registerme
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Post by registerme on Dec 25, 2021 18:53:32 GMT
So we've got to the point that (I think) we are agreeing that current immunity doesn't protect against omicron any more than other previous variants. I don't agree with that. My understanding is that current immunity (provided by previous exposure and vaccinations to date) protects against omicron more than other, previous variants because omicron is in and of itself less virulent. Omicron is less virulent therefore existing protections are more effective. So how then can it be that the reason the omicron variant is apparently less dangerous to a given individual is due to immunity as the BBC claim? It must surely be something intrinsic to the omicron variant that makes it less harmful. No, I don't think it must surely be. Omicron being less virulent AND there being more effective protection (because the protection provided against the less virulent omicron is more useful / effective). Let's say, for the sake of argument, that protection provided by any vaccine and / or previous infection is worth -0.5 danger factors (I should trademark that). Alpha = 1 danger factor. Alpha and vaccinated = 0.5 danger factors. Beta = 1 danger factor (but more transmissible). Beta and vaccinated = 0.5 danger factors, but more ill people. Delta = 1.25 danger factors (but more transmissible than beta). Delta and vaccinated = 0.75 danger factors, but a lot more ill people. Omicron = 0.75 danger factors (but incredibly more transmissible than even delta). Omicron and vaccinated = 0.25 danger factors, but a hell of a lot more ill people. Obviously I'm pulling numbers out of my arse, but the above should hopefully illustrate why vaccines are helpful against omicron. Or in my own case, had I caught alpha and not had a vaccine I might have ended up in hospital. As it was I (probably) caught omicron and had had two doses of a vaccine. I was extremely unlikely to end up in hospital.
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ilmoro
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Post by ilmoro on Dec 25, 2021 19:49:52 GMT
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Post by bracknellboy on Dec 25, 2021 20:06:20 GMT
That seems to be a bit too binary. Immunity will be against anything resembling coronavirus but more effective against something that is closer to the known model than something that shows greater deviation. The body is looking for a something with spikes, Omicron has spikes with a false nose & moustache, but enough of the body's defences could still see though the disguise to prevent serious disease but not to prevent infection. But using your analogy delta has spikes without anything false (to those who gained immunity via recent infection). Therefore, shouldn't delta present as being lower risk of hospitalisation than omicron? But that isn't the case or at least seems now unlikely to be the case. I can't make sense of that at an English language comprehension level, let alone at a medical/virology/immunology level.
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Post by bracknellboy on Dec 25, 2021 20:32:02 GMT
I disagree. Vaccination against delta (or alpha), or prior infection, provides some level of immunity against omicron. Across the population as a whole I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that this has contributed to omicron's apparent "less severe disease".It's not binary, there are many variables in play, "contributed to" is not the same as "due to", and experts tailoring their message for mass consumption are going to use different language to that which they'd use writing a paper for peer review. As would journalists. Why should it provide better protection from omicron (a variant that immunity hasn't seen) than say delta ? How on earth have we managed to go from disputed statements that a considerable part of potentially lower serious disease outcomes with 'O' may be largely due to vaccine and prior infection immunity 'wall' to 'that can't be true else it would have been better with Delta' ?? Nope, struggling. thinking harder. No, still struggling. The bolded part of course when reworded to remove the 'doesn't' to 'does' would be a statement accepeted to be reasonable. So what is going on with the negatives ? Oh hang on a sec: I think I get it. We are spending time on word games dressed up as discussions of disputed facts. But No-one anywhere has said that vaccines or prior immunity provide better protection against Omicron than prior variants. So even the following: " It is milder - if you catch it, the risk of needing hospital treatment is up to 70% lower than with previous variants. But that is largely because many of us have built up immunity from vaccines and past infections rather than changes to the virus" you are taking the present tense to be entirely literal. Not 'historical context'. Now, pretty much everyone else reading that statement is reading that last part to mean "relative to waves with previous variants."They aren't reading it thinking: oh, if I get 'O' tomorrow then I am going to be 70% less at risk than if I get 'D' instead". 'Cos given the context of everything else, that is self evidently nonsensical: that is not an interpretation that any half sensible person is going to make. The English language eh: its rich, flexible, and context is important. Clearly the interpretation that you are putting on it and disputing is self evidently sp daft that a) it couldn't have been the intent of the original sentence and b) noone else is reading that interpretation from it. Still, we can all have a laugh.
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stevepn
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Post by stevepn on Dec 25, 2021 21:30:43 GMT
Why then doesn't that immunity gained from prior variants or vaccines provide better protection against those same variants? Why should it provide better protection from omicron (a variant that immunity hasn't seen) than say delta ? How on earth have we managed to go from disputed statements that a considerable part of potentially lower serious disease outcomes with 'O' may be largely due to vaccine and prior infection immunity 'wall' to 'that can't be true else it would have been better with Delta' ?? Nope, struggling. thinking harder. No, still struggling. The bolded part of course when reworded to remove the 'doesn't' to 'does' would be a statement accepeted to be reasonable. So what is going on with the negatives ? Oh hang on a sec: I think I get it. We are spending time on word games dressed up as discussions of disputed facts. But No-one anywhere has said that vaccines or prior immunity provide better protection against Omicron than prior variants. So even the following: " It is milder - if you catch it, the risk of needing hospital treatment is up to 70% lower than with previous variants. But that is largely because many of us have built up immunity from vaccines and past infections rather than changes to the virus" you are taking the present tense to be entirely literal. Not 'historical context'. Now, pretty much everyone else reading that statement is reading that last part to mean "relative to waves with previous variants."They aren't reading it thinking: oh, if I get 'O' tomorrow then I am going to be 70% less at risk than if I get 'D' instead". 'Cos given the context of everything else, that is self evidently nonsensical: that is not an interpretation that any half sensible person is going to make. The English language eh: its rich, flexible, and context is important. Clearly the interpretation that you are putting on it and disputing is self evidently sp daft that a) it couldn't have been the intent of the original sentence and b) noone else is reading that interpretation from it. Still, we can all have a laugh. How can we laugh about this when a neighbour is telling me that people are dropping like flies?
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Dec 25, 2021 22:09:01 GMT
You must have missed the sarcasm.
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Dec 25, 2021 22:14:01 GMT
How on earth have we managed to go from disputed statements that a considerable part of potentially lower serious disease outcomes with 'O' may be largely due to vaccine and prior infection immunity 'wall' to 'that can't be true else it would have been better with Delta' ?? Nope, struggling. thinking harder. No, still struggling. The bolded part of course when reworded to remove the 'doesn't' to 'does' would be a statement accepeted to be reasonable. So what is going on with the negatives ? Oh hang on a sec: I think I get it. We are spending time on word games dressed up as discussions of disputed facts. But No-one anywhere has said that vaccines or prior immunity provide better protection against Omicron than prior variants. So even the following: " It is milder - if you catch it, the risk of needing hospital treatment is up to 70% lower than with previous variants. But that is largely because many of us have built up immunity from vaccines and past infections rather than changes to the virus" you are taking the present tense to be entirely literal. Not 'historical context'. Now, pretty much everyone else reading that statement is reading that last part to mean "relative to waves with previous variants."They aren't reading it thinking: oh, if I get 'O' tomorrow then I am going to be 70% less at risk than if I get 'D' instead". 'Cos given the context of everything else, that is self evidently nonsensical: that is not an interpretation that any half sensible person is going to make. The English language eh: its rich, flexible, and context is important. Clearly the interpretation that you are putting on it and disputing is self evidently sp daft that a) it couldn't have been the intent of the original sentence and b) noone else is reading that interpretation from it. Still, we can all have a laugh. How can we laugh about this when a neighbour is telling me that people are dropping like flies? I don't think bracknellboy is laughing about it and nor am I. (He's having a go at me not at the seriousness of the pandemic) The pandemic is very serious and so is the reaction to it. There are other very serious things that affect people in terrible ways but it doesn't mean we must stop talking about any of them. As for dropping like flies, why don't the figures show that ? ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Cases+and+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~GBR
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Dec 25, 2021 22:15:45 GMT
I think "dropping like flies" refers to infections, which the data certainly supports.
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ilmoro
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Post by ilmoro on Dec 25, 2021 22:49:50 GMT
But using your analogy delta has spikes without anything false (to those who gained immunity via recent infection). Therefore, shouldn't delta present as being lower risk of hospitalisation than omicron? But that isn't the case or at least seems now unlikely to be the case. I can't make sense of that at an English language comprehension level, let alone at a medical/virology/immunology level. Not sure why but my point was that the vaccines are designed to target the spike protein in coronavirus. The omicron mutations act as a disguise which confuses the immune response but one that sufficient of the bodies defences (T cells largely it seems) can see through to prevent severe disease. A more effective 'disguise' would not result in a reduction of severity of disease the science seems to be suggesting
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Dec 25, 2021 23:31:02 GMT
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Post by bernythedolt on Dec 26, 2021 3:19:21 GMT
Why then doesn't that immunity gained from prior variants or vaccines provide better protection against those same variants? Why should it provide better protection from omicron (a variant that immunity hasn't seen) than say delta ? How on earth have we managed to go from disputed statements that a considerable part of potentially lower serious disease outcomes with 'O' may be largely due to vaccine and prior infection immunity 'wall' to 'that can't be true else it would have been better with Delta' ?? Nope, struggling. thinking harder. No, still struggling. The bolded part of course when reworded to remove the 'doesn't' to 'does' would be a statement accepeted to be reasonable. So what is going on with the negatives ? Oh hang on a sec: I think I get it. We are spending time on word games dressed up as discussions of disputed facts. But No-one anywhere has said that vaccines or prior immunity provide better protection against Omicron than prior variants. So even the following: " It is milder - if you catch it, the risk of needing hospital treatment is up to 70% lower than with previous variants. But that is largely because many of us have built up immunity from vaccines and past infections rather than changes to the virus" you are taking the present tense to be entirely literal. Not 'historical context'. Now, pretty much everyone else reading that statement is reading that last part to mean "relative to waves with previous variants."They aren't reading it thinking: oh, if I get 'O' tomorrow then I am going to be 70% less at risk than if I get 'D' instead". 'Cos given the context of everything else, that is self evidently nonsensical: that is not an interpretation that any half sensible person is going to make. The English language eh: its rich, flexible, and context is important. Clearly the interpretation that you are putting on it and disputing is self evidently sp daft that a) it couldn't have been the intent of the original sentence and b) noone else is reading that interpretation from it. Still, we can all have a laugh. Well, I have to say my initial interpretation was the same as michaelc 's. Sorry for being thick! This is how I interpreted the 70% relative reduction message. If two unvaxxed humanoid aliens A and B teleported to the UK today and A caught omicron and B caught delta, then A's chance of needing hospitalisation is thought to be up to 70% lower than B's. That 70% being an absolute relative figure, and nothing to do with previous vaccination or infection. And I took it to mean an absolute reduction of that order precisely because of the very different behaviours of the two variants: it is possible/probable that omicron doesn't attack the lungs anywhere near as badly as delta. That leading directly, and entirely of itself, to a 70% reduction on hospitalisations. I actually find the other interpretation here more difficult to follow. Are we expected to believe that someone who catches delta tomorrow is suddenly 70% less likely to need hospital than someone who caught it last week? Of course not. But if you believe someone who catches omicron is 70% less likely to need admission than a person with delta, and that reduction is largely down to more people being vaccinated now, then that is what you are saying in effect. I would suggest the derivation of this sudden 70% reduction figure that's arisen overnight is almost all weighted by the more benign effects of omicron on the lungs (compared to delta), and far less weighted by the vaccines which have been on ongoing rollout for a year. Clearly the vaccines have made a terrific dent on both variants, and are an absolute triumph of science, but I see the 70% thing as a measure of the relative severity of the two variants and no more than that. It just goes to show how easy it is for different people to read the same news differently!
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Dec 26, 2021 8:12:01 GMT
How on earth have we managed to go from disputed statements that a considerable part of potentially lower serious disease outcomes with 'O' may be largely due to vaccine and prior infection immunity 'wall' to 'that can't be true else it would have been better with Delta' ?? Nope, struggling. thinking harder. No, still struggling. The bolded part of course when reworded to remove the 'doesn't' to 'does' would be a statement accepeted to be reasonable. So what is going on with the negatives ? Oh hang on a sec: I think I get it. We are spending time on word games dressed up as discussions of disputed facts. But No-one anywhere has said that vaccines or prior immunity provide better protection against Omicron than prior variants. So even the following: " It is milder - if you catch it, the risk of needing hospital treatment is up to 70% lower than with previous variants. But that is largely because many of us have built up immunity from vaccines and past infections rather than changes to the virus" you are taking the present tense to be entirely literal. Not 'historical context'. Now, pretty much everyone else reading that statement is reading that last part to mean "relative to waves with previous variants."They aren't reading it thinking: oh, if I get 'O' tomorrow then I am going to be 70% less at risk than if I get 'D' instead". 'Cos given the context of everything else, that is self evidently nonsensical: that is not an interpretation that any half sensible person is going to make. The English language eh: its rich, flexible, and context is important. Clearly the interpretation that you are putting on it and disputing is self evidently sp daft that a) it couldn't have been the intent of the original sentence and b) noone else is reading that interpretation from it. Still, we can all have a laugh. Well, I have to say my initial interpretation was the same as michaelc 's. Sorry for being thick! This is how I interpreted the 70% relative reduction message. If two unvaxxed humanoid aliens A and B teleported to the UK today and A caught omicron and B caught delta, then A's chance of needing hospitalisation is thought to be up to 70% lower than B's. That 70% being an absolute relative figure, and nothing to do with previous vaccination or infection. And I took it to mean an absolute reduction of that order precisely because of the very different behaviours of the two variants: it is possible/probable that omicron doesn't attack the lungs anywhere near as badly as delta. That leading directly, and entirely of itself, to a 70% reduction on hospitalisations. I actually find the other interpretation here more difficult to follow. Are we expected to believe that someone who catches delta tomorrow is suddenly 70% less likely to need hospital than someone who caught it last week? Of course not. But if you believe someone who catches omicron is 70% less likely to need admission than a person with delta, and that reduction is largely down to more people being vaccinated now, then that is what you are saying in effect. I would suggest the derivation of this sudden 70% reduction figure that's arisen overnight is almost all weighted by the more benign effects of omicron on the lungs (compared to delta), and far less weighted by the vaccines which have been on ongoing rollout for a year. Clearly the vaccines have made a terrific dent on both variants, and are an absolute triumph of science, but I see the 70% thing as a measure of the relative severity of the two variants and no more than that. It just goes to show how easy it is for different people to read the same news differently! Omicron may be 50 - 70% less likely to put you in hospital, but if twice as many (or more) people are catching it your individual risk is still pretty much the same, death rates are still holding steady which is still good news on the effectiveness of vaccination on all variants and the push on booster jabs. But there is also the suggestion that Omicron hasn't substantially reached the older, more vulnerable population and Christmas family gatherings may change all of this, not in a good way. People who have caught Delta recently (after a booster jab) might well be less likely to end up in hospital than if they had caught it a few weeks ago, protection was starting to decrease with time after the second jab for many people. It may be that the spread of Omicron is slowing because it has run through a lot of unvaccinated people and is finding it more difficult to infect vaccinated people, or it is so much milder in vaccinated people they are not getting tested and cases are going unreported. Overall if we can avoid overloading the hospitals things are not looking too bad (yet).
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ilmoro
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Post by ilmoro on Dec 26, 2021 17:57:34 GMT
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Dec 26, 2021 18:48:28 GMT
I sold my modest Pfzier and Moderna stock last week and used the funds to buy some pubs and restaurant stocks. Maybe the gamble might work out .....
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Dec 27, 2021 14:52:13 GMT
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