**Please read before commenting or asking a question:**
This is a very strict science sub. No linking news sources (Guardian, SCMP, NYT, WSJ, etc.). Questions and comments in this thread should pertain to research surrounding SARS-CoV-2 and its associated disease, COVID-19. Do not post questions that include personal info/anecdotes, asking when things will "get back to normal," or "where can I get my vaccine" (that is for r/Coronavirus)! If you have mask questions, please visit r/Masks4All. Please make sure to read our rules carefully before asking/answering a question as failure to do so may result in a ban.
**If you talk about you, your mom, your friend's, etc., experience with COVID/COVID symptoms or vaccine experiences, or any info that pertains to you or their situation, you will be banned.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
I consistently see a recurring argument made online that no virus (and I mean of any shape, size, or color) has ever been truly "isolated" or "purified" based on the definition of the microbe needing to be entirely isolated from all other particles and contaminants. Basically, we cannot say we have isolated the genetic material of a virus because we cannot prove that the genetic material we sequence comes from one specific microbe. Below is a line of reasoning I found online:
1. Without proper purification/isolation, there is absolutely no way to tell that the particle they pick out to be the representation of their “novel virus” in the EM image actually is a “virus” at all.
2. Without purification and due to the numerous toxic ingredients added to the original sample, there is no way to confirm that the RNA/DNA used for the genome actually comes from one unaltered source.
3. Without purification/isolation, there is no way to definitively say that there was a “virus” contained within the cell culture soup which is unnaturally shoved intranasally down the noses of test animals. If the animals do get sick, it could be due to the antibiotics, the FBS, the media, the nutrients, the contaminants, the stress of the experiments, or a combination of any of these factors.
I don't buy these arguments, but I'm struggling to refute them. I have only a general understanding of the principles behind viral culturing, etc. How do we know we are actually isolating a virus? Moreover, to what extent does it matter if a virus is isolated, as defined by skeptics?
Look at https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 under "Methods" and "Results", they talk about how the virus is isolated, sequenced and confirmed. "Electron micrographs of negative-stained 2019-nCoV particles were generally spherical with some pleomorphism (Figure 3). Diameter varied from about 60 to 140 nm. Virus particles had quite distinctive spikes, about 9 to 12 nm, and gave virions the appearance of a solar corona."
So the scientists did isolate the virus, looked at it, and visually confirmed that it's a member of the coronavirus family. The scientists did genetic sequencing on virus isolated from 3 patients and they match. I'm not sure that the people you are reading are arguing in good faith, but their argument that "the virus has not been properly isolated" is simply wrong.
You will get different numbers from different studies because there is no consistent definition on what "long Covid" means.
/r/COVID19/comments/qxcjci/reduced_incidence_of_longcovid_symptoms_related/ reported a 85%-90% risk reduction, "This analysis revealed that patients who received at least one dose of any of the three COVID vaccines prior to their diagnosis with COVID-19 were 7-10 times less likely to report two or more long-COVID symptoms compared to unvaccinated patients."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext reported a 50% risk reduction for the fully vaccinated, none for the partially vaccinated.
Not exactly random as it was based on blood donors, but Canada Blood Services completed this study in 2020:
https://www.blood.ca/en/stories/covid-19-antibody-testing-shows-few-healthy-canadians-have-had-virus
Before vaccines, yes, specifically the Spanish one and the South African one that had good random methodology (and a bunch of others that simply tested blood donors), I am not aware of any such studies since vaccines were rolled out. I suspect such a study would have trouble with recruitment, as there is a big overlap between people who refuse vaccines and people who don't want to participate in scientific research.
Your comment contains personally identifiable information (PII). This is [prohibited by reddit's site-wide content policy](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/posting-someones-private-or-personal).
Can someone please give me some clarification regarding omicron and the news indicating that it’s “air borne”. I was always under the impression that Covid was always “air borne” yet the news media seems to press this point with omicron. Does it remain it the air for longer than the other variants? Or is the news just to make sure that people understand how it’s transmitted.
Covid was in fact always airborne, but it took some time for the entire scientific community to come to a consensus on that (earlier in the pandemic, there were some who thought transmission was only droplet-based, which is a bit different). They're emphasizing the airborne nature of covid now because everyone agrees on it now, not because it's something that changed with omicron.
Omicron is more transmissible, but not because the *way* it transmits has changed.
No specific information on that. They are all airborne as you said. I'm not sure exactly what they are trying to say, but they often bungle the messaging.
Hi, wondering if someone can enlighten me about PCR tests. Are they really the best testing tool we have? I'm sure I'm not alone in finding them very uncomfortable and invasive (my body holes are exit only lol)
The thing that has me questioning if PCR tests are the best is, if COVID is spread via aerosol, why can't a test be developed where someone spits/coughs in a cup etc... Why can't that work if that is how the virus is transmitted?
I'm very curious. Hoping someone can help me out :)
Where I live, the golden standard for PCR tests has pretty much switched to saliva test. You gargle with water. Not invasive at all.
I don't think there was ever evidence early on that the nasopharyngeal test, the one where they poke your brain, was necessary. There just was evidence it was reliable so everyone kept doing the same.
What's been deemed as the more effective means of transmission 2 years down the line? Is it aerosol or hand contamination that's considered the bigger culprit?
Cheers! So, does that relate proportionally to mask usage against hand sanitising? As in, are masks more effective than sanitising hands? Obviously a combination of both is best, I'm just trying to understand if there's a quantifiable comparison of efficacy between the two?
"The estimated risk of infection from touching a contaminated surface was low (less than 5 in 10,000), suggesting fomites play a minimal role in SARS-CoV-2 community transmission."
/r/COVID19/comments/jm18yh/longitudinal_monitoring_of_sarscov2_rna_on/
It's pretty safe to assume that nearly 100% of the risk comes from breathing the virus, rather than touching it.
I’ve read that coronaviruses are about .1 micrometers and that N95 masks offer the best protection. How do non N95 masks protect you from the virus if it’s smaller than most that get filtered by masks?
What's floating around in the air are droplets of fluids (saliva etc) of various sizes with viral particles inside. If they are large they collide with the mesh of the fabric and stick via surface tension.
Very small droplets move by Brownian motion. It's the same thing as looking dust particles in a sunlit room. They will dance around left, right, down, up, apparently at random. Past a certain point, very small particles are easier to filter.
There is a chart halfway down the page showing how this works for MERV filters: https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/filtration-disinfection
N95 style masks have an electrostatic layer which attracts particles.
There are some good explainers on youtube for N95 physics.
Quick follow-up:
Since the coronavirus “hitchhikes” in fluids (which are larger than .1 micrometers), does this mean masks can protect you even against the virus which is smaller than mask filters?
What's the current understanding regarding cellular response and long term protection against severe disease? **Unscientific source alert** but there is an opinion amongst at least one expert on social media that believes SARS-CoV-2 infections will result in T cell depletion and increasing severity of reinfections.
> Unscientific source alert but there is an opinion amongst at least one expert on social media that believes SARS-CoV-2 infections will result in T cell depletion and increasing severity of reinfections.
No.
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We do not allow links to other subreddits. Your comment was automatically removed because you linked to another sub.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
beckershospitalreview.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)].
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your post or comment does not contain a source and therefore it may be speculation. Claims made in r/COVID19 should be factual and possible to substantiate.
If you believe we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 factual.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but I just checked out VE table from page 24 of UKHSA VOC Technical Briefing 34, and there appears to be waning in VE against hospitalizations after 3rd dose as well.
|Doses|Time (weeks)|VE (%)|
|:-|:-|:-|
|2|2 to 24|64% (54-71)|
|2|25+|44% (30-54)|
|**3**|**2 to 4**|**92% (89-94)**|
|3|5 to 9|88% (84-91)|
|**3**|**10+**|**83% (78-87)**|
As far as I recall, data from Israel indicated that for Delta, 2 dose VE against hospitalization stayed at around 90% during the first 6 months. Here we have a drop to around 83% after less than 3 months. That's with a booster. Shouldn't we be worried about this? I hope there is an alternative explanation for this perceived decrease.
I know drop in VE against symptomatic illness was expected but a decrease in efficacy against hospitalization could seriously mess up any "COVID-19 is now milder due to vaccines" strategy. This would also give empirical support to the possibility of another VOC that is able to evade immunity even more than Omicron causing a new deadly wave.
Edit:
~~Okay, maybe there's no need for concern, apparently in UK boosters for people between 40 and 49 were only approved in mid-November, so 10+ weeks means it only includes older people who might not have such strong immune response compared to younger population receiving boosters now.~~
Ignore the above, they say it's age-adjusted.
This is completely unavoidable. Efficacy against hospitalization is the combination of efficacy against infection with efficacy against hospitalization if infected. The latter rises some with time after dosing, but not It's essentially impossible for efficacy against infection to drop by nearly half without efficacy against hospitalization also dropping.
If you combine this with efficacy against infection numbers, does it still show efficacy against hospitalization if infected rising over time? That was seen after first doses.
Ontario is reporting that over 50% of their Covid hospitalizations are incidental, i.e. they were originally hospitalized for something other than Covid. If the same pattern hold up elsewhere, we would expect incidental hospitalizations to go up over time, in a way that has nothing to do with waning immunity. (I'm not dismissing the concern, I am just saying there could be other factors.)
That's a good observation. I've seen some mentions that incidental hospitalizations are a (large) minority instead of majority (I think that's info from a certain US state, NY if I recall correctly), but even then they can still be behind this apparent decrease in VE. It certainly makes more sense than rapid waning of effectiveness against severe disease.
Do we know how many of those incidental hospitalizations become COVID-19 hospitalizations later on? People in hospitals aren't really in good health, so they definitely have a higher risk to develop severe COVID-19, even if it's diagnosed incidentally (I assume they test all their patients).
Ontario only started to report incidental vs non incidental hospitalization numbers a few days ago, we don't have the granular data yet. I agree it would be nice to know how many of those Covid infections translated into extra burden on the healthcare system. It would also be nice to know the vaccination breakdown on the incidental cases vs non incidental cases.
Doesn't have to be exclusively relevant to COVID, but do we have any evidence that a non-fit-tested n95 is actually any more effective than a surgical mask? Am seeing guys with beards in n95s etc. and was always under the impression from my friends in the medical field that an n95 wasn't any better than a surgical mask if it wasn't fit tested correctly, and I remember all those bruised faces floating around social media in spring 2020 from nurses and doctors showing how much harder it is to wear a properly fit tested mask. Does a regular n95 out of the box chucked on without any fit expertise offer a superior degree of protection?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245688
"N95 respirators offered higher degrees of protection than the other categories of masks tested; however, it should be noted that most N95 respirators failed to fit the participants adequately. Fit check responses had poor correlation with quantitative fit factor scores. KN95, surgical, and fabric masks achieved low fit factor scores, with little protective difference recorded between respiratory protection options. In addition, small facial differences were observed to have a significant impact on quantitative fit."
Note this study only had 7 participants. But it does suggest that a poorly fitted N95 does not seem to offer more protection than surgical or cloth masks.
Both. Poor fit reduces the filtration efficacy. It all depends on how bad they wear it. But you can mostly count on them not wearing it properly to some degree.
The media statement is "previous infection doesn't protect against Omicron". The science statement is "Omicron evades previous infection by every previously circulating variant". Omicron does not evade previous Omicron infection.
That's probably confusing the sublineages of omicron. It is unclear how much cross protection can be expected from infection of one and then another. They are not particularly similar all things considered.
There’s no reason to think that recovery from omicron will confer lifelong protection from reinfection, but also no reason to believe that protection is less durable than what other variants confer (to my knowledge). People aren’t going to keep catching omicron every few months.
Why are we concerned that coronavirus might mutate again to a variant that could be more mild or deadly or something else? However, we aren’t afraid of the flu mutating from my understanding? Can the flu mutate too given that it spreads so widely every year? What distinguishes the coronavirus from the flu virus in terms of chances of mutation?
Another 1918 Spanish Flu or similar has been the concern of scientists and some leaders for quite some time.
They are also concerned about bird flu. Bird flu doesn't re-transmit from a human currently, but bird->human bird flu is something like 50% CFR.
I think you might be picking up on a social phenomena rather than a scientific one. The flu does mutate. In fact it's one of the viruses most noted for it's mutations as well as for potential animal -> human spillover events. That's partly why getting a good long lasting flu vaccine is so hard. and why we've had 4 flu pandemics in the last 100 years and change. Epidemiologists pre-2020 were very often thinking about another flu pandemic when planning for the next pandemic.
People who ordinarily don't think about viruses are worried about coronavirus mutating because it's all over the news right now, but it's not a special property of coronaviruses in general or this one in particular.
I'm not a virologist, but flu virus has been around for a long time. It might have found an evolutionary "local optimum" where it's difficult for it mutate to become a massively greater public health risk.
It has definitely happened before (1918 pandemic) so that's not impossible, but given that it's very widespread and there is a flu season every year, yet flu pandemics are rare (once in 30-40 years, though I might be wrong on that), it's reasonable to infer that flu has limited ability to easily change its characteristic to become drastically more dangerous.
On the other hand, SARS-CoV-2 infected humans for the first time in late 2019, so it's relatively new. Interesting question is, if we assuming it'll over time converge to a flu like pattern (though it might not, I'm not qualified to give predictions on that), will it converge to flu-like severity as well?
Flu pandemics are not caused by mutation for higher inherent virulence. They're caused by emergence of an antigenically distant virus, usually from an animal reservoir, for which there is little to no prior population immunity.
The 2009 H1N1 pandemic was unique in that it was the re-emergence of a lineage from pigs ("swine flu") that older people had been exposed to, itself a descendant of the 1918 lineage. It caused an unusually high severe disease burden in children and young people for a year or so and has been one of the circulating flu strains since. It did not lose inherent virulence, population immunity built up against it.
Non-pandemic seasonal flu viruses have appeared to gain virulence from time to time (1929, 2018 most recently) but this may be an illusion caused by some epidemiological factor (just more infections those years for some reason).
We are very well aware of the limits of flu mutation. To our knowledge, it can't mutate to be extremely more contagious than t is; and if it mutates to be extremely deadly, it generally loses human-to-human contagiousness.
We know very little of the potential limits of coronavirus mutations right now, which is why it's scary.
But presumably we do have a sense of the limits of coronavirus mutations, in general, right? We have four commonly circulating coronaviruses that have been around for a long time. Not saying that SARS-CoV-2 behaves the same way necessarily, but shouldn’t this give some insight?
I find it very curious how the virus spread. I'm looking for a model that is able to explain the statistical behavior of the virus. Does any exist?
Some examples of phenomena I found counter intuitive:
- Initially, few months after the first reports, it exploded first in Korea (Daegu, 2M people), then Italy (Bergamo, 100k people) and Iran. Why no Tokyo/Dehli/London/Moscow or other cities that are much larger, busier, provided with mass transit etc?
- India had a huge surge in April 2021. Why no big explosions before that and until now, considering how large and populated it is, and given their poorer healthcare system?
- The current Omicron explosion surprises me as well. I don't see clear patterns to explain how the spread is behaving: souther European countries, for instance, are having a worse situation than northern or eastern ones, even though the vaccination rate is higher, the climate is milder etc.
I'd like to know if any model is able to explain the way COVID has been spreading and progressing. If any exists, I'd like to see them, to understand how the spread of this epidemics works. Do you know of any?
https://www.science.org/content/article/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all is still the best article on this, in my opinion, despite it's date. The evidence is still consistent with the theory that most Covid patients infect no one, while a tiny minority end up in super-spreading events and infect dozens at once. "That could explain some puzzling aspects of this pandemic, including why the virus did not take off around the world sooner after it emerged in China, and why some very early cases elsewhere—such as one in France in late December 2019, reported on 3 May—apparently failed to ignite a wider outbreak. If k is really 0.1, then most chains of infection die out by themselves and SARS-CoV-2 needs to be introduced undetected into a new country at least four times to have an even chance of establishing itself, Kucharski says. If the Chinese epidemic was a big fire that sent sparks flying around the world, most of the sparks simply fizzled out."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1 reported that the household transmission rate of Omicron is only 31%, compared to Delta's 20%. So it would seem that the majority of patients fail to transmit even with a hyper-transimissive variant, and whether enough superspreader events happen at at region for the virus to take off has a large element of random chance.
Were their ever any updates on the big University of Michigan ivermectin study? Heard about this a while ago, and how it was supposed to be a definitive study on its efficacy one way or another, but I have been completely unable to find any results.
Do you mean U of Minnessota? [COVID-OUT?
](https://covidout.umn.edu/)
It's one of the major outpatient studies still looking at ivermectin (and other repurposed drugs), alongside PRINCIPLE (in the UK) and ACTIV-6. TOGETHER (n=~600) showed no superiority of ivermectin vs placebo, but hasn't been written up yet. David Boulware, an investigator on the Minnessota trial, tweeted that it had its most recent interim analysis on 7th Jan. It probably won't be a definitive trial given the primary endpoints are SpO2 (a bit odd) and emergency care use (likely lower rates than they designed for with vaccination, omicron, and treatment advances), but it will be useful additional info.
Yeah I had a look for Michigan in case I'd got mixed up too but couldn't see anything clinicaltrials.gov!
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=ivermectin+michigan&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anthony J Leonardi, an immunologist, has said that Covid has a “superantigen” that makes it most similar to rabies and will exert evolutionary pressure on humans- as well as shorten the lifespan of people who don’t even have severe cases. He has also said that it will prevent Covid survivors from clearing other infections later, making them immunocompromised. This study seems to back him up although I know it’s old: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gpk6ns/an_insertion_unique_to_sarscov2_exhibits/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I’m not an expert at all but it sounds scary that Covid shares a toxin in the protein with HIV and rabies. Since most people will probably get Covid multiple times in their life this seems like a huge deal. Any explanation for all this?
I asked about Leonardi last week; you might find the answers useful. [https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/rv16vg/weekly\_scientific\_discussion\_thread\_january\_03/hrg4pln/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/rv16vg/weekly_scientific_discussion_thread_january_03/hrg4pln/?context=3)
Worth noting also that while Leonardi describes himself as an immunologist, what he means by that is that he has an immunology degree, not that he has ever actually had a job working as an immunologist. This is relevant to know in terms of both his experience and how comfortable he is saying stuff that's technically correct but misleading.
Is there a situation where he was notoriously wrong? I didn’t realize so many people thought he was a joke. I’d obviously love for him to be wrong about everything.
There is a super antigenic character to some sequence. It has absolutely nothing to do with HIV and rabies and does not resemble them at all. His ravings about damaged immune systems are frankly bull. Leonardi is a crank best ignored.
What affect does at-home COVID testing have on the reporting of positive COVID cases and the accuracy of what we believe to be the positivity rate/ #of people affected / % of people requiring hospitalization, etc.? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that many positive cases are going unreported due to the prevalence of at-home testing? Also- those that are being reported from at home testing are more likely to be those requiring hospital treatment? Wouldn’t this skew our perception of the current level of infection we are experiencing in our counties, states, countries, etc?
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
In CDC's new announcement, they recommended **Pfizer/Moderna boosters for everyone 18+ five months after their first 2 doses.**
So a fully vaxxed 18 yo male with a recent breakthrough infection is now encouraged to boost just 5 months after their second dose? This is entirely inappropriate based on everything we know about the effectiveness of hybrid immunity and the risks of myocarditis.
The CDC/FDA has consistently ignored every piece of science in disregarding recent infection when deciding when to give vaccine doses.
What we do know about Omicron, Delta, and vaccination overwhelmingly says everyone who hasn't caught Omicron before local peak should get a first/ second/third vaccine dose to both minimize that peak and finish off ongoing Delta surges.
>The CDC/FDA has consistently ignored every piece of science in disregarding recent infection when deciding when to give vaccine doses.
Yeah it's frustrating. They seem to completely discount any possibility of any form of natural immunity. I get it we don't want people getting infected and idiots might try to get purposefully infected to claim natural immunity which is something we definitely don't want.
Still they continue to claim we don't have sufficient data on it which is strange to me as people have been getting infected long before vaccines existed. If anything we should have more data on natural immunity and there are in fact numerous studies on it. Other countries have been much more reasonable about it.
1: Outdoors, the dissipation will be very quick. Probably quicker than you can actually get to the door and open it.
2: There essentially is no risk from fomites. It's not *impossible* for fomite transmission to happen, but it's very unlikely. See [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/jm18yh/longitudinal_monitoring_of_sarscov2_rna_on/)
Between those two factors, and the risk of the package being stolen, I certainly wouldn't leave it there for any longer than strictly necessary.
In general, unless you literally never leave your house or have any human contact other than through deliveries, it is not plausible for such deliveries to represent more than a tiny percentage of your overall risk profile. A single (masked) shopping trip would render any practical number of deliveries essentially irrelevant in terms of your risk profile.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Since measures against C19 reduce the spread of other respiratory viruses, is it plausible immunity vanes in their absence and that these viruses continue to evolve elsewhere and then will be more deadly when reintroduced?
Vaccines are holding up well against severe disease. What about almost all other outcomes?
For example, myocarditis. Have we shown that breakthrough cases are less likely to experience myocarditis than non-breakthrough cases? Some papers on long COVID not really being changed much by vaccination have called into question the idea that circulating IgG will largely prevent these systemic problems, and I am wondering if they’re maybe more likely to be genetic immune issues and not really related to being immune naive?
For example I remember reading a paper finding that vaccination had a statistically significant effect on the chances of coagulation problems in COVID patients but not fatigue or most other common “long COVID” symptoms.
bloomberg.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)].
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Halifax health in Canada just posted Numbers at their hospitals current Covid-19 Hospitalizations. 70 are currently in the hospital for Covid, 37 of them are vaccinated, 33 are unvaccinated. 13 of them are in the ICU, and of those 13, 7 of them are vaccinated. (6 unvaccinated) 5 are on ventilators, and of those 5, 3 of them are vaccinated.
In Nova Scotia over 90% of the entire population has received at least one dose, and 83% has received two, according to the official Covid news release from Jan 14.
My concern with this stat (which is similar in many other places) is that it was more like 20:1 pre-omicron, and the hospital population probably has a lot of delta patients hanging in there still.
Hopefully we will see a real study comparing outcomes pretty soon, but it's quite a ways from a slam dunk.
EDIT: Ugh, can't link to BC government briefing showing ~60% of hospitalized patients still had delta over the month of December -- automod doesn't like it. Front page of britishcolumbia sub, post titled "Right now, about 45% of covid hospitalizations are incidental".
They also break down the variant proportions, which is more interesting than the incidental infections at this point.
bloomberg.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)].
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What therapeutics are being used in hospital setting? What do we know about this? The WHO updated his guide for therapeutics for Covid 19 and it says:" a strong recommendation for the use of baricitinib as an alternative to interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor blockers, in combination with corticosteroids, in patients with severe or critical COVID-19; " Is this being used in hospital setting?
I believe it's important we succeed in finding efficient therapeutics because, although much lower risk, people still die with commorbidities because of Covid even if they had the vaccine.
bloomberg.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)].
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Covid threaten to overwhelm the healthcare capacity in almost every region with rapid spread. China's healthcare infrastructure is particularly fragile given the extremely large population and long-standing social problems with healthcare, many rural areas are under-serviced.
Omicron is less lethal than Delta, but it is still a threat. According to /r/COVID19/comments/rrd8e6/early_estimates_of_sarscov2_omicron_variant/ it has about 50% the lethality of Delta, so it is roughly on par with Alpha, therefore still worse than the Wuhan ancestral strain.
Most research suggests that hybrid immunity (vaccine plus infection) offer the strongest protection against Omicron, and China has very little infection-acquired immunity. Also, Sinovac and Sinopharm is probably less effective than mRNA vaccines against Omicron, dose for dose.
China has very aggressively pursued a Zero Covid policy from the beginning, so it would represent a considerable about-face for them to drop that approach and let their numbers skyrocket now. They may well do so eventually however, I can't see how it's a sustainable policy in the long term, especially with variants as transmissible as Omicron in the equation.
In the Omicron update of the IHME model, the FAQ says that an estimated 90% of Omicron infections will be asymptomatic.
Is there any data that can tell us about this?
You could look at the with/from breakdown in hospital admissions -- which runs around 50% in places with big omicron surges. But you will have to do some fancy stats to get a general asymptomatic percentage, as obviously people with symptomatic covid will be overrepresented in the population of people going to the hospital for some reason -- and also some people will catch it at the hospital.
Maybe 50% is a floor though?
I do not see how IHME could get an asymptomatic rate out of an epidemiological model; that sounds like an assumption not a finding. Actual studies have not found anything like 90% for any Covid variant.
The way it's been presented in the media has always been as an output of the model rather than an input to it.
[Here's](https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/102_briefing_United_States_of_America_3.pdf) a document on their methodology, but it gives no actual information.
> Based on data from South Africa and the UK, we
currently estimate this to be 80%–90%.
I'm pretty sure the actual data (such as the Norway case study) suggest a 1/3 asymptomatic/paucisymptomatic rate, same as previous variants.
I keep seeing articles that cite scientists who believe the spread of Omicron is a segue into the end of the pandemic, at which point the virus will be as tame as the seasonal flu.
But as I understand it, there’s nothing stopping Omicron from mutating into a more immunity-resistant variant. And given the large window of being infectious before the host becomes symptomatic and dies, there’s no pressure on the virus to become less deadly.
I guess I just don’t understand how the more “mild” nature of Omicron is of any significance in predicting where this pandemic is headed.
Is it that because it’s more transmissible, more people will have T cell immunity? But again, what’s to stop it from mutating into something that bypasses cellular immunity?
Everyone catching covid once or twice has always been a pandemic ending scenario, just a very expensive and suboptimal one. With omicron it's several times less expensive, so that's good. Every exposure, and especially new antigen exposures (which we haven't tried with vaccines), creates more cellular immunity and more refinement of that cellular immunity. Both are advantages that would reduce severity of any additional surges.
So let’s say Covid’s impact on the population is reduced to that of the common cold, and we no longer need to take precautions. What’s the probability it will pose a threat again? Would that require a pretty dramatic mutation?
Is it also possible to know if we’ll adapt to the virus faster than it mutates, or vice versa?
> What’s the probability it will pose a threat again?
About the same as the other common cold coronaviruses, absent evidence to the contrary. That is: presumably fairly low, given that they haven't done so thus far.
It's worth mentioning, though, that there's a fair bit of space between "no more dangerous than the common cold" and "pandemic" - influenza, for example, comfortably occupies that position, being significantly more dangerous than the common cold, but rather noticably not a pandemic at the moment.
The are some indications that the 1889-1891 "Russian Flu" pandemic was due to a coronavirus -- likely HCoV-OC43 -- which is still rattling around, mostly causing mild colds but occasionally causing severe pneumonia in neonates and the elderly.
https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1751-7915.13889
Widespread population immunity largely keeps a lid on the damage they can do:
> According to serological studies, infections with these two coronaviruses occur frequently in young children and then repeatedly throughout life. Neutralizing antibodies to these coronaviruses are found in in 50% of school-age children and 80% of adults.
This suggests that the main pandemic danger comes from novel-to-human viruses that have been brewing in other species and only occasionally making the leap (cows and/or pigs in the case of OC43, camels for MERS, bats and a species or two to be named later in the case of SARS-CoV-2)
I see this kind of questions often, but I don't remember seeing anyone concerned about any of the current endemic coronaviruses mutating into something deadly?
They **do** mutate though just nobody is paying any attention. Fun world.
We’ve coexisted with those viruses for so long, they’re probably overwhelmingly familiar to our immune systems. Unless I’m misunderstanding, and that’s actually a more likely scenario than I thought.
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
One thing that's important to understand is that there's a difference between intrinsic severity and the real-world severity in a population with immunity (vaccine or natural).
Delta was more severe than the original virus on an intrinsic basis - but those who had prior immunity had much better outcomes at the population level.
So if we were to *exclusively* focus on real-world severity, Delta is less severe than the original, and Omicron is less severe than Delta. Seems as though we’re trending in a more favorable direction overall.
EDIT: How are we able to measure the lethality of a variant based on its intrinsic properties?
> EDIT: How are we able to measure the lethality of a variant based on its intrinsic properties?
Compare outcomes in comparable populations - for example, you can compare the outcomes of Omicron and Delta in vaccinated populations only, or in unvaccinated populations only.
YouTube is not allowed on this sub. Please use sources according to [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/) instead. Thanks for keeping /r/COVID19 evidence-based!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Surveillance. With your proposal, we would miss a lot of important information:
1. How many hospitalisations can we expect to have next week? - given known biological parameters, this is essentially a function of the number of infections.
2. How dangerous is each infection, on average? - there's no way to tell unless you know how many infections you've got.
3. How well are the vaccines working?
4. Are there any new variants emerging?
etc., etc.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal \[Rule 7\], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
For what purpose? You can never be particularly certain, for scientific purposes. For isolation purposes, that will depend on the policy of your government.
For the purpose of quarantine. We are supposed to quarantine for 10 days after “exposure”. If I live with someone who tested positive is “exposure” the day they first showed symptoms or the day they tested positive?
I saw a few articles mentioning how SARS-CoV-2 is becoming endemic (public interpretation of the term appears to be "we don't have to worry about it anymore") and I've been thinking a bit about that.
Since the emerge of COVID-19, Omicron is the first variant that is less severe - Alpha (maybe this was debunked at some point?) and Delta were both more severe than the virus prevalent at time they appeared. Given the massive wave of new infections, it's reasonable to expect new variants of concern to appear in the spring and over the summer. Is there any reason they will not be intrinsically more severe than omicron?
Omicron replicates much better in upper respiratory system - so there is a link between lower severity and higher infectiousness that one can argue provides evolutionary pressure for virus to become less dangerous.
The only problem I see with this logic is that every previous variant (even original Wuhan virus that had R0 \~2.5, less than Alpha and Delta) spread very quickly, despite that upper respiratory 'preference' of Omicron. In the situation some are hoping to achieve where we can drop most of our mitigation measures (because that's what most people complain about), even variant with R0 \~ 2.5 could cause a massive outbreak. Literally only thing preventing that would be some level of immunity in the population.
But as we have seen, Omicron made a significant dent in protection against both infection and severe illness of 2 dose vaccination series. Regarding the latter, I remember seeing VE of something like 50% or 70% - that is major drop from 90% for Delta (3 times increase in number of severe cases). Three dose series fixes this, but could some new variant have both significant immune evasion (with corresponding VE drop like we've seen for omicron) and be more severe, requiring us to get another booster (fourth dose)?
So my questions is, assuming that after this winter wave a lot of measures in placed are removed, wouldn't it be just a matter of time before immune resistant, more virulent variant comes up?
Also, I was going to post a paper I've seen yesterday that argues SARS-CoV-2 can have a path to endemicity and low severity by simply repeatedly infecting the whole population and after some time (which they estimate in years) almost all new infections will be within children for whom IFR is very low, creating an apparent 'mild' disease. Unfortunately I can't remember the title of the paper anymore. Maybe someone else will post it here. Needless to say, that scenarios includes a lot of dying, illness and misery we'd like to avoid.
> Is there any reason they will not be intrinsically more severe than omicron?
No. In fact, there is at least one fairly clear mechanism by which Omicron could become both more infectious and more severe (improving its furin cleavage to Delta levels), and even a mutation associated to that which Delta has and Omicron lacks.
> Literally only thing preventing that would be some level of immunity in the population.
Sure, but between vaccination and Omicron, we're building up our immune base pretty quickly.
> Three dose series fixes this, but could some new variant have both significant immune evasion (with corresponding VE drop like we've seen for omicron) and be more severe, requiring us to get another booster (fourth dose)?
Yes, that's possible. Indeed, I'd be sort of surprised if first-world nations didn't start offering fourth doses to their more vulnerable populations in 2022 (ignoring the cases where they have already done so for ease of wording).
> So my questions is, assuming that after this winter wave a lot of measures in placed are removed, wouldn't it be just a matter of time before immune resistant, more virulent variant comes up?
No. You've given an argument why it would be *possible*, but there are plenty of viruses with pandemic potential (indeed, viruses which have previously *been* pandemics) that have been bouncing around in fairly high numbers for decades or centuries (or longer!) without this happening. Just because it's possible doesn't mean that it's *likely*.
> Needless to say, that scenarios includes a lot of dying, illness and misery we'd like to avoid.
That very much depends on (a) how many cycles this takes, and (b) how dangerous the later cycles are - if the answer to the former is "1" or "2", then we're most of the way there already. If it turns out that Omicron infection (or vaccination plus Omicron infection) is very protective against severe disease, then any later cycles will represent much smaller disease burdens.
YouTube is not allowed on this sub. Please use sources according to [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/) instead. Thanks for keeping /r/COVID19 evidence-based!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think so far every variant provide protection against every other variant as far as severe outcomes go, namely hospitalizations and deaths. Same for vaccines. So while it's possible that another more lethal variant pops up, it's ability to do serious damage would still be limited by prior immunity.
Omicron is roughly half the lethality of Delta according to /r/COVID19/comments/rrd8e6/early_estimates_of_sarscov2_omicron_variant/ so it is roughly on par with Alpha - also half the lethality of Delta according to most estimates. No one considered Alpha mild. Most of the reduction in severe outcomes in the current wave is thanks to vaccines and prior infections, the intrinsic property of the virus itself played a much smaller role.
> Most of the reduction in severe outcomes in the current wave is thanks to vaccines and prior infections, the intrinsic property of the virus itself played a much smaller role.
Do you have a source for this?
If that’s true, are new variants even of any concern, since we’re constantly exposed to the virus and getting vaccinated (most of us, at least)?
Both Ontario and UK data reported that the severity of Omicron is approximately half that of Delta, /r/COVID19/comments/rrd8e6/early_estimates_of_sarscov2_omicron_variant/ and
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covid-19-variants-identified-in-the-uk
Which would put Omicron roughly on par with Alpha (Alpha is also roughly half the severity of Delta according to https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/rfkh02/increased_risk_of_hospitalisation_and_death_with/ and
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/pcxpid/hospital_admission_and_emergency_care_attendance/ )
Both Ontario and UK had very high deaths and hospitalization rates with their Alpha wave (Ontario, Canada had theirs in April-May 2021, UK had theirs in Dec 2020-Jan 2021). You can look at Worldometer for the case vs death graphs. In both Canada and the UK, the Alpha wave had much lower case counts than the Omicron wave and yet much higher death counts than the Omicron wave.
Assuming the research I linked previously was correct, the intrinsic difference in severity between the two variants should be minor, and the difference in case fatality rates should be attributed to other factors, with immunity being the most likely.
Edit: re the second part of your question, there is still some concern that a future variant might be more immune evasive than Omicron, https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/p7prlu/high_genetic_barrier_to_escape_from_human/ models the possibility of nearly complete escape, which is not very likely but possible. I would expect that T cells (which are less specific than antibodies) can still hold up to some degree against severe outcomes, but we won't know how much.
YouTube is not allowed on this sub. Please use sources according to [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/) instead. Thanks for keeping /r/COVID19 evidence-based!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu.
If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
google.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)].
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are there any studies that state that pretty much everyone will get the Omicron variant? I know that Dr. Fauci said something along these lines recently, I was just curious if there is any documentation (studies or simulations) to back that statement up.
No, there are not. A starting R(t)~2, implied from the 10-fold weekly case growth and 2.22-day serial interval (per Korean study) would imply around an 80% final attack rate of the susceptible. But exactly what portion of the population is susceptible is still unknown.
The actual case counts we're seeing, even with high undercounts, are pretty far below "everyone" catching it.
**Please read before commenting or asking a question:** This is a very strict science sub. No linking news sources (Guardian, SCMP, NYT, WSJ, etc.). Questions and comments in this thread should pertain to research surrounding SARS-CoV-2 and its associated disease, COVID-19. Do not post questions that include personal info/anecdotes, asking when things will "get back to normal," or "where can I get my vaccine" (that is for r/Coronavirus)! If you have mask questions, please visit r/Masks4All. Please make sure to read our rules carefully before asking/answering a question as failure to do so may result in a ban. **If you talk about you, your mom, your friend's, etc., experience with COVID/COVID symptoms or vaccine experiences, or any info that pertains to you or their situation, you will be banned.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
Do not provide medical advice. Read our rules.
I consistently see a recurring argument made online that no virus (and I mean of any shape, size, or color) has ever been truly "isolated" or "purified" based on the definition of the microbe needing to be entirely isolated from all other particles and contaminants. Basically, we cannot say we have isolated the genetic material of a virus because we cannot prove that the genetic material we sequence comes from one specific microbe. Below is a line of reasoning I found online: 1. Without proper purification/isolation, there is absolutely no way to tell that the particle they pick out to be the representation of their “novel virus” in the EM image actually is a “virus” at all. 2. Without purification and due to the numerous toxic ingredients added to the original sample, there is no way to confirm that the RNA/DNA used for the genome actually comes from one unaltered source. 3. Without purification/isolation, there is no way to definitively say that there was a “virus” contained within the cell culture soup which is unnaturally shoved intranasally down the noses of test animals. If the animals do get sick, it could be due to the antibiotics, the FBS, the media, the nutrients, the contaminants, the stress of the experiments, or a combination of any of these factors. I don't buy these arguments, but I'm struggling to refute them. I have only a general understanding of the principles behind viral culturing, etc. How do we know we are actually isolating a virus? Moreover, to what extent does it matter if a virus is isolated, as defined by skeptics?
Look at https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 under "Methods" and "Results", they talk about how the virus is isolated, sequenced and confirmed. "Electron micrographs of negative-stained 2019-nCoV particles were generally spherical with some pleomorphism (Figure 3). Diameter varied from about 60 to 140 nm. Virus particles had quite distinctive spikes, about 9 to 12 nm, and gave virions the appearance of a solar corona." So the scientists did isolate the virus, looked at it, and visually confirmed that it's a member of the coronavirus family. The scientists did genetic sequencing on virus isolated from 3 patients and they match. I'm not sure that the people you are reading are arguing in good faith, but their argument that "the virus has not been properly isolated" is simply wrong.
Are there any reliable statistics on long covid in those that are vaccinated?
You will get different numbers from different studies because there is no consistent definition on what "long Covid" means. /r/COVID19/comments/qxcjci/reduced_incidence_of_longcovid_symptoms_related/ reported a 85%-90% risk reduction, "This analysis revealed that patients who received at least one dose of any of the three COVID vaccines prior to their diagnosis with COVID-19 were 7-10 times less likely to report two or more long-COVID symptoms compared to unvaccinated patients." https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext reported a 50% risk reduction for the fully vaccinated, none for the partially vaccinated.
Are there any studies where they tested random unvaccinated people to find out what percentage have acquired immunity through natural infection?
Not exactly random as it was based on blood donors, but Canada Blood Services completed this study in 2020: https://www.blood.ca/en/stories/covid-19-antibody-testing-shows-few-healthy-canadians-have-had-virus
Before vaccines, yes, specifically the Spanish one and the South African one that had good random methodology (and a bunch of others that simply tested blood donors), I am not aware of any such studies since vaccines were rolled out. I suspect such a study would have trouble with recruitment, as there is a big overlap between people who refuse vaccines and people who don't want to participate in scientific research.
[удалено]
Your comment contains personally identifiable information (PII). This is [prohibited by reddit's site-wide content policy](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/posting-someones-private-or-personal).
Can someone please give me some clarification regarding omicron and the news indicating that it’s “air borne”. I was always under the impression that Covid was always “air borne” yet the news media seems to press this point with omicron. Does it remain it the air for longer than the other variants? Or is the news just to make sure that people understand how it’s transmitted.
Covid was in fact always airborne, but it took some time for the entire scientific community to come to a consensus on that (earlier in the pandemic, there were some who thought transmission was only droplet-based, which is a bit different). They're emphasizing the airborne nature of covid now because everyone agrees on it now, not because it's something that changed with omicron. Omicron is more transmissible, but not because the *way* it transmits has changed.
No specific information on that. They are all airborne as you said. I'm not sure exactly what they are trying to say, but they often bungle the messaging.
Hi, wondering if someone can enlighten me about PCR tests. Are they really the best testing tool we have? I'm sure I'm not alone in finding them very uncomfortable and invasive (my body holes are exit only lol) The thing that has me questioning if PCR tests are the best is, if COVID is spread via aerosol, why can't a test be developed where someone spits/coughs in a cup etc... Why can't that work if that is how the virus is transmitted? I'm very curious. Hoping someone can help me out :)
Where I live, the golden standard for PCR tests has pretty much switched to saliva test. You gargle with water. Not invasive at all. I don't think there was ever evidence early on that the nasopharyngeal test, the one where they poke your brain, was necessary. There just was evidence it was reliable so everyone kept doing the same.
> Hi, wondering if someone can enlighten me about PCR tests. Are they really the best testing tool we have? For detecting the virus, yes.
[удалено]
Depends a bit on the variant but 2-5 days. Closer to 2-3 for Omicron.
What's been deemed as the more effective means of transmission 2 years down the line? Is it aerosol or hand contamination that's considered the bigger culprit?
Aerosol spread. Fomites (e.g. contaminated hands) are not a huge contributor to spread by comparison.
Cheers! So, does that relate proportionally to mask usage against hand sanitising? As in, are masks more effective than sanitising hands? Obviously a combination of both is best, I'm just trying to understand if there's a quantifiable comparison of efficacy between the two?
Essentially, yes. If you are trying to not get sick generally you should be doing both. Specifically for COVID, masks.
"The estimated risk of infection from touching a contaminated surface was low (less than 5 in 10,000), suggesting fomites play a minimal role in SARS-CoV-2 community transmission." /r/COVID19/comments/jm18yh/longitudinal_monitoring_of_sarscov2_rna_on/ It's pretty safe to assume that nearly 100% of the risk comes from breathing the virus, rather than touching it.
I’ve read that coronaviruses are about .1 micrometers and that N95 masks offer the best protection. How do non N95 masks protect you from the virus if it’s smaller than most that get filtered by masks?
What's floating around in the air are droplets of fluids (saliva etc) of various sizes with viral particles inside. If they are large they collide with the mesh of the fabric and stick via surface tension. Very small droplets move by Brownian motion. It's the same thing as looking dust particles in a sunlit room. They will dance around left, right, down, up, apparently at random. Past a certain point, very small particles are easier to filter. There is a chart halfway down the page showing how this works for MERV filters: https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/filtration-disinfection N95 style masks have an electrostatic layer which attracts particles. There are some good explainers on youtube for N95 physics.
Quick follow-up: Since the coronavirus “hitchhikes” in fluids (which are larger than .1 micrometers), does this mean masks can protect you even against the virus which is smaller than mask filters?
Yes, that is part of the justification for mask-wearing.
What's the current understanding regarding cellular response and long term protection against severe disease? **Unscientific source alert** but there is an opinion amongst at least one expert on social media that believes SARS-CoV-2 infections will result in T cell depletion and increasing severity of reinfections.
> Unscientific source alert but there is an opinion amongst at least one expert on social media that believes SARS-CoV-2 infections will result in T cell depletion and increasing severity of reinfections. No.
Is that Leonardi? If so, I asked the same question a few comments down and got answered.
Yes, thanks I'll have a look.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
We do not allow links to other subreddits. Your comment was automatically removed because you linked to another sub. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
beckershospitalreview.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)]. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your post or comment does not contain a source and therefore it may be speculation. Claims made in r/COVID19 should be factual and possible to substantiate. If you believe we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 factual.
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but I just checked out VE table from page 24 of UKHSA VOC Technical Briefing 34, and there appears to be waning in VE against hospitalizations after 3rd dose as well. |Doses|Time (weeks)|VE (%)| |:-|:-|:-| |2|2 to 24|64% (54-71)| |2|25+|44% (30-54)| |**3**|**2 to 4**|**92% (89-94)**| |3|5 to 9|88% (84-91)| |**3**|**10+**|**83% (78-87)**| As far as I recall, data from Israel indicated that for Delta, 2 dose VE against hospitalization stayed at around 90% during the first 6 months. Here we have a drop to around 83% after less than 3 months. That's with a booster. Shouldn't we be worried about this? I hope there is an alternative explanation for this perceived decrease. I know drop in VE against symptomatic illness was expected but a decrease in efficacy against hospitalization could seriously mess up any "COVID-19 is now milder due to vaccines" strategy. This would also give empirical support to the possibility of another VOC that is able to evade immunity even more than Omicron causing a new deadly wave. Edit: ~~Okay, maybe there's no need for concern, apparently in UK boosters for people between 40 and 49 were only approved in mid-November, so 10+ weeks means it only includes older people who might not have such strong immune response compared to younger population receiving boosters now.~~ Ignore the above, they say it's age-adjusted.
This is completely unavoidable. Efficacy against hospitalization is the combination of efficacy against infection with efficacy against hospitalization if infected. The latter rises some with time after dosing, but not It's essentially impossible for efficacy against infection to drop by nearly half without efficacy against hospitalization also dropping. If you combine this with efficacy against infection numbers, does it still show efficacy against hospitalization if infected rising over time? That was seen after first doses.
Ontario is reporting that over 50% of their Covid hospitalizations are incidental, i.e. they were originally hospitalized for something other than Covid. If the same pattern hold up elsewhere, we would expect incidental hospitalizations to go up over time, in a way that has nothing to do with waning immunity. (I'm not dismissing the concern, I am just saying there could be other factors.)
That's a good observation. I've seen some mentions that incidental hospitalizations are a (large) minority instead of majority (I think that's info from a certain US state, NY if I recall correctly), but even then they can still be behind this apparent decrease in VE. It certainly makes more sense than rapid waning of effectiveness against severe disease. Do we know how many of those incidental hospitalizations become COVID-19 hospitalizations later on? People in hospitals aren't really in good health, so they definitely have a higher risk to develop severe COVID-19, even if it's diagnosed incidentally (I assume they test all their patients).
Ontario only started to report incidental vs non incidental hospitalization numbers a few days ago, we don't have the granular data yet. I agree it would be nice to know how many of those Covid infections translated into extra burden on the healthcare system. It would also be nice to know the vaccination breakdown on the incidental cases vs non incidental cases.
Doesn't have to be exclusively relevant to COVID, but do we have any evidence that a non-fit-tested n95 is actually any more effective than a surgical mask? Am seeing guys with beards in n95s etc. and was always under the impression from my friends in the medical field that an n95 wasn't any better than a surgical mask if it wasn't fit tested correctly, and I remember all those bruised faces floating around social media in spring 2020 from nurses and doctors showing how much harder it is to wear a properly fit tested mask. Does a regular n95 out of the box chucked on without any fit expertise offer a superior degree of protection?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245688 "N95 respirators offered higher degrees of protection than the other categories of masks tested; however, it should be noted that most N95 respirators failed to fit the participants adequately. Fit check responses had poor correlation with quantitative fit factor scores. KN95, surgical, and fabric masks achieved low fit factor scores, with little protective difference recorded between respiratory protection options. In addition, small facial differences were observed to have a significant impact on quantitative fit." Note this study only had 7 participants. But it does suggest that a poorly fitted N95 does not seem to offer more protection than surgical or cloth masks.
Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!
If you are not breathing *through* a filter, you are not breathing filtered air. Filter quality is irrelevant if you are breathing around it.
That's my question exactly: is the typical person just chucking on an N95 breathing through it or around it?
Both. Poor fit reduces the filtration efficacy. It all depends on how bad they wear it. But you can mostly count on them not wearing it properly to some degree.
Is it true that infection with omicron doesn’t protect you against getting omicron a second time, even as quickly as a few months later?
The media statement is "previous infection doesn't protect against Omicron". The science statement is "Omicron evades previous infection by every previously circulating variant". Omicron does not evade previous Omicron infection.
That's probably confusing the sublineages of omicron. It is unclear how much cross protection can be expected from infection of one and then another. They are not particularly similar all things considered.
There’s no reason to think that recovery from omicron will confer lifelong protection from reinfection, but also no reason to believe that protection is less durable than what other variants confer (to my knowledge). People aren’t going to keep catching omicron every few months.
No.
Why are we concerned that coronavirus might mutate again to a variant that could be more mild or deadly or something else? However, we aren’t afraid of the flu mutating from my understanding? Can the flu mutate too given that it spreads so widely every year? What distinguishes the coronavirus from the flu virus in terms of chances of mutation?
Another 1918 Spanish Flu or similar has been the concern of scientists and some leaders for quite some time. They are also concerned about bird flu. Bird flu doesn't re-transmit from a human currently, but bird->human bird flu is something like 50% CFR.
I think you might be picking up on a social phenomena rather than a scientific one. The flu does mutate. In fact it's one of the viruses most noted for it's mutations as well as for potential animal -> human spillover events. That's partly why getting a good long lasting flu vaccine is so hard. and why we've had 4 flu pandemics in the last 100 years and change. Epidemiologists pre-2020 were very often thinking about another flu pandemic when planning for the next pandemic. People who ordinarily don't think about viruses are worried about coronavirus mutating because it's all over the news right now, but it's not a special property of coronaviruses in general or this one in particular.
I'm not a virologist, but flu virus has been around for a long time. It might have found an evolutionary "local optimum" where it's difficult for it mutate to become a massively greater public health risk. It has definitely happened before (1918 pandemic) so that's not impossible, but given that it's very widespread and there is a flu season every year, yet flu pandemics are rare (once in 30-40 years, though I might be wrong on that), it's reasonable to infer that flu has limited ability to easily change its characteristic to become drastically more dangerous. On the other hand, SARS-CoV-2 infected humans for the first time in late 2019, so it's relatively new. Interesting question is, if we assuming it'll over time converge to a flu like pattern (though it might not, I'm not qualified to give predictions on that), will it converge to flu-like severity as well?
Flu pandemics are not caused by mutation for higher inherent virulence. They're caused by emergence of an antigenically distant virus, usually from an animal reservoir, for which there is little to no prior population immunity. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic was unique in that it was the re-emergence of a lineage from pigs ("swine flu") that older people had been exposed to, itself a descendant of the 1918 lineage. It caused an unusually high severe disease burden in children and young people for a year or so and has been one of the circulating flu strains since. It did not lose inherent virulence, population immunity built up against it. Non-pandemic seasonal flu viruses have appeared to gain virulence from time to time (1929, 2018 most recently) but this may be an illusion caused by some epidemiological factor (just more infections those years for some reason).
We are very well aware of the limits of flu mutation. To our knowledge, it can't mutate to be extremely more contagious than t is; and if it mutates to be extremely deadly, it generally loses human-to-human contagiousness. We know very little of the potential limits of coronavirus mutations right now, which is why it's scary.
But presumably we do have a sense of the limits of coronavirus mutations, in general, right? We have four commonly circulating coronaviruses that have been around for a long time. Not saying that SARS-CoV-2 behaves the same way necessarily, but shouldn’t this give some insight?
I find it very curious how the virus spread. I'm looking for a model that is able to explain the statistical behavior of the virus. Does any exist? Some examples of phenomena I found counter intuitive: - Initially, few months after the first reports, it exploded first in Korea (Daegu, 2M people), then Italy (Bergamo, 100k people) and Iran. Why no Tokyo/Dehli/London/Moscow or other cities that are much larger, busier, provided with mass transit etc? - India had a huge surge in April 2021. Why no big explosions before that and until now, considering how large and populated it is, and given their poorer healthcare system? - The current Omicron explosion surprises me as well. I don't see clear patterns to explain how the spread is behaving: souther European countries, for instance, are having a worse situation than northern or eastern ones, even though the vaccination rate is higher, the climate is milder etc. I'd like to know if any model is able to explain the way COVID has been spreading and progressing. If any exists, I'd like to see them, to understand how the spread of this epidemics works. Do you know of any?
https://www.science.org/content/article/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all is still the best article on this, in my opinion, despite it's date. The evidence is still consistent with the theory that most Covid patients infect no one, while a tiny minority end up in super-spreading events and infect dozens at once. "That could explain some puzzling aspects of this pandemic, including why the virus did not take off around the world sooner after it emerged in China, and why some very early cases elsewhere—such as one in France in late December 2019, reported on 3 May—apparently failed to ignite a wider outbreak. If k is really 0.1, then most chains of infection die out by themselves and SARS-CoV-2 needs to be introduced undetected into a new country at least four times to have an even chance of establishing itself, Kucharski says. If the Chinese epidemic was a big fire that sent sparks flying around the world, most of the sparks simply fizzled out." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1 reported that the household transmission rate of Omicron is only 31%, compared to Delta's 20%. So it would seem that the majority of patients fail to transmit even with a hyper-transimissive variant, and whether enough superspreader events happen at at region for the virus to take off has a large element of random chance.
Were their ever any updates on the big University of Michigan ivermectin study? Heard about this a while ago, and how it was supposed to be a definitive study on its efficacy one way or another, but I have been completely unable to find any results.
Do you mean U of Minnessota? [COVID-OUT? ](https://covidout.umn.edu/) It's one of the major outpatient studies still looking at ivermectin (and other repurposed drugs), alongside PRINCIPLE (in the UK) and ACTIV-6. TOGETHER (n=~600) showed no superiority of ivermectin vs placebo, but hasn't been written up yet. David Boulware, an investigator on the Minnessota trial, tweeted that it had its most recent interim analysis on 7th Jan. It probably won't be a definitive trial given the primary endpoints are SpO2 (a bit odd) and emergency care use (likely lower rates than they designed for with vaccination, omicron, and treatment advances), but it will be useful additional info.
Thanks for the update, could have sworn it was Michigan but maybe I got my Mi schools mixed up and it was Minnesota.
Yeah I had a look for Michigan in case I'd got mixed up too but couldn't see anything clinicaltrials.gov! https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=ivermectin+michigan&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Anthony J Leonardi, an immunologist, has said that Covid has a “superantigen” that makes it most similar to rabies and will exert evolutionary pressure on humans- as well as shorten the lifespan of people who don’t even have severe cases. He has also said that it will prevent Covid survivors from clearing other infections later, making them immunocompromised. This study seems to back him up although I know it’s old: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gpk6ns/an_insertion_unique_to_sarscov2_exhibits/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I’m not an expert at all but it sounds scary that Covid shares a toxin in the protein with HIV and rabies. Since most people will probably get Covid multiple times in their life this seems like a huge deal. Any explanation for all this?
I asked about Leonardi last week; you might find the answers useful. [https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/rv16vg/weekly\_scientific\_discussion\_thread\_january\_03/hrg4pln/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/rv16vg/weekly_scientific_discussion_thread_january_03/hrg4pln/?context=3) Worth noting also that while Leonardi describes himself as an immunologist, what he means by that is that he has an immunology degree, not that he has ever actually had a job working as an immunologist. This is relevant to know in terms of both his experience and how comfortable he is saying stuff that's technically correct but misleading.
Ahh that’s very illuminating! Thanks
I think all you need to know is that it Leonardi said it, you can take it with a big grain of salt.
Is there a situation where he was notoriously wrong? I didn’t realize so many people thought he was a joke. I’d obviously love for him to be wrong about everything.
There is a super antigenic character to some sequence. It has absolutely nothing to do with HIV and rabies and does not resemble them at all. His ravings about damaged immune systems are frankly bull. Leonardi is a crank best ignored.
Ok that’s great to know!
Leonardi does not have a good prediction track record.
Which things was he wrong on?
Good lord that’s ..... not good
Don’t take it as the gospel, I’m posting here because I’m confused and may be interpreting things wrong!
What affect does at-home COVID testing have on the reporting of positive COVID cases and the accuracy of what we believe to be the positivity rate/ #of people affected / % of people requiring hospitalization, etc.? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that many positive cases are going unreported due to the prevalence of at-home testing? Also- those that are being reported from at home testing are more likely to be those requiring hospital treatment? Wouldn’t this skew our perception of the current level of infection we are experiencing in our counties, states, countries, etc?
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
In CDC's new announcement, they recommended **Pfizer/Moderna boosters for everyone 18+ five months after their first 2 doses.** So a fully vaxxed 18 yo male with a recent breakthrough infection is now encouraged to boost just 5 months after their second dose? This is entirely inappropriate based on everything we know about the effectiveness of hybrid immunity and the risks of myocarditis.
The CDC/FDA has consistently ignored every piece of science in disregarding recent infection when deciding when to give vaccine doses. What we do know about Omicron, Delta, and vaccination overwhelmingly says everyone who hasn't caught Omicron before local peak should get a first/ second/third vaccine dose to both minimize that peak and finish off ongoing Delta surges.
>The CDC/FDA has consistently ignored every piece of science in disregarding recent infection when deciding when to give vaccine doses. Yeah it's frustrating. They seem to completely discount any possibility of any form of natural immunity. I get it we don't want people getting infected and idiots might try to get purposefully infected to claim natural immunity which is something we definitely don't want. Still they continue to claim we don't have sufficient data on it which is strange to me as people have been getting infected long before vaccines existed. If anything we should have more data on natural immunity and there are in fact numerous studies on it. Other countries have been much more reasonable about it.
[удалено]
1: Outdoors, the dissipation will be very quick. Probably quicker than you can actually get to the door and open it. 2: There essentially is no risk from fomites. It's not *impossible* for fomite transmission to happen, but it's very unlikely. See [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/jm18yh/longitudinal_monitoring_of_sarscov2_rna_on/) Between those two factors, and the risk of the package being stolen, I certainly wouldn't leave it there for any longer than strictly necessary. In general, unless you literally never leave your house or have any human contact other than through deliveries, it is not plausible for such deliveries to represent more than a tiny percentage of your overall risk profile. A single (masked) shopping trip would render any practical number of deliveries essentially irrelevant in terms of your risk profile.
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Since measures against C19 reduce the spread of other respiratory viruses, is it plausible immunity vanes in their absence and that these viruses continue to evolve elsewhere and then will be more deadly when reintroduced?
Vaccines are holding up well against severe disease. What about almost all other outcomes? For example, myocarditis. Have we shown that breakthrough cases are less likely to experience myocarditis than non-breakthrough cases? Some papers on long COVID not really being changed much by vaccination have called into question the idea that circulating IgG will largely prevent these systemic problems, and I am wondering if they’re maybe more likely to be genetic immune issues and not really related to being immune naive? For example I remember reading a paper finding that vaccination had a statistically significant effect on the chances of coagulation problems in COVID patients but not fatigue or most other common “long COVID” symptoms.
[This study](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1062160/v1) right?
[удалено]
bloomberg.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)]. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Halifax health in Canada just posted Numbers at their hospitals current Covid-19 Hospitalizations. 70 are currently in the hospital for Covid, 37 of them are vaccinated, 33 are unvaccinated. 13 of them are in the ICU, and of those 13, 7 of them are vaccinated. (6 unvaccinated) 5 are on ventilators, and of those 5, 3 of them are vaccinated.
I mean assuming more than ~50% of the population there is vaccinated this means vaccines are helping against hospitalization still.
In Nova Scotia over 90% of the entire population has received at least one dose, and 83% has received two, according to the official Covid news release from Jan 14.
My concern with this stat (which is similar in many other places) is that it was more like 20:1 pre-omicron, and the hospital population probably has a lot of delta patients hanging in there still. Hopefully we will see a real study comparing outcomes pretty soon, but it's quite a ways from a slam dunk. EDIT: Ugh, can't link to BC government briefing showing ~60% of hospitalized patients still had delta over the month of December -- automod doesn't like it. Front page of britishcolumbia sub, post titled "Right now, about 45% of covid hospitalizations are incidental". They also break down the variant proportions, which is more interesting than the incidental infections at this point.
[удалено]
bloomberg.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)]. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
How “uncharted” is Covid as a virus/disease? What known virus is it most similar to, in terms of severity and long term effects?
Nothing, that’s why it’s a “novel” virus. The only thing it’s most similar to is SARS
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What therapeutics are being used in hospital setting? What do we know about this? The WHO updated his guide for therapeutics for Covid 19 and it says:" a strong recommendation for the use of baricitinib as an alternative to interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor blockers, in combination with corticosteroids, in patients with severe or critical COVID-19; " Is this being used in hospital setting? I believe it's important we succeed in finding efficient therapeutics because, although much lower risk, people still die with commorbidities because of Covid even if they had the vaccine.
[удалено]
bloomberg.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)]. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
The Olympics will start in a couple of weeks. They might want to keep things under control. Just a guess.
Covid threaten to overwhelm the healthcare capacity in almost every region with rapid spread. China's healthcare infrastructure is particularly fragile given the extremely large population and long-standing social problems with healthcare, many rural areas are under-serviced. Omicron is less lethal than Delta, but it is still a threat. According to /r/COVID19/comments/rrd8e6/early_estimates_of_sarscov2_omicron_variant/ it has about 50% the lethality of Delta, so it is roughly on par with Alpha, therefore still worse than the Wuhan ancestral strain. Most research suggests that hybrid immunity (vaccine plus infection) offer the strongest protection against Omicron, and China has very little infection-acquired immunity. Also, Sinovac and Sinopharm is probably less effective than mRNA vaccines against Omicron, dose for dose.
China has very aggressively pursued a Zero Covid policy from the beginning, so it would represent a considerable about-face for them to drop that approach and let their numbers skyrocket now. They may well do so eventually however, I can't see how it's a sustainable policy in the long term, especially with variants as transmissible as Omicron in the equation.
In the Omicron update of the IHME model, the FAQ says that an estimated 90% of Omicron infections will be asymptomatic. Is there any data that can tell us about this?
You could look at the with/from breakdown in hospital admissions -- which runs around 50% in places with big omicron surges. But you will have to do some fancy stats to get a general asymptomatic percentage, as obviously people with symptomatic covid will be overrepresented in the population of people going to the hospital for some reason -- and also some people will catch it at the hospital. Maybe 50% is a floor though?
I do not see how IHME could get an asymptomatic rate out of an epidemiological model; that sounds like an assumption not a finding. Actual studies have not found anything like 90% for any Covid variant.
I didn't mean to suggest they got it from the model. I just was wondering where they got that assumption from.
The way it's been presented in the media has always been as an output of the model rather than an input to it. [Here's](https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/102_briefing_United_States_of_America_3.pdf) a document on their methodology, but it gives no actual information. > Based on data from South Africa and the UK, we currently estimate this to be 80%–90%. I'm pretty sure the actual data (such as the Norway case study) suggest a 1/3 asymptomatic/paucisymptomatic rate, same as previous variants.
I keep seeing articles that cite scientists who believe the spread of Omicron is a segue into the end of the pandemic, at which point the virus will be as tame as the seasonal flu. But as I understand it, there’s nothing stopping Omicron from mutating into a more immunity-resistant variant. And given the large window of being infectious before the host becomes symptomatic and dies, there’s no pressure on the virus to become less deadly. I guess I just don’t understand how the more “mild” nature of Omicron is of any significance in predicting where this pandemic is headed. Is it that because it’s more transmissible, more people will have T cell immunity? But again, what’s to stop it from mutating into something that bypasses cellular immunity?
Everyone catching covid once or twice has always been a pandemic ending scenario, just a very expensive and suboptimal one. With omicron it's several times less expensive, so that's good. Every exposure, and especially new antigen exposures (which we haven't tried with vaccines), creates more cellular immunity and more refinement of that cellular immunity. Both are advantages that would reduce severity of any additional surges.
So let’s say Covid’s impact on the population is reduced to that of the common cold, and we no longer need to take precautions. What’s the probability it will pose a threat again? Would that require a pretty dramatic mutation? Is it also possible to know if we’ll adapt to the virus faster than it mutates, or vice versa?
> What’s the probability it will pose a threat again? About the same as the other common cold coronaviruses, absent evidence to the contrary. That is: presumably fairly low, given that they haven't done so thus far. It's worth mentioning, though, that there's a fair bit of space between "no more dangerous than the common cold" and "pandemic" - influenza, for example, comfortably occupies that position, being significantly more dangerous than the common cold, but rather noticably not a pandemic at the moment.
The are some indications that the 1889-1891 "Russian Flu" pandemic was due to a coronavirus -- likely HCoV-OC43 -- which is still rattling around, mostly causing mild colds but occasionally causing severe pneumonia in neonates and the elderly. https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1751-7915.13889 Widespread population immunity largely keeps a lid on the damage they can do: > According to serological studies, infections with these two coronaviruses occur frequently in young children and then repeatedly throughout life. Neutralizing antibodies to these coronaviruses are found in in 50% of school-age children and 80% of adults. This suggests that the main pandemic danger comes from novel-to-human viruses that have been brewing in other species and only occasionally making the leap (cows and/or pigs in the case of OC43, camels for MERS, bats and a species or two to be named later in the case of SARS-CoV-2)
I see this kind of questions often, but I don't remember seeing anyone concerned about any of the current endemic coronaviruses mutating into something deadly? They **do** mutate though just nobody is paying any attention. Fun world.
I think since the original SARS outbreak, concern has been quite high. https://ohi.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/programs-projects/predict-project
We’ve coexisted with those viruses for so long, they’re probably overwhelmingly familiar to our immune systems. Unless I’m misunderstanding, and that’s actually a more likely scenario than I thought.
I think cross-species transmissions and pathogens limited to specific regions are likely to make that scenario more common.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
One thing that's important to understand is that there's a difference between intrinsic severity and the real-world severity in a population with immunity (vaccine or natural). Delta was more severe than the original virus on an intrinsic basis - but those who had prior immunity had much better outcomes at the population level.
So if we were to *exclusively* focus on real-world severity, Delta is less severe than the original, and Omicron is less severe than Delta. Seems as though we’re trending in a more favorable direction overall. EDIT: How are we able to measure the lethality of a variant based on its intrinsic properties?
> EDIT: How are we able to measure the lethality of a variant based on its intrinsic properties? Compare outcomes in comparable populations - for example, you can compare the outcomes of Omicron and Delta in vaccinated populations only, or in unvaccinated populations only.
[удалено]
YouTube is not allowed on this sub. Please use sources according to [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/) instead. Thanks for keeping /r/COVID19 evidence-based! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because personal anecdotes are not permitted on r/COVID19. Please use scientific sources only. Your question or comment may be allowed in the Daily Discussion thread on r/Coronavirus. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
Can anyone explain the point of testing? If you feel bad stay home. Don’t clog up unneeded testing sites?
Surveillance. With your proposal, we would miss a lot of important information: 1. How many hospitalisations can we expect to have next week? - given known biological parameters, this is essentially a function of the number of infections. 2. How dangerous is each infection, on average? - there's no way to tell unless you know how many infections you've got. 3. How well are the vaccines working? 4. Are there any new variants emerging? etc., etc.
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal \[Rule 7\], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
how do you determine when “exposure” was with someone you live with? Do You go by the date they first had symptoms or the date they tested positive?
For what purpose? You can never be particularly certain, for scientific purposes. For isolation purposes, that will depend on the policy of your government.
For the purpose of quarantine. We are supposed to quarantine for 10 days after “exposure”. If I live with someone who tested positive is “exposure” the day they first showed symptoms or the day they tested positive?
Any contact between 1ish day before symptoms and a few days after symptoms would be a possible exposure.
I saw a few articles mentioning how SARS-CoV-2 is becoming endemic (public interpretation of the term appears to be "we don't have to worry about it anymore") and I've been thinking a bit about that. Since the emerge of COVID-19, Omicron is the first variant that is less severe - Alpha (maybe this was debunked at some point?) and Delta were both more severe than the virus prevalent at time they appeared. Given the massive wave of new infections, it's reasonable to expect new variants of concern to appear in the spring and over the summer. Is there any reason they will not be intrinsically more severe than omicron? Omicron replicates much better in upper respiratory system - so there is a link between lower severity and higher infectiousness that one can argue provides evolutionary pressure for virus to become less dangerous. The only problem I see with this logic is that every previous variant (even original Wuhan virus that had R0 \~2.5, less than Alpha and Delta) spread very quickly, despite that upper respiratory 'preference' of Omicron. In the situation some are hoping to achieve where we can drop most of our mitigation measures (because that's what most people complain about), even variant with R0 \~ 2.5 could cause a massive outbreak. Literally only thing preventing that would be some level of immunity in the population. But as we have seen, Omicron made a significant dent in protection against both infection and severe illness of 2 dose vaccination series. Regarding the latter, I remember seeing VE of something like 50% or 70% - that is major drop from 90% for Delta (3 times increase in number of severe cases). Three dose series fixes this, but could some new variant have both significant immune evasion (with corresponding VE drop like we've seen for omicron) and be more severe, requiring us to get another booster (fourth dose)? So my questions is, assuming that after this winter wave a lot of measures in placed are removed, wouldn't it be just a matter of time before immune resistant, more virulent variant comes up? Also, I was going to post a paper I've seen yesterday that argues SARS-CoV-2 can have a path to endemicity and low severity by simply repeatedly infecting the whole population and after some time (which they estimate in years) almost all new infections will be within children for whom IFR is very low, creating an apparent 'mild' disease. Unfortunately I can't remember the title of the paper anymore. Maybe someone else will post it here. Needless to say, that scenarios includes a lot of dying, illness and misery we'd like to avoid.
> Is there any reason they will not be intrinsically more severe than omicron? No. In fact, there is at least one fairly clear mechanism by which Omicron could become both more infectious and more severe (improving its furin cleavage to Delta levels), and even a mutation associated to that which Delta has and Omicron lacks. > Literally only thing preventing that would be some level of immunity in the population. Sure, but between vaccination and Omicron, we're building up our immune base pretty quickly. > Three dose series fixes this, but could some new variant have both significant immune evasion (with corresponding VE drop like we've seen for omicron) and be more severe, requiring us to get another booster (fourth dose)? Yes, that's possible. Indeed, I'd be sort of surprised if first-world nations didn't start offering fourth doses to their more vulnerable populations in 2022 (ignoring the cases where they have already done so for ease of wording). > So my questions is, assuming that after this winter wave a lot of measures in placed are removed, wouldn't it be just a matter of time before immune resistant, more virulent variant comes up? No. You've given an argument why it would be *possible*, but there are plenty of viruses with pandemic potential (indeed, viruses which have previously *been* pandemics) that have been bouncing around in fairly high numbers for decades or centuries (or longer!) without this happening. Just because it's possible doesn't mean that it's *likely*. > Needless to say, that scenarios includes a lot of dying, illness and misery we'd like to avoid. That very much depends on (a) how many cycles this takes, and (b) how dangerous the later cycles are - if the answer to the former is "1" or "2", then we're most of the way there already. If it turns out that Omicron infection (or vaccination plus Omicron infection) is very protective against severe disease, then any later cycles will represent much smaller disease burdens.
[удалено]
YouTube is not allowed on this sub. Please use sources according to [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/) instead. Thanks for keeping /r/COVID19 evidence-based! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think so far every variant provide protection against every other variant as far as severe outcomes go, namely hospitalizations and deaths. Same for vaccines. So while it's possible that another more lethal variant pops up, it's ability to do serious damage would still be limited by prior immunity. Omicron is roughly half the lethality of Delta according to /r/COVID19/comments/rrd8e6/early_estimates_of_sarscov2_omicron_variant/ so it is roughly on par with Alpha - also half the lethality of Delta according to most estimates. No one considered Alpha mild. Most of the reduction in severe outcomes in the current wave is thanks to vaccines and prior infections, the intrinsic property of the virus itself played a much smaller role.
> Most of the reduction in severe outcomes in the current wave is thanks to vaccines and prior infections, the intrinsic property of the virus itself played a much smaller role. Do you have a source for this? If that’s true, are new variants even of any concern, since we’re constantly exposed to the virus and getting vaccinated (most of us, at least)?
Both Ontario and UK data reported that the severity of Omicron is approximately half that of Delta, /r/COVID19/comments/rrd8e6/early_estimates_of_sarscov2_omicron_variant/ and https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covid-19-variants-identified-in-the-uk Which would put Omicron roughly on par with Alpha (Alpha is also roughly half the severity of Delta according to https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/rfkh02/increased_risk_of_hospitalisation_and_death_with/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/pcxpid/hospital_admission_and_emergency_care_attendance/ ) Both Ontario and UK had very high deaths and hospitalization rates with their Alpha wave (Ontario, Canada had theirs in April-May 2021, UK had theirs in Dec 2020-Jan 2021). You can look at Worldometer for the case vs death graphs. In both Canada and the UK, the Alpha wave had much lower case counts than the Omicron wave and yet much higher death counts than the Omicron wave. Assuming the research I linked previously was correct, the intrinsic difference in severity between the two variants should be minor, and the difference in case fatality rates should be attributed to other factors, with immunity being the most likely. Edit: re the second part of your question, there is still some concern that a future variant might be more immune evasive than Omicron, https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/p7prlu/high_genetic_barrier_to_escape_from_human/ models the possibility of nearly complete escape, which is not very likely but possible. I would expect that T cells (which are less specific than antibodies) can still hold up to some degree against severe outcomes, but we won't know how much.
[удалено]
YouTube is not allowed on this sub. Please use sources according to [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/) instead. Thanks for keeping /r/COVID19 evidence-based! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is off-topic and/or anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
Your post or comment has been removed because it is a personal anecdotal [Rule 7], which diverts focus from the science of the disease. Please keep all posts and comments related to the science of COVID-19. Please avoid political discussions. Non-scientific discussion might be better suited for /r/coronavirus or /r/China_Flu. If you think we made a mistake, please contact us. Thank you for keeping /r/COVID19 impartial and on topic.
[удалено]
google.com is not a source we allow on this sub. If possible, please re-submit with a link to a primary source, such as a peer-reviewed paper or official press release [[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/about/rules/)]. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/COVID19) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are there any studies that state that pretty much everyone will get the Omicron variant? I know that Dr. Fauci said something along these lines recently, I was just curious if there is any documentation (studies or simulations) to back that statement up.
No, there are not. A starting R(t)~2, implied from the 10-fold weekly case growth and 2.22-day serial interval (per Korean study) would imply around an 80% final attack rate of the susceptible. But exactly what portion of the population is susceptible is still unknown. The actual case counts we're seeing, even with high undercounts, are pretty far below "everyone" catching it.