Plan B Forum

Omicron, the name of the new Covid-19 variant that is sending worrying signals from southern Africa, sounds like something from Transformers.

It has caused panic across the world, among governments, the public and the stock markets. After adding a number of southern African countries to the red list, the UK government has reimposed mandatory masks in England from Tuesday, and will require anyone travelling to the country from abroad to take a PCR test. Omicron is probably the first variant to have scientists worried since Delta became the predominant strain in every country last summer. But how bad it is? What does it mean for future lockdowns – and future deaths?

Scientists are waiting on three pieces of data before they will be able to tell what effect this new variant will have over the next six to 12 months. The first is how infectious Omicron is. Can it outcompete Delta? Earlier this year we saw another worrying variant, Beta, that luckily faded away as a result of a selective advantage in Delta that allowed it to transmit faster between people. Limited data from South Africa shows that Omicron is very infectious, but whether it will become the predominant strain remains to be seen.

The second thing scientists are waiting for is data showing the impact of this new variant on health outcomes – both in terms of hospitalisations and deaths. The reason governments impose lockdown measures is because hospitals fill up; limiting social mixing helps to slow the spread of the virus and reduce the impact on health services. In an optimistic scenario, Omicron may cause less severe disease and become more like the common cold. In a more realistic scenario, it could cause the same disease levels that we’ve seen with Alpha, Beta and Delta.

The third and most concerning piece of data is the potential for Omicron to erode the immunity afforded by vaccines. Crucially, this wouldn’t necessarily mean that our current vaccines would stop working against Omicron. It would mean they would be less effective at stopping transmission – and, most worryingly, at stopping people from going into hospital and dying. This is based on a virological analysis of the sequencing of Omicron’s genome, and we don’t yet know the implications it will have in the real world. Companies such as BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer vaccine, are already trying to gauge the impact their vaccine will have on this variant.

More here...

Scientists are waiting on three pieces of data before they will be able to tell what effect this new variant will have over the next six to 12 months. The first is how infectious Omicron is... The second ... is data showing the impact of this new variant on health outcomes ... The third and most concerning piece of data is the potential for Omicron to erode the immunity afforded by vaccines...we don’t yet know the implications it will have in the real world.

MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:48 am

And they also skipped mu - didn't want us to be cowed

Oct. 6, 2021 -- Amid the Delta variant summer surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, some experts warned that the next potential threat was starting to emerge: the Mu variant of the coronavirus. Mu made headlines because its specific mutation meant it could evade vaccine immunity — spiking a new fear among the immunized.

But then an interesting thing happened — the prevalence of Mu in circulation in the U.S. dropped off quickly over a matter of weeks. The robust transmissibility of the Delta variant allowed it to remain the dominant coronavirus strain, despite the risk from Mu, some experts believe.