Serious concern’ as South Africa detects new coronavirus variant--Omicron

[fjb 24]

You will know the vaccines are working when the covid survival rate goes from 99.7% to 99.8%?

Can someone indicate how many deaths from omicron now, since it was first detected November 09? I can't find any reported deaths from any of the 38 countries reporting omicron cases.

Hmm, and I see daily new covid cases in SA are on par with new cases in Thailand but only a fraction of new cases reported in the EU and across the pond in North America.

Not to worry:

“Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said: "The implications of this paper are that Omicron will be able to overcome natural and probably vaccine-induced immunity to a significant degree.
"But, the degree is still unclear - though it is doubtful that this will represent complete escape."
The gut instinct of most scientists is that even if vaccines are less effective at stopping you catching Covid their main job of preventing severe disease and death will hold up better.”

Also, be informed that approximately 75% of covid deaths in the US are in the age bracket 65 and up and this group is no less than 86.5% fully vaccinated. The demographic data is available from the CDC in the link provided as well as other data bases. As of today there are likely no less than 10 known cases of omicron in the US.

The biggest storm coming may very well be the blizzard advisory for Grand Marais, up in Cook county, Mn.

[placeholder]

5 hours ago, fjb 24 said:

 

Also, be informed that approximately 75% of covid deaths in the US are in the age bracket 65 and up and this group is no less than 86.5% fully vaccinated. The demographic data is available from the CDC in the link provided as well as other data bases. As of today there are likely no less than 10 known cases of omicron in the US.

The biggest storm coming may very well be the blizzard advisory for Grand Marais, up in Cook county, Mn.

And what is the percentage of those who died in that age bracket who were vaccinated vs those who were unvaccinated.?

And do your figures include those who died before vaccination was available? And how did that change over time as more and more of that age bracket were vaccinated vs those who weren't vaccinated? I look forward to your detailed response.

In the meantime chew on this from the Washington State Dept. of Health:

https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/data-tables/421-010-CasesInNotFullyVaccinated.pdf

 

or this from the Texas Dept of State Health Services:

https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/data-tables/421-010-CasesInNotFullyVaccinated.pdf

Edited December 5, 2021 by placeholder

[Jeffr2]

9 hours ago, lucky2008 said:

You better believe it is! 

One jab, two jab, three jab, four
five jab, six jab, seven jab more.  

As determined by the virus and how we deal with it.  Not by anything else.  The more get jabs now, the less we'll need in the future.

[Jeffr2]

8 hours ago, fjb 24 said:

You will know the vaccines are working when the covid survival rate goes from 99.7% to 99.8%?

Can someone indicate how many deaths from omicron now, since it was first detected November 09? I can't find any reported deaths from any of the 38 countries reporting omicron cases.

Hmm, and I see daily new covid cases in SA are on par with new cases in Thailand but only a fraction of new cases reported in the EU and across the pond in North America.

Not to worry:

“Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said: "The implications of this paper are that Omicron will be able to overcome natural and probably vaccine-induced immunity to a significant degree.
"But, the degree is still unclear - though it is doubtful that this will represent complete escape."
The gut instinct of most scientists is that even if vaccines are less effective at stopping you catching Covid their main job of preventing severe disease and death will hold up better.”

Also, be informed that approximately 75% of covid deaths in the US are in the age bracket 65 and up and this group is no less than 86.5% fully vaccinated. The demographic data is available from the CDC in the link provided as well as other data bases. As of today there are likely no less than 10 known cases of omicron in the US.

The biggest storm coming may very well be the blizzard advisory for Grand Marais, up in Cook county, Mn.

As we know, deaths lag by a few weeks.  We should know more then.

[Jeffr2]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/world/africa/coranavirus-vaccine-hesitancy-africa.html

The Next Challenge to Vaccinating Africa: Overcoming Skepticism

 

Deep distrust of governments and medical authorities, especially among rural and marginalized communities, may already be stalling out vaccination drives. The legacy of Western exploitation and medical abuses during and after colonialism is weighing heavily, too.

 

Misinformation circulating on social media often fills the vacuum, some of it floating in from the United States and Europe, where vaccine refusal has also been an issue.

 

“There’s no doubt that vaccine hesitancy is a factor in the rollout of vaccines,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the Africa director of the World Health Organization. News or rumors of potential side effects, she said, “gets picked out and talked about, and some people become afraid.”

[mommysboy]

There does appear to be grounds for optimism that this variant is not quite so serious, even Fauci is beginning to sound cautiously optimistic.

 

As regards continued vaccines: there are 2 ways of gaining T and B cell immunity to Covid 19: vaccination or natural infection.  It's a personal choice, but I know which I would choose.  At some point we will all get covid19, or a new mutation, so it makes sense to gain some prior protection.

Edited December 6, 2021 by mommysboy

[placeholder]

1 minute ago, mommysboy said:

There does appear to be grounds for optimism that this variant is not quite so serious, even Fauci is beginning to sound cautiously optimistic.

 

As regards continued vaccines: there are 2 ways of gaining T and B cell immunity to Covid 19: vaccination or natural infection.  It's a personal choice, but I know which I would choose. 

Actually, there's a third way: a combination of both. Studies of shown that the strongest response is elicited when a naturally infected person is then inoculated with a vaccine. Don't know what longitudinial studies show, though

[mommysboy]

12 hours ago, placeholder said:

Actually, there's a third way: a combination of both. Studies of shown that the strongest response is elicited when a naturally infected person is then inoculated with a vaccine. Don't know what longitudinial studies show, though

Yes I agree, but we choose one and the other happens.

[Scott]

16 hours ago, mommysboy said:

There does appear to be grounds for optimism that this variant is not quite so serious, even Fauci is beginning to sound cautiously optimistic.

 

As regards continued vaccines: there are 2 ways of gaining T and B cell immunity to Covid 19: vaccination or natural infection.  It's a personal choice, but I know which I would choose.  At some point we will all get covid19, or a new mutation, so it makes sense to gain some prior protection.

We need to keep in mind that when a natural infection occurs, we don't know either how mild it will be and it also continues to run the risk of continuing to accumulate mutations and possible recombination with new genetic material.

There are some very early and preliminary indications some of the changes maybe due to viral material from another coronavirus that is one of the causes of the common cold.  

[Virt]

On 12/6/2021 at 2:11 AM, Jeffr2 said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/world/africa/coranavirus-vaccine-hesitancy-africa.html

The Next Challenge to Vaccinating Africa: Overcoming Skepticism

 

Deep distrust of governments and medical authorities, especially among rural and marginalized communities, may already be stalling out vaccination drives. The legacy of Western exploitation and medical abuses during and after colonialism is weighing heavily, too.

 

Misinformation circulating on social media often fills the vacuum, some of it floating in from the United States and Europe, where vaccine refusal has also been an issue.

 

“There’s no doubt that vaccine hesitancy is a factor in the rollout of vaccines,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the Africa director of the World Health Organization. News or rumors of potential side effects, she said, “gets picked out and talked about, and some people become afraid.”

Africa, a place the world has tried so long to save/exploit.

No wonder they don't trust what the west is telling them, but it's also a region that still has witch doctors and all sorts of mumbo jumbo.

In don't know how many that still can't read or have access to trustworthy news channels, but i would imagine it's still quite a few people that does not live in the major cities.

 

Another problem is the logistics when it comes to the mRNA vaccines that needs to be kept at certain temperatures, so they might have a better chance with AZ etc.

 

If it's so hard to get people vaccinated in the west, i can only imagine the problems the health authorities got in Africa, when it comes to the vaccines.

 

It's still a place where countries are at war, famine in certain countries, poverty and high death rates when it comes to births.

 

COVID is probably not a concern to many Africans, if life is all about surviving every day 

[Scott]

Thus far, there is a lot of noise surrounding the origin of the Omicron virus and the mutations.  I didn't follow Delta mutations to closely but I plan to follow the mutations and origins of this one.  There are several studies in pre-print.  

 

Omicron has a genetic sequence that may come from the common cold or it may actually come from the human genome -- about 8% of our DNA comes from viruses.   Both of these could make it less deadly, but in the very long term would could end up with something we call a really terrible cold or a mild Covid.  Only time will tell on that.  

If Covid starts picking up human genome changes then it makes finding a vaccine a little more challenging.  We don't want a vaccine that targets our own cells.  This won't happen because it would be discovered very quickly in early testing.   It also means our own immune system will have a hard time identifying it as an invading pathogen. 

The variant also appear to have picked up some genetic material from the HIV virus.  The same genetic sequence found in the cold-causing coronavirus also appears in HIV.  

 

At this point, much of this is speculation.  The genetic sequence from other viruses are real, but why and how they ended up recombining is not clear.  

My concern is will it compete with Delta or can they co-exist?   Can you rather easily get both or will one dominate?  In short, will our immune system be able to identify them as being the same pathogen and fight both?