Theres no new information in this article but it’s interesting for a couple of reasons
First, in regard to omicron it admits the sub variants “are genetically different enough that they could have had their own Greek names. But for some reason, this did not happen, and the World Health Organization designated them as subvariants of Omicron.”
It’s essential to keep the brand name “Omicron” because that was sold to the public as being less dangerous (now known to be false) and suitable for herd immunity (it’s not - it’s exceptionally good at re-infection), so any newly named variant would destroy the illusion that Covid is ‘over’.
Second, the article points out the Wuhan strain had an R0 of 3.3, whereas the latest Omicron variant has an R0 of 18.6, ie it’s the most contagious virus ever along with measles.
Third, not only is the latest Omicron strain a ‘master at evading immunity’, “a Japanese research group found that in lab-based, cell-culture experiments, BA.4/5 was able to replicate more efficiently in the lungs than BA.2. In hamster experiments, it developed into more serious illness.”.
The article ends by noting that new Omicron specific vaccines are on the way (in trials). But given the number of anti-vaxxers and the fact that the ip will be locked up, Omnicron will surely evolve away from these and the vaccines will fail in the same way that the original ones did.
Its unusual to see an msm source be so blunt with the facts. I wonder how long society can continue amidst ever increasing death and long term damage while the fiction that ‘Covid is over’ competes with the fiction that it was always just like the flu. There must be some kind of tipping point…
The west is adopting a herd immunity covid strategy, but at what cost?
Oh, right, millions of lives.
Second, the article points out the Wuhan strain had an R0 of 3.3, whereas the latest Omicron variant has an R0 of 18.6, ie it’s the most contagious virus ever along with measles.
jesus fucking christ
BA.2.75 is another one to keep an eye on, it's early but it might have a growth advantage over BA.5 :covid-cool:
Well you can probably start betting that the time between dominant variants will keep decreasing, if Canada's data is any indication of the rest of the western world: https://nitter.net/DGBassani/status/1542991378073935877
The latest Omicron variant has an R0 of 18.6, ie it’s the most contagious virus ever along with measles.
Jesus fuck.
hamster experiments
Poor little guys.
NYT opinion article about how we have to stand up to the "manspreading" of covid by not acknowledging it
Vox video featuring Johnny Harris where he argues that covid is actually good for passing between borders
Because R0 varies depending on which data set it's calculated from, it's possible there have been studies showing measles has an R0 of 69.
What's the likelihood of the new variant spreading among congress and the senate and outright disabling a good chunk of the political machine?
There's a decent likelihood it could disable a good chunk of them.
Now for the bad news
Diane Feinstein is running for re-election.
Diane Feinstein. The profoundly disabled geriatric woman who does not know where she is.
These politicians are not people, they are flesh avatars of individual political machines.
At this point we are getting closer and closer to Futurama heads in jars except they are just hand puppets for a random corporation for a days worth of pay to the interns wheeling them about.
It already fucked up Tim Kaine I'm pretty sure. Part of me thinks that half of Congress could drop dead from COVID and they would still pretend that living with COVID is sustainable.
…I should probably look for my cloth masks and give them a good wash.
As a heads up, cloth masks offer virtually no protection against the Omicron variants. Ideally use an N95, but KN95s and KF94s offer great protection as well.
Stay safe out there comrades
fucking are you serious? cloth ones are the only ones i weear (and i wear them indoors 11 times out of 10 i would die before going indoors eithout one) brcause you an wear them an infinite number of times, i cant afford fucking disposable fancy ones, whats an option besides the cloth and the disposable ones that also works well enough?
Replace when they are Dirty, Damaged, or Difficult to breath through.
The only type of mask that protects the wearer are N95's. Surgical and cloth masks protect other people from the wearer.
Proper N95s are pricy ($2 per mask), but there really is a difference. My glasses don't fog up like they did with KN-95s, so my breath must be passing through the filter.
Most places that have offered them are sold out, but you can still buy them directly from the manufacturer: https://www.progearhealth.com/product-page/n95-particulate-filter-respirator-surgical-mask-regular
IIRC the papers and stuff I went through about most common mechanisms of infection, it's much more important to ventilate (I do it like maniac both home and on my job including simply opening windows) and/or spend as little time as possible indoors, that is when in any kind of crowd - buses,shops...Of course masks/distancing/hygiene still matters.
For orientation they described COVID particles spreading through the air comparable to the behaviour of cigar smoke[!]; that is to say even if you and anyone else around you wear 95s (yeah I know it's SF...) but you spend too much time in that crowd - you'll get COVID anyway. IIRC this was all early omicron or pre-omicron data. PS and cloth masks are basically just a fashion detail.
IIRC the papers and stuff I went through about most common mechanisms of infection, it’s much more important to ventilate (I do it like maniac both home and on my job including simply opening windows) and/or spend as little time as possible indoors, that is when in any kind of crowd - buses,shops…Of course masks/distancing/hygiene still matters.
The most important thing is that everyone else is masked. Which of course won't be happening
(never caught covid again until fall 2021, when I went into a grocery store with unmasked people)
I live in Florida. Almost no one here wears a mask anymore.
When this variant reaches the states we are so fucked.
I'm pretty sure BA.4 and BA.5 already make up the majority of COVID cases now in the US
Edit: yes, they do: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions
I was told to scrap cloth masks all together and stick to KN95s
might be bullshit but that's what i was told
I’ve been trying to shock the libs by saying things like 2000 people have died of Covid since roe was overturned or 13000 have died of Covid since the Uvalde shooting
Also those statistics make me :deeper-sadness:
it feels like we're living through a Native American smallpox moment
Much worse because the longterm effects compound. Smallpox can blind you but it just leaves most victims scarred if it doesn't kill them. Even a mild case of COVID can cause long COVID which is as much cardiovascular and pulmonary as it is neurological. A severe one impacts every organ system either directly or as a result of what ICU care actually entails. Each new case and variant is playing Russian roulette with the risk of either. The lower death rate means state, capital, and the public can ignore it. Not having such a visible consequence to infection means it can be minimised as a respiratory illness on par with influenza (but not the kind that kills millions of people and that these freaks didn't believe in either). It's going to become a cycle of background genocide that targets the most vulnerable demographics which are also the most inconvenient to the bourgeoisie.
COVID's the most horrifying illness I've ever seen. You couldn't design a better longterm killer than it short of plague, and we can effectively control plague with minimal impact to society.
It’s going to become a cycle of background genocide that targets the most vulnerable demographics which are also the most inconvenient to the bourgeoisie.
COVID’s the most horrifying illness I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t design a better longterm killer
This is my understanding as well.
The question I have is: Is the long-term complication rate really as low as 10-20% (long COVID)? Or is it much higher than that, but with symptoms so mild that many people are overlooking it?
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/insurance-death-rates-working-age-people-up-40-percent
chuds blame this 40% increase on the vaccine, but I see it as the natural conclusion of repeated COVID-reinfection among vulnerable phenotypes.
Because of this, insurance companies are beginning to add premium increases on employers in counties with low vaccination rates to cover the benefit payouts.
libs and many leftists also blame this on the wrong thing, which is "not enough people getting vaccinated". Vaccines have zero efficacy against long-COVID, and from what I've seen only mildly reduce viral load/spread. The fact that insurance companies are targeting unvaccinated areas shows they have no idea what they're doing either. (don't get me wrong I hate chuds and broken clock etc)
My suspicion is that many of these people are dying of compounded long-COVID: long-COVID itself is bad, but from my experience recoverable and somewhat bearable.
However, getting covid AGAIN, WHILE you are still recovering from long-COVID, makes it worse. And maybe pushes it over the edge into fatal-damage territory. More spike protein = more damage
I could really see this being an actual Native American smallpox moment, where people just progressively die at higher rates, the virus continually evolving into more contagious and deadly forms, until eventually a huge percentage, or even a majority of the population is done in by the virus. Of course, if that happens, it may not end that way, because something may be done about it before it gets that bad
Basically I'm wondering whether the people who are "immune" to COVID, are actually fundamentally immune? Or are they simply suffering less damage (in which case they too are at risk if the virus evolves)
asymptomatic people can still get long covid
unless we do thorough testing on everyone (not just people w/ covid symptoms) including blood draws and ct scans we'll never know
my prediction is that the average global average lifespan is going to tank.
With long COVID I'm primarily concerned about how much it ties up medical resources. One thing hogs always point to is that cancer and heart disease kill so many more people. Those patients and their complex specialist needs are competing for appointment slots with chronic COVID impacts. Since COVID is affecting so many systems, that's everything from transplant surgeons to cardiologists to radiology to labs to ambulances to nursing homes. An increased burden on the medical system as staff are leaving because of the trauma of treating COVID and the existing resource strain will only compound the things destroying that system. It's hard to measure what a COVID death is when you're just a regular cardiomyopathy patient who can't get a new heart because there's a surge in demand for them and fewer beds available. Both on individual and systemic levels each new wave is going to take away more of our jenga blocks that allow us to withstand the next one.
less severe illness than smallpox
well one of the main reasons smallpox killed so many American Natives is because they were totally isolated from Afroeurasia for 20,000+ years
In addition to that, their hygienic standards (while better than europe for sure) were probably still lower than modern people's
when you take that into account, COVID-19 is causing all this damage DESPITE us all living in a global civilization with near-constant inoculation--now imagine how bad it would be if we lived in isolated pre-Columbian states
also I don't know much about smallpox but COVID definitely causes cumulative damage in the people it doesn't kill. It's unclear whether smallpox also did this.
I think covid wouldn't have been as bad in early centuries. The flow of people has always been constant, but the volume has increased in recent decades. Most cases on boats between Europe and America would have burned out before reaching their destination. Cities were also able to effect quarantine better. Plus, governments that aren't neoliberal are better equipped to handle any disease outbreak.
Is there any way to figure out what varrieant you got? I tested positive today and I'm be curious to know
Offtopic, but I (by no means expert on health) was recommending my infected friends and relatives to do Vim Hof breathings during recovery; at least google it, for what it's worth.
Edit: and get as much sleep (and rest in general) as possible, it's good for immunity and maybe your doc forgot to tell you.
There is CBD in weed, but also evidence that cannabis weakens your immune system to some degree.
Been doing the Wim Hof stuff during the pandemic. Haven’t gotten Covid yet. But it’s mainly because I think we’ve been very diligent about the protocols, masking anytime we have to go indoors and not going anywhere inside that is packed.
The cold showers I believe have helped bolster my immunity. Also the deep breathing exercises as you suggested (which I’ve kind of cut back on). At one point when I was doing them regularly had gotten up to being able to hold my breath for up to (and sometimes just over) two minutes. Lately CSN only get fo about 1:30.
I’d suggest both the cold showers and deep breathing, and yoga or long walks/running, whatever exercise you prefer.
Will do, day one and two I could barely sleep, but now taking it seriously and staying put in bed
what the fuck do we do now? like assuming we switch to public health communism overnight how do we fight a disease this infectious?
COVID's the thing that convinced me China Good. You can't stop it until you've exhausted the current wave and that means a month or two of quarantining as much as possible for asymptomatic cases and ones from essential workers facing less exposure to also fade out. They print magic money already so the stimulus payments should restart. Then controlling entry just means strict federal standards on PPE, testing, workplace sanitation/building codes/worker protection, vaccination, and penalties for intentionally spreading it or producing antivax/antimask propaganda. If the feds can play gestapo for any random post threatening them, they can absolutely track and shut down the propaganda networks as soon as they pop up. They can tie vaccination to carrots and sticks, and if they beat the plague rats to death with a stick then here's me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2MvHuflizQ
Will Covid tests that are several months old have any problem testing for the newer variants ?
