COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[GeorgiaModerate]

The press lies. News at 11.

There's an inherent contradiction there.

[Person Man]

The press lies. News at 11.

There's an inherent contradiction there.

OK, Alice.

[pppolitics]

Biden, Republicans and the Pandemic Blame Game

President Biden is in a tough spot: He campaigned on the ideas that he had the team to manage a pandemic and that his five-decade career as a Washington deal maker was just the ticket to overcome the country’s political polarization.

That’s not happening, not even a little.

Not only are Republicans resisting Mr. Biden’s push to end the pandemic, some of them are actively hampering it. Republican governors slow-walked vaccination efforts and lifted mask mandates early. In Washington, G.O.P. leaders like Steve Scalise, the second-ranking House Republican — who himself didn’t get vaccinated until about two weeks ago — mocked public health guidance that even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors as “government control.”

There’s little Mr. Biden can do. Nearly a year and a half of pandemic living has revealed precisely who will and won’t abide by public health guidelines.

[...]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/us/politics/biden-republicans-coronavirus.html

[Torie]

This article really depresses me. I think we need some policy shifts, and we need them sooner rather than later.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/565743-delta-variant-raises-fears-of-worsening-mutations

[compucomp]

Idiots spend thousands in Journalism school yet don't even know what Bayes Theorem is
Yes 75% of cases in Provincetown are vaccinated.
However 95% of people are vaccinated !!!!

They may be willfully disregarding Bayes's Theorem, and as Hammy pointed out earlier not emphasizing enough that there were large public gatherings and parties in Provincetown which undoubtedly fueled the spread, but there's no doubt that this outbreak has challenged several key assumptions about the pandemic that the CDC was working with prior to this week. It has conclusively debunked

-That vaccinated can resume their 2019 lives, large gatherings and all, with no protection and be safe from COVID-19
-That breakthrough infections are rare occurrences.

It is seriously challenging
-That even if infected, vaccinated people are unlikely to be contagious. It's not proven yet that vaccinated infected are as contagious as unvaccinated infected, but this outbreak is definitely suggesting that vaccinated people served as vectors for COVID spread. More study is needed here but one should not be holding on to the prior consensus anymore.

Yes, the vaccine still provides a very good degree of protection (75%-85%) and protects strongly against severe illness and hospitalization, so we probably don't need shelter-in-place orders and business shutdowns. But the public should absolutely be informed of this study so they can know that the game has changed, and the media should absolutely be covering it closely.

By the way, if Provincetown had a very high percentage of vaccination, greater than 100% apparently considering seasonal population changes, shouldn't there have been a wall of herd immunity that would have stopped an outbreak in its tracks? Well, in this case that wall crumbled like Trump's border wall in a stiff wind. More study is needed here too but that may prompt another reassessment of our assumptions.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/djane_go/status/1421266538498199554

Reminder: "Fox has quietly implemented its own version of a vaccine passport while its top personalities attack them"

[All Along The Watchtower]

Nate Silver “trolling” the idiotic/dangerous media people is genuinely great.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1421230734686228489?s=21

[All Along The Watchtower]

Also, shout-out to Ben Wakana. Good to know that people in the administration are as angered and exasperated with the Permanent Pandemic Doomer Media as so many Americans are.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This article really depresses me. I think we need some policy shifts, and we need them sooner rather than later.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/565743-delta-variant-raises-fears-of-worsening-mutations

"Policy shifts" won't do a damned bit of good so long as over forty percent of our fellow citizens belong to a deluded death cult. What we need is to collectively reject Republicult BS. That doesn't mean agreeing with every progressive policy, but it means the end of fear, hate, and BS as acceptable parts of public discourse. It means taking climate and health as seriously as ozone depletion.

COVID denialism is like an accelerated version of climate change denialism (the two have a lot in common). And eventually all the political BS ends up in the same place: reality. Reality doesn't care about ideology. You make choices and you get consequences.

 Republicans have spent decades collectively building a vast complex of delusions, and have leveraged technically legal abuses of the law, increases in productivity, and (rational) aversion to conflict to defer the consequences.  Their success at  mostly avoiding consequences thus far has emboldened them to even greater divergence from reality, which will only serve to make the inevitable reckoning even worse. We're all going to pay for it. Republicultists will whine and point fingers of blame, and will likely end up better than they deserve, but we're all going to suffer for their choices.


I don't think we're getting out of this. The right is too far gone to come to their senses in time. Even if we manage to keep our societal and political infrastructure from crumbling until enough Republican voters have died (a process that current Republican leadership is accelerating with their COVID response) so that sanity can re-assert itself, I think it's going to be both too late and not enough. For the rest of my life, the United States is going to face civil unrest, climate-fueled catastrophes, and significant public health issues, all as the direct or indirect result of the Republican Party's political activity.

[Fargobison]

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1421505886154072064

Don't fall for the media hype. The vaccines work, sadly I think the media and CDC have done a lot of damage on that front.

People can talk about Provincetown but that was something that featured contact that was much closer than would be considered ordinary and also there was just a tiny fraction that had severe symptoms...it was a testament to the vaccine doing its job.

[All Along The Watchtower]

"Policy shifts" won't do a damned bit of good so long as over forty percent of our fellow citizens belong to a deluded death cult.

Not to be confused with all of our fellow citizens who belong to a deluded “public health” cult!

[ilikeverin]

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1421505886154072064

Don't fall for the media hype. The vaccines work, sadly I think the media and CDC have done a lot of damage on that front.

People can talk about Provincetown but that was something that featured contact that was much closer than would be considered ordinary and also there was just a tiny fraction that had severe symptoms...it was a testament to the vaccine doing its job.

Ashish Jha is bae I thought about setting up an alert for his name last year just because I always appreciated his coverage. He's always done a wonderful job talking about the seriousness of the pandemic and supporting many common-sense restrictions while also acknowledging basic realities (e.g., people like being around other people), and I've come to really value his perspective.

[Torie]

Yeah, participating in Bear Week this summer is not a main steam thing. I get it.

So I want to know what the odds are that the sum of the percentage of the vaccinated + those who got Covid and are still here = herd immunity before enough time has passed to make likely that a new horrible and much more deadly strain mutates out as to which the vaccines are not effective. And given those odds, what policy changes seem appropriate, e.g., you need a chip encoded vaccine passport that is very hard to forge, to get inside anywhere, and those who do not enforce that are shut down. This odds and the degree of the calamity, should drive the policy, no?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Yeah, participating in Bear Week this summer is not a main steam thing. I get it.

So I want to know what the odds are that the sum of the percentage of the vaccinated + those who got Covid and are still here = herd immunity before enough time has passed to make likely that a new horrible and much more deadly strain mutates out as to which the vaccines are not effective. And given those odds, what policy changes seem appropriate, e.g., you need a chip encoded vaccine passport that is very hard to forge, to get inside anywhere, and those who do not enforce that are shut down. This odds and the degree of the calamity, should drive the policy, no?

The answer to that will be inherently speculative to a significant degree, but I agree it is a very important topic and it ought to be driving some far-reaching re-thinking of pandemic preparedness policy.

One of the better sources for informed speculation about this sort of thing seems to be the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. They have a variety of reports that they have been preparing for the UK government trying to figure out the policy implications of these scientific questions:

https://www.gov.uk/search/all?organisations%5B%5D=scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies&order=updated-newest&parent=scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies

Probably (certainly hopefully!) the US government has similar reports, but I don't think they are publicly available.

The report that seems to bear most directly on the things you are wondering about is probably this one:

"Long term evolution of SARS-CoV-2, 26 July 2021"

They consider various possibilities for how the virus may evolve, how probable they are, and what the consequences are likely to be if they happen. You really have to read the full report (and really this should be mandatory reading for policy makers in general), but I will excerpt some of it here:

Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences?
 
As eradication of SARS-CoV-2 will be unlikely, we have high confidence in stating that there
will always be variants. The number of variants will depend on control measures.
We describe hypothetical scenarios by which SARS-CoV-2 could further evolve and acquire,
through mutation, phenotypes of concern, which we assess according to possibility. For this
purpose, we consider mutations in the ‘body’ of the virus (the viral genes that are expressed
in infected cells and control replication and cell response), that might affect virus fitness and
disease  severity, separately from  mutations  in the  spike  glycoprotein that  might  affect  virus
transmission and antibody escape.
We assess which scenarios are the most likely and what impact they might have and consider
how  these  scenarios  might  be  mitigated.  We  provide  supporting  information  based  on  the
evolution of SARS-CoV-2, human and animal coronaviruses as well as drawing parallels with
other viruses.

...

Scenario  One:  A  variant  that  causes  severe  disease  in  a  greater  proportion  of  the
population than has occurred to date. For example, with similar morbidity/mortality to
other  zoonotic  coronaviruses  such  as  SARS-CoV  (~10%  case  fatality)  or  MERS-CoV
(~35% case fatality). This could be caused by:

...

Likelihood of genotypic change in internal genes: Likely whilst the circulation of SARS-
CoV-2 is high. 
Likelihood of increased severity phenotype: Realistic possibility.
Impact: High.



...

Scenario Two: A variant that evades current vaccines. This could be caused by:

...

Antigenic shift - Likelihood: Realistic possibility.
Impact: High for a completely new spike, medium/low if a spike from a seasonal CoV is
introduced since we expect a proportion of the population to have antibodies to these
endemic viruses.

...

A longer-term version of shift whereby SARS-CoV-2 undergoes a reverse zoonotic event
into  an  animal  reservoir(s). -

Likelihood: Realistic possibility. Impact: Medium.

...

Antigenic drift -
Likelihood: Almost certain. Impact: Medium.

...





Scenario Three: Emergence of a drug resistant variant after anti-viral strategies. This
could be caused by:

...

Likelihood: Likely - unless the drugs are used correctly.  Impact: medium unless a scenario
arises where drugs are needed more widely.

...





Scenario Four: SARS-CoV-2 follows an evolutionary trajectory with decreased
virulence. This could be caused by:

...

Likelihood: Unlikely in the short term, realistic possibility in the long term.

It's hard to really summarize this in a simple way, you really just have to (and should) read it.




There are various other quite relevant and timely reports, e.g.


" How long will vaccines continue to protect against COVID-19?, 30 July 2021 "

Executive summary
1. It is highly likely that vaccine induced immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and potentially
severe disease (but probably to a lesser extent) will wane over time. 
2. This is likely to be first detected by vaccine failures in vulnerable cohorts (for example a high
rate of infections in people vaccinated over time, including hospitalized cases).
3. It is therefore likely that there will be vaccination campaigns against SARS-CoV-2 for many
years to come, but currently we do not know what will be the optimal required frequency
for re-vaccination to protect the vulnerable from COVID disease.

- that waning being detected first in vulnerable cohorts, btw, is exactly what has been detected first and is what the CDC said they were detecting in the leaked presentation (older people and people in nursing homes being worst affected by early indications of waning vaccine efficacy).



and

"ONS: Short report on Long COVID, 22 July 2021"

[ProudModerate2]

I agree that 125,000 headline could benefit from some additional context.

I also concur.

[emailking]

Nate Silver “trolling” the idiotic/dangerous media people is genuinely great.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1421230734686228489?s=21

The NYT tweet is just a slide title from the CDC slides (stating that it's what the report says).

[ProudModerate2]

Video: Analyst slams GOP's 'nonsensical' messages on masks.

If interested watch here: https://us.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/07/31/republican-mask-message-coronavirus-powers-sot-nr-vpx.cnn

[roxas11]

Nate Silver “trolling” the idiotic/dangerous media people is genuinely great.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1421230734686228489?s=21

The NYT tweet is just a slide title from the CDC slides (stating that it's what the report says).

As I said yesterday had Tucker Carlson or anybody else at Fox News went on in social media and posted the exact same tweet that the NYT did

The New York times would be attacking them right about now and you better believe that they would not care at all about the "it was just a slide title from the CDC slides excuse"

[emailking]

Nate Silver “trolling” the idiotic/dangerous media people is genuinely great.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1421230734686228489?s=21

The NYT tweet is just a slide title from the CDC slides (stating that it's what the report says).

As I said yesterday had Tucker Carlson or anybody else at Fox News went on in social media and posted the exact same tweet that the NYT did

The New York times would be attacking them right about now and you better believe that they would not care at all about the "it was just a slide title from the CDC slides excuse"

What does that matter? I'm not a fan of Carlson but I've defended him before when he's gotten BS criticism on this site.

[roxas11]

Nate Silver “trolling” the idiotic/dangerous media people is genuinely great.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1421230734686228489?s=21

The NYT tweet is just a slide title from the CDC slides (stating that it's what the report says).

As I said yesterday had Tucker Carlson or anybody else at Fox News went on in social media and posted the exact same tweet that the NYT did

The New York times would be attacking them right about now and you better believe that they would not care at all about the "it was just a slide title from the CDC slides excuse"

What does that matter? I'm not a fan of Carlson but I've defended him before when he's gotten BS criticism on this site.

It matters because it shows that The New York Times is capable of pushing the same kind of BS that they themselves would have criticized other news organization for doing

[emailking]

It matters because it shows that the new York times is capable of pushing the same kind of BS that they themselves would have criticized other news organization for doing

So it's just an excuse to dump on the NYT? Because I haven't heard an argument yet that what they tweeted was incorrect.

[roxas11]

It matters because it shows that the new York times is capable of pushing the same kind of BS that they themselves would have criticized other news organization for doing

So it's just an excuse to dump on the NYT? Because I haven't heard an argument yet that what they tweeted was incorrect.

I'm just calling them out for being the hypocrites they are for putting out a tweet like that yet they would be the first in line to attack somebody else for doing the same...

[emailking]

I'm just calling them out for being the hypocrites they are for putting out a tweet like that yet they would be the first in line to attack somebody else for doing the same...

Ok. I mean that's conjecture that they would do that. But yes if Fox had tweeted that and then the NYT said it was putting their readers' lives at risk, as you did, then yes that would be bad. I see it as a raw fact that came from a expert source. In the end, the vaccinated may not be as effective transmitters as the unvaccinated, but if there's credible information to suggest they might be, as the CDC does, I think we need to know that.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1421576405142355974

[roxas11]

I'm just calling them out for being the hypocrites they are for putting out a tweet like that yet they would be the first in line to attack somebody else for doing the same...

In the end, the vaccinated may not be as effective transmitters as the unvaccinated, but if there's credible information to suggest they might be, as the CDC does, I think we need to know that.

Ironically, this is actually a far better headline than what the New York Times actually posted on social media lol

maybe they should just hire you and replaced the guy they currently have posting lazy and ridiculous headlines on social media