Calculon wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:16 am
petej wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 9:52 pm
Ymx wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 1:43 pm
We didn’t give up on mitigations. We added them.
The mitigations will slow the spread but to what end, more and more mitigations for a disease that is less and less harmful? For me the balance/risk has shifted and mitigations that were worthwhile pre vaccines and delta & omicron increasingly aren't worth it now, though the masking doesn't really bother me. Anyone suggesting shutting down schools or nurseries or making people test or mask 4 year olds and younger can fuck right off. The end is obviously the virus being endemic and that we are all going to get it multiple times in our lifetimes. The biggest risk is when we first get it and are immune naive. I can appreciate governments being cautious (shame that ours wasn't more so when it really should have been).
The out competing delta is interesting considering the SA delta wave had peaked ages go meaning it is likely that it's pure Rcurrent will be considerably different its R0 value or whatever you wish to call it. Omicron could have a lower R0 value than delta but a higher Rcurrent value due to its immunity evasion. If the omicron Rcurrent ends up being lower in highly vaccinated countries it is a bit of blow to the natural immunity is superior lot as SA has low vaccination and more "natural" immunity.
By R0 I mean how it would spread in a population that had no immunity at all.
Ro assumes complete susceptibility in a population so you are talking about R or Rt. The Rt of Omicron is extremely high in SA at the moment but the reasons it might be lower in somewhere like the UK is more complex than just vaccination rate. Many other factors in play, maybe also one of them the fact that omicron took of in SA when there were only a couple of hundred daily infections from Delta, while the UK has 50000 daily Delta infections at the time that Omicron is trying to establish itself there. Completely agree with your fist paragraph, I would add travel bans to the list of things that can fuck off. I have a friend here who has been unable to see her little girl for nearly two years thanks to a travel ban.
Unfortunately there is no evidence that the disease is less harmful or will become less harmful as you suggest unless you mean that being vaccinated reduces the chances of hospitalisation and possible death? Yesterday we have had over 50,000 cases in the UK and 141 deaths and we seem to be plateauing at around 120 deaths a day, c1,000 a week or 52,000 a year. It is likely to get worse as winter hits unless we accelerate vaccinations and boosters. Unfortunately we still have over 6 million who haven't taken up their vaccination yet plus over 9 million kids not yet eligible - a big enough pool to keep the covid circulating at a pretty high level for some time to come. The virus becoming endemic does not mean it becomes less deadly plus we have the overhanging shadow of long covid which we don't fully understand yet and I wouldn't want to be exposing people to an unknown and possibly serious long term medical condition. Also from initial data from SA it looks like Omicron might have a higher re-infection rate particularly amongst those who have already had covid and are relying on 'natural immunity'. The whole purpose of simple PH mitigations ie masks, ventilation, distancing, working from home where possible, etc is to avoid more stringent lock downs and to buy time to get everyone vaccinated and boosted. If everyone followed these simple mitigations then lock downs will not be required. I agree with comments above in that we have got the balance wrong - over 50,000 deaths a year to a preventable disease seems to many to me!
