A few things that were touched on, but I’d like to see further discussion on;
If Omicron is importantly less severe than Delta, does it continue to pose any sort of humanity-wide threat other than the obvious potential overreaction and politicians doing things to seem like they have a handle on the situation? Conditional on Omicron being more vaccine avoidant and less severe, is there any good reason not to simply continue reopening and work on better booster/Paxlovid distribution systems, instead of trying to use mask mandates/lockdowns?
Moreover, how much of the immune evasion could be due to just… erosion? We know that vaccines are getting less effective over time, and that’s doubly true for non-mRNA vaccines like J&J/AZ. How much stock can we put in the hypothesis that people with boosters will get infected with Omicron at a ~similar rate to which people with two doses of the vaccine got infected with Delta?
I wished to make a similar point to your #1. If Omicron is both more contagious and less severe than Delta… that seems like a best-case scenario. Rather than being an important worsening of the pandemic, it could effectively end the pandemic by replacing most existing strains with something even less dangerous (and COVID is already not very dangerous). Though even if this is the case, I don’t expect our health and government authorities to admit it.
Yup. Also consider the following Socratic dialogue:
A: “Viruses evolve be to be less virulent over time because it’s not advantageous to kill your host”
B: “Viruses don’t always do that”
A: “Fair enough. But it’s also not adaptive for viruses to be so bad that they cause societies to shut down completely”
I think one could argue that this is exactly what’s unfolding with Omicron.
A few things that were touched on, but I’d like to see further discussion on;
If Omicron is importantly less severe than Delta, does it continue to pose any sort of humanity-wide threat other than the obvious potential overreaction and politicians doing things to seem like they have a handle on the situation? Conditional on Omicron being more vaccine avoidant and less severe, is there any good reason not to simply continue reopening and work on better booster/Paxlovid distribution systems, instead of trying to use mask mandates/lockdowns?
Moreover, how much of the immune evasion could be due to just… erosion? We know that vaccines are getting less effective over time, and that’s doubly true for non-mRNA vaccines like J&J/AZ. How much stock can we put in the hypothesis that people with boosters will get infected with Omicron at a ~similar rate to which people with two doses of the vaccine got infected with Delta?
I wished to make a similar point to your #1. If Omicron is both more contagious and less severe than Delta… that seems like a best-case scenario. Rather than being an important worsening of the pandemic, it could effectively end the pandemic by replacing most existing strains with something even less dangerous (and COVID is already not very dangerous). Though even if this is the case, I don’t expect our health and government authorities to admit it.
Yup. Also consider the following Socratic dialogue:
A: “Viruses evolve be to be less virulent over time because it’s not advantageous to kill your host” B: “Viruses don’t always do that” A: “Fair enough. But it’s also not adaptive for viruses to be so bad that they cause societies to shut down completely”
I think one could argue that this is exactly what’s unfolding with Omicron.