Any news on mAb effectiveness against Omicron? Losing our best therapeutic while the FDA dithers on Paxlovid would be a disaster, but that's where the last studies I saw were pointing.
My understanding is existing mAb is mostly not very effective against Omicron, but that once we can get mAb based on Omicron that should work again. I don't know the timeline required for that.
My partner and I have a vacation planned where we’d be flying out (domestic, within the US) in a few days and returning shortly after Christmas. We’re going somewhere warm and most of our activities will be outdoors (aside from a couple museums) and we plan to do outdoor dining exclusively. I am boosted and my partner is double vaxxed and we both have N95s but wear them badly.
How dangerous should we be considering this trip given the Omicron variant? My partner says this trip is very important to their mental health, so my arbitrary threshold is that if the chance of us getting infected during this trip is <5-10%, it’s still worth taking.
NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, etc etc, but the way I'd look at it is: The question is how much risk you are taking on versus the risk of staying home, rather than the risk on the trip. Airplanes do good filtering so the risk is actually at the airport and going to/from the airport, plus what activities you do. It sounds like what you'll do there isn't riskier than what you'd do anyway, so mostly it's 'spend a few hours in the airport.' Also the return trip is massively more risky than the trip there, because exponential growth.
If your standard is 5-10% I think it's a trip worth taking in my book. In general, if things are important to your mental health, you're vaccinated and you're not old or otherwise at risk, I think you need to maintain your mental health. So in your shoes I would go, because I'd be prepared to accept the consequences.
Is there some sense to the idea that you might as well hurry up and get Omicron now rather than later? (If not actually _trying_ to get it, then at least not really working too hard to avoid it?) If I'm going to be stuck at home sick for two weeks, I might as well do it before the grocery delivery services are overwhelmed and understaffed because 25% of the population is sick at once. And on the offchance that I have to go to hospital I'd definitely rather do it before the hospitals are overwhelmed.
You'd have to balance that against the chance that either (a) things turn out better than expected and I don't get it, or (b) I do get it, but we get meaningfully better treatments (with sufficient supply, which probably rules out paxlovid for me) before then.
Of course the inconvenience and cost factor of getting sick far from home, rather than at home, might be significant.
If you can get in 'under the window' then for one's own personal benefit I can see it, but the window can close quite rapidly. Doing this a week from now seems a lot less reasonable, and two weeks fugetaboutit.
My family is high-conscientiousness: it'll be my paranoid family, my paranoid parents, and my paranoid sister's family. (There will be two families traveling about 1000 miles each, by car.)
I think we'll be okay, over all, but I'm not sure how much is just sick of missing another Christmas. And part of me thinks "it looks like it's gonna just blast through the population regardless of what we do," which again could be motivated thinking.
Time to talk with my parents about making sure they're wearing N95's to church.
A major factor to consider is: "What will we do if one of us tests positive or has a known exposure before flying back"?
All the airlines now require you to attest during check-in that you haven't had symptoms, a positive test, or close contact with someone with Covid in the past 10 days. People can easily end up in a pickle, torn between their honesty/conscientiousness vs. the prospect of losing the money they spent on their flight and driving home in an expensive rental car.
If it were me, I would probably just go, and have a refundable booking for a one-way rental car just in case.
Yes, definitely know how you're getting home before you leave home is a very good rule. If you can drive home or ride it out until you're better in a pinch, that works.
My understanding is that airlines are pretty generous in terms of how they handle this when it happens, but I haven't investigated.
Depends on the type of disaster. If there's a huge wave but then the pandemic ends in 2 months for all practical purposes, that sucks for humans but could be very good for stocks.
Surely, at least some (normally not swingy, e.g. not crypto) asset class would swing dramaticaly, whether up or down, if markets would be expecting dramatic things happening in January and weeks beyond?
Of course, markets might be off, in which case opportunity presents itself, for someone.
Buying straddles seems like a reasonable thing to do but you can definitely still lose. I'm not saying there's nothing to be done, I'm saying I don't see an obvious great trade because this could go so many different ways. If you go short in 2020, you won if you covered, but I would never have thought to cover at the right time.
Swiss here. Swiss data is overall soso (definitely worse than what you would expect given GDP, HDI, etc), collection process sort of sucks (at least they stopped using fax machines which were deprecated by telcos even before the pandemic some time along the line...) and variant data actually pretty bad, much less sequencing than one would like.
I'm happy to know the Germans actively are buying them, so at least they'll start on things. Better late than never. Do you have a link?
I don't know what people's willingness is either, but my model is that if cases double and then double again Germany would absolutely go full lockdown.
The main news is that they get an additional 35 million Moderna doses delivered early, but also said this in the middle:
"Die Impfkampagne dürfe nicht durch fehlenden Impfstoff ausgebremst werden, mahnte Lauterbach. Deutschland habe zudem eine "große Tranche" an weiteren Impfdosen von BioNTech/Pfizer reserviert. Ein großer Teil dieser Impfdosen könne voraussichtlich im ersten Quartal 2022 geliefert werden, der gesamte Impfstoff jedoch erst im weiteren Verlauf des Jahres. Dafür werde ein großer Teil dieser Impfdosen in seiner Wirksamkeit bereits an die Omikron-Variante angepasst sein, so Lauterbach weiter."
"Chance we are broadly looking at a future crisis situation with widely overwhelmed American hospitals, new large American lockdowns and things like that" - From your reasoning for the probability change it sounds like this prediction is mostly about lockdowns in particular? I can see 35% for lockdowns, but it seems low for "a future crisis situation with widely overwhelmed American hospitals". And if it is about lockdowns in particular, do these 35% include the option of a lockdown only for the unvaccinated?
Do we think Omicron gets it’s business done quicker? I’ve tested positive today and I’m hoping to be able to spend Christmas Day with my family (day 9)
I heard that vaccines can temporarily make you _more_ vulnerable by keeping your immune system busy. I don’t remember what this effect was called or how long it is supposed to last. Is this true? And if so, is one better off getting the booster between now and Christmas (a day of increased risk of exposure) or waiting until after? I last got shots in April.
I - My naive sense is that when some variants take over percentage of cases, they crowd out earlier variants. But maybe with enough mutation, then we end up with just multiple pandemics of diseases with different features happening at the same time.
Does omicron displace delta and steal hosts, or do they start coexisting?
II - The evolutionary search speed is determined by number of infected. If we're going to increase the hosts this little computer is running on from hundred millions to billions, that's not great. Even if milder, how much should we worry about omicron's ability to accelerate the emergence of something worse still?
Where does omicron move your doomsday clock for infectious disease, if at all?
Any news on mAb effectiveness against Omicron? Losing our best therapeutic while the FDA dithers on Paxlovid would be a disaster, but that's where the last studies I saw were pointing.
My understanding is existing mAb is mostly not very effective against Omicron, but that once we can get mAb based on Omicron that should work again. I don't know the timeline required for that.
Zvi, I am hoping to get your thoughts here.
My partner and I have a vacation planned where we’d be flying out (domestic, within the US) in a few days and returning shortly after Christmas. We’re going somewhere warm and most of our activities will be outdoors (aside from a couple museums) and we plan to do outdoor dining exclusively. I am boosted and my partner is double vaxxed and we both have N95s but wear them badly.
How dangerous should we be considering this trip given the Omicron variant? My partner says this trip is very important to their mental health, so my arbitrary threshold is that if the chance of us getting infected during this trip is <5-10%, it’s still worth taking.
NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, etc etc, but the way I'd look at it is: The question is how much risk you are taking on versus the risk of staying home, rather than the risk on the trip. Airplanes do good filtering so the risk is actually at the airport and going to/from the airport, plus what activities you do. It sounds like what you'll do there isn't riskier than what you'd do anyway, so mostly it's 'spend a few hours in the airport.' Also the return trip is massively more risky than the trip there, because exponential growth.
If your standard is 5-10% I think it's a trip worth taking in my book. In general, if things are important to your mental health, you're vaccinated and you're not old or otherwise at risk, I think you need to maintain your mental health. So in your shoes I would go, because I'd be prepared to accept the consequences.
Thanks for this! Given all the uncertainties, it’s helpful to know “What would Zvi do?”
Is there some sense to the idea that you might as well hurry up and get Omicron now rather than later? (If not actually _trying_ to get it, then at least not really working too hard to avoid it?) If I'm going to be stuck at home sick for two weeks, I might as well do it before the grocery delivery services are overwhelmed and understaffed because 25% of the population is sick at once. And on the offchance that I have to go to hospital I'd definitely rather do it before the hospitals are overwhelmed.
You'd have to balance that against the chance that either (a) things turn out better than expected and I don't get it, or (b) I do get it, but we get meaningfully better treatments (with sufficient supply, which probably rules out paxlovid for me) before then.
Of course the inconvenience and cost factor of getting sick far from home, rather than at home, might be significant.
If you can get in 'under the window' then for one's own personal benefit I can see it, but the window can close quite rapidly. Doing this a week from now seems a lot less reasonable, and two weeks fugetaboutit.
I came here to ask about Christmas plans, too.
My family is high-conscientiousness: it'll be my paranoid family, my paranoid parents, and my paranoid sister's family. (There will be two families traveling about 1000 miles each, by car.)
I think we'll be okay, over all, but I'm not sure how much is just sick of missing another Christmas. And part of me thinks "it looks like it's gonna just blast through the population regardless of what we do," which again could be motivated thinking.
Time to talk with my parents about making sure they're wearing N95's to church.
A major factor to consider is: "What will we do if one of us tests positive or has a known exposure before flying back"?
All the airlines now require you to attest during check-in that you haven't had symptoms, a positive test, or close contact with someone with Covid in the past 10 days. People can easily end up in a pickle, torn between their honesty/conscientiousness vs. the prospect of losing the money they spent on their flight and driving home in an expensive rental car.
If it were me, I would probably just go, and have a refundable booking for a one-way rental car just in case.
Yes, definitely know how you're getting home before you leave home is a very good rule. If you can drive home or ride it out until you're better in a pinch, that works.
My understanding is that airlines are pretty generous in terms of how they handle this when it happens, but I haven't investigated.
What about the stock and similar markets? If there is indeed disaster lurking at the corner, it does not seem to be priced in at all, or?
Depends on the type of disaster. If there's a huge wave but then the pandemic ends in 2 months for all practical purposes, that sucks for humans but could be very good for stocks.
Surely, at least some (normally not swingy, e.g. not crypto) asset class would swing dramaticaly, whether up or down, if markets would be expecting dramatic things happening in January and weeks beyond?
Of course, markets might be off, in which case opportunity presents itself, for someone.
Buying straddles seems like a reasonable thing to do but you can definitely still lose. I'm not saying there's nothing to be done, I'm saying I don't see an obvious great trade because this could go so many different ways. If you go short in 2020, you won if you covered, but I would never have thought to cover at the right time.
Swiss here. Swiss data is overall soso (definitely worse than what you would expect given GDP, HDI, etc), collection process sort of sucks (at least they stopped using fax machines which were deprecated by telcos even before the pandemic some time along the line...) and variant data actually pretty bad, much less sequencing than one would like.
German Government apparently ordered a large number of Pfizer boosters adjusted to Omicron for delivery in late Q1/early Q2 next year.
Big question is whether it's already too late by that point.
We're already in a partial shutdown, but most people were hoping we'd be out again once the numbers go down.
I don't know if anyone is willing to maintain even stricter shutdowns to delay the big wave until those Omicron boosters arrive.
I'm happy to know the Germans actively are buying them, so at least they'll start on things. Better late than never. Do you have a link?
I don't know what people's willingness is either, but my model is that if cases double and then double again Germany would absolutely go full lockdown.
I only got the German source here: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/coronavirus-impfen-lauterbach-103.html
The main news is that they get an additional 35 million Moderna doses delivered early, but also said this in the middle:
"Die Impfkampagne dürfe nicht durch fehlenden Impfstoff ausgebremst werden, mahnte Lauterbach. Deutschland habe zudem eine "große Tranche" an weiteren Impfdosen von BioNTech/Pfizer reserviert. Ein großer Teil dieser Impfdosen könne voraussichtlich im ersten Quartal 2022 geliefert werden, der gesamte Impfstoff jedoch erst im weiteren Verlauf des Jahres. Dafür werde ein großer Teil dieser Impfdosen in seiner Wirksamkeit bereits an die Omikron-Variante angepasst sein, so Lauterbach weiter."
Nova Scotia here, where so far, case rates have been among the lowest in NorthAmerica.
Three days ago, first Omicron cases were detected.
Today, had the highest daily number of cases reported for the entire pandemic. 287 cases, in a population just under 1 million.
"Chance we are broadly looking at a future crisis situation with widely overwhelmed American hospitals, new large American lockdowns and things like that" - From your reasoning for the probability change it sounds like this prediction is mostly about lockdowns in particular? I can see 35% for lockdowns, but it seems low for "a future crisis situation with widely overwhelmed American hospitals". And if it is about lockdowns in particular, do these 35% include the option of a lockdown only for the unvaccinated?
Do we think Omicron gets it’s business done quicker? I’ve tested positive today and I’m hoping to be able to spend Christmas Day with my family (day 9)
I think if you're vaccinated you're a favorite, but the real answer is no one knows things on that level of detail yet.
I heard that vaccines can temporarily make you _more_ vulnerable by keeping your immune system busy. I don’t remember what this effect was called or how long it is supposed to last. Is this true? And if so, is one better off getting the booster between now and Christmas (a day of increased risk of exposure) or waiting until after? I last got shots in April.
I have never se n that on a graph or heard that theory. Seems implausible.
I - My naive sense is that when some variants take over percentage of cases, they crowd out earlier variants. But maybe with enough mutation, then we end up with just multiple pandemics of diseases with different features happening at the same time.
Does omicron displace delta and steal hosts, or do they start coexisting?
II - The evolutionary search speed is determined by number of infected. If we're going to increase the hosts this little computer is running on from hundred millions to billions, that's not great. Even if milder, how much should we worry about omicron's ability to accelerate the emergence of something worse still?
Where does omicron move your doomsday clock for infectious disease, if at all?