| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... 22:49 - Dec 15 with 4044 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/londoners-with-cold-symptoms-more-
Separately, a government science adviser has suggested that panic around the oncoming Omicron wave is unjustified. Speaking in a personal capacity, Prof Robert Dingwall, a government Covid adviser from Nottingham Trent University, told the Daily Telegraph: “The Omicron situation seems to be increasingly absurd. There is obviously a lot of snobbery about South African science and medicine but their top people are as good as any you would find in a more universally developed country. They clearly don’t feel that the elite panic over here is justified, even allowing for the demographic differences in vulnerability — which are probably more than cancelled by the higher vaccination rate.
“My gut feeling is that Omicron is very much like the sort of flu pandemic we planned for — a lot of sickness absence from work in a short period, which will create difficulties for public services and economic activity, but not of such a severity as to be a big problem for the NHS and the funeral business.”
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:28 - Dec 15 with 669 views | fab_lover |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:25 - Dec 15 by homer_123 |
Indeed - I think I posted a week or so ago. A parent of a child in my lads football team - has contracted Covid three times....that certainly isn't herd immunity. |
Yes, and I've learnt today that the infection numbers EXCLUDE re-infections.
Despite what people might think from my posts, I am honestly hopeful...but (as in football) there's a country mile between "hope" and "assurance" and it won't be till 2022 we can have any assurance over the effects of Omicron. |  | | |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:29 - Dec 15 with 650 views | StokieBlue |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:09 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
I entirely see where you are coming from but how many weeks/months would it take to gauge the severity of this variant if we go down the 'close all the things and isolate all the poorly people' route? |
There has been a 38% rise in London hospitalisations which coincidences with the Omicron variant.
The NHS will be overwhelmed in short order if that kind of rise continues and is repeated across the country and it will be a double-whammy with large numbers of NHS staff unable to attend work even if people generally aren't as sick as Delta.
Adding a few more restrictions might be wise, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.
SB |  | | |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:31 - Dec 15 with 636 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:20 - Dec 15 by Guthrum |
It was never "going onto people's chests" which affected the oxygen levels. It was the fact Covid tampers with oxygen absorbtion. Which is why ventilators turned out to be of limited use. |
Oxygen is absorbed from the lungs though isn't it? And if I remember correctly xrays were revealing extensive scarring which I presume was related to the continuous cough. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:31 - Dec 15 with 634 views | homer_123 |
I think the genuine concern here is 'numbers' and the sheer volume involved.
It is very clear Omicron is spreading extremely fast and it will be a couple of three weeks down the road until hospitalisation numbers show what the effect will be.
By that point - it's too late, if it isn't already. [Post edited 15 Dec 2021 23:37]
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:34 - Dec 15 with 610 views | fab_lover |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:31 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Oxygen is absorbed from the lungs though isn't it? And if I remember correctly xrays were revealing extensive scarring which I presume was related to the continuous cough. |
A friend of mine works in ICU. The experience of the first wave gave him PTSD. Basically, they were seeing things in patients they'd never seen before. Yes, lots of lung scarring meaning even if you lived, your life wouldn't be great afterwards, but multiple organ failures as well. He's not a young guy, or prone to exaggeration, but I wish what he said about seeing the effects of Covid could be relayed to people going "oh, it's just like the flu".
Covid isn't just like the flu; and that's before you get to the 1m people in this country estimated to have "long covid". | | | |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:36 - Dec 15 with 592 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:24 - Dec 15 by ZXBlue |
You keep doing it and are doing it again. |
Perhaps you or your uppie voting prophets of fear would care to explain that one. Fairly sure I linked a Guardian article to encourage a balanced discussion which some have managed. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:39 - Dec 15 with 575 views | Guthrum |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:21 - Dec 15 by Trequartista |
That's because it's probably mutated with someone who had covid and a coronavirus common cold at the same time. The problem is the sheer numbers we're getting in winter mean even a weaker covid could cause hospitals to overflow.
If we can get through this wave, my feeling is we're in good shape with herd immunity, and then to get another variant more transmissible than this would be likely to be weaker again. Coronavirus colds have been around for decades and never mutate to become dangerous, so hopefully the same logic will eventually apply to covid. I'm not an expert of course, i just need to keep looking at the positive and some logic to keep morale up! |
Problem with the term "coronavirus" is it simply describes the shape of the virus. They are not a "family" as such.
The actual "parent" is SARS, which does mutate into more severe forms and has done so. |  |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:41 - Dec 15 with 565 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:29 - Dec 15 by StokieBlue |
There has been a 38% rise in London hospitalisations which coincidences with the Omicron variant.
The NHS will be overwhelmed in short order if that kind of rise continues and is repeated across the country and it will be a double-whammy with large numbers of NHS staff unable to attend work even if people generally aren't as sick as Delta.
Adding a few more restrictions might be wise, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.
SB |
Saw that mentioned earlier and couldn't really access the graphs properly. What was the base line for the 38% increase in actual patient numbers and was omicron the cause of hospitalisaion? | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:42 - Dec 15 with 560 views | footers |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:36 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Perhaps you or your uppie voting prophets of fear would care to explain that one. Fairly sure I linked a Guardian article to encourage a balanced discussion which some have managed. |
When you only appear to pop up to offer one side of that argument time and again it's pretty clear what you're pushing. |  |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:42 - Dec 15 with 556 views | StokieBlue |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:36 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Perhaps you or your uppie voting prophets of fear would care to explain that one. Fairly sure I linked a Guardian article to encourage a balanced discussion which some have managed. |
You linked a one-sided Guardian article which attempts to minimise the apparent risks of the Omicron variant and then personally minimised it further by directly citing equality to the common cold in your post subject.
It's not hugely dissimilar to some posts that annoyed a lot of posters 20 months ago.
SB | | | |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:43 - Dec 15 with 553 views | Guthrum |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:31 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Oxygen is absorbed from the lungs though isn't it? And if I remember correctly xrays were revealing extensive scarring which I presume was related to the continuous cough. |
No, it's not caused by the cough. Covid itself damages the lungs. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:43 - Dec 15 with 550 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:34 - Dec 15 by fab_lover |
A friend of mine works in ICU. The experience of the first wave gave him PTSD. Basically, they were seeing things in patients they'd never seen before. Yes, lots of lung scarring meaning even if you lived, your life wouldn't be great afterwards, but multiple organ failures as well. He's not a young guy, or prone to exaggeration, but I wish what he said about seeing the effects of Covid could be relayed to people going "oh, it's just like the flu".
Covid isn't just like the flu; and that's before you get to the 1m people in this country estimated to have "long covid". |
You don't have to convince me of that but what I am hoping is that this variant will not be producing the same issues for the reasons mentioned at the start of the article. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:47 - Dec 15 with 520 views | homer_123 |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:43 - Dec 15 by Guthrum |
No, it's not caused by the cough. Covid itself damages the lungs. |
Indeed:
"Early estimates indicate that 2% of all patients who had COVID-19, including those who were not hospitalised, will have suffered a degree of fibrotic lung scarring as a result of the infection. This estimate is even higher in patients who were admitted to intensive care."
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/worlds-first-cell-therapy-trial-for-post-covid-19-fib | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:50 - Dec 15 with 498 views | fab_lover |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:41 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Saw that mentioned earlier and couldn't really access the graphs properly. What was the base line for the 38% increase in actual patient numbers and was omicron the cause of hospitalisaion? |
Good questions.
The government data is here:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhsRegion&areaNa
168 admissions for the 13th (as recent as it goes).
111 admissions a week earlier.
So yes, relatively low numbers for now.
With Omicron at over 50% levels of Covid infections in London, it's likely that the majority of admissions from now on will be Omicron related.
38% of a low(ish) number is still a low number; it's whether the hospital admissions - which always lag beyond infection rates - carry on going up at that rate, because a low(ish) number very quickly becomes a higher number...and then people die of nothing to do with Covid, because beds are full, or staff are off because they are infected. | | | |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:51 - Dec 15 with 496 views | homer_123 |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:43 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
You don't have to convince me of that but what I am hoping is that this variant will not be producing the same issues for the reasons mentioned at the start of the article. |
To quote the article you posted:
"A study looking at 78,000 Omicron cases in South Africa found that the risk of hospitalisation was 29% lower compared with the original Covid-19, and 23% lower than the Delta variant, with vaccines holding up well."
Herein lies the issue - it is better than is potentially 23% lower than Delta but....that is still a significant 'actual' number and also, if Omicron spreads more widely, more effectively and is more evasive of our current vaccines than Delta - then the actual numbers could be larger still than Delta.
Hopefully not I agree but let's not downplay this. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:51 - Dec 15 with 489 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:29 - Dec 15 by StokieBlue |
There has been a 38% rise in London hospitalisations which coincidences with the Omicron variant.
The NHS will be overwhelmed in short order if that kind of rise continues and is repeated across the country and it will be a double-whammy with large numbers of NHS staff unable to attend work even if people generally aren't as sick as Delta.
Adding a few more restrictions might be wise, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.
SB |
"Adding a few more restrictions might be wise, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour."
You know what, my instinct is actually to agree, after all we have had discussions before where I have been the one promoting the precautionary principle. However I have grounds for hope regarding this variant and it would be nice to be able to express this without some people feeling threatened by it and somehow regarding it as breaking ranks in some way.
There is more than enough fear doing the rounds.
...on top of which we have a crap football team. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:54 - Dec 15 with 462 views | XYZ |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:43 - Dec 15 by BanksterDebtSlave |
You don't have to convince me of that but what I am hoping is that this variant will not be producing the same issues for the reasons mentioned at the start of the article. |
We're all hoping that.
Stopping it doubling its victims very two days is vital to ensure a significant portion of the country's key workers don't have to self-isolate.
Watch Wes Streeting's speech in the Commons yesterday. |  | | |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:57 - Dec 15 with 459 views | Guthrum |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:51 - Dec 15 by homer_123 |
To quote the article you posted:
"A study looking at 78,000 Omicron cases in South Africa found that the risk of hospitalisation was 29% lower compared with the original Covid-19, and 23% lower than the Delta variant, with vaccines holding up well."
Herein lies the issue - it is better than is potentially 23% lower than Delta but....that is still a significant 'actual' number and also, if Omicron spreads more widely, more effectively and is more evasive of our current vaccines than Delta - then the actual numbers could be larger still than Delta.
Hopefully not I agree but let's not downplay this. |
Another issue is that South Africa has a significantly younger population than places like the UK (median age of 27.6 years as opposed to 40.4). What has happened there is not necessarily an accurate guide to when it hits ageing populations in the West. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:59 - Dec 15 with 443 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:42 - Dec 15 by footers |
When you only appear to pop up to offer one side of that argument time and again it's pretty clear what you're pushing. |
Shame you didn't pop up on that previous thread when you called me out and address my response to your vitriolic stream of abuse! But to be fair that is your m.o
Edit...Oh and maybe spell out for me what it is I am pushing while your at it. [Post edited 16 Dec 2021 0:00]
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 00:04 - Dec 16 with 431 views | Trequartista |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:23 - Dec 15 by StokieBlue |
Herd immunity isn't possible if people can still be infected and pass it on. It only works when either infection or vaccination prevents someone passing it on so that when enough people have that immunity, those without immunity (ie. no vaccine) are at a tiny risk of running into the virus.
I suspect you don't actually mean herd immunity?
SB |
I mean the point where so many people have had Omicron, cases are going to stay very low after the wave, I don't mean at the point where the virus is gone. I've heard it being used as a gradual thing i.e. 'some herd immunity', 'a lot of herd immunity' rather than a tipping point that can't be reached. Don't know if that has a different name? Perhaps i just mean "immunity"
[Post edited 16 Dec 2021 0:12]
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 00:04 - Dec 16 with 427 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:42 - Dec 15 by StokieBlue |
You linked a one-sided Guardian article which attempts to minimise the apparent risks of the Omicron variant and then personally minimised it further by directly citing equality to the common cold in your post subject.
It's not hugely dissimilar to some posts that annoyed a lot of posters 20 months ago.
SB |
You link one sided views also, which is fine....thisvarticle begins by listing symptoms which are "cold like." hence the title. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 00:06 - Dec 16 with 427 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:43 - Dec 15 by Guthrum |
No, it's not caused by the cough. Covid itself damages the lungs. |
Related to, not caused by. All covid? | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 00:09 - Dec 16 with 423 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:50 - Dec 15 by fab_lover |
Good questions.
The government data is here:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhsRegion&areaNa
168 admissions for the 13th (as recent as it goes).
111 admissions a week earlier.
So yes, relatively low numbers for now.
With Omicron at over 50% levels of Covid infections in London, it's likely that the majority of admissions from now on will be Omicron related.
38% of a low(ish) number is still a low number; it's whether the hospital admissions - which always lag beyond infection rates - carry on going up at that rate, because a low(ish) number very quickly becomes a higher number...and then people die of nothing to do with Covid, because beds are full, or staff are off because they are infected. |
Thanks. And admitted primarily because of covid? | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 00:10 - Dec 16 with 417 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:51 - Dec 15 by homer_123 |
To quote the article you posted:
"A study looking at 78,000 Omicron cases in South Africa found that the risk of hospitalisation was 29% lower compared with the original Covid-19, and 23% lower than the Delta variant, with vaccines holding up well."
Herein lies the issue - it is better than is potentially 23% lower than Delta but....that is still a significant 'actual' number and also, if Omicron spreads more widely, more effectively and is more evasive of our current vaccines than Delta - then the actual numbers could be larger still than Delta.
Hopefully not I agree but let's not downplay this. |
Or up play it either. | |
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| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 00:11 - Dec 16 with 422 views | Trequartista |
| Omicron might turn out to be a nasty cold after all.... on 23:39 - Dec 15 by Guthrum |
Problem with the term "coronavirus" is it simply describes the shape of the virus. They are not a "family" as such.
The actual "parent" is SARS, which does mutate into more severe forms and has done so. |
Yes there was nothing i had read there, it was just a hopeful thought based on nothing. It's just always bad news isn't it. But enough about ITFC. | |
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