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Tags Coronavirus , vaccination , vaccines

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Old 10th December 2021, 06:16 PM   #641
Dr.Sid
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
I think that's good news, isn't it?
In length of quarantine after potential contact .. yes.
Also might be part of why it spreads so fast. Which would be easier to fight than immunity escape.
But it does spread so fast .. and if that's a problem, all reasons why it's happening are certainly also a problem.
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Old 10th December 2021, 06:26 PM   #642
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Originally Posted by macdoc View Post
excellent science ...hope it actually works

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/202...at-cancer.html
The article is behind a paywall. Cannot read.
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Old 10th December 2021, 06:32 PM   #643
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Are there any reports yet of people dying from the omicron variant?

That's the only thing about this that gives me a sense of hope. The possibility that it's only like a typical cold now. Highly infectious, but not very dangerous.
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Old 10th December 2021, 06:43 PM   #644
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
Are there any reports yet of people dying from the omicron variant?

That's the only thing about this that gives me a sense of hope. The possibility that it's only like a typical cold now. Highly infectious, but not very dangerous.
That's what I was about to ask. Also how many omicron victims require ICU treatment? Many reports seem to suggest it's "mild".
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Old 10th December 2021, 07:17 PM   #645
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
As far as I understand it, Japan is testing people who come from overseas. The cases so far detected have all been detected in people arriving in Japan from other countries.
Fwiw, source:
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14499771
Quote:
Officials have confirmed eight more cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant in Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said at a Dec. 10 news conference.

That brings the total number of Omicron cases confirmed in the country to 12.

The eight people tested positive at quarantine stations when they arrived in Japan from abroad.

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases used genome sequencing to analyze the positive samples.

Kihara said two were “people who had been in close contact with the first Omicron patient.”
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Old 10th December 2021, 07:53 PM   #646
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CDC's MMWR report on Omicron Dec. 10, 2021

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/...cid=mm7050e1_w

In the USA from Dec1-8, 43 cases, 1 hospitalization. 0 deaths.

Details: symptoms, age, vax status, etc in report.
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Old 10th December 2021, 09:40 PM   #647
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Originally Posted by marting View Post
In any case the extreme growth rate has the UK Omicron incidence reaching levels greater than Delta within a couple weeks. Not enough time for boosters to have much of an effect.
33% of us have already had our boosters, starting with the oldest/most vulnerable. I'm 68 and got mine two weeks ago. I'd expect that to have a significant effect, if boosters really do provide 75% protection against symptomatic illness.
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Old 10th December 2021, 09:41 PM   #648
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I am now listening to Clyde Lewis of Ground Zero proclaim that Omicron is invalidating the vaccine agenda and blaming it on Big Pharma. Also that deaths from the vaccine are spiraling out of control.

He has a far bigger audience than any skeptic. So misinformation and untruth are widely disseminated. Have a nice day.
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Old 10th December 2021, 10:24 PM   #649
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Originally Posted by Pixel42 View Post
33% of us have already had our boosters, starting with the oldest/most vulnerable. I'm 68 and got mine two weeks ago. I'd expect that to have a significant effect, if boosters really do provide 75% protection against symptomatic illness.
It will reduce the odds of symptomatic infection for you and others with boosters and it's more likely to prevent severe disease. But it's not going to have much effect on the incoming wave overall because it's too late to boost that many more people. There's a time delay before boosters take effect and this thing is highly likely to have exceeded Delta by the end of the month. Scotland a bit sooner.

The USA will see the same thing a week or two later.
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Old 10th December 2021, 11:34 PM   #650
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
Are there any reports yet of people dying from the omicron variant?

That's the only thing about this that gives me a sense of hope. The possibility that it's only like a typical cold now. Highly infectious, but not very dangerous.
Last figures I saw for Scotland, one omicron death and 11 hospitalisations. total identified cases 146.
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Old 10th December 2021, 11:52 PM   #651
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Originally Posted by Planigale View Post
Last figures I saw for Scotland, one omicron death and 11 hospitalisations. total identified cases 146.
And did they report the vaccination status, age and so on for the death and the hospitalisations?
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Old 11th December 2021, 12:23 AM   #652
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
And did they report the vaccination status, age and so on for the death and the hospitalisations?
This is second hand, and on the fly, but all double vaccinated, not sure if any had boosters. No further personal details, any more specificity leads to loss of anonymity.

Current NHS clinical / hospital tests do not detect omicron (ie differentiate from delta). Only the community tests do this, so most omicron is detected in milder cases. It is still very early days to judge virulence, but even mild illness can cause elderly people with complex health needs to decompensated and need hospital admission. Large numbers of people becoming ill at the same time even with mild to moderate illness can hugely disrupt health care systems. This is without considering the loss of staff who become infected or are off work as contacts.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/in-you...ffing-25665002

Virtually all of whom will be double vaccinated and boosted.

Last edited by Planigale; 11th December 2021 at 12:26 AM.
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Old 11th December 2021, 01:22 AM   #653
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
I think that's good news, isn't it?
I think it means there is less chance of detecting it before you start spreading it, especially if people are only testing twice a week, per current UK guidelines.
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Old 11th December 2021, 01:29 AM   #654
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
Are there any reports yet of people dying from the omicron variant?

That's the only thing about this that gives me a sense of hope. The possibility that it's only like a typical cold now. Highly infectious, but not very dangerous.
I'd say it's much too early to judge.

From a personal point of view, Covid seems suddenly a lot closer to me. As well as friends on Facebook having it, which has been happening throughout, I've been at three events in the last three or four weeks at which people I know subsequently tested positive. Someone I vaguely knew (met once, but in touch via social media since) died last week of it (she was a double-lung transplant recipient, so vulnerable).
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Old 11th December 2021, 02:55 AM   #655
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Originally Posted by marting View Post
Really? like what?
Constantly pushing papers shouting how vaccines are losing effectiveness, yet ignoring data buried deep in those same papers (like they are n-times less effective versus being still 90%+ effective).
Always going for relative drops but never mentioning absolute numbers.

You did some thing too many times. As if you are some anti-vaxer looking for excuse not to get vaccinated. That's how some of your post read (and some antiwax idiots actually argue that way!).

Quote:
The original Pfizer/Biontech study can be seen here:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577

Vaccine efficacy protocals were to establish efficacy against PCR positive infection, not hospitalization or death. And the vaccine proved to be highly efficacious. There were 9 people in the placebo group that developed severe disease while only 1 in the vaccinated group which, while having large CIs because of the small size, were also consistent with high efficacy against severe disease.

Since then very large observational studies have confirmed high efficacy against severe disease while symptomatic and assymptomatic infection has waned over time hence the boosters.
But when did they get PCR test? After they had symptoms. participants were not regularly tested. (Difference from some other protocols)

===

i guess I might be reading The Atheist's posts as not intended.
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Old 11th December 2021, 03:03 AM   #656
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Originally Posted by marting View Post
What seems to set Klimax off is anything that indicates vaccines aren't doing much to stop transmission. Plenty of evidence vaccines reduce severe disease but efficacy against infection has been less than stellar with Alpha and Delta. Omicron is biting a big hole in what's left. Many superspreader events in the last weeks where everyone was double vaccinated.
...
90% effectiveness against delta is pretty good. (IIRC from data in your favourite Israeli study) Omicron is making hash of it, though. On the other hand, preliminary tests show that 3rd does does restore effectiveness. (See my link)
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Old 11th December 2021, 03:21 AM   #657
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More anecdotal evidence from the coal face of omicron being less severe:

Quote:
As the omicron variant sweeps through South Africa, Dr. Unben Pillay is seeing dozens of sick patients a day. Yet he hasn’t had to send anyone to the hospital.

That’s one of the reasons why he, along with other doctors and medical experts, suspect that the omicron version really is causing milder COVID-19 than delta, even if it seems to be spreading faster.

“They are able to manage the disease at home," Pillay said of his patients. "Most have recovered within the 10 to 14-day isolation period.” said Pillay.

And that includes older patients and those with health problems that can make them more vulnerable to becoming severely ill from a coronavirus infection, he said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSt...delta-81689492
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Old 11th December 2021, 05:12 AM   #658
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“They are able to manage the disease at home," and "Most have recovered within the 10 to 14-day isolation period.” can be perfectly said about delta. We need exact numbers. There will be no shortage of those soon though.
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Old 11th December 2021, 06:54 AM   #659
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Originally Posted by Dr.Sid View Post
“They are able to manage the disease at home," and "Most have recovered within the 10 to 14-day isolation period.” can be perfectly said about delta. We need exact numbers. There will be no shortage of those soon though.
The article does give some encouraging numbers, which were not in the excerpt quoted by The Atheist:

Quote:
According to South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases:

— Only about 30% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves.

— Average hospital stays for COVID-19 have been shorter this time - about 2.8 days compared to eight days.

— Just 3% of patients hospitalized recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20% in the country's earlier outbreaks.
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Old 11th December 2021, 02:06 PM   #660
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One thing I noticed about the UK daily figures: number of cases is up 12.6% over the last week; number of tests is up 12.6% over the last week. The two graphs have a very similar incline over the last week, too.

The ZOE Covid figures have not moved the same amount in the last week, as far as I recall.
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Old 11th December 2021, 02:38 PM   #661
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Yesterday:
Originally Posted by dann View Post
Today 1,840 Omicron cases, so 560 new cases in 24 hours, 44% more: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2021-...urealistisk-ud
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Old 11th December 2021, 02:46 PM   #662
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
The article does give some encouraging numbers, which were not in the excerpt quoted by The Atheist:
That's all very well, but if the infection rate is higher and most patients were fully vaccinated, that doesn't mean Omicron is inherently less deadly, it might just be infecting more people who are less vulnerable. If that is so then we might eventually see a similar death rate in the unvaccinated/unboosted population.
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Old 11th December 2021, 05:35 PM   #663
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Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets View Post
That's all very well, but if the infection rate is higher and most patients were fully vaccinated...
With a cumulative vaccine total administered in Gauteng of 6M and a population of 12M, there can't be more than 25% fully vaccinated, so that scenario is extremely unlikely.
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Old 11th December 2021, 09:12 PM   #664
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Gauteng's Omicron surge has clearly peaked and is dropping. Now looks like about 30% from the peak. This is confirmed because the PCR positivity rate has also been dropping and is now below 20% for the first time in about a week.

Considering the incredible ramp up to about Dec 3, this is an astonishing turnaround. The population is about 12M and the totol Omicron cases are only around 100k. So what is the cause of this abrupt change in Rt? I can't think of anything other than rather large shifts in population adherence to NPIs.

I also agree with TA, PuppyCow, etc., that it increasingly looks like the virulence of Omicron is significantly less than prior variants. Hospitalization, which had just started ramping has slowed growth slightly and is at a much lower level than prior surges and it can't be fully accounted for by the delay after infection.
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Old 11th December 2021, 09:22 PM   #665
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Originally Posted by marting View Post
Considering the incredible ramp up to about Dec 3, this is an astonishing turnaround. The population is about 12M and the totol Omicron cases are only around 100k. So what is the cause of this abrupt change in Rt? I can't think of anything other than rather large shifts in population adherence to NPIs.
That seem too fast even for NPIs. Maybe omicron just isn't viable and falls apart after few generations ?
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Old 11th December 2021, 09:39 PM   #666
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Originally Posted by Dr.Sid View Post
That seem too fast even for NPIs. Maybe omicron just isn't viable and falls apart after few generations ?
India had a sharp ramp, peak and decline with Delta though it was still wider than Omicron. The only time I've seen a change in Rt like this was in Jan 2020 when China locked people in their apartments.
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Old 12th December 2021, 02:12 AM   #667
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Originally Posted by marting View Post
Considering the incredible ramp up to about Dec 3, this is an astonishing turnaround. The population is about 12M and the totol Omicron cases are only around 100k. So what is the cause of this abrupt change in Rt? I can't think of anything other than rather large shifts in population adherence to NPIs.
I doubt that, because South Africa never managed to squash any of the previous waves like it. There's something else in play.

Originally Posted by marting View Post
I also agree with TA, PuppyCow, etc., that it increasingly looks like the virulence of Omicron is significantly less than prior variants. Hospitalization, which had just started ramping has slowed growth slightly and is at a much lower level than prior surges and it can't be fully accounted for by the delay after infection.
More data on booster shots from Israel, again, very positive.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world...t-omicron.html
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Old 12th December 2021, 03:00 AM   #668
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Originally Posted by The Atheist View Post

More data on booster shots from Israel, again, very positive.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world...t-omicron.html
What does it say?

Quote:
Sorry!
The content is not available in your region.
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Old 12th December 2021, 03:02 AM   #669
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
And did they report the vaccination status, age and so on for the death and the hospitalisations?
In the era of big data it is a terrible mission failure for this not to be automatic, but humans are not good at making stuff easy.
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Old 12th December 2021, 04:30 AM   #670
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Originally Posted by zooterkin View Post
What does it say?
Quote:
Coronavirus: Israeli study finds Pfizer COVID-19 booster protects against Omicron

Israeli researchers said on Saturday they found that a three-shot course of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine provided significant protection against the new Omicron variant.

The findings were similar to those presented by BioNTech and Pfizer earlier in the week, which were an early signal that booster shots could be key to protect against infection from the newly identified variant.

The study, carried out by Sheba Medical Center and the Health Ministry's Central Virology Laboratory, compared the blood of 20 people who had received two vaccine doses 5-6 months earlier to the same number of individuals who had received a booster a month before.

"People who received the second dose 5 or 6 months ago do not have any neutralization ability against the Omicron. While they do have some against the Delta (strain)," Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Sheba, told reporters.
It seems that immunity fades faster than the current recommended schedule for getting a third (booster) shot. In Japan for example, the current policy is to give booster shots 8 months after the second dose. But that would leave a gap of a few months, at least, where the initial immunity has already waned significantly before one becomes eligible to receive a third dose.
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Old 12th December 2021, 05:30 AM   #671
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
It seems that immunity fades faster than the current recommended schedule for getting a third (booster) shot. In Japan for example, the current policy is to give booster shots 8 months after the second dose. But that would leave a gap of a few months, at least, where the initial immunity has already waned significantly before one becomes eligible to receive a third dose.
It was 6 months in the UK, it's being dropped to 3 months now.
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Old 12th December 2021, 05:44 AM   #672
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Originally Posted by zooterkin View Post
It was 6 months in the UK, it's being dropped to 3 months now.
Ah, I see. Japan also says they are going to reduce the period before the third dose, although they haven't yet decided by how much. So it still stands at 8 months as of now.



The next question I guess is how long will booster shots be good for. Will we need 3 or 4 shots per year? Or will the third dose last longer than the second?
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Old 12th December 2021, 09:43 AM   #673
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
The next question I guess is how long will booster shots be good for. Will we need 3 or 4 shots per year? Or will the third dose last longer than the second?
They're very good questions.

Pity none of them have answers.

I'm be giving very short odds on frequent vaccine updates for the foreseeable future - twice a year is my pick. I just hope the Frogs' claims that their vaccine will protect against all of them turns out to be true.

I think we've found a major limitation of mRNA vaccines - they can be too specific.
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Old 12th December 2021, 11:22 AM   #674
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Originally Posted by The Atheist View Post
I think we've found a major limitation of mRNA vaccines - they can be too specific.
Why is that?
Is it because mRNA vaccines only use a single protein? So it applies to all genetic vaccines?
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Old 12th December 2021, 02:03 PM   #675
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Originally Posted by Cheetah View Post
Why is that?
Is it because mRNA vaccines only use a single protein? So it applies to all genetic vaccines?
I'll see if Capsid can answer that, but my understanding is the vaccine creates production of antibodies that specifically attack the spike protein. When the spike changes, it doesn't work as well, and manufacturers are about to produce new vaccines to attack the new spikes.

And that process could well be never-ending.
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Old 12th December 2021, 02:43 PM   #676
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Originally Posted by The Atheist View Post
I'll see if Capsid can answer that, but my understanding is the vaccine creates production of antibodies that specifically attack the spike protein. When the spike changes, it doesn't work as well, and manufacturers are about to produce new vaccines to attack the new spikes.

And that process could well be never-ending.
That's not the issue we have with mRNA vaccines though. Mutations are not cause of the effect vanning after few months. It might be problem with omicron, but old school vaccines might have the same problem. Since we can't compare effectiveness of traditional and mRNA vaccines against omicron just yet, it's too soon to tell.
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Old 12th December 2021, 03:06 PM   #677
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Originally Posted by The Atheist View Post
I doubt that, because South Africa never managed to squash any of the previous waves like it. There's something else in play.
Yep. That something else was a batch of delayed reports so large numbers were missing last week.

https://www.nicd.ac.za/latest-confir...december-2021/

Today we report 37 875 new cases, which includes 19 840 retrospective cases and 18 035 new cases. In the past 24 hours a total of 18,035 positive COVID-19 cases have been reported. The positivity testing rate today is 28.9%.
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Old 12th December 2021, 03:35 PM   #678
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Outstanding Omicron info in this UK technical briefing in such a short time. Best in class.

Nothing yet on severity. None hospitalized yet but some info on relative Ve. for mild infection and vacine types, boosters, and time since vax.

https://assets.publishing.service.go...riefing_31.pdf

Boosters bring Omicron Ve up from 35% with 2 doses to 70-75% Pfizer booster.

Severe disease Ve unknown but likely quite good for vaxxed with or without boosters.
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Old 12th December 2021, 04:13 PM   #679
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Originally Posted by marting View Post
Yep. That something else was a batch of delayed reports so large numbers were missing last week.
Yeah, that kind of thing helps!

It's spreading at lightning speed everywhere, by the looks.

I'm taking bets on how long it's going to take to become established here, and I have Christmas Day as the favourite. Airline staff will catch it and bring it home.
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Old 12th December 2021, 09:17 PM   #680
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Originally Posted by Planigale View Post
Last figures I saw for Scotland, one omicron death and 11 hospitalisations. total identified cases 146.
Someone needs to tell Snopes and the WHO:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/omicron-deaths/

Quote:
On Dec. 10, the World Health Organization told us no omicron cases reported up to that date had resulted in death, but "it is still early in the clinical course of disease and this may change."
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