'No Evidence' That Omicron is Less Severe Than Delta, Say Imperial Researchers

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• Re:

  I thought the point was it doesn't cut anyway. Inconclusive.

• Re:

  "There is no evidence" is a fucking nothingburger. It asserts nothing. Take a big bite of air and enjoy.

  When you have sufficient data, that IS "evidence that omicron is no less severe than delta", a demonstrated pattern.

  I'm not interested in diving whatever agendas are at play here, because this bullshit goes way further back than that. It's old and I'm sick of it. At best, someone babbling about "there's no evidence" asserts that other assertions should be scrutinized, that we are as yet unsure, agnostic.

  • by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @03:34PM (#62091761)

    >At best, someone babbling about "there's no evidence" asserts that other assertions should be scrutinized, that we are as yet unsure, agnostic. "i dunno lol."

    Exactly

    So long as we don't know, and there are many people claiming we *do* know, it's important that prominent voices speak out saying "We don't know yet". Otherwise by the time we really do know, the masses may already be convinced of a falsehood.

    That's especially dangerous when the (potential) falsehood is "it's less/not dangerous", and thus promotes widespread reckless behavior.

• Fuck that. I'm just going to keep up to date on my vaccinations and boosters, and let the chips fall where they may. This has gone on long enough. At some point things need to return to normalcy, one way or another. I have to wonder if all this screwing around is doing nothing but dragging this on and on endlessly, with mutation after wave after mutation.
  • I understand the fatigue factor. I am missing out in so many activities that I would love to engage in but I don't because if I get infected, it's bad. If I infect other people, it's worse because that adds to the public health care load which is currently breaking our medical system.
    
    I would argue for adding masking with a good N95 mask to your daily life. Omicron is demonstrably more infectious, severity of infection is TBD as is the incidence of long Covid. However it's not just about you. It's good that you're keeping up-to-date in the vaccinations. You are ahead of a huge number of people in this world. Masking is essential to keep from infecting other people should you be unlucky enough to have a breakthrough infection with omicron.
    
    vaccines, boosters, and masks are what's required to keep other people from getting sick and you getting sick from them.

    • • Re:

        Same question for you.
        I live in Chicago and we have been on a mask mandate since August. I teach in a mask, too.

        • • Re:

            Not to mention that thousands are dying across the country in auto accidents, which is easily mitigated by not driving. Yet, they continue to drive.

      • Re:

        yeah about half the people are still wearing masks around here. The numbers are higher in supermarkets.. It seems like the number of masked wearers are increasing since omicron started hitting the local environment. As for shaking hands, I never do that during flu season at the best of times. being from Scandinavia background, what is this thing you call hugging?
        
        Things may look normal on the surface but if you know anyone in the medical field, it's clear that the fire is burning out of sight of most peop

      • Re:

        • • Re:

            It's funny that most of this pro-virus bullshit on this site comes from you and your army of sock accounts.

      • Re:

        I'm in BC, the mask mandate came back late this summer after it was removed and hospitalizations went way up, almost all unvaccinated but there's 10% unvaccinated (not including kids) and 10% of 5 million is still half a million, enough to overwhelm the healthcare system. The neighbouring Province declared the pandemic over this summer, ICU usage went up to close to 200% and now the number of people who are dying from what was treatable disease like cancer or heart problems is way up due to the surgery canc

        • • Re:

            The real problem is that anti-vaxx nutjobs aren't dying fast enough.

            Your bullshit has killed a lot of people. People I care about. if you can't be bothered to get vaccinated, and least shut the fuck up.

      • • It's easy to have the lowest infection rates when you fire scientists who refuse to manipulate the data [beckershos...review.com] to make your state look better than it is, hide healthcare worker infection and death rates from covid [beckershos...review.com] to nudge your numbers even lower, blatangly fuck around with the data to make things look better and refuse to release data under the premise that it's confidential, even though it was not confidential for at least a year prior and no laws changed to make it confidential. [nbcmiami.com]

          Add to that the fact that Florida has done DNA sequencing on less than 0.01% of cases (about 2800 since the pandemic began) and it starts sounding a lot like Florida might just be using every loophole they can find to suggest that covid isn't a problem.

          But a governor who spent the first few months of the pandemic completely denying that it was spreading wouldn't do that, would he?

  • Re:

    Sorry, but you'll never be normal.

    What people mean when they say this is, "Let me go back to my Wall-E sled!"

    What they don't realize is that they still have their teevee. Nothing changed.

  • Re:

    . I have to wonder if all this screwing around is doing nothing but dragging this on and on endlessly,

    The report you're commenting on came to the conclusion that past infection is only 19% protective in this wave. Getting infected before doesn't mean you won't get infected now. Getting infected now doesn't mean you won't get infected later. And each infection is a new chance to create the mutations that set off the next wave. Oh, and FYI: Regeneron basically doesn't work anymore, and Molnupiravir and Pax

  • Re:

    Screwing around? What precisely do you think is "screwing around". Mutations will happen, it is what viruses do.

    Also, I've consulted the Cosmic Normalcy Guide, it turns out there is no rule that says Normalcy must return. Yes, I know, it seems odd but there you go.

  • At this point I just consider having a mask on in public, is like having a jacket, or keeping your shoes on.

    While the vaccinations are extremely effective, you are still at risk, and if you are at risk you could be spreading to other people who may not be vaccinated or can take more risk.

    I don't care if you catch COVID, I don't care if you get better, I don't care if you Die from it. But I do care that you had spread it to perhaps hundreds of other people while you were infectious and didn't have symptoms.

  • Re:

    We are where we are because a lot of yokels don't wear masks and don't get vaccinated (plus, it is a global pandemic that generates new mutations as it hits different regions of the world at different times.

    Sure, at some point the world will return to normal. A lot of people who rushed "to normal" ain't around to see how and when things go back to normal. It was understandable in 2020. But in 2021, I don't get it.

    I, for one, will keep getting my vaccines. On top of that, I will just follow the example f

  • Re:

    You realize "Fuck that" is how we get mutation after mutation, right?

    More people saying "fuck that" -> more people infected -> more opportunities for mutation

    • • Re:

        Slow down the infection rate so that better vaccines and treatments can be developed, and which will also slow down the mutation rate so that those treatments and vaccines remain effective.

        You know, Public Heath 101 stuff.

        What's your plan? It appears to be "I don't think I'll die, so fuck everyone"

• Re:

  Dang. I was really hoping to get back to kiss-hellos and my hobby of licking door knobs.

• Re:

  Continue wearing a mask, avoid crowds, don't travel, socially distance and wash your hands like it's spring 2020.

  I dunno where you live, but no one around here has been doing any of that since about last April or so?

  I've not really worn a mask since I got my 2nd shot first of April, and no one really wears them...except the occasional elderly person you see out.

  Been to music events, dining out in packed restaurants, gun shows, etc...

  Life here has been back to normal for quite some time now, and all covi

  • Re:

    I wonder how docile we would have been without TV?

    We have faced more severe restrictions then we did under British rule and not many seem to care.

    I get people being scared but this is destroying communities. I am waiting for the long term effects of children in their formative years not being able to see peoples faces. Having to treat every person - including themselves - as a biohazard. We have done a lot to dehumanize each other all in the name of protecting one another.

    I'm sure someone will be vulger

• Re:

  People keep including "wash your hands" as part of the standard COVID mantra. However isn't it pretty well established that surface transmission of COVID is negligible?

  There are certainly other good reasons to wash your hands regularly - but I'm not sure that COVID is one of them.

  • Re:

    But not too regularly. Otherwise you might have such a weak immune system that you could get sick just from touching things.

  • Re:

    >"People keep including "wash your hands" as part of the standard COVID mantra. However isn't it pretty well established that surface transmission of COVID is negligible?"

    Same with cloth masks. But whatever. Gotta do "something", especially if it LOOKS like you are doing something.

• • • Oh look it's another fake rsilvergun account

      and a motherfucking loathsome wumao one trying foment conflict for daddy Xi. How are all those Olympic boycotts treating you in west Taiwan?

• by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @01:20PM (#62091109)

  Except that if the host dies 2 weeks later, it had plenty of time to infect many other people

• Re:

  Because the vaccines make variants less likely to kill someone, more deadly variations could survive because they don't kill their hosts.

• by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @01:48PM (#62091243) Homepage

  The virus doesn't give a rat's arse what happens to you after your primary infectious period, which is before and shortly after symptom onset. You could burst into flames for all it cares after that point. You're a dead-end host.

  • Re:

    That would be an interesting illness, politically speaking.

• Re:

  That's one model.

  Killing the host after enough time has passed to spread to many other hosts is a model that also works.

• This is a dangerous virus myth and repeatedly has been denounced by experts, Thats because if the virus has a long enough incubation period, it can spread just fine, despite being deadly, if the deadly symptoms start to show up later. With SARS, its often 7 days to hospitalization, and 3 days to symptoms. So there is a lot of time for it to spread. Higher viral loads can increase spread advantage while making the virus worse. What you are saying is only true of the virus has to kill instantly which is not how things work. Many other viruses don't follow the stupid myth like Smallpox, Measles, Polio, Ebola, HIV, Hepatitis, pandemic Flus, etc.

• Both data from the UK and South Africa show that when compared to the delta wave last summer, deaths are not rising with the case load. This is probably due to a number of factors such as vaccines, antivirals/corona drugs and people that already have a latent immunity.

  • Both data from the UK and South Africa show that when compared to the delta wave last summer, deaths are not rising with the case load. This is probably due to a number of factors such as vaccines, antivirals/corona drugs and people that already have a latent immunity.
    
    That may be the case in the UK but South Africa has a very low vaccination rate [bbc.com].

    • Re:

      But they might have a much higher infection base rate from alpha+delta than previously known since ZA have a much younger base population than Western countries, and since younger people mostly get symptom free infections and you only test once you show symptoms...

  • Re:

    Right. Politicians and people who take their world view from them are always *instantly* certain about what any event or piece of data signifies, but science takes time and effort to figure things out -- if it ever does. Science also changes its mind, which politically-driven thinkers never do. Politics regards uncertainty as weakness, but science *runs* on the stuff.

    In a nutshell there are reasons to feel optimistic about data coming out of South Africa and the UK, but it's very early days yet.

• by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday December 17, 2021 @01:43PM (#62091217)

  South Africa has a COVID fatality rate 25 times lower [twitter.com] than previous peak.

  That's a chart you can view directly ay the link...

• Re:

  They did (double dose) vaccinate a lot of people between the Delta and Omicron waves, and a lot of people got Delta there. Even though Omicron seems to be able to get past vaccination and prior infection, that doesn't mean it doesn't offer some protection against severe disease or hospitalization. Indeed, that does seem to be the case.

  • • Re:

      The difference between nearly zero and 30% is a lot when you're talking about comparing spread rates between two waves, and the lower death rate can be due to a combination of vaccination and the number of people who were previously infected. Try using logic with your data instead of just spreading your assholery around.

• Re:

  No it doesn't. Data from South Africa continues to show that the infection *in South Africa* has largely spread through the school system with Omicron overwhelmingly affecting the young who are largely being ignored by various COVID measures the world over.

  COVID is mild in young people. All COVID. Omicron, Delta, Beta, and whatever Trump called the WuFlu.

  Hint: research involves more than just reading a Bloomberg article. You should really consider letting professionals do their job.

  • Who says that?

    No it doesn't. Data from South Africa continues to show that the infection *in South Africa* has largely spread through the school system

    Link please, I've seen soem articles that claim most Omicron is under 40, but not limited to schools at all.

    The very fact Omicron would be limited to younger population would still prove the point of the main poster, that it's less dangerous overall.

    • another hypothesis not yet considered

      Some observations suggest to me another hypothesis which doesn't seem to be discussed much:

      Is the increased infectivity of omicron particularly concentrated among younger people for biological, and not just rate and type of social contact, reasons? It does seem from very preliminary data that it's increase is dominating in younger people though at present that could be just the social factors. But what if it isn't?

      That would confound the observation of so far low severity rate.

      If severity in old were sim

  • Re:

    No it doesn't. Data from South Africa continues to show that the infection *in South Africa* has largely spread through the school system with Omicron overwhelmingly affecting the young who are largely being ignored by various COVID measures the world over.
    
    Can you please quantify "largely"? That doesn't sound like an actionable statistic to me.
    
    "Five weeks of data from the administrative capital Pretoria and the surrounding municipality show that hospitalizations are lower across all age groups. Among t

  • Re:

    This is factually incorrect. The highest rates are from people in their 30s which is above ZAs median age.

    https://www.nicd.ac.za/wp-cont... [nicd.ac.za]

• The the damage to lungs which causes severe hospitalization & death is from complex immune system reactions & destruction, which is why anti-virals only seem to work in the earlier stages of infections, and after hospitalization the treatments are immune suppressants like steroids and IL-6 inhibitors.

  So only if the lower replication of omicron in lung tissues also results in lower immune reactions & destruction to such tissues (possible but not at all guaranteed), would it be safe to assume lower severity of disease.

• Re:

  There's anecdotes that it's less severe. There's no data yet.

• • Re:

    Yes in some areas hospitalizations are up, but, it seems most of those are still Delta, and the majority are still un-vaccinated people.

    So far it seems Omicron is still proving to be less lethal, and if you are vaccinated and booster, you likely will be ok if you get O or D.

    But again, it is still WAY early.

• Re:

  The latest figures from the UK Health Security Agency show the doubling rate for Omicron is less than two days in all regions of England apart from the south-west. Cases are doubling every one-and-a-half days in London where 73.5% of Covid cases are now expected to be Omicron.

  https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

  • • Re:

      "I wish you fear merchants would at least learn a modicum of reading comprehension in your race to scare others."

      As opposed to the inscrutable logic you employed to justify that humans already have natural immunity to COVID?

      Is "fear merchanting" worse than the shit you're always selling?

• Re:

  If your metric is Severe Cases / Total Cases, it's less severe.

  The takeaway depends on whether you know anything about statistics or not.

  • Re:

    If your metric is Severe Cases / Total Cases, it's less severe.

    Well, that's largely my only fear.

    If I won't die from it...I'll treat it like any other disease I might could get and survive and go about my daily life.

    From what I'm seeing out there, potentially Omicron is not only generally less severe, but it seems more often than not, asymptomatic.

    Of course it is VERY early to tell....but so far, so good.

  • • Re:

      Very early on, when vastly less was know, I feel the fear was reasonable in the face of (globally, not referring to anything specific) chaotic responses and exponentially expanding case counts (it tends to unnerve me a bit when a log-scale graph becomes appropriate for representing data of potentially mortal concern)... but I have to agree, people have been running with these sorts of one-parameter fears for too long (and it's not just with respect to this context).

    • Re:

      What statistics did you consider when you claimed that we had natural immunity to COVID, SuperKendall?

      Never forget what a lying, partisan asshole you are.

• Re:

  The Imperial College study result is the same result as out of Denmark [files.ssi.dk].

• Re:

  Stop making mountains out of molehills. Stop believing everything you read on the intertubules, bad for you.

• Re:

  From your link about how bad the modeling was: "The model also predicted the United States could incur up to 1 million deaths even with "enhanced social distancing" guidelines, including "shielding the elderly"

  You're aware that we're up to 800,000 now, right? Do you promise to stop posting that link or thinking it was right once we do surpass 1M?

• Re:

  You might want to google "lagging indicator".

  Oh, who are we kidding. Ken never lets reality get in the way of his opinions.

• Re:

  Speaking of "a bunch of losers who poorly modeled Covid before [heritage.org]". Let no one forget the loser that claimed that humans already had immunity to COVID. THAT LOSER WAS YOU, SuperKendall.

  "Stop believing the Merchants of Fear and Death."

  Stop believing liars like you, SuperKendall.

• • The doctor

    That's called anecdata. Nobody is lying. "What a person said" is not a valid basis for knowledge. This has been known for a long time... couple thousand years "or more."

    • Re:

      How about the fact that Omicron is all over Florida given poo samples from various locations?

      https://abcnews.go.com/Health/... [go.com]

      • Re:

        You need to read a bit more carefully. The article's about wastewater samples taken in one Florida county (Orange), which, given that it's home to Orlando and its attendant theme parks, happens to be the one with the greatest number by far of incoming visitors in the state.

        • Proportion

          DISCLAIMER: I work on the sequencing in a different country, so I don't know all the tiny details about the finding in Florida.

          Wastewater detection isn't solely a binary detection (present/absent). By using proper numerical models, it's possible to deconvolute the fraction of mutations' observations, and obtain a relatively good estimation of prevalence in the catchment area's population. My team does that in Switzerland [bsse.ethz.ch] in order to complement what we can already report based on the observed fraction am [bsse.ethz.ch]

    • Re:

      No, you just don't understand. Only evidence that supports my point of view is valid. Everything else is the gobermint lying to me. We all know they are trying to control us with 5G birdbots and tracking chips in the "jab" so we won't discover the earth is flat.

    • • Re:

        Can't *rapidly* test for - normal practice is submitting random/suspect samples to lab for sequencing or other analysis. Making absolute statements of impossibility is the true pseudoscience.

        • Can't *rapidly* test for - normal practice is submitting random/suspect samples to lab for sequencing or other analysis. Making absolute statements of impossibility is the true pseudoscience.

          True, but most normal PCR tests, lab tests as you say, but the easily available ones, can identify the omicron because the genetic changes make one of the subtests fail whilst the others succeed.

          BTW the comments on this thread are the exact example of why this is such an important piece of news. There's a whole bunch of politically motivated idiots who come out and shout "it's milder; do nothing" whilst not waiting for the evidence. This clearly says that, even if they end up being right, these idiots were still behaving like idiots and endangering everyone. By now based on South Africa, we can be sure that it isn't likely to be much more deadly than the previous variants, but it's too early to know that it won't be a big problem. Nations that can should be finding ways of delaying the growth until we actually know the consequences, likely in the next week or two.

          • One of the early "It's milder; do nothing" stories that was circulated came from Russian government press, too.

            This doesn't mean it's false, but we all know their recent track record on propaganda.

        • • • Re:

              That Coetzee said the thing is mild? Have a BBC article [bbc.co.uk] if that'll satisfy you. The problem is not that she's lying or doesn't exist. The problem is that she's clearly statistically illiterate (as with many Doctors). There are a bunch of things wrong with her analysis that Rei has gone through in far more detail than I can be bothered [slashdot.org] which means it's not useful data for predicting the effect of this variant if it gets loose in other countries like the Italy, the US, China or the UK.

              You realise there's a

      • Re:

        You, Sir, are a jelly donut.

        • Re:

          Now why go insulting jelly donuts like that.

    • • Re:

        Early data from South Africa shouldn't be relied on, because their public officials are making travel bans a political issue, when actually it is a public health issue.

        We should wait for the data to be reviewed by outside experts. It is too early to tell, for a bunch of reasons, including:

        1. Increased rate of re-infection with omicron. These people might have milder symptoms.
        2. Increased rate of vaccination breakthrough. These people might have milder symptoms.
        3. Increased rate of infection in children. These peopl

  • Re: Somebody's lying.

    There was an analysis on this in the local newspaper. The situation in South Africa differs too much from western countries. Younger population, more "herd immunity" due to wide spread infections etc.... Looks like both are right. Reality tends to be non boolean.

  • Re:

    Somebody is lying big time. Or perhaps there is some other factor going on that makes Omicron "extremely mild" in South Africa, but just as deadly as Delta in the USA/UK?

    P So far from what I've read and seen reported in the US, Omicron isn't causing the severity and hospitalization that delta has.

    From all reports I've seen recently, the surge in cases requiring hospitalization are Delta.

    • Re:

      It's still too early to say for sure, another week or 2 will tell due to lag between infection and hospitalization.
      Another thing is that if it is, numbers pulled out of my ass, 5 times as infectious and only causes half the hospitalizations, that is still over double the hospitalizations then current.

  • The "missing part of the story" is a lesson in statistical biases (like much of this pandemic has been, esp. base-rate bias and Simpson's paradox).

    In the case of the origin of this "Omicron Is Mild" story:

    1) Selection Bias - Age: This wave started out with a much younger age group. Younger people have significantly lower inherent risk and better prognoses.

    2) Selection Bias - Past Infection: A significantly higher percentage of people have been infected in this wave than were during the last wave. This implies reduced hospitalization and better prognoses.

    3) Selection Bias - Vaccination: Same as above.

    4) Immortal Time Bias - Imagine that you have two people hospitalized:

    A) Good case: person will recover quickly and be discharged
    B) Bad case: person will steadily worsen, end up in ICU, end up on a ventilator, and eventually die

    The study is conducted a week later. What does it see? (A) has been discharged, and contributes to a "milder" presentation. (B) has neither died nor been discharged, and is rejected from consideration. (B) can't have died because not enough time has passed for them to die; they are effectively an immortal from the perspective of the study.

    The faster the growth rate, the greater the amount that this bias skews results. To compensate for this, you either have to only consider cases that have been given enough time to die, or to estimate what percentage of unresolved cases will result in discharge vs. death.

    None of the above were accounted for in the South African reports. Nor did there seem to be any interest in doing so - officials would usually refer to these results, and then sentences later use them as a reason to rail against the travel bans.

    A couple other biases to consider:

    1) Makes strains look more severe than they are: increased testing, esp. of patients that are already hospitalized. Contrarily, also making things look less severe: overloaded testing systems, so fewer cases (only the more severe ones) found

    2) Makes strains look less severe than they are: early in waves, hospitals aren't as overloaded, and a patient's prognosis is better; the faster that case growth occurs, the more this amplifies the impact. Also, treatments available have improved over time.

    • Re:

      The majority of Omicron infections were from people in their 30s which is above the countries median age.

      I've heard various arguments along these lines over the past year and I'm still scratching my head as to what the point of raising them even is.

      People care about the world as it actually is not as it was or not compared to some absolute reference. If all of the people who would be killed off by something bad were already killed off then what actually matters in the real world is that bad thing no longer

      • The majority of Omicron infections were from people in their 30s which is above the countries median age.

        "The country's median age" could not be more irrelevant when comparing severity between waves. The age distribution of the previous waves is what is of relevance. And the age distribution differences look like this [twimg.com]. That age group difference on its own would imply a third as many deaths in this wave as in the last wave.

        I've heard various arguments along these lines over the past year and I'm still scratching my head as to what the point of raising them even is.

        If you're comparing severity between strains, you *must* compare apples to apples. You can't say "Strain X is more severe than Strain Y" when you're studying Strain Y relative to young people with past infection and vaccination and studying Strain X relative to old people with a COVID-naive immune system. That's not a strain comparison, and doesn't change how we should react to the news of a new fast-spreading strain entering the global picture.

        Can you cite any studies that have been this sloppy?

        How about literally every single one conducted thus far?

        It's questionable even calling what's come out thus far (including the above from Imperial College) a "study". A better term would be "a report". When it comes to severity, we're not even talking about preprints here.

        In case you've forgotten, Omicron was only declared a variant of concern 3 weeks ago, and had only been first identified four days before that. It's virtually impossible for a "study" that gives patients sufficient time to die to have been conducted already.

        In the Imperial College report above, for example: just like the Danish report, they're just simply reporting raw numbers of hospitalizations between two dates, raw numbers of new cases between the dates (Omicron vs. non-Omicron), and comparing the rates of Omicron and non-Omicron hospitalizations without any controlling for any factors whatsoever. Read the report for yourself.

        In the Imperial College and Danish reports, there is effectively control for vaccination and past infection status, since unlike South Africa, it's not being compared to waves that happened long ago, but current infections with Delta. But there's no control for age or time bias. In some of the South African reports there's control for age - in others, no control for age - but in none is there any control for past infection, vaccination status, or time bias.

      • 4) Immortal Time Bias - Imagine that you have two people hospitalized:

        A) Good case: person will recover quickly and be discharged
        B) Bad case: person will steadily worsen, end up in ICU, end up on a ventilator, and eventually die

        The study is conducted a week later. What does it see? (A) has been discharged, and contributes to a "milder" presentation. (B) has neither died nor been discharged, and is rejected from consideration. (B) can't have died because not enough time has passed for them to die; they are effectively an immortal from the perspective of the study.

        Can you cite any studies that have been this sloppy?

        The average time between a COVID diagnosis and death from COVID is about 3 weeks. Omicron was first discovered 3 weeks ago. We're only just starting to reach the point where you can make preliminary conclusions. You probably need another couple of weeks worth of data to have any confidence.

    • Re:

      Another is hospitalization bias. It's been alleged that there is motivation to keep the hospitals full of COVID cases, so they are hospitalizing people that don't need it. Really the death statistic is the least tamperable.

  • The doctor from South Africa where Omicron was first brought to light described it as "extremely mild."

    The doctor from South Africa noticed the infection in *children*. Every COVID variant is mild in children. At the time Omicron was first raised to a variant of concern practically no one over the age of 40 had been infected, the breakout started in the South African school system.

    Somebody is lying big time.

    No. Someone is ignorant. That someone is you.

    Whatever is going on, we aren't being told the whole story here.

    The whole story is there, you just need to read more than some headline flashed up to you on Fox News.

  • Re:

    Any analyses I've heard of always claimed it was premature to draw firm conclusions. So go back to your Conspiracy Theory Checklist and try again.

    • Re:

      They need to do more research until they come back with an answer I like, otherwise it's a conspiracy!

  • Somebody is lying big time.

    Many like to jump to that conclusion/explanation now, usually for partisan reasons, but people could simply be (a) mistaken and/or (b) trying to be optimistic, especially in light of incomplete data. While unhelpful from a data standpoint, those aren't nefarious. Furthermore, many like to ignore caveats that are often offered, like "it seems", "so far", etc... and jump straight to "someone's lying". That's really unhelpful.

  • Re:

    First, mainstream media is incompetent, in many cases criminally so, at accurately reporting on scientific or medical research. The media has a tendency of misquoting or over simplifying the conclusion. In most cases, the media reports on science before it has been peer reviewed and properly assessed.

    No one is lying, someone is wrong but this article is only saying their is 'No Evidence'. That is not a strong claim. There is no evidence that Omicron is milder. There is no evidence that omicron is more sev

  • Incorrect data isn't lying. Please don't bother with the Tin Foil hat talk.

    The initial data could had shown a mild, but that was with a particular population, where once it has spread to a wider group of people its true danger is shown.

    In the United States Diarrhea is mostly just an occasional annoyance. In other areas of the wold it is a major source of mortality.

    Also the Media is pounding the scientist with what about this new Omicron, they press for information now. So the scientist tries to explain their initial findings, and tries to preface it with that it isn't the final result. However the press will just go on and show that this is science and the science is the truth or just a bunch of BS. Because they cant cover nuance, because their consumers are idiots.

  • Re: Somebody's lying.

    An insurance company in SA said that 200,000 people had mild Omicron. A study in Hong Kong said it is mild and a doctor in the USA calls it a Covid Cold which lasts about 5 days. The worst symptom seems to be lower back pain. Based on what I heard about the symptoms, I had it last week. The back ache was annoying, the rest not a big problem.

  • Re:

    Early observations of Omicron were that infections were not severe, but those observations were taken from a population of persons where a very high percentage of them had had Covid once or even twice in the past year. Covid infection provides you with natural antibodies, but across a population, mass infection results in maximal death and long-term complications from Covid. In South Africa, supply and logistical limitations has resulted in a vaccine penetration of around 6%, meaning they are simply getting