[HN Gopher] Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Va...
___________________________________________________________________
Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of
Concern
Author : nycdatasci
Score : 184 points
Date : 2021-11-26 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.who.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.who.int)
| crate_barre wrote:
| I gotta say, COVID releases new features faster than a lot of
| teams do.
| trhway wrote:
| thus to slow down and potentially bring the virus into complete
| disarray and stop it in its tracks we need to force the virus
| into the Six Sigma Lean Agile Scrum process.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Which is funny because I've heard that feature branching isn't
| the cool way to go about things now.
| robbintt wrote:
| Covid uses trunk based development.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| counterintuitively, the larger it becomes, the more features it
| releases. This genius solved the scaling problem
| funtimes323 wrote:
| Well when you pump and dump things like Delta you got to keep
| pumping/dumping. I mean - what else is going to get everyone
| cattle herded into the concentration camps. Australia is the
| country with balls to arrest its own citizens for the crime of
| testing positive and stuffing them into concentration camps.
|
| Only fascists wear masks.
|
| Only fascists are vaxxers.
|
| Only fascists inflict violence on people with 'vaccines' that
| have killed hundreds of thousands of people from heart attacks.
|
| GET FUCKED VAXXERS! I HOPE YOU ALL FUCKING DIE!
| acqbu wrote:
| Will people ever get over sensationalism and learn to live with
| it? It will continue to mutate and spread for years to come.
| Putting life on pause should've never been an option because of
| the toxic precedent it created.
| isodev wrote:
| Imagine there was a fire near where you live, constantly
| spreading and endangering lives in your community. Would you
| say people can just "learn to live it"?
| acqbu wrote:
| When far more people are harmed by the indirect effects of
| the fire (fear, jobs lost, mental health issues etc) than the
| fire itself, then yes - I would encourage them to liberate
| their minds, embrace reality and start living.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| A heck of a lot of people really don't want to move on from
| all this. Life is way too short to be wasted living the way
| some of society seems to think is necessary "in order to
| take this serious".
|
| Disease and death have been a part of humanity since time
| began. All we can do is try to make the most out of the
| short time we have here on this earth. Playing this covid
| theater game for 2+ years is, in my opinion, an insulting
| to human nature. We aren't meant to do this.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| "some of you may have to die, but that is a sacrifice I'm
| willing to make"
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Imagine being given almost 2 years to build capacity to put
| that fire out so the community could go back to normal life
| but instead zero additional capacity was built? Hospitals had
| almost 2 years to build capacity. Where is it? Why is society
| being asked to continue bailing out institutions that have
| had an enormous amount of time to prepare?
| bonzini wrote:
| You just don't build capacity against something that grows
| exponentially until it hits a substantial part of the
| overall population. Say a country like the UK, at the peak
| of the curve, would have 1% of their population getting
| sick everyday for a week or two, and 1% of that getting in
| a hospital (very conservative since 1% is the IFR and lots
| of people get out of the hospital on their legs)
|
| You might have built the 90.000 beds you need, but where
| will you find the doctors?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Such an excuse. You find the doctors or find a way to get
| people to help. It's an emergency. Figure it out.
|
| Forcing society to grind to an halt because some
| "experts" just waive their hand and give up is absurd.
| bedhead wrote:
| Can you point to a single policy that has demonstrated (in an
| intellectually honest way) ANY efficacy in slowing covid?
| One??
|
| Vax passports, cloth masks, N95 masks, face shields, closing
| schools, cohorts, WFH, clean/dirty pen jars (my fave),
| plexiglass, 6 feet, travel bans...
|
| The grim reality is that there hasn't been a _single_ policy
| that 's been shown to have made any difference at all. NONE.
| There's literally nothing to do other than stay home if sick
| and get vaxxed if you want, the rest is all theater and much
| of it has horrible tradeoffs.
| brazzy wrote:
| >The grim reality is that there hasn't been a single policy
| that's been shown to have made any difference at all. NONE.
|
| BULLSHIT.
|
| How delusional can you be? There is _plenty_ of evidence
| that masks and contact reduction in various forms have a
| _massive_ effect on how quickly the virus spreads.
| Infection numbers and their development over time varied
| _wildly_ between countries, clearly correlated with such
| measures, long before vaccines were available.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > There is plenty of evidence that masks and contact
| reduction in various forms have a massive effect on how
| quickly the virus spreads.
|
| If this is true, why is it when showing a chart of data
| it is almost impossible to pick when any of these
| measures went into effect? If these measures worked to
| any worthwhile degree their effect on any data should be
| absolutely profound. Thus far, you'd have a hard time
| picking florida out from oregon or california. If you
| need PhD level math to prove that all these NPI'S work...
| it means they weren't worth the extremely toxic and
| corrosive effectives they've had on our communities. Any
| fool off the street should be able to look at the raw
| data and see the impact, which currently you can't do.
| brazzy wrote:
| >If this is true, why is it when showing a chart of data
| it is almost impossible to pick when any of these
| measures went into effect?
|
| Quite exactly the opposite is actually true: it's always
| very clear from such charts that the measures are very
| effective.
|
| Some examples:
|
| https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-
| aspc/images/corporate...
|
| https://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/j
| our...
|
| https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline
|
| Doesn't take "PhD level math" either, just some basic
| understanding how the effects are delayed by incubation
| period, testing and reporting, and how an exponential
| function changes shape as the exponent changes
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Correlation does not equal causation. And of course
| studies done by people with a vested interest in proving
| all this worked will say this worked.
|
| You'd be hard pressed to find studies that say none of
| this worked. Such researchers would destroy their careers
| and be labeled as kooks.
| naasking wrote:
| It's not nearly as straightforward as you're pointing out
| because people _voluntarily_ change their behaviour in
| response to circumstances, like case numbers, deaths,
| etc. Your big assumption is that top-down policies
| /controls are the biggest factor causing delayed change
| in numbers, but that isn't at all clear from the data
| alone.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > ANY efficacy in slowing covid? One??
|
| Here, this was recorded on March of 2020
|
| https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1238604080571772928
|
| Simply because your country's leadership is incompetent and
| you are incompetent at finding opposing views and analysis
| doesn't mean that said tools don't exist
|
| Apologies for writing such a scathing comment but, guys, we
| are 1 year plus into this, please just... I don't even
| know, I'd like to say "inform yourselves" but with the web
| and informational intakes being so fragmented who knows
| what you guys even consider "good information" anymore
| lettergram wrote:
| You mean like we learned to live with the far more deadly (at
| least initially) influenza?
|
| As your body increasingly comes in contact with it you'll
| build a solid immunity. Similar to the other mRNA viruses
| such as RSV (dangerous to babies, but almost no one else).
| Daishiman wrote:
| Influenza didn't kill 5+ million people in two years.
| tjr225 wrote:
| Uhhhh it killed somewhere around 17-50 million people. I
| guess you're technically correct lmao.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
| sdfdf4434r34r wrote:
| You're off by a factor of 10, it killed 50 million in
| 1918-1920, 1-4 million in 1957-1958, 1-4 million again in
| 1968-1969, 700k in 1977, 100-200k in 2009.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| If Covid had occurred in 1918, it would likely have had a
| much higher CFR than H1N1 - no supplemental oxygen
| available at that time.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It took a couple years for the 1918 pandemic to sputter
| out. We didn't learn to live with it, our immune systems
| learned to fight it off, and it retreated from being an
| acutely dangerous threat to being merely a chronic one.
|
| The cost was millions of lives, because it was the only
| option- there were no vaccines or antivirals. But we have
| both of those now. The steady-state for COVID-19 will
| hopefully look something like seasonal flu, but it will
| take time.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > Will people ever get over sensationalism and learn to live
| it?
|
| You see, that's the crux of the matter: Not everyone can live
| with it. Literally. So far, it killed more than 5 million
| people globally. There is also the issue with possibly lasting
| brain damage (even occuring in cases that weren't severe enough
| for hospitalization) and life-wrecking long covid.
| Compassionate people have a problem ignoring all that.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Assuming you're going to live for 50 more years from today,
| wasting a year of your life is only worth it if it prevents a
| 2% chance of death.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| This assumes every year of life has equal worth.
| webdoodle wrote:
| Heart disease has killed more people in the same time period,
| but the MSM hasn't stopped running Coke and Pepsi ads.
| acqbu wrote:
| Compassionate people should have a problem with being
| enslaved, mentally and physically, by a disease that,
| according to your stats has killed 0.06% of the world
| population - albeit, it's debatable how many people died as a
| direct result of it.
| plutonorm wrote:
| then you should also have problem with
| capitalism/plutocracy.
| CyanBird wrote:
| I know 5 people personally that have died of this virus,
| forgive me if I take offense at your hand waving of it
| spookthesunset wrote:
| That doesn't mean any of these NPI's work, are ethical,
| or are worth their immense cost to society. It is
| entirely possible to "take this serious" but feel that
| society is causing itself far more harm with all these
| measures than it would have by doing absolutely nothing
| at all. None of these thing were in any playbook prior to
| march of 2020. And here we are almost a month from 2022
| still working from this unwritten, untested playbook and
| _still_ we have no clue if any of it works.
|
| About the only thing we know works is vaccines and all
| these cool treatments we've figured out.
| dnautics wrote:
| >Using this approach, this variant has been detected at faster
| rates than previous surges in infection, suggesting that this
| variant may have a growth advantage.
|
| Really? I wonder how much of this is "it's very easy to spot in
| the pcr" and we don't have to Redeploy tests..
| dnautics wrote:
| Should clarify: I'm not discounting the possibility that this
| variant spreads quickly, but given the known fact that it
| detects very easily, some sort of statistical modeling of how
| to correct for that (or a disclaimer that we are comparing
| apples to oranges) would be nice before making a pronouncement
| about rapidity
| nycdatasci wrote:
| "In recent weeks, infections have increased steeply, coinciding
| with the detection of B.1.1.529 variant. The first known
| confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on 9
| November 2021.
|
| This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are
| concerning. Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of
| reinfection with this variant, as compared to other VOCs. The
| number of cases of this variant appears to be increasing in
| almost all provinces in South Africa"
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| The mainstream vaccine narrative has needed additional
| supporting evidence to state with confidence that vaccinations
| after previous infection should be a requirement... it's only
| natural a new variant should occur with the exact fit needed.
| kranke155 wrote:
| You realise this is mostly the case in the US?
|
| In the EU - previous infection and recovery gives you a COVID
| Pass - some countries are doing a single shot after infection
| at most to count you as vaccinated (Spain I believe does
| this) which is consistent with the data we have
|
| It's mostly the US that has an insane vacine policy.
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| > It's mostly the US that has an insane vacine policy.
|
| 3) PROFIT !!
| ska wrote:
| > In the EU - previous infection and recovery gives you a
| COVID Pass
|
| Is that consistent? I had heard it's based on antibody test
| - you get a limited time pass.
| tastroder wrote:
| In Germany antibody tests aren't used for that
| determination. 6 months from PCR positive counts as
| "recovered" in the German scheme, afterwards you need a
| single mRNA shot on top to count as fully vaccinated.
| maxerickson wrote:
| We'll see what happens with the large employer mandate, but
| as of now, I've been asked to show proof of vaccination 0
| times in the US, while living a similar life to before the
| pandemic.
|
| (I didn't spend much time in restaurants prior, I've cut
| that back, but then they aren't checking anyway)
| DeviantDV wrote:
| I AM LRRR, RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8!
|
| edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia5c78zlyxw
| malepoon wrote:
| Twitter thread from a vaccine developer:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1464222680731820043.html
|
| A lot of speculation still, but it's not all bad so far.
| nostromo wrote:
| This image really puts it in context:
| https://images.app.goo.gl/13amCWF8aJ8q2eZAA
|
| The red portion of the graph on the far right is the new
| variant.
| tigershark wrote:
| It started from an extremely low base. And extrapolating that
| curve is completely wrong as you can see from today numbers.
| 2.8k compared to yesterday 2.4K. It's obviously still early
| to know anything conclusive but the relatively small increase
| today is a very good sign. We'll know something more next
| week.
| koheripbal wrote:
| His argument is fallacious.
|
| He's saying that since there all other variants we're
| susceptible to the vaccine, it's unlikely that this one is.
|
| ...and goes on to list the high number of different markers the
| vaccines target.
|
| Unfortunately, vaccines largely target the spike proteins, and
| sequencing of omicron is demonstrating that every single
| protein marker on the spike is changed.
|
| Vaccines will likely have a very small effect on this variant.
|
| There are also two other mutations of concern that have never
| been seen together that each increase binding to ACE2 for cell
| entry.
|
| This all needs to be formally confirmed, but this is probably
| BAD.
| fartattack wrote:
| Your argument is fallacious. You clearly lack even an
| elementary education in immunology. Exposure to the antigen
| teaches your immune memory cells what the antigen looks like.
|
| Quit your job, stay home, live in fear. The rest of society
| doesn't need cowards like you.
|
| The pandemic is over, except for paranoid people. There will
| be endless variants. It's an RNA virus. No amount of
| vaccination will be perfect, but life will go on.
|
| Get vaccinated and go expose yourself to the existing endemic
| variants; it's the best defense there is.
|
| Live your life. If you think you can wait until there are no
| more variants, you'll be locked inside wearing a mask
| forever. Some of us have lives to lead.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| A study in Nature had previously shown that >= 20 amino acid
| mutations on the spike protein was sufficient to cause immune
| escape from the vaccine or previous infection, but that
| individuals who were both previously infected and vaccinated
| were still able to neutralize the mutant virus. [1]
|
| The omicron variant has >30 AA mutations on the spike
| protein, so it remains to be seen how effective vaccines are
| in response to it. Even if it is unable to prevent infection,
| it's still likely that the vaccines will provide some
| attenuation of severity, especially with a booster. We also
| now have pharmaceutical means to treat infections, so any
| notions that this will bring us back to March 2020 seem
| unrealistic.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04005-0
| naasking wrote:
| > individuals who were both previously infected and
| vaccinated were still able to neutralize the mutant virus.
|
| Mainly because of the infection, not the vaccination.
| Infection trains your immune response to detect multiple
| factors of the virus, the mRNA vaccines are only for the
| spike protein which has considerable mutations in later
| variants like this one.
|
| Arguably, traditional dead-virus vaccines might provide
| better long-term protection for this reason, but we went
| all-in on the new tech.
| Kye wrote:
| Chise is a she/her-shaped creature as far as I know.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Pronouns, the original type-hinting system.
| reindeer76 wrote:
| >vaccine developer
|
| >Chair of ...Maryland's Newest Anthropomorphic Convention!
|
| Not sure how I feel about this. Are many vaccine developers
| also furries?
| Kye wrote:
| Furries come from a broad cross-section of civilization,
| though tech has outsized representation as a profession. It's
| highly likely someone you know and respect is a furry.
| azeirah wrote:
| I'd imagine many people in power have various hobbies you'd
| consider odd if you knew about them. (nevermind fetishes, oh
| my god!)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Never mind religion, oh your god!
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Fetish, religion and bears, oh my!
| jachee wrote:
| "Oh Myyyyyy" --George Takei
| mdni007 wrote:
| And he's a scientist but believes in horoscopes. I don't
| think I've seen someone living a more hypocritical lifestyle
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/project/about.do
|
| Its actually pretty common to venture outside the box in
| every regard, if you have the ability to venture outside
| the box.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| But horoscopes, my god. They're not outside the box,
| they're outside reality. It's like a physicist believing
| in perpetual motion.
| whymauri wrote:
| Wait, I know some physicists and scientists who use Costar.
| It's almost always somewhat tongue-in-cheek, just a little
| fun to add spice to life. Not a 100% serious religious
| guide... in the same way I know serious scientists who own
| a and cleanse a few crystals for the 'aura.'
|
| It's kinda like pointing at a scientist who plays DnD and
| carries a DnD good luck pin and saying "DnD isn't even
| real! It's just play."
| funtimes323 wrote:
| The vast majority of furries are pedophiles.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| There's an expose available on the pseudononymous author.[1]
| According to that, she is a Moderna employee.
|
| [1] https://www.inputmag.com/features/furry-scientist-
| vaccines-c...
| ch33zer wrote:
| What an atrocious ad filled useless site. Original thread here:
|
| https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/146422268073182004...
| malepoon wrote:
| Thanks. At some point Twitter itself didn't let you read
| threads without logging in, but it looks like they changed
| that...
| [deleted]
| ouid wrote:
| That's a lot more mutations than we would expect to see from a
| naturally emerging strain, yeah?
| jacquesm wrote:
| No.
|
| 10,000,000 times 50,000,000,000 (rough stab at # of virions per
| infection, range 1 to 100 B), is
|
| 500,000,000,000,000,000 opportunities for mutations so far.
|
| You can take it to the bank that the number of mutations is
| far, far higher than the number that makes it to the press
| because the strains that end up dominating have already
| undergone a lot of competitive pressure by the time we notice
| them, so there will be a lot more strains that we will simply
| never know about.
|
| Fun fact: the total mass of all virions produced by infected
| hosts to date is likely less than 10 kg.
| Kliment wrote:
| One thing to be aware of with RNA viruses - they mutate _all
| the time_ and almost all mutations are nonviable (unable to
| infect cells or unable to replicate) and die off immediately.
| The fact there are so few variants (and there hasn 't been a
| new dominant variant since _October 2020_ ) illustrates how
| fragile its mechanisms are.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The number of viable versions must number in the thousands
| though, they are just less viable than the previous
| generation and that's why they'll die out almost
| immediately, for a new strain to become the dominant one it
| has to work 'better' than the old one.
| kalaido wrote:
| Booster time guys. Be a good boy!
| 0xcafecafe wrote:
| Why Omicron and not Nu?
| kranke155 wrote:
| Nu means naked in Portuguese (and Spanish I think?) Maybe they
| wanted to avoid all the lazy puns. A pretty significant part of
| the world speaks either of those two languages.
| sedatk wrote:
| Also in French.
| ku-man wrote:
| Not it Spanish
| jsnell wrote:
| Just guessing: Nu is too close to Mu. Xi is pronounced too
| inconsistently to be useful internationally.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| And a certain someone named that!
| 323 wrote:
| Imagine the confusion between "Nu variant" and "new variant",
| when the next variant appears. Also, Nu is basically
| ungoogleble.
|
| Bonus points: Nu is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet, and
| today is Friday 26 (2*13).
| [deleted]
| stefan_ wrote:
| Or, you know, Xi..
| varelse wrote:
| That would probably get renamed the pooh variant.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Ha, didn't know there was a Xi between "N" and "O" in the
| Greek alphabet. I don't wonder why they skipped it.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| That's the original variant I am afraid.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Here's the link on CoVariants (aka 21K):
| https://covariants.org/variants/21K
|
| Gives a better breakdown of what we're actually talking about.
| crate_barre wrote:
| _Also known as B.1.1.529
|
| Variant21K appears to have arisen in November 2021, possibly in
| South Africa. Early sequences are predominantly from South
| Africa, though also detected in Botswana and Hong Kong.
|
| 21K is primarily of concern due to the large number of
| mutations it has in the Spike gene. Many of these variants are
| in the receptor binding domain and N-terminal domain, and thus
| may play key roles in ACE2 binding and antibody recognition._
|
| This literally reads like post apocalyptic fan fiction.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> This literally reads like post apocalyptic fan fiction._
|
| I find it incredibly fascinating how fast this virus can
| mutate in order to throw curveballs around our natural and
| engineered defenses and become more efficient at killing us.
|
| How is this even possible in such a short amount of time? I
| thought evolution takes tens of thousands of years. It's not
| like viruses have giant brains with massive IQs to come up
| with all this so fast.
|
| Would be cool if someone could ELI5.
| jsnell wrote:
| The probable cause for many variants of concern has been
| multi-month long infections in one immunocompromised person
| (obviously a different one each time), often treated with
| convalescent plasma or monoclonal antibodies to keep the
| disease in check but not cure it. This provided the virus a
| perfect optimization platform, and for it to quickly
| collect a group of mutually beneficial changes.
|
| In the normal case the selective pressure isn't really
| there, since the virus will get beat back after a week or
| two anyway and just 1-2 point mutations probably didn't
| give it any significant advantage is infecting more hosts.
|
| Given how many mutations this variant has compared to its
| most direct known ancestor, the former is almost certainly
| what happened in this case too.
|
| See for example:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-
| ma...
| xbkingx wrote:
| It speaks to the more serious problem with vaccine
| hesitancy - the more virions (individual virus 'particles')
| that exist, the greater the chance of a mutation that finds
| a way around our defenses. It's just basic evolution.
|
| The variants arise randomly and proliferate with the
| current major strains. The infected population adapts to
| reduce the transmission of the most virulent/contagious
| strains. Selective pressure (tug of war between infecting
| people and people fighting off the infection) increases on
| the new variants until one or a few maintain or exceed the
| transmission of the progenitor strain.
|
| That's the problem with the, "I'll get over it/I'm not
| worried/My segment of the population doesn't die from it"
| mentality. The more infections - subclinical, asymptomatic,
| severe, fatal, undetected - the more rolls of the dice. We
| (humans) are selecting variants that are worse for us,
| hoping we can snuff out the infection before some key
| mutation that eludes our immune system and/or testing
| develops.
|
| Two other thoughts with internal conflicts/points worth
| mentioning - First, recovered patients should be more
| resistant to new strains. Their immune systems threw
| everything at the virus to defeat it, so their response
| will be more diversified than those with mRNA vaccines
| targeting a specific protein sequence. (The magnitude and
| usefulness of the variations in immune response can negate
| that advantage.) Second, the reasons that a 'novel' virus
| is dangerous are that we, as a species, don't know if we
| can (naturally/innately), and we don't know how much the
| virus can change in protein sequence (to evade our
| defenses) or our response to infection.
|
| Anyways, I'm rambling. Not a virologist, but a PhD (and as
| such, I think I know more about stuff than a really do) and
| that's how I think about it. :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Given a population of almost 8 billion and a six months
| head start you are now looking at a reservoir of many
| millions of people infected at any given time. Each of
| these will provide 1 to 100 billion new virions, and each
| of those is an opportunity for the virus to undergo a
| mutation, which RNA viruses are particularly receptive to
| because they lack the same level of error correction that
| DNA based viruses enjoy.
|
| Edit: fixed bit about error correction, thanks
| somewhereoutth!
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Interestingly, SARS-CoV-2 _does_ have error correction -
| but the essence of your comment is correct.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fair enough, I should have been more precise.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| With that said, then a one sise fits all vacinne is
| highly unlikely, correct? That there will be variants and
| mutations that will out pace (so to speak) the protection
| a given jab is engineered to offer?
|
| Long to short, if death prevention is the objective then
| we need to shift to finding solution that are less
| specific but still effective. For example, anti virals.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's like the ideal scenario if you are a multinational
| pharmaceutical company.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The various vaccines have different ways of acting, some
| will be less specific but also less effective from the
| start, some will be more specific but run a higher chance
| of being outdated by future mutations, all of them can
| only be tested for efficacy against the known strains. So
| yes, this probably will remain.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> That there will be variants and mutations that will
| out pace (so to speak) the protection a given jab is
| engineered to offer?_
|
| Flu vaccines are also updated on a yearly basis to
| reflect the strains currently in circultion, so why would
| the covid vaccines not do the same?
|
| This sounds like an anti-viral subscription service. :)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Well, isn't the common cold the result of an endless stream
| of "curveballs" and thus why there's no prevention for it?
| That is, the virus that causes the common cold is actually
| numerous variants (not the exact same version of the
| virus).
| foyoyi2613 wrote:
| It has a much shorter lifespan thus in one human lifecycle
| it has a much more time to evolve. Humans (or other higher
| animals) are not powerless. They have sex. The random
| recombination of genes when reproducing can create an
| environment hostile to parasites/viruses in its offspring.
| See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis
| for details.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > How is this even possible in such a short amount of time?
| I
|
| Mutations on organisms such as viruses depend on the raw
| amount of virus duplication which happens, not per se
| "time", if you have a large amount of hosts, and therefore
| high amounts of duplication that increases the duplication
| rate making it more likely that mutations will occur,
| therefore speeding up the mutation rate, and as it happens
| with large countries still not taking strong measures
| against covid there's ample amount of hosts which can
| incubate new mutations....
|
| Also, ought be noted that mutation is entirely random, this
| is *not* "a consequence to vaccines existing", most
| mutations will be neutral, others negative to the virus
| itself, but few might have positive effects on its
| vitality, or incubation period or others
| WJW wrote:
| > and become more efficient at killing us.
|
| This is not actually a "goal" of the virus, since dead
| people cannot move and therefore spread much less of the
| virus. They seek to become more infectious so they can
| spread more, and in this process sometimes they also
| accidentally kill the host.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Evolution takes tens of thousands of tries, not years.
|
| Sometimes far fewer tries than that, of course, but viruses
| certainly get a lot of iterations in any given population
| in any given month.
| nope96 wrote:
| How was "Omicron" chosen as the name of this variant?
| jenny91 wrote:
| They're just going through the greek alphabet, I believe
| manojlds wrote:
| And skipped Xi
| dmt0 wrote:
| Xi was the original variant
| omginternets wrote:
| I almost corrected you before realizing how brilliant you
| are. Well played.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I suppose Nu might be dangerously confusing with Mu , and Xi
| was politically untenable. The next one is going to be Pi
| [deleted]
| leegraham wrote:
| 'Nu' also has the problem of sounding like 'new', so phrases
| like 'the Nu variant' are confusing if spoken aloud.
| [deleted]
| bserge wrote:
| I like to think "Futurama". Soon Omicron Persei 8 will
| subjugate the humans!
| throwaway4good wrote:
| They use the greek alphabet to avoid stigmatising or
| politicizing the origins the various variants. They also pick
| names that are easy to remember and pronounce as opposed to the
| more technical names (ie. B.1.1.529).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Any thoughts on whether they would have done this greek
| alphabet thing had the first outbreak been in Africa instead
| of China? And why change now, when viruses (and variants)
| have long been named after the country or region where the
| first outbreak was recorded?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| These names are for public consumption. The reality is a
| world of tens of thousands variants that are constantly
| evolving. The B.1.1.529 is from a computer program that names
| clusters of variants via a clustering algorithm.
| Kye wrote:
| Pangolin, pangolout
|
| https://github.com/cov-lineages/pangolin
|
| I'm surprised it has so few stars, watches, and forks given
| how big a deal it is.
| funtimes323 wrote:
| Cause it sounds more scary than 'Nu'. We'll have to see what
| King Puppy Killer, a.k.a Dr. Mengel, a.k.a Fauci the Horrible
| has to say.
| vletal wrote:
| Omicron? Was not it Nu like few hours ago? I like the longer name
| better. Our ministry of finance has already made a typo in a
| Facebook post calling it Mu (like the sound cows make).
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| They skipped nu because it sounds too much like mu, and they
| skipped xi because it sounds like Winnie-the-Poo.
| polskibus wrote:
| Wait, what happened to epsilon?
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| That one dates back to July, 2020.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Epsilon_variant
| [deleted]
| funtimes323 wrote:
| This isn't /r/fuckingretarded .
|
| Take your branch covidian fascist propaganda bullshit back to
| reddit. You people are the worst of humankind - you will get what
| is coming to you.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Interesting choice to pick "Omicron" instead of "Nu," which news
| outlets had been expecting them to use. Perhaps this allows them
| to avoid having to use "Xi" as the name of a Covid variant, which
| would have been...inconvenient for the WHO.
| [deleted]
| yosito wrote:
| Maybe they wanted to avoid antivax jokes about the Nu normal.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Nu means naked in Portuguese (and Spanish I think?)
|
| Maybe they wanted to avoid all the lazy puns. A pretty
| significant part of the world speaks either of those two
| languages.
| [deleted]
| tommiegannert wrote:
| It would probably be reported as Ni or Ny in Spanish:
| https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_griego#Letras
| kranke155 wrote:
| Yeah but why bother? Why is this a big deal? Just having a
| funny/dumb pun to the name means you might as well avoid it
| tbh.
| pygy_ wrote:
| In French _nu_ is both "naked"and the name of the greek
| letter that sounds like the latin N.
| lottin wrote:
| "Nu" means _nude_ in Portuguese, French and Catalan, but that
| 's the masculine form, whereas the noun _variant_ is
| feminine, therefore "nu variant" would never be mistaken for
| "nude variant". But even if it could be misinterpreted, I
| don't think anybody would care.
| kergonath wrote:
| Variant is masculine in French. Well, the feminine form
| "variante" exists as well, but is not used in this context.
|
| Also, both the masculine and feminine forms, "nu" and
| "nue", are pronounced exactly the same. "Le variant nu" in
| French would always be ambiguous.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Futurama fans are going to have fun with this one and the
| Omicron Persei invasion.
| beebmam wrote:
| The Greek letter Xi is pronounced very differently than the
| pinyin Xi
| wk_end wrote:
| This is true and doesn't really matter, for the optics.
| [deleted]
| void-pointer wrote:
| I think they realised that "Nu" was too similar to "New" that
| if/when the next variant came around, there would be confusion
| as to what someone means when they _speak_ the words "New
| variant"
| mattlondon wrote:
| What is the problem with Xi?
|
| Perhaps there is a second meaning I don't know?
| [deleted]
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Because if WHO like any other multi national agency is afraid
| to offend China.
| Teever wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping
| [deleted]
| neither_color wrote:
| But that's pronounced chi like chai no? I tend to not read Xi
| as pinyin unless it's in context with other Chinese words.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Pronounced more like zai or ksai or ksee. Chi (pronounced
| "kai") looks like an X, which is a different letter.
| powerslacker wrote:
| Xi Jinping is the current leader of China.
| kgin wrote:
| Have you heard about the nu variant?
|
| No, what's it called?
|
| The nu variant
|
| Yeah, does it have a name?
|
| It's nu
|
| Yeah I know it's new but what do they call it?
|
| What does who call it?
|
| That's what I'm asking you! What does WHO call it?
| sgerenser wrote:
| Nailed it, I think this is exactly why they skipped Nu.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| Who calls it?
| anotherhue wrote:
| Naturally.
| MontagFTB wrote:
| I don't even know what I'm _talking_ about!
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Plus, "M" and "N" can often be hard to disambiguate, having
| "Mu" and "Nu" just adds another layer of confusion.
| matt123456789 wrote:
| :) https://youtu.be/sShMA85pv8M
| g42gregory wrote:
| I don't know what to make of the WHO statements anymore. There
| has been so much retractions, flip-flops, politically-driven
| actions, half-truths, etc... I don't know how assign any meaning,
| good or bad, to what comes out of that organization.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| This is a multinational organization, funded by member states,
| built around consensus that we're talking about here.
|
| It seems unreasonable to expect international organizations to
| be simultaneously accepted by multiple parties with divergent
| and conflicting interests... and somehow not be subject to
| politics.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| And yet, their representatives do things like disconnect from
| Skype when asked about Taiwan, and they skipped naming a
| mutation the Xi variant.
|
| So how much can you trust them? Probably about as much as you
| can trust who they're loyal to.
| _djo_ wrote:
| It's disturbing how poor the civics knowledge regarding
| multinational organisations remains in much of the world.
|
| The relations between countries in general are dysfunctional,
| driven by politics and selfish interests, often corrupt, and
| dependent on power, why are we surprised when those same
| factors affect shared multinational organisations?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Even though there are good reasons for it to be the case, I
| do agree with the OP that it undermines the trust in them.
|
| Politics should not override science IMO.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Granted, but unfortunately some problems (war, global
| climate, trade baselines) can only be tackled in a
| multinational forum, because agreement between multiple
| parties is required for any truly optimal solution.
|
| And the only feasible solutions to creating those forums
| are points somewhere between "completely political" and
| "apolitical."
|
| So it's constructive to say "I wish the WHO were less
| political" or "The WHO should appease its members by
| doing X, so that it could be more neutral in Y," but it's
| pretty trite to comment that it's political. Yes, and
| what alternatives are possible?
| [deleted]
| xyst wrote:
| My current take (not a virologist, doctor):
|
| At this point, if you are not immunocompromised and you have the
| first vaccination and a booster. You should be able to easily
| recover regardless of the mutation(s). The virus would need to
| completely diverge from SARS-CoV-2 in order to fully defeat the
| countermeasures of the current vaccinations.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Strikes me as unnecessarily early to make such a claim.
| Animats wrote:
| Testing of vaccines against this new variant is already
| starting.[1] First results in 2 weeks.
|
| Pfizer says that if they have to generate a new vaccine for
| this variant, it will take about 100 days.[2] That's the
| great thing about this mRNA vaccine technology - given the
| gene sequence of a virus, a vaccine can be designed. The
| original Moderna vaccine was designed in two days.
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/omicron-variant-prompts-
| concerns-ab...
|
| [2] https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/world/pfizer-release-
| statemen...
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong comment?
| ericdodges wrote:
| Delta has been in the wild for some time and boosters for
| it are still being tested. I'd take such claims with a
| grain of salt. If this variant has significant immune
| evasion from prior infection or vaccination, 100 days is a
| lot of time to wreak havoc. There are also myriad
| logistical problems if we have to boost everyone again that
| will drag things out.
| Lionga wrote:
| 100 days + XXX days for the new approval of the vaccine.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Although variations on the vaccine require less
| approval than a totally new one. This process takes place
| every year for flu vaccines.
| funtimes323 wrote:
| Strikes me that you need to go stroke one out on /r/horsesex.
| Lionga wrote:
| Any reasoning/source or this is just what you wish for / want
| to believe?
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| Not OP but I remember reading that with the way the vaccine
| works, as long as it's classified as a variant you should be
| covered. If you're not covered anymore (assuming the full
| vaccination is not outdated) that means it's most likely a
| new virus rather than a new variant. I can't find a proper
| link to quote tough, so you can assume this is totally wrong.
| Nevertheless, the logic behind it makes sense (to me at
| least).
| Lionga wrote:
| Quick research tells me that Biontech does need two weeks
| to check if the vaccine works against the new variant [1],
| so clearly it does NOT need to be a new virus for the
| vaccine to become useless.
|
| [1] https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/biontech-
| will-kno...
| ianai wrote:
| True but the mRNAs have held up well against every
| variant to this point. It's not even something I'm
| comfortable banking on against this new variant, but
| we're far from concluding this is a problem, too.
| Edit-I'm thinking it's like 66% against this VOC from
| escaping the vaccines and 33% pro, very roughly.
| reindeer76 wrote:
| Narrowness of immune response:
|
| >The mRNA and viral vector vaccines induced ONLY spike protein
| antibodies in the inoculated test subjects
|
| >In comparison, whole inactivated virus and natural infection
| induce antibodies to many parts of the virus
|
| Original antigenic sin:
|
| >Subjects injected with the old formulations have locked their
| immune response to only a few antibodies
|
| >Any new formulation of the injection will amplify those
| antibodies rather than inducing new ones
|
| Antibody-dependent enhancement:
|
| >Omicron may have mutated to take advantage of non-neutralising
| antibodies to the injection spike protein
|
| >This would mean that the virus can more easily latch onto the
| CD147 receptor and enter cells in the vaccinated
| fabian2k wrote:
| There is zero evidence at all for any antibody-dependent
| enhancement with the COVID vaccines so far.
|
| The mRNA vaccines also induce the cell-mediated immunity,
| unlike e.g. subunit vaccines that only consists of a protein.
| The cell-based response is fundamentally different and not
| based on the 3D structure of the virus protein like the
| antibody response. So mutation that would evade the antibody
| response would not automatically evade the cell-based
| response as well.
|
| The spike protein is also the most important protein of the
| virus. And antibodies are mostly useful against surface
| components of the virus, not so much against stuff that's on
| the inside. The spike protein performs a critical function,
| to evade the antibody response it has to do both, change
| enough to be unrecognizable while still being able to infect
| cells with a similar efficiency. That's not an easy thing to
| do.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Curious edit history. This pile of garbage originally used
| "vaxtard", "sin", and "purebloods". You really shouldn't take
| anything seriously from a source that uses those trigger
| phrases.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Seems to have been copy-pasted from /pol/
| Eliezer wrote:
| > Curious edit history. This pile of garbage originally
| used "vaxtard", "sin", and "purebloods". You really
| shouldn't take anything seriously from a source that uses
| those trigger phrases.
|
| There's no edit histories on HN, unless I missed something.
|
| Never forget the windowless buildings in Russia, where
| people are working to make you hate each other. At least
| make it harder for them than simple semiautomated tricks
| like this.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| I saw what OP initially wrote before they started editing
| it down a bit. This is one of the ways that
| misinformation viruses spread. OP saw it on a radicalized
| forum somewhere, copied it into a less-radical forum and
| started watering the message down a little to aid in
| radicalizing others.
| sp332 wrote:
| This does have quite a few mutations, including several that
| are pretty rare. https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-
| designation/issues/343
| op00to wrote:
| Are people getting sicker with it?
| bmakdbd wrote:
| > However, Dr Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African
| Medical Association and a practising GP based in Pretoria,
| said it was "premature" to make predictions of a health
| crisis.
|
| "It's all speculation at this stage. It may be it's highly
| transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are
| extremely mild," she said. "Maybe two weeks from now I will
| have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing.
| So are we seriously worried? No. We are concerned and we
| watch what's happening. But for now we're saying, 'OK:
| there's a whole hype out there. [We're] not sure why.'"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/26/south-
| africa-b...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| "the cases we are seeing are extremely mild"
|
| So, like most COVID infections?
| tastroder wrote:
| We don't know yet, the number of cases this variant has
| been confirmed in is far too low at this point. You'll
| likely get a better idea of what that mix of mutations
| means in terms of clinical aspects and transmissions in a
| few weeks, most of the current takes are educated guesses
| based on what this variant has in common with the previous
| ones.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > The virus would need to completely diverge from SARS-CoV-2 in
| order to fully defeat
|
| Yeah, you shouldnt be making these claims if you don't have
| specific background or understanding of what you are talking
| about
|
| All current vaccines target few/couple specific proteins and
| protein groups on the virus spikes which interact with our
| cells, if these couple spikes/protein groups change then the
| vaccines stop being effective, you don't need a complete
| divergence of the vaccines to stop working as the vaccines
| don't target the "whole virus" to begin with, just specific
| parts of it, that was the worry with Delta and is the worry
| with this new strain
| klaushougesen1 wrote:
| Basically the same reason why we have a new flu vaccine every
| single year
| gfodor wrote:
| Seems like a bad take since we already know the vaccine
| immunity is reduced with time.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| still some ways to reach omega (the larger sibling of omicron)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| o micron literally means "small o" and o mega literally means
| "big o", but those computer scientists, when they use "big O
| notation" they write it with an O. Omega is sad :(
| y7 wrote:
| To be fair, big O and little o have different meanings in
| asymptotic notation, and I guess it doesn't pronounce as well
| as "big omicron" and "little omicron". (Although O and o are
| both used as well.)
| dadboddilf2 wrote:
| get your vaccines folks
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