Quote (Handcuffs @ 27 Nov 2021 02:24)
My initial readings are showing that the doctors/scientists in South Africa are saying that cases thus far are mild. Reassuring, I suppose.
Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 28 Nov 2021 09:53)
This is a hasty conclusion IMO. I doubt there's enough evidence to conclude with any degree of confidence that it's less deadly. I'm seeing conflicting results when I search, so we're just going to have to wait and see.
The quote from the South African doctor has been badly misconstrued. She didn't say that all omicron infections are mild, she said that the infections she has seen so far have been mild - and the sample only contained young people.
It's the equivalent of someone in February 2020 seeing a couple dozen of cases of the ancestral Wuhan strain in young people and everyone (incorrectly) concludes that "it's just a cold".
Fact is that we don't know yet if omicron will cause more or less severe cases when let loose on an elderly, fat-as-fuck Western population.
Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 27 Nov 2021 09:13)
Do we have enough information to make that determination? If so, that's great! We expect variants to get milder as time goes on because killing your host is not good for business. We'll basically move from totally ignoring flu seasons to having Covid seasons with occasional mask orders.
This is the long-term trend for zoonoses because viruses tend to adapt to their new host over time - but in the short run, the there is little evolutionary pressure for a virus to become less virulent when the most infectious period is 4-5 days post infection and deaths typically occur much later, after 10-20 days (untreated).
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 28 2021 04:21am