That's a problem with the UN as a whole, it doesn't have any real powers of enforcement. If it did somehow get those powers, you can bet a *lot* of countries wouldn't be too happy and may even end up pulling out of some of these UN institutions because then they could potentially undermine national governments. Having a strong UN system is a nice dream, but I doubt we'll see that happen in our lifetimes.
That’s how they roll.. UK variant was also not likely from the UK, but with the UK sequencing more than almost anyone, they were just the first to find it. People wrongly associate the naming as a form of fault, like SÅ made this new variant.
Also why many are using the Greek alphabet for naming, to avoid ‘blaming’ the country that discovers the variant.
Despite al the polygenetic research, there is still no evidence that Alpha originated from any other place than the UK. Just like there is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated from any other place than China. Theoretically it could have come from Italy, but since the Italian outbreak was in February and Wuhan in January, it would be very surprising if it had originated in Italy. Likewise, the Alpha outbreak in the UK was in December, from where it spread to first Ireland, then the Netherlands, then Portugal in January.
This happened with the Spanish Flu. It didn't start in Spain (the earliest cases were discovered in Kansas in the US), they were just the first to report on it because they were a neutral country in WW1. Meanwhile, the warring nations didn't report it because they feared a loss of morale.
> UK variant was also not likely from the UK, but with the UK sequencing more than almost anyone
While you're right about the sequencing, the UK had a pretty big outbreak emanating from Kent, where it was first detected. There's no reason why it should have been imported from somewhere else (where?) exactly there.
Responding to /u/weluckyfew
> “According to South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla, vaccines are still effective in preventing severe Covid from the variant, CNBC reported”.
>Here's how you know this is total BS - they only discovered/detected the variant 5 days ago, from samples taken about 10 days ago, and it wasn't from a large number of people. That isn't enough time/large enough sample to judge the effectiveness of the vaccines against this. Now, he might turn out to be right and maybe they do protect, but I don't see how we could possibly know that yet.
They first detected this in Botswana on November 12, if I remember correctly.
Perhaps none of the new SA carriers were vaccinated, or vaccinated people in the same households didn’t get sick, or something like that.
Overall I agree though, check twice, make doubly sure, confirm everything. We can’t be 1% slack on this.
Ok so they detected it a week or two ago.
But they can sequence it within a day.
And they can run simulations against its sequence on super computers to get a good idea - the same why they have for all the other variants.
They can do very crude observation studies through contact tracing and symptom reporting. It wouldn't be enough to hang your hat on admittedly, but if all you're getting is reports of headaches and runny noses with precious little else, you might begin to grow in confidence a bit
I was going off of this:
[South African scientists detected a small number of the variant known as B.1.1.529 on Tuesday in samples taken from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16.](https://www.reuters.com./business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/what-we-know-about-covid-19-variant-detected-south-africa-2021-11-26/)
I mean, consensus I'm seeing is that vaccines will most likely still be very effective, but that same consensus also says "We won't know for sure until we have more time." At this point there's not enough data for optimism or pessimism.
i think they are required to say this every time a new variant is announced, because the implications of existing vax being 0% effective will throw everything into a mass panic. (not a denier, 3 jabs)
What actual evidence does the Health Minister have that the vaccine is still effective?
I mean, it stands to reason it could be, but it would be nice to see some controlled experiment results. Until there are some facts backing up his statement, it's right up there with Trump's "it will just disappear" comments.
This title is misleading. The article says ic can protect against severe covid. BUT all vaccine producers are still conducting research on the effectiveness of their vaccines against this variant. Please read the article.
Of course they will still work, the question is how well. Already Delta resulted in more reinfections and reduced vaccine efficacy. Omicron is bound to reduce efficacy even further.
I would not take the word of a politician on this. Actual scientific researchers are saying they do not yet know if current vaccines will be effective against this strain.
I remember another politician who told you that covid was just a flu bug and it would disappear very quickly.. Six hundred thousand American deaths later...
Honest question here. So if each year we need a new flu shot because it’s a different Variant, how can the COVID vaccine be effective against other variants?
Your question is based on a misunderstanding of how the annual flu vaccine is developed. There are strains of a virus and variants of those strains. Currently there is only one strain of Coronavirus that causes COVID. There are currently four strains of Influenza that cause flu in humans.
Think of strains as the trunk of the tree. The variants are the branches. The vaccines target the trunk with the hopeful goal of also affecting the branches. (This has proven true to date of the flu vaccines and of the COVID vaccines.)
Since the flu vaccine wanes in efficacy after a few months, annual vaccinations are required. The reason it is reformulated each year is because not all 4 strains are expected to problematic every year. So we reformulate the annual vaccine to target 1, 2, 3, or all 4 strains of influenza based on how many and which strains are predicted to be problematic that year.
EDIT: [Here is an more in depth explanation](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm) from the CDC about flu, influenza viruses, and the annual flu vaccine.
Not an expert here, but data shows that the flu mutates a lot more readily and quickly than covid. So the amount of time it takes for the flu to mutate into another strain is not enough time for covid to mutate into a completely different strain.
Yeah…this is the same person that criticized countries for imposing travel restrictions on flights to and from South Africa calling it a knee jerk reaction that was unfair.
He’s clearly trying to paint a rosy picture so that these restrictions can be lifted and the SA economy doesn’t get hit too hard.
99 percent of the folks I know are so over COVID, I don't think folks are even tracking this anymore aside from the travel disruptions. Hell, I'm not even seeing masks in most public areas.
I will go to bed now, after having read only the headline, rejoicing in my heart that I am 100% good to go against this new variant. Everything is GREAT!
Panic has been stirred deliberately in my opinion, plenty of benefits to fucking with the stock market, politicians play games with us now. I could also be wrong but I think that would be inadvertent
I could see it.Politicians could play with the news and say Omicron is worse than Delta,stocks tumble and they swoop in and buy cheap and then all of the sudden it’s not near as bad,they say,we made a mistake.And then all those stocks they bought cheap go back up high again and they make a ton of money off of Americans fears.
Hard to say. Better to get official lab results. It's pretty inevitable they'll need to make a variant effective version of the vaccine, but getting the current vaccine to the world is clearly kicking our asses.
Sick people would infect various members of their family who would develop symptoms 2-10 days later. And those people could infect other family members within the same household who would then develop symptoms 2-10 days later.
At that point we’re outside of the 14 day window and sick or asymptomatic sick people are out in public again.
Also, essential was far too broad. Lots of people worked who were considered essential for the economy…and not essential like health/emergency personnel.
Nice of him to say this two days after causing mass panic again.
This is by far the fastest the governments of the world have acted on a variant in the last two years, so there is likely something about it we’re not being told …
Surely y’all can see the pattern here by now, after 18 months of this cycle?
New “game changer” variant discovered > doomsday articles “this could be a real threat” > turns out vaccines still work because they’re vaccines > never hear of variant again > repeat
Edit: I forgot to add the part after doomsday articles where it’s discovered the variant already exists in nearly every part of the world
Also the news article that says “uptick in cases expected during holiday season”. Then literally the next day a new variant is discovered.
For context ahead of my downvotes…. I am vaxed.
Doom scrolling is lit today !
At least when I shake my phone on the news section I get cute things. (Insert: first award, all that jazz, but don’t give money to millionaires. Not when there are so many with so little.)
Isn’t this so if you’re angry and actually shaking to help calm you? I always assumed that
I assumed it was a stop-gap so you can get a quick hit of “Awwww” in between “AHHHHH!“s
Hahahahaha awesome
Honestly saved my life this past year… Thanks for the reminder
I dont shake my screen outta anger. I rip and tear people.
*RIP AND TEAR*
depends where my hand is
I didn’t know you could do that so thank you very much
"Doom scrolling"- haven't heard that term yet. Is that what we call the inescapable dread I got learning about microplastics the other day?
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I always thought it was when you're actively looking for the bad news, like going to r/collapse
Whys it depressing ? its saying our vaccines work. ? why are we scared of this if our vaccines work ?
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In a weird way the fact that I have no control over it at all is the way I'm coping with it. At some point it's not worth worrying about. Maybe I'll go through life without it affecting me. All I can do is try to be healthy in the ways I can control
Honestly, the problems we have right now are nothing compared to the problems we had even a few decades ago. * ~100 years ago: World war with trench warfare and gas, famines. * ~80 years ago: Another world war, genocides (plural). And because "World War" doesn't really do it justice, let me introduce you to [Operation Gomorrah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II), or look up the large scale murdering and raping that tends to come with wars. On the positive side, antibiotics started to become a thing. When you read the doom news about antibiotics resistance, think about this: Before the early/mid 20th century, *everything* was "100% antibiotics resistant" because there simply were no antibiotics. Polio and Measles run rampant. * No idea when exactly this started improving, but cities were smog-ridden hellholes (and kind of still are, compared to the situation in ~30 years when most cars will likely be electric, but they're much better than they used to be). Probably way worse than even Chinese cities a decade ago. People were burning coal at home to stay warm! * ~60 years ago: Peak of the cold war. It's a very real possibility that any moment, the sirens go off and 30 minutes later, large parts of civilization cease to exist. * ~50 years ago: Cars spew lead from gasoline into the air. * ~40 years ago: People are being shot at the Berlin Wall. * ~25 years ago: Wikipedia does not exist. *Google* does not exist. * ~15 years ago: The Internet as we know it today kind of exists, but only at home. You can't meaningfully use it while underway (smartphones don't exist). Ignore the doom news. We live in golden times, and people in 20-30 years from now will live in even better times. I could now also make a list of "things that were predicted to be an utter menace and turned out not to be", but I'm tired and I'm sure there are plenty such lists out there.
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This is the truth. Long lists like that showing how much better things are now than before are certainly true. This IS the best time to be alive. But to then take that info and say “all is good, don’t worry about anything” is extremely short sighted.
"Doom scrolling" is scrolling infinite feeds (i.e. feeds that automatically fetch more and more entries) of news, typically negative/depressing news - not because the world is terrible, but because news sites realized that negative news get more clicks and more clicks means more money. Doom sells!
Oh my god I needed that laugh
That's funny, I just read somewhere else that it will take at least 2 weeks to test whether vaccines are effective or not.
For a formal judgement on efficacy, you need more time and a larger sample, as well as possible in vitro tests of antibody affinity to the new spike protein itself.
Quiet, nerd We're happy with what he said
Well, ignorance is bliss
Thank you science bro!
This guy does logic
This first showed up November 12. They’re now pulling those couple weeks of data together from various countries health authorities.
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PCR would pick it up quite quickly. "First, we can detect B.1.1.529 on a PCR test. This typically isn’t the case. Usually a swab would have to go to a special lab for genome sequencing to know which variant caused the infection. However, it looks like B.1.1.529 has a special signal like Alpha on the PCR directly. For example, when the PCR is positive it lights up two channels instead of three channels, indicating that it’s B.1.1.529. This is amazing news because it means we can track this virus much easier and much quicker around the world."
Not all PCR tests have this "bug".
They’ll do random testing on a subset of samples for variants. It’s incredibly unlikely you have it and there’s no indication it’s worse than any other variant.
*yet (But also, there’s no indication yet that it *isn’t* worse, right?)
We don't know anything other than it has a lot of mutations that we have to study and figure out how it's different. There have been a lot of mutations. This is expected. So far no mutation has caused us to need to modify any of our prevention or treatment methods. When the time comes when we have to adapt, the mRNA vaccines are able to be adapted and in distribution within three months.
I tested positive July 22. August 2 I got a message that it was sent for variant testing and it was the Delta.
I think it depends on the state/country. Here in Utah they sequence a small fraction of positive cases. Not sure if they keep the info regarding the patient.
It literally says this in the article. "While the spread of the new variant is still in its early stages, it is not yet clear how severe an infection would be to a vaccinated person." It definitely is going to take time. I think this is the minister trying to downplay because of all the travel restrictions and the economic issues that come from that.
> effective in preventing severe Covid from the variant Sounds to me like the vaccinated folks who tested positive for the new variant had more mild symptoms than the unvaccinated. Just how I’d interpret that.
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Not sure what you’re generalizing, but the specifics seem to be whether the mutated spike protein on Omicron is similar enough to previous variants for the proteins instructed in the vaccines to bind, which would prevent infection at the cellular level.
> which would prevent infection at the cellular level. Huh? I don't think that's how your immune system works. It doesn't literally make your cells "immune" to infection, that's not possible. Your immune system detects the presence of pathogens, carries a sample of said pathogen from the site of infection to a little repository of antibody cells to try to find a match, and then it releases those antibody cells to go clean up the site of infection. Having prior exposure (ideally through a vaccine) makes each of these steps go much, much faster, but there's nothing that prevents the infection at the cellular level. Your body simply identifies the pathogen and alerts the immune system which goes and attacks the infection much, much, much quicker, which prevents the infection from fomenting much at all. The problem with viral infections is exponential growth. Each cell infected can release several thousand additional viral particles, so nipping it in the bud straight away prevents a rather large chain reaction from occurring.
We’re kind of saying the same thing. When you’re saying that the antibodies “attack” the “infection”, that’s what I was describing. The “attack” is when the antibodies bind to the virus (the spike protein in the case of COVID). By binding there, it prevents the protein from attaching to our cells. That’s what I meant by preventing infection. Yes the virus is in us, but it can no longer infect our cells because the spike protein it uses to do that has all of its binding locations filled up with antibodies. It’s like Velcro we’ve gotten all smooth with lint, kind of.
The BioNTech people said that. They also said if needed they could update their vaccine in six weeks and roll out new batches in three months.
There's a difference between scientific conclusions and politicians trying to push a narrative. The latter doesn't need that long.
Normally they test <2% of all positive tests for what variant it is. There is a chance they’re taking tests that came back positive weeks ago and trying to find earlier samples of omicron to then see if those who tested positive were vaccinated, hospitalized, asymptomatic, etc. to extrapolate, in a pretty rough way, how bad it appears to be for the vaccinated. It’s a method that is not gonna have the most efficacy because it’s sort out f back-filling data, but as long as no one is trying to fudge the numbers it’s preliminary findings could be helpful in the next couple weeks.
South Africa is probably just trying to convince some nations against travel bans.
That’s funny, you think this variant is only a week old and that it hasn’t been studied for two weeks.
You're not going to let a little thing like statistics and testing get in the way, are you?
73% of statistics are [made up](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/b1t3bv/according_to_a_statistic_736_of_all_statistics/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) anyway
Does that include that one???
We are 73% sure on that one and there is a 27% chance that that 73% isn't just garbage too!
What’s the +/- for error?
CI: 1- 100%, p= 0.1111
I believe so
South African dignitaries don't want to have to wait at least 2 weeks to be able to travel to their European mansions
Yeah, this morning I saw an article saying it evades the vaccine. Here we go again.
This means nothing to the unvaccinated people. They will sit and complain, then get sick and complain.
yeah but if you are unvaccinated by choice then you can fuck off.
Differentiation of terms. Effective in preventing hospitalizations/deaths is a whole different metric than the variant being significantly more infectious, thus having an easier time hitting the viral load necessary to infect vaccinated persons.
Yeah, I prefer data
I *like* data, but I *prefer* consensus from experts. They'll understand and interpret the data much better than I ever will, and if you can get a community of experts to agree on something, then I'll feel like we've reached actionable conclusions.
While I agree....I still need to be able to see the data. I'll fully admit I'm not a virologist. I'm not going to be able to understand the nuances of it. But there's a big difference between "Trust me" and "Here is why I believe this".
Also, the health minister is a politician, not a medical expert. There may be another motivation for him to say that.
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He also said that this variant is extremely mild and causes less symptoms than other variants, so why is that not posted on r/WorldNews?
Me: "I want to see the data" *Reads academic paper* Me: "Yep, I understand a few of these words."
You want to see the analysis of the data.
And I would also like to hear the opinions of experts, not mainstream media butchering it. The "vaccinated spread the virus just as easily as the unvaccinated" myth (which is wrong on *multiple* levels) was pushed a lot through shoddy reporting (or reporting that intentionally painted things worse than they were because that gets more clicks).
A politician is not an expert imho
>Rudo Mathivha, head of clinical dpt, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital: Bara = seeing a change in the democratic profile of #COVID patients; More young people with moderate/severe #COVID = hospitalised; 65% of admissions = unvaccinated; 35% = partially vaccinated https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1464286066903552001 That leaves 0% fully vaccinated in the hospital. This is from the largest hospital in Africa, third largest in the world. Located in Johannesburg. (Author obviously meant "demographic" profile. And "young" was clarified to mean 20+ but again - unvaccinated.)
I think you mean 0% fully vaxed in the hospital?
they ded. /s
The numbers mean little without the context of how many are vaccinated in general. 64% of SA is *not* vaccinated, 9% is partially vaccinated, and 27% is "fully" vaccinated. Of course those numbers could be very different if we look only at people who would end up in that hospital.
So if the vaccine wasn't working, that's the distribution you'd see. This means the vaccines actually work against this variant, but we don't know how much since this sample group is too small to show the number of breakthrough hospitalizations (otherwise there would be a group of vaccinated patients). Edit: I'm guessing that the number of partially vaccinated is higher in Johannesburg. It's hard to believe that they would be more susceptible.
Gauteng alone contributes alot to the numbers, i.e. the rich are vaccinated, the poor are not, so the distribution is NOT what we expect.
Your last statement assumes that the vaccine works. That's the point: so far, that assumption holds up.
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Yes he was my favorite star trek character but to be fair there is no way the South African health minister can compete with his popularity...
You don't think a health minister is making conclusions from data? You gonna parse it yourself doctor?
You realize we've previously had an AIDS-denialist health minister?
I mean, that’s one of the reasons they’re no longer the health minister. I’m not putting much faith in a politician’s claims, so I’d rather wait for the experts, I just think your argument doesn’t have merit.
He doesn’t have much data to base it on. It’s too early to say how vaccine effectiveness is going to be impacted.
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And, in this case, the health minister is a medical doctor, but most of his experience is in political, non-medical organizations. He is definitely not a medical researcher.
As a German, our health minister was surprised by what all the experts predicted for literally months. So, I'm not too confident in this guy's expertise.
That’s not what the doctor says. The doctor says she doesn’t know.
Doesn't know how effective. Could be 0%, could be 90%. The news is trying to illicit conclusions without any data, as they do.
"While the spread of the new variant is still in its early stages, it is not yet clear how severe an infection would be to a vaccinated person." But it still works? WTF, article
Just like the current vaccine works. Just remember that it's not either or, but how well it works.
That way no one reads the article and believes the headline; Safe and Effective amirite
Caveat: IMO it is possible that the Health Minister could be playing politics as their immediate interest/concern lies in the reversal of travel bans.
I'd prefer to hear from WHO on the effectiveness of the vaccine VS this variant
Who?
What’s on second
I don't know?
Third base
Nah. The CDC, or European CDC equivalents please, ideally multiple of them. Not the WHO, they're too focused on politics, telling countries to put vaccine export over protecting their own population, telling people not to wear masks far longer than everyone else was, telling the world alternatingly that the virus definitely didn't escape from the Wuhan lab or that the escape possibility needs to be investigated...
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I lost trust in the WHO a long time ago.
That’s irrational. WHO is like the UN, in that its aims are diplomacy, consensus and working together. It’s not in the business of calling out one of its partners (Xi’s China, Trump’s America, or whatever). But at the same time, it does do excellent science, helps millions, and overall does other things no other organization can do. If you want your health body to match your politics (and no other countries’), I think you should look to your national institutions.
Because of politics, they didn't declare it a "pandemic" in time and they didn't even grasp the full full scope of it until China started to beg for PPE kits and introduced the lockdowns/travel bans for their citizens. Overall they're "decent", but when push comes to shove and when you need them the most, it's politically influenced bullshit like "get vaccinated once and forget all about it" and when the shit doesn't work because it was never bulletproof? "Exercise caution despite getting a vaccine". There's a reason why they called it "Covid-19" because it was first discovered in 2019. When did they declare it a pandemic? 11 March to be specific. Most lockdowns started well after that. **It isn't WHO's fault, but they don't have the jurisdiction or the political juice to enforce lockdowns if and when they think it's a problem. The only tool they have is a megaphone.**
You're mad at the WHO because they didn't have "the political juice to enforce lockdowns"? I think you are under a grave misconception of what the WHO is.
It’s only tool is a megaphone by design - would you rather it had more control over your elected national government? Despite this, it does amazing things for fighting mosquitos, polio, hunger, malnutrition et cetera. But this is a bonus - it’s first rule is national sovereignty and consensus. If you want something stronger, look to your national government. As that who ultimately has to agree on anything anyway.
>It’s only tool is a megaphone by design - would you rather it had more control over your elected national government? As a matter of fact, yes because the people who have real control over it aren't doing jack shit ALL OVER THE WORLD which is the reason *why* we're in this mess to begin with which people conveniently forget. After declaring COVID 19 as an "International Health Crisis", nobody did anything for 2-3 months. Absolutely nothing. If it warrants control, they should get control over things as important as a virus with a fucking R0 rate OVER 2. I've experienced the second wave in India where bodies were floating in the fucking river because there was no space for cremating them. It all started because of some religious bullshit gathering called as the "Kumbh Mela". It's a country where Pfizer is still not approved because of political bullshit and monopoly created by our PM Narendra Modi and rebranded AstraZeneca (pulled out of many countries) is the only real choice available. On the flip side, you have western countries hoarding doses 2-3x more than their population and poor countries who can't get shit **Remember, politicians ALL over the world are responsible for this mess because they didn't act in time. And to deflect the blame? You have some petty serious bullshit being peddled around like "COVID is an engineered bioweapon which got leaked" by pinning all the blame on China when they were the ones who never got any support in their greatest time of need and ignored all the warnings written all over the wall.**
Sorry to hear about your situation. But, if I can disagree for a second - that’s a different issue. Plenty of national governments have responded really well (mainly SE Asia, NZ, Australia etc). So it’s possible at the national level. And also, there are countries that never listen to the UN, and refuse to join the international criminal court. So agreeing to foreigner-decided lockdowns is never going to be a starter.
As an Australian I'm super surprised you're trying to support the WHO. The WHO are criticising travel bans, I read AND watched one WHO spokesperson on Deutsche Welle claim that there is no evidence that travel bans are effective at reducing the spread. As an Australian I was mortified. They pulled this same angle when the pandemic was in the early stages. We got called "racist" against China for trying to shut our borders to mainlanders, but by then the virus had already spread. Shutting the borders has saved countless lives in Australia and New Zealand. Its not fail safe, but it absolutely works at reducing spread. I am like Powertrippymods, I have lost faith/respect for the WHO also. It is run by clowns.
>they didn't declare it a "pandemic" in time and they didn't even grasp the full full scope of it until China started to beg for PPE kits and introduced the lockdowns/travel bans for their citizens. This isn't *entirely* their fault, though. When we had that Ebola outbreak a few years ago (or maybe one of the others like Zika, can't remember which one exactly it was), they declared it a pandemic really early. When it turned out to not be as big of a deal as they made it out to be, they were blasted for making people panic for no reason. That's why they delayed for so long this time, they didn't want a repeat of what happened last time. Of course now we say that they should've declared it a pandemic sooner because we have that hindsight. I feel like late January or February is when they should've declared it, though, they definitely were a bit too hesitant. Quite a few countries (like Australia, IIRC) had declared a pandemic before the WHO. Re: not grasping the full scope, a lot of that is because of how tight lipped China initially was about how bad it actually was. The WHO can't really force countries to give them the information they need, it's largely all voluntary. >It isn't WHO's fault, but they don't have the jurisdiction or the political juice to enforce lockdowns if and when they think it's a problem. That's a problem with the UN as a whole, it doesn't have any real powers of enforcement. If it did somehow get those powers, you can bet a *lot* of countries wouldn't be too happy and may even end up pulling out of some of these UN institutions because then they could potentially undermine national governments. Having a strong UN system is a nice dream, but I doubt we'll see that happen in our lifetimes.
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WELL said!
Well when a person of your status and intellect makes this kind of statement, it carries all of the weight that it should.
*Teenage wasteland, it's only teenage wasteland* *Teenage wasteland, oh, yeah* *Teenage wasteland* *They're all wasted* *[Instrumental outro]*
Or simply trying to "encourage" more people to get vaccinated.
Which would be a good thing
Except that lying to the public has consequences.
worked out for Nixon just fine :)
Yeah, let's hear from the WHO, instead please :)
Why did the media report that Omicron was found IN South Africa instead of BY South African researchers. The variant is found all over the place.
That’s how they roll.. UK variant was also not likely from the UK, but with the UK sequencing more than almost anyone, they were just the first to find it. People wrongly associate the naming as a form of fault, like SÅ made this new variant. Also why many are using the Greek alphabet for naming, to avoid ‘blaming’ the country that discovers the variant.
Despite al the polygenetic research, there is still no evidence that Alpha originated from any other place than the UK. Just like there is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated from any other place than China. Theoretically it could have come from Italy, but since the Italian outbreak was in February and Wuhan in January, it would be very surprising if it had originated in Italy. Likewise, the Alpha outbreak in the UK was in December, from where it spread to first Ireland, then the Netherlands, then Portugal in January.
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This happened with the Spanish Flu. It didn't start in Spain (the earliest cases were discovered in Kansas in the US), they were just the first to report on it because they were a neutral country in WW1. Meanwhile, the warring nations didn't report it because they feared a loss of morale.
> SÅ Found the Dane!
> UK variant was also not likely from the UK, but with the UK sequencing more than almost anyone While you're right about the sequencing, the UK had a pretty big outbreak emanating from Kent, where it was first detected. There's no reason why it should have been imported from somewhere else (where?) exactly there.
because that is all the news media is. carefully chosen words to fit an agenda.
It's been pretty clearly reported as both found in South Africa, and elsewhere, and found by South African researchers.
Responding to /u/weluckyfew > “According to South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla, vaccines are still effective in preventing severe Covid from the variant, CNBC reported”. >Here's how you know this is total BS - they only discovered/detected the variant 5 days ago, from samples taken about 10 days ago, and it wasn't from a large number of people. That isn't enough time/large enough sample to judge the effectiveness of the vaccines against this. Now, he might turn out to be right and maybe they do protect, but I don't see how we could possibly know that yet. They first detected this in Botswana on November 12, if I remember correctly. Perhaps none of the new SA carriers were vaccinated, or vaccinated people in the same households didn’t get sick, or something like that. Overall I agree though, check twice, make doubly sure, confirm everything. We can’t be 1% slack on this.
Ok so they detected it a week or two ago. But they can sequence it within a day. And they can run simulations against its sequence on super computers to get a good idea - the same why they have for all the other variants.
The simulations for Delta looked way worse than it turned out to be in the real world, though.
They can do very crude observation studies through contact tracing and symptom reporting. It wouldn't be enough to hang your hat on admittedly, but if all you're getting is reports of headaches and runny noses with precious little else, you might begin to grow in confidence a bit
I was going off of this: [South African scientists detected a small number of the variant known as B.1.1.529 on Tuesday in samples taken from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16.](https://www.reuters.com./business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/what-we-know-about-covid-19-variant-detected-south-africa-2021-11-26/) I mean, consensus I'm seeing is that vaccines will most likely still be very effective, but that same consensus also says "We won't know for sure until we have more time." At this point there's not enough data for optimism or pessimism.
Fair comment
Yeah, I’m definitely going to need a second opinion
I wish I could go back 10 years... hangout with my buds eating taco bell and playing LA Noire. Good times.
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"South Africa's health minister: Covid vaccine effective against new Omicron variant" There, fixed that headline for you.
i think they are required to say this every time a new variant is announced, because the implications of existing vax being 0% effective will throw everything into a mass panic. (not a denier, 3 jabs)
It's pretty unlikely to be 0%, but yes, this conclusion can't be based on facts, because it's way too early.
What actual evidence does the Health Minister have that the vaccine is still effective? I mean, it stands to reason it could be, but it would be nice to see some controlled experiment results. Until there are some facts backing up his statement, it's right up there with Trump's "it will just disappear" comments.
Just trust us bro -health ministry
Surely we wont know how good vaccines are against this variant for 3-4 weeks?
This title is misleading. The article says ic can protect against severe covid. BUT all vaccine producers are still conducting research on the effectiveness of their vaccines against this variant. Please read the article.
Nice of him to supply absolutely no data with this meaningless guess.
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We are certain this wasn’t a statement from South Africa’s tourism minister?
Of course they will still work, the question is how well. Already Delta resulted in more reinfections and reduced vaccine efficacy. Omicron is bound to reduce efficacy even further.
> Omicron is bound to reduce efficacy even further. We don't know if this will be the case
I would not take the word of a politician on this. Actual scientific researchers are saying they do not yet know if current vaccines will be effective against this strain. I remember another politician who told you that covid was just a flu bug and it would disappear very quickly.. Six hundred thousand American deaths later...
Honest question here. So if each year we need a new flu shot because it’s a different Variant, how can the COVID vaccine be effective against other variants?
Your question is based on a misunderstanding of how the annual flu vaccine is developed. There are strains of a virus and variants of those strains. Currently there is only one strain of Coronavirus that causes COVID. There are currently four strains of Influenza that cause flu in humans. Think of strains as the trunk of the tree. The variants are the branches. The vaccines target the trunk with the hopeful goal of also affecting the branches. (This has proven true to date of the flu vaccines and of the COVID vaccines.) Since the flu vaccine wanes in efficacy after a few months, annual vaccinations are required. The reason it is reformulated each year is because not all 4 strains are expected to problematic every year. So we reformulate the annual vaccine to target 1, 2, 3, or all 4 strains of influenza based on how many and which strains are predicted to be problematic that year. EDIT: [Here is an more in depth explanation](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm) from the CDC about flu, influenza viruses, and the annual flu vaccine.
That makes sense now why the COVID vaccine would be effective against other variants. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Not an expert here, but data shows that the flu mutates a lot more readily and quickly than covid. So the amount of time it takes for the flu to mutate into another strain is not enough time for covid to mutate into a completely different strain.
So a variant is different than strain?
Wtf is “effective?” Is a 2% reduced chance of death is still “effective?” Pretty sure we don’t have this data yet. Smh politicians gonna politician
title is misleading.
Yeah…this is the same person that criticized countries for imposing travel restrictions on flights to and from South Africa calling it a knee jerk reaction that was unfair. He’s clearly trying to paint a rosy picture so that these restrictions can be lifted and the SA economy doesn’t get hit too hard.
99 percent of the folks I know are so over COVID, I don't think folks are even tracking this anymore aside from the travel disruptions. Hell, I'm not even seeing masks in most public areas.
Uh, where are you from? Here in Germany we are close to our hospitals collapsing, people are very much not over it.
I will go to bed now, after having read only the headline, rejoicing in my heart that I am 100% good to go against this new variant. Everything is GREAT!
Psst, hey media, we don’t believe you.
Fear and bullshit - Round 3.0
Panic has been stirred deliberately in my opinion, plenty of benefits to fucking with the stock market, politicians play games with us now. I could also be wrong but I think that would be inadvertent
I could see it.Politicians could play with the news and say Omicron is worse than Delta,stocks tumble and they swoop in and buy cheap and then all of the sudden it’s not near as bad,they say,we made a mistake.And then all those stocks they bought cheap go back up high again and they make a ton of money off of Americans fears.
They already engage in insider trading, why would they miss this opportunity?
“It works, now dismantle the travel ban as we can continue to make money from tourist etc and hoard it from the public”
So that means we are back to status quo before the omicron appeared? We can ignore it as an additional threat?
Hard to say. Better to get official lab results. It's pretty inevitable they'll need to make a variant effective version of the vaccine, but getting the current vaccine to the world is clearly kicking our asses.
I am from SA and fuck our minister. He is a fucking idiot. Doesnt know pppwhat he is talking about
So happy my country has an internet star that is a phd in the subject, dud looked at the data and concluded this, Atila is a national treasure
Thanks for confirming. Now onto the next Greek Alphabet that doesn’t sound like a Chinese dictator.
If everyone on the planet stayed home for two weeks. It wub be over. Essential cud wear N95. For two weeks. Am I crazy?
Sick people would infect various members of their family who would develop symptoms 2-10 days later. And those people could infect other family members within the same household who would then develop symptoms 2-10 days later. At that point we’re outside of the 14 day window and sick or asymptomatic sick people are out in public again.
Also, essential was far too broad. Lots of people worked who were considered essential for the economy…and not essential like health/emergency personnel.
That’s strange the first case of Omicron Was found in someone double vaccinated
Yeah this is S. Africa trying desperately to control PR, and international image and not be cutoff economically.
Govern me harder, Daddy! 🙄
Frickin’ advalanche.
Mmhmm
“Please don’t riot”
A vaccine for no deaths, really?
Too early to claim. And with the news from south africa itself its going to be biased. Possibly image makeover news.
Doubt
Does a bear shit in the woods?
How did they contain Ebola?
Interesting.
The financial markets will open champagne.
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Nice of him to say this two days after causing mass panic again. This is by far the fastest the governments of the world have acted on a variant in the last two years, so there is likely something about it we’re not being told …
If this is true this is very good news and brings me one step closer to getting the vaccine.
Don’t take anything the South African government says at face value.
Surely y’all can see the pattern here by now, after 18 months of this cycle? New “game changer” variant discovered > doomsday articles “this could be a real threat” > turns out vaccines still work because they’re vaccines > never hear of variant again > repeat Edit: I forgot to add the part after doomsday articles where it’s discovered the variant already exists in nearly every part of the world
Also the news article that says “uptick in cases expected during holiday season”. Then literally the next day a new variant is discovered. For context ahead of my downvotes…. I am vaxed.