Omicron news
- Thread starter weltweit
- Start date
2hats
Dust.
See also BA.2 v BA.1.
Meanwhile... (Kyoto) a new study of the environmental stability of a number of SARS-CoV-2 VOC, including omicron (hello fomites).
This study suggests that the omicron/B.1.1.529/BA.1 variant also has the highest environmental stability among VOCs, which might be a contributory factor to omicron replacing the delta variant and spreading rapidly.
On plastic surfaces, average survival times of original Wuhan strain, alpha, beta, gamma and delta variants were around 56, 191, 157, 59 and 144 hours, respectively, compared to 194 hours for omicron. On skin corresponding average virus survival times were around 9, 20, 19, 11, 17 and 21 hours.
All VOCs were completely inactivated by 15 second exposure to 35% ethyl alcohol based sanitiser.
DOI: 10.1101/2022.01.18.476607.
Meanwhile... (Kyoto) a new study of the environmental stability of a number of SARS-CoV-2 VOC, including omicron (hello fomites).
This study suggests that the omicron/B.1.1.529/BA.1 variant also has the highest environmental stability among VOCs, which might be a contributory factor to omicron replacing the delta variant and spreading rapidly.
On plastic surfaces, average survival times of original Wuhan strain, alpha, beta, gamma and delta variants were around 56, 191, 157, 59 and 144 hours, respectively, compared to 194 hours for omicron. On skin corresponding average virus survival times were around 9, 20, 19, 11, 17 and 21 hours.
All VOCs were completely inactivated by 15 second exposure to 35% ethyl alcohol based sanitiser.
DOI: 10.1101/2022.01.18.476607.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes, although to really demonstrate the point in a way that many reasonable people can get on board with, we'll just have to wait and see what happens when the effect of boosters start to wane. Until/unless that happens, we'll be stuck with something that is equivalent to being bored by endless arguments about detail between the likes of me and littlebabyjesus
I've had to move with the current times because too many people were already moving on here before the Omicron wave even revealed its full potential. And I'm not that interested in fighting a losing battle for many months in a row, its too futile, especially when people are worn out and need a break. But I'll continue to move with the times which might mean leaning further towards 'its all over' but will also mean that if things deteriorate in future, I will renew my traditional pandemic stance. So no sense of permanence should be assumed when it comes to my current stance.
I've had to move with the current times because too many people were already moving on here before the Omicron wave even revealed its full potential. And I'm not that interested in fighting a losing battle for many months in a row, its too futile, especially when people are worn out and need a break. But I'll continue to move with the times which might mean leaning further towards 'its all over' but will also mean that if things deteriorate in future, I will renew my traditional pandemic stance. So no sense of permanence should be assumed when it comes to my current stance.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
And I still think Israel offers something for 'both sides' to watch at the moment.
For the current picture there probably offers clues about the raw potential that Omicron still has, and may also turn out to offer clues about booster waning. But it also offer clues about how far the authorities will feel the need to go in these sorts of circumstances - if the level of things like intensive care numbers end up being similar to previous waves, but without anything like the same number of restrictions on our lives, then we might assume this is a state of affairs that authorities in very many countries will be quite content with. Unfortunately this sort of thing may also demonstrate something I've often mentioned since the start of the pandemic, that its the hospital figures that force governments to act more than the number of deaths, although ultimately there are still some limits to the amount of death they will ask us to ensure too, but those limits are probably rather high. This point about deaths may not be obvious in countries like the UK which fucked things up so badly with the first few waves that we already had ridiculous amounts of death, but in countries that previously controlled things to a greater extent, the new approach may well stick out more in their latest death figures.
For the current picture there probably offers clues about the raw potential that Omicron still has, and may also turn out to offer clues about booster waning. But it also offer clues about how far the authorities will feel the need to go in these sorts of circumstances - if the level of things like intensive care numbers end up being similar to previous waves, but without anything like the same number of restrictions on our lives, then we might assume this is a state of affairs that authorities in very many countries will be quite content with. Unfortunately this sort of thing may also demonstrate something I've often mentioned since the start of the pandemic, that its the hospital figures that force governments to act more than the number of deaths, although ultimately there are still some limits to the amount of death they will ask us to ensure too, but those limits are probably rather high. This point about deaths may not be obvious in countries like the UK which fucked things up so badly with the first few waves that we already had ridiculous amounts of death, but in countries that previously controlled things to a greater extent, the new approach may well stick out more in their latest death figures.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Israel is mirroring many other places in seeing excess death numbers falling as omicron deaths increase. It is a curious but marked phenomenon.
Graphs and maps from EUROMOMO
Graphs and maps from EUROMOMO
It looks like this is within the acceptable number of deaths.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I've already tried to explain why I dont find it very curious at this time of year.
The bar for what counts as an excess death changes throughout the year, and tends to be much higher in January, due to the normal seasonal pattern of flu, cold weather etc deaths. When these other forms of death are lower than normal, it creates more room for Covid deaths to occur without ending up counting as excess deaths.
I can demonstrate that point for England and Wales reasonably easily due to the large amount of regular death data that is published here. I find it much harder to achieve this for a lot of other countries, including Israel. For example if I could find weekly all cause death figures for Israel then we would be able to see the picture without the effect of the winter excess death bar being higher that I just described.
The site you got that graph from compounds this issue further by only publishing z-scores, a measurement that is even more convoluted but that I am not fit to attempt to explain properly.
Because I cannot find the raw data for Israel, I cannot say exactly to what extent the stuff I just described is responsible for the phenomenon you mention, but it would be surprising if it wasnt a big factor. But I will acknowledge several other potential factors too:
Data lag. The spike in Israels deaths are a very recent phenomenon, I dont know if those have filtered into the excess death figures yet.
Although I am not a fan of stretching the phenomenon of 'incidental deaths' too far for particular agendas, I am quite happy to acknowledge that such things are still some part of the mix. And they are expected to be a larger part of the mix during huge Omicron waves, due to the often much larger number of infections countries are experiencing from Omicron, the high levels of protection from vaccination, and some of the intrinsic properties of Omicron. Establishing exact causes of death is not a precise science, but where attempts are made to analyse this, for example in ONS reports for England and Wales, in the Omicron wave they are tending to say that 70-something percent of deaths where Covid was involved had Covid directly listed as the primary underlying cause of death. In other words, although I hate to describe things in these terms, some of those deaths may well have happened at this time of year even in the absence of an Omicron wave. I wont translate this directly to a 1-to-1 mapping, eg I wont claim that up to 30% of those deaths would certainly have happened anyway, but I will try to be fair by recognising that its some part of the picture we currently see. I tend to treat such estimates as an upper bar for 'incidental deaths', with the real figure for deaths that would have happened anyway being somewhere in the region of higher than 0% and less than 30%.
edit - to be more precise, the most recent ONS figures were:
from Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional - Office for National Statistics
With that detail in mind we might also conclude that the proportion of 'incidental' deaths has continued to increase during the Omicron wave, as has also been the case with hospitalisations. This is another reason far more countries are taking a more relaxed approach now.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
I'm just linking to this post from Yossarian about the Hong Kong situation so that it is easier to find in future in the event that some are still tempted to talk shit about how 'mild' Omicron is, since that attempt to distort history seems quite likely to rear its head in future.
www.urban75.net
COVID-19 in America
https://apnews.com/article/biden-government-free-n95-masks-program-2b4a59953281ca16028244ab9a5b1d6e
www.urban75.net
