"Such a Twitter thread is anathema to the histrionics that have invaded much of the COVID discourse; it doesn’t spell an informative thread of information, and instead reads more like the workings of a hypochondriac." Anathema to the histrionics? You are saying that the thread is an example of histrionics, the production of "a hypochondriac." You need a copy editor.
Hi Modern Discontent. Perhaps I am misinterpreting what you wrote, but I suspect you are using the term "virulence" as a synonym for "transmissibility". "Virulence" is an approximate or exact synonym for "pathogenicity" https://www.tulane.edu/~wiser/protozoology/notes/Path.html - the degree to which an infection causes symptoms, harm and death.
"Transmissibility", ~AKA "infectivity" is a measure of how much a pathogen spreads in a given context. Part of that context is the degree to which the infection enables or prevents the host from engaging in behaviours which increase the chance of transmission. There is a general principle that pathogens evolve to become less virulent, as a competitive advantage over those which cause more severe symptoms which are likely to lead to less normal social mixing and/or more community scale efforts at reducing transmission.
Everything seems to be consistent with omicron being highly transmissible. The sample of the first known case seems to be early to mid-November:https://www.gisaid.org/hcov19-variants/ (bogs down my Firefox browser) so the variant has probably been spreading since some time in October. It has already been sequenced in 18 countries: (number of sequences) in 128 South Africa; 19 Botswana; 13 Portugal; 12 Netherlands; 9 UK; 6 Australia; 5 Germany; 5 Hong Kong; 4 Italy & Austria; 2 Canada & Brazil; 1 Sweden, Belgium, Reunion, Israel, Spain & Czech Republic.
The rapid increase in case numbers in South Africa seems to be due largely or entirely to omicron. It is summer and previously dominant delta cases have been waning rapidly, down to 4.49 new cases per day on 10th November. The latest figure is 45.90 on 30th November. This is a doubling time of 5.7 days.
I see no reason to believe omicron is less virulent than delta.
According to Hu et al 2021-03-21 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21710-6 (pre-delta, I guess, in Hunan, China): "The mean generation time was estimated to be 5.7 days, with infectiousness peaking 1.8 days before symptom onset, with 95% of transmission events occurring between 8.8 days before and 9.5 days after symptom onset. Most transmission events occurred during the pre-symptomatic phase (59.2%). SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility to infection increases with age, while transmissibility is not significantly different between age groups and between symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals."
So if we took whatever variant this was and made a second variant with no symptoms, its transmissibility would be marginally increased since without symptoms, presumably there would be unchanged social behavior and so more chance for transmission to new hosts. Since many people, in the Hunan context, are transmitting the virus even with symptoms, it seems unlikely that removing the symptoms would greatly increase overall transmission.
(Theoretically, a variant which caused only mild symptoms would spread very widely in the long term since no-one would care too much compared to the current situation where some people - nearly all of them vitamin D deficient and lacking early treatment - are harmed and killed.)
I think there is very little overall transmission advantage to be gained by delaying or eliminating early symptoms. A variant with better performing viruses, such as by lasting longer in the air, or being better able to infect cells, and/or which cause more viral shedding, can gain enormous transmission advantages, and those advantages would still remain positive even if the new variant caused significantly worse symptoms during the infectious page.
Severe COVID-19 symptoms are of little evolutionary importance to the virus, since they are well after the infectious stage. These occur partly due to co-morbidities but mainly due to typically terribly low, and not at all repleted, 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, especially if there are no early treatments and if the hospital treatment is similarly clueless, such as corticosteroids to suppress inflammatory responses, which also suppress innate and adaptive responses to viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens which contribute to the damage.
" . . .many people who are reporting on the current information on COVID are not building off of previous knowledge." would win Gold at the Politeness Olympics!
Really appreciate your comment about the media coverage of covid. You are quite nice about it 😊 "Over time I’ve found my patience within the realm of COVID to continuously be tested, because many of the people who are supposed to relay this information in a manner that is both informative and sensible tends to always be lacking."
The phrasing that has been coming to mind for me is that most average Joe news reporters and writers wouldn't know the difference between a good study and a pimple on their ass. They don't have the education to assess studies or statistics. Due to my science background, I can find my way around a study, but not the statistics, and I am continually annoyed by news articles links to studies that do not substantiate claims made in the article. The consequences of this are significant these days.
I agree with you 100% that border closures are ineffective, but I am confused as to why you cite the source you did to support your stance that masking is not effective, when the paper does not state that at all (in fact, the conclusions of their paper combined with their experimental results and mathematical modeling seem to suggest the opposite of what you stated). The paper clearly states that cloth or surgical masks are less effective than their stated filtration due to gaps, but also clearly states that well fitted KN95/high filtration masks are very effective in spaces where 2m distancing is not possible and/or air exchange is not possible. In fact, they clearly say in their conclusions "Thus, the present results endorse the use of high-efficiency, unvalved masks with a proper fit when the recommended social distancing guidelines cannot be maintained between individuals."
"Such a Twitter thread is anathema to the histrionics that have invaded much of the COVID discourse; it doesn’t spell an informative thread of information, and instead reads more like the workings of a hypochondriac." Anathema to the histrionics? You are saying that the thread is an example of histrionics, the production of "a hypochondriac." You need a copy editor.
Hi Modern Discontent. Perhaps I am misinterpreting what you wrote, but I suspect you are using the term "virulence" as a synonym for "transmissibility". "Virulence" is an approximate or exact synonym for "pathogenicity" https://www.tulane.edu/~wiser/protozoology/notes/Path.html - the degree to which an infection causes symptoms, harm and death.
"Transmissibility", ~AKA "infectivity" is a measure of how much a pathogen spreads in a given context. Part of that context is the degree to which the infection enables or prevents the host from engaging in behaviours which increase the chance of transmission. There is a general principle that pathogens evolve to become less virulent, as a competitive advantage over those which cause more severe symptoms which are likely to lead to less normal social mixing and/or more community scale efforts at reducing transmission.
I think many people are being overly optimistic about new SARS-CoV-2 variants being less virulent. Some have seized upon early reports from South African doctors that omicron's symptoms seem to be mild. https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/omicron-extremely-mild-says-doctor-who-first-discovered-strain-numerous-mutations and https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/south-african-doctor-raised-alarm-omicron-variant-says-symptoms/ . However racing hearts in children and extreme fatigue don't seem very mild to me.
Everything seems to be consistent with omicron being highly transmissible. The sample of the first known case seems to be early to mid-November:https://www.gisaid.org/hcov19-variants/ (bogs down my Firefox browser) so the variant has probably been spreading since some time in October. It has already been sequenced in 18 countries: (number of sequences) in 128 South Africa; 19 Botswana; 13 Portugal; 12 Netherlands; 9 UK; 6 Australia; 5 Germany; 5 Hong Kong; 4 Italy & Austria; 2 Canada & Brazil; 1 Sweden, Belgium, Reunion, Israel, Spain & Czech Republic.
The rapid increase in case numbers in South Africa seems to be due largely or entirely to omicron. It is summer and previously dominant delta cases have been waning rapidly, down to 4.49 new cases per day on 10th November. The latest figure is 45.90 on 30th November. This is a doubling time of 5.7 days.
The only report I know of regarding hospitalisations in South Africa is: https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/covid-19-hospitalizations-rising-south-africas-omicron-hot-spot-rcna6922 . In Gauteng province from 120 hospital admissions in the week to 6th November, admissions (or is this the number of people in hospital?) rose to 580 for the week ending 27th November. This is a doubling every 9.2 days.
I see no reason to believe omicron is less virulent than delta.
According to Hu et al 2021-03-21 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21710-6 (pre-delta, I guess, in Hunan, China): "The mean generation time was estimated to be 5.7 days, with infectiousness peaking 1.8 days before symptom onset, with 95% of transmission events occurring between 8.8 days before and 9.5 days after symptom onset. Most transmission events occurred during the pre-symptomatic phase (59.2%). SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility to infection increases with age, while transmissibility is not significantly different between age groups and between symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals."
So if we took whatever variant this was and made a second variant with no symptoms, its transmissibility would be marginally increased since without symptoms, presumably there would be unchanged social behavior and so more chance for transmission to new hosts. Since many people, in the Hunan context, are transmitting the virus even with symptoms, it seems unlikely that removing the symptoms would greatly increase overall transmission.
(Theoretically, a variant which caused only mild symptoms would spread very widely in the long term since no-one would care too much compared to the current situation where some people - nearly all of them vitamin D deficient and lacking early treatment - are harmed and killed.)
I think there is very little overall transmission advantage to be gained by delaying or eliminating early symptoms. A variant with better performing viruses, such as by lasting longer in the air, or being better able to infect cells, and/or which cause more viral shedding, can gain enormous transmission advantages, and those advantages would still remain positive even if the new variant caused significantly worse symptoms during the infectious page.
Severe COVID-19 symptoms are of little evolutionary importance to the virus, since they are well after the infectious stage. These occur partly due to co-morbidities but mainly due to typically terribly low, and not at all repleted, 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, especially if there are no early treatments and if the hospital treatment is similarly clueless, such as corticosteroids to suppress inflammatory responses, which also suppress innate and adaptive responses to viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens which contribute to the damage.
" . . .many people who are reporting on the current information on COVID are not building off of previous knowledge." would win Gold at the Politeness Olympics!
Really appreciate your comment about the media coverage of covid. You are quite nice about it 😊 "Over time I’ve found my patience within the realm of COVID to continuously be tested, because many of the people who are supposed to relay this information in a manner that is both informative and sensible tends to always be lacking."
The phrasing that has been coming to mind for me is that most average Joe news reporters and writers wouldn't know the difference between a good study and a pimple on their ass. They don't have the education to assess studies or statistics. Due to my science background, I can find my way around a study, but not the statistics, and I am continually annoyed by news articles links to studies that do not substantiate claims made in the article. The consequences of this are significant these days.
I agree with you 100% that border closures are ineffective, but I am confused as to why you cite the source you did to support your stance that masking is not effective, when the paper does not state that at all (in fact, the conclusions of their paper combined with their experimental results and mathematical modeling seem to suggest the opposite of what you stated). The paper clearly states that cloth or surgical masks are less effective than their stated filtration due to gaps, but also clearly states that well fitted KN95/high filtration masks are very effective in spaces where 2m distancing is not possible and/or air exchange is not possible. In fact, they clearly say in their conclusions "Thus, the present results endorse the use of high-efficiency, unvalved masks with a proper fit when the recommended social distancing guidelines cannot be maintained between individuals."