redsturgeon wrote:Watching the Marr show this morning to try to get a calm overview of where we are this is my take.
South African doctor reports new variant a few days ago that seems highly transmissible and gives rise to a slightly different set of mild symptoms in those patients seen. (NB "mild" just means not needing hospitalisation)
This new variant is found to contain an very large number of mutations and thus could evade the current vaccines.
In the light of this, measures are swiftly taken to limit spread.
A renewed push on vaccines is in place.
Vaccine companies are already looking to prepare new vaccines available in a few months.
In the meantime we may find that best case scenario is that the Omicron variant, though highly contagious is relatively mild and the measures put in place have been an over reaction. We should know more in two weeks.
Worst case scenario is that Omicron evades the vaccine and takes hold in our elderly and vulnerable population and causes a new peak in hospitalisations and deaths but at least we acted quickly to mitigate the worst impacts though more restrictions may be necessary.
We just need to be sensible.
No need to panic or get angry...
John
Thanks for the summary John. I watched another what I would call "calm overview" of the situation. I suspect that it's way more technical than the Andrew Marr coverage, it's a video from a doctor who has been doing various in-depth videos on aspects of SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 and just posted one on Omicron -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLsMqC7WxTcThe things I took away from the video were ...
1 - The fact that the PCR tests still work for Omicron, although with one "widely used PCR test" (
https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-omicron-(b.1.1.529)-sars-cov-2-variant-of-concern) failing to detect the S gene (and S gene dropout has been seen in other variants e.g. Alpha so it's not new), gives Dr Syed (the author/presenter of the video) some confidence that even if there is some level of immune escape it will not be catastrophic/total such that it takes us back to square one. If tests can still detect the virus then at least infection-acquired immunity should still recognise it quite well. Maybe the situation is less certain on vaccine-induced immunity since it does focus on the spike protein but so far on the S gene dropout they are only taking about one type of PCR test as opposed to all. [ Do you (John) have any inside knowledge about how many different variants of the PCR test there are and has any internal chatter amongst the testing community started discussing in more detail which tests show S gene dropout on Omicron and which (if any) don't? ] Regardless of that, as mentioned S gene dropout was also seen in Alpha and other variants and vaccine immunity even against mild symptomatic disease still held up pretty well and against severe disease still remained very strong so it's by no means a clear indication of vaccine-induced immune escape.
2 - Yes there are a lot of mutations in Omicron but that might also make the virus unstable and there is still a possibility that like the Beta variant it could fizzle out either due to instability or because it isn't sufficiently fitter than Delta to outcompete it. That latter reason was what did for the Beta variant that actually had more immune escape from the vaccines than Delta has(*). Even though graphs of growth rates look alarming the actual number of cases is still very low even in South Africa. Yes of course it is infectious and could displace Delta but it is still too early to know that for sure based on actual observed cases rather than theoretical concerns about spike mutations. Delta might still prevail.
3 - There has been much focus on the spike mutations possibly making it more infections but the spike is also suspected to be responsible for various mechanisms that cause damage to various systems in the body, i.e. increase the severity of disease in some people. If the spike is changed significantly that not only raises the possibility of increased transmissibility but also the possibility of a reduction in disease severity due to that mutated spike protein no longer being able to cause some of those damaging effects.
4 - It's too early to know for sure about disease severity vs Delta because the identification of this variant is so recent that people infected haven't had time to progress to severe disease if that is the way it is going. I didn't see the data source Dr Syed was referencing but he did say that there were early indications that the incubation period for Omicron might be longer than that of Delta. At first glance that might seem alarming, people walking around for longer spreading it asymptomatically, but the other side of that coin is that if the virus is taking longer to cause sufficient damage for symptoms to arise that could be an indication that it is milder than other strains in terms of overall disease severity; slower effect gives the immune system longer to fight it off. That might even be a big win if Omicron turned out to be fit enough to out-compete Delta but significantly less severe such that a surge in hospitalisations doesn't happen and ultimately hospitalisations decrease.
So I agree with your take John, and with a few subsequent comments on this thread about the media getting a bit hysterical about all of this and potentially whipping up public panic. Yes of course it could go badly, Omicron might out-compete Delta and have sufficiently higher vaccine escape to noticeably blunt the benefits of the current vaccines, but at the other end of the spectrum it could end up replacing Delta with a variant that is far less likely to land even the unvaccinated in hospital and us oldies (and the vulnerable) who have been double-jabbed and boosted might retain really solid 90+% protection against hospitalisation. Just maybe this could be the final act of it turning from a pandemic to a not-too-troubling endemic virus.
- Julian (ever the optimist!)
(*) South Africa actually sold off it's stock of the Oxford/AZ vaccine without rolling it out because an in-country trial (albeit a small one) showed effectively 0% efficacy against mild/moderate symptomatic disease at the time when the Beta variant was the dominant variant in SA.