What is happening in China? Scott Gottlieb says we essentially don’t know the extent to which Omicron has spread in China. What do we know? We know China has not made great use of its time so far, and seems incapable of the loss of face necessary to get mRNA vaccines, nor does it seem to have stockpiled sufficient amounts of treatment for over a billion people if things get fully out of hand.
> We also know from Hong Kong what it could look like if a population that only had access to Sinovac and has had few previous infections has uncontrolled spread of Omicron. Things get very bad very quickly.
I dont understand why it would be a good idea for them to get mRNA vaccines because those vaccines proved weak against Omicron (and I imagine that additional mutations on BA 2.2 will not help).
Reasoning:
BA.2.2, a descendant of Omicron is already here and causing much damage in Asia. This one has about 20 mutations different from Omicron. This is how fast this virus is mutating and causing damages.
The mRNA vaccines as constructed against the Wuhan virus have been great at protecting people through the many waves of variants but, as Omicron shows, the virus is mutating away from them. This is likely because these vaccines mostly help the immune system learn about parts of the spike proteins that are often subjected to mutation, not the ones resistant to that.
Repeated boosting mRNA vaccines could help the immune system to learn better about epitopes on the spike protein that is resistant to mutation. But, that is a tremendous financial cost to society, not to mention health cost in terms of side effects. Lastly, changing vaccine formulation to target Omicron directly will not do much long term as long as the mechanism of action is the same. The virus will just mutate away from that formulation too.
A 15% chance of keeping it under control sounds far too high at this stage. I'd sell to 3%.
Original-recipe covid could be eradicated through lockdown, Delta was borderline. I don't think it's possible with Omicron even with a "full" Chinese-style lockdown, and Shanghai is not under full lockdown.
The comparatively milder infections with the Omicron variant and higher levels of population immunity have raised hopes for a weakening of the pandemic. We argue that the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe.
While this post is about China, cases in Europe are climbing again as well: http://kjplanet.com/coronavirus-data-explorer-europe-mar-16-2022.png. (Of course, we know cases aren't the best metric, but deaths lag. Hospital admissions are not always as well tracked, but also seem to be ticking up.)
I've heard speculation linking this to the BA.2 Omicron variant, but I'm struggling to understand why this would affect Europe and not other major nations (US, Canada, India, etc.). Any insight here?
> We also know from Hong Kong what it could look like if a population that only had access to Sinovac and has had few previous infections has uncontrolled spread of Omicron. Things get very bad very quickly.
This isn’t a fair characterization. Sinovac has been surprisingly effective at preventing deaths. Hong Kong’s high death rate is almost entirely a result of Omicron spreading through elderly people (60+) who are completely unvaccinated. (See https://hongkongfp.com/2022/02/21/covid-19-almost-90-of-fifth-wave-deaths-analysed-by-hong-kong-govt-were-among-unvaccinated/, though it’s from early in the wave.)
I dont understand why it would be a good idea for them to get mRNA vaccines because those vaccines proved weak against Omicron (and I imagine that additional mutations on BA 2.2 will not help).
Reasoning:
BA.2.2, a descendant of Omicron is already here and causing much damage in Asia. This one has about 20 mutations different from Omicron. This is how fast this virus is mutating and causing damages.
The mRNA vaccines as constructed against the Wuhan virus have been great at protecting people through the many waves of variants but, as Omicron shows, the virus is mutating away from them. This is likely because these vaccines mostly help the immune system learn about parts of the spike proteins that are often subjected to mutation, not the ones resistant to that.
Repeated boosting mRNA vaccines could help the immune system to learn better about epitopes on the spike protein that is resistant to mutation. But, that is a tremendous financial cost to society, not to mention health cost in terms of side effects. Lastly, changing vaccine formulation to target Omicron directly will not do much long term as long as the mechanism of action is the same. The virus will just mutate away from that formulation too.
Any guesses on the death toll?
A 15% chance of keeping it under control sounds far too high at this stage. I'd sell to 3%.
Original-recipe covid could be eradicated through lockdown, Delta was borderline. I don't think it's possible with Omicron even with a "full" Chinese-style lockdown, and Shanghai is not under full lockdown.
I'd like to point everyone to this comment published in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00722-z
The comparatively milder infections with the Omicron variant and higher levels of population immunity have raised hopes for a weakening of the pandemic. We argue that the lower severity of Omicron is a coincidence and that ongoing rapid antigenic evolution is likely to produce new variants that may escape immunity and be more severe.
While this post is about China, cases in Europe are climbing again as well: http://kjplanet.com/coronavirus-data-explorer-europe-mar-16-2022.png. (Of course, we know cases aren't the best metric, but deaths lag. Hospital admissions are not always as well tracked, but also seem to be ticking up.)
I've heard speculation linking this to the BA.2 Omicron variant, but I'm struggling to understand why this would affect Europe and not other major nations (US, Canada, India, etc.). Any insight here?