Could Omicron be GOOD news? Variant 'might speed up end of pandemic

[Pearce]

That was how the pandemic ended throughout history. Hope that this is happening now.

zhun bo???

Some months ago, I read this about the Spanish flu virus which has huge relevance to the current Covid pandemic (Basically, as more and more people develop natural immunity (through infections) against a virus, the subsequent variants of the virus will cause increasingly less danger to people's health and eventually, it will become endemic. I was actually reading some books about World War 1 when I came across the Spanish Flu.)

https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended
Since the whole world had been exposed to the virus, and had therefore developed natural immunity against it, the 1918 strain began to mutate and evolve in a process called “antigenic drift.” Slightly altered versions of the 1918 flu reemerged in the winters of 1919-1920 and 1920-1921, but they were far less deadly and nearly indistinguishable from the seasonal flu.

“The 1918 flu definitely lost its real virulence by the early 1920s,” says Taubenberger.

But what’s truly incredible, according to genetic analyses, is that the same novel strain of flu first introduced in 1918 appears to be the direct ancestor of every seasonal and pandemic flu we’ve had over the past century.

“You can still find the genetic traces of the 1918 virus in the seasonal flus that circulate today,” says Taubenberger. “Every single human infection with influenza A in the past 102 years is derived from that one introduction of the 1918 flu.”

=====

ps. vaccination enables people to get infected by the Covid virus with a low risk of serious illness or death and hence, for the population to develop natural immunity against the virus over time. However, the risk is nobody knows whether there is any long term negative side effects of the hastily researched and approved current vaccines.

Maybe some people with strong cells or antibodies able to mutate the virus into less deadly thus it became another new variant and when they cough out, other people inhale in, the latest variant will kill off the other variant and thus become normal flu

 

[buttbERry]

hopefully it will end it

 

[Standing Birdy]

If everyone dies from it then no one left to catch covid

 

[TANKOKBENG]

In before, Omicron is God sent.

 

[jericho75]

I love Ong yee com virus

 

[BHills]

Some months ago, I read this about the Spanish flu virus which has huge relevance to the current Covid pandemic (Basically, as more and more people develop natural immunity (through infections) against a virus, the subsequent variants of the virus will cause increasingly less danger to people's health and eventually, it will become endemic. I was actually reading some books about World War 1 when I came across the Spanish Flu.)

https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended
Since the whole world had been exposed to the virus, and had therefore developed natural immunity against it, the 1918 strain began to mutate and evolve in a process called “antigenic drift.” Slightly altered versions of the 1918 flu reemerged in the winters of 1919-1920 and 1920-1921, but they were far less deadly and nearly indistinguishable from the seasonal flu.

“The 1918 flu definitely lost its real virulence by the early 1920s,” says Taubenberger.

But what’s truly incredible, according to genetic analyses, is that the same novel strain of flu first introduced in 1918 appears to be the direct ancestor of every seasonal and pandemic flu we’ve had over the past century.

“You can still find the genetic traces of the 1918 virus in the seasonal flus that circulate today,” says Taubenberger. “Every single human infection with influenza A in the past 102 years is derived from that one introduction of the 1918 flu.”

=====

ps. vaccination enables people to get infected by the Covid virus with a low risk of serious illness or death and hence, for the population to develop natural immunity against the virus over time. However, the risk is nobody knows whether there is any long term negative side effects of the hastily researched and approved current vaccines.

Things are looking good as preliminary data suggest that the Omicron variant is more infectious but less likely to cause serious illness or death than the Delta variant.

According to what I read in the past, a virus will evolve into increasingly infectious variants over time and the most infectious variant will dominate over other variants.

Eventually, the most infectious variant will become just Endemic to humans because
(1) In order to be able to infect humans quicker, a virus will have to evolve in such a way which eventually happens to be less likely to cause serious illness or death to humans.

(2) As increasingly more people have been infected before over time, more people would have developed the body ability to fight against the virus and its variants to avoid serious illness and death.

Eventually, we will have a very infectious but not very harmful Covid variant of the virus dominating the world while other more harmful variants find it extremely difficult to find Covid-naive bodies to infect and spread.

Most of the harmful but less infectious variants will just die off over time.

It is unclear how vaccination is changing the equation. If vaccination plays the same role as a previous infection, then the original script will probably be played out. However, if it does not, then what is going to happen cannot be predicted.

Someone has just predicted that this Omicron variant might be the final variant of concern, meaning there is not going to be a new variant which is both very infectious and harmful to humans (because Omicron's domination will preclude another harmful variant to be able to spread widely ). However, it is just based on theory and I think it is still too early to tell.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/com...lta-variant-covid-19-pandemic-vaccine-2397651

 

[UO]

Wow so the HIV positive gay dudes saved us from covid? Who knew!!

 

[BHills]

Just saw someone on EDMW posted this video below. The guy in the video has mostly similar views as mine which is that this Omicron variant might be a good news and this pandemic might be heading towards to become an endemic eventually, especially if the next variant is much more infectious but causes even less serious illnesses or deaths than Omicron.

For a new variant to dominate over other variants by causing other variants very difficult to find many Covid-naive humans to infect, the new variant has to be one which evolves to infect humans much more easily and hence more superficially (for e.g. just the most upper part of respiratory system and not into the lungs, therefore a very low probability of causing serious illness or death to humans. This is so that the infected host will not die easily but live normally and spread the virus quickly and widely to others).

Infections are rising exponentially with Omicron but this is good news because serious illnesses and deaths are going to increase significantly slower and more people in the population will develop natural immunity to the Covid virus after infection without a high risk of serious illness or death. If infections by the next dominant variant after Omicron rise even faster but serious illnesses and deaths hardly rise, it would signal that the pandemic has finally turned endemic.

 

[RedOrion]

So how would you know if you kena omicron or had omicron but recovered? Since its said art test are unreliable.

And how would it affect your vaccination status in TT app?

 

[terriblee]

Getting infected with omicron now no need boost anymore and got immunity against delta

 

[boredom2012]

Then ask those experts to stop taking vaccine and mingle with the crowds without masks first.

 

[BHills]

This guy (Europe director) talks more sense than Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Director-General of WHO).​

​

Europe could be headed for COVID-19 pandemic 'endgame': WHO​

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge delivered optimistic comments but added that it was still too early to consider COVID-19 endemic. (Photo: Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/File/Ida Guldbaek Arentsen)

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/covid19-omicron-europe-pandemic-endgame-who-2454831
COPENHAGEN: The Omicron variant has moved the COVID-19 pandemic into a new phase and could bring it to an end in Europe, the WHO Europe director said Sunday (Jan 23).

"It's plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame," Hans Kluge told AFP in an interview, adding that Omicron could infect 60 per cent of Europeans by March.

Once the current surge of Omicron sweeping across Europe subsides, "there will be for quite some weeks and months a global immunity, either thanks to the vaccine or because people have immunity due to the infection, and also lowering seasonality".

"We anticipate that there will be a period of quiet before COVID-19 may come back towards the end of the year, but not necessarily the pandemic coming back," Kluge said.

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci expressed similar optimism on Sunday.

He told ABC News talk show This Week that with COVID-19 cases coming down "rather sharply" in parts of the United States, "things are looking good".

While cautioning against over confidence, he said that if the recent fall in case numbers in areas like the US's northeast continues "I believe that you will start to see a turnaround throughout the entire country".

The WHO regional office for Africa also said last week that cases of Covid had plummeted in that region and deaths were declining for the first time since the Omicron-dominated fourth wave of the virus reached its peak.

The Omicron variant, which studies have shown is more contagious than Delta but generally leads to less severe infection among vaccinated people, has raised long-awaited hopes that COVID-19 is starting to shift from a pandemic to a more manageable endemic illness like seasonal flu.

But Kluge cautioned that it was still too early to consider COVID-19 endemic.

"There is a lot of talk about endemic but endemic means ... that it is possible to predict what's going to happen. This virus has surprised (us) more than once so we have to be very careful," Kluge said.

With Omicron spreading so widely, other variants could still emerge, he warned.

 

[fallen1]

It will only end the pandemic, if you let it do so
Still die die dont reopen everything, how to end this pandemic?

 

[BHills]

It will only end the pandemic, if you let it do so
Still die die dont reopen everything, how to end this pandemic?

Before reopening, the risk of serious illness and deaths from Covid has to be at an acceptable (low) level.

That is why government in most developed countries have been rushing to vaccinate their people to lower down the risk of reopening.

 

[swageat]

The new Covid variant Omicron could turn out to be a 'Christmas gift' if it causes milder illness, a German health expert claimed today after South African doctors said the strain appears to cause less severe symptoms.

Medics in South Africa said the strain is causing mild symptoms — such as a headache and tiredness — than previous versions of the virus and hasn't led to a single hospitalisation or death.

Professor Karl Lauterbach, a clinical epidemiologist who is in the running to be Germany's next health minister, said the early reports means Omicron could be a Christmas gift and may even speed up the end of the pandemic.

He suggested that it has so many mutations — 32 on the spike protein alone, twice as many as Delta — which could mean it is optimised to infect and be less lethal, in line with how most respiratory viruses evolve.

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, said the theory 'may prove to be true' but said that high levels of previous infection and vaccination may be offering protection against the strain.

This would also be a positive sign, because it shows that the highly-mutated variant is not completely unrecognisable to the immune system of Covid survivors or vaccines.

Scientists have long-warned the coronavirus is unlikely to ever be eradicated but will instead transition into a milder cold-like virus.

However, experts warned today that they need at least two weeks to determine what impact the Omicron variant will have, due to the time it takes for someone to become seriously unwell after catching the strain.

Scientists also need at least two weeks to work out whether Omicron's worrying mutations could make it more infectious than Delta and resistant to vaccines will translate in the real world.

And most cases have so far been in younger people, who experience milder symptoms from the virus compared to older adults.

It comes as Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Christmas plans could be put in jeopardy by the new strain, raising fears Britons could be stung with last-minute curbs like last year.

Ms Sturgeon confirmed six cases of the variant have been recorded in Scotland, some of which do not have links to abroad, suggesting Omicron is now spreading in the community.

She called for the UK — which has nine confirmed cases of the variant — to toughen up its approach by ordering all arrivals to self-isolate at home for eight days instead of two to curb the spread of the new strain. But Boris Johnson rejected the plan and said the Government will review its approach in three weeks.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...t-speed-end-pandemic-causes-mild-illness.html

Give/pass it to s'pore pm

 

[fallen1]

Before reopening, the risk of serious illness and deaths from Covid has to be at an acceptable (low) level.

That is why government in most developed countries have been rushing to vaccinate their people to lower down the risk of reopening.

On the other hand
You will never know the true extent of how serious or minor a variant is if you dont reopen