[News] PM's Press Conference - 5PM.

[Poojah]

I find the repeated use of this statistic a bit perplexing. Whilst technically true, it’s not like it’s due to some recent baby boom down there. The reason the median age in South Africa is 13 years lower than the UK is because the average life expectancy is 17 years lower - largely because people are generally less healthy and have less access to healthcare.

The current 7 day average for Covid cases in South Africa is 21,917 - the highest it has ever been. The second highest was in early July, when cases hit just over 19,000. At that point in time the 7 day average for deaths was 338. The latest 7 day average death figure? 24, a number of which are understood to be Delta, not Omicron. I appreciate this is a small sample, but unless Omicron has a much greater lag between the recording of cases through to death, then it’s certainly indicative of a significant reduction in lethality.

I still can’t get my head round thinking that the current level of fear mongering isn’t largely a political stunt. That’s not to say I think Omicron’s threat is trivial - I just think the current reaction is disproportionate.

Anyway, I hope I’m right - and not just so I can be smug on a football messageboard.

Not one to quote my own post but I was planning on calling myself out and opening up to a miscalculation above. I still intend to, but now I’ve done the maths, I’ve realised it still looks quite positive.

Basically the flaw in my logic was concentrating on the assumption that the connection between cases and deaths is the same, and there’s no reason to doubt that. However, you can’t go back and say that when cases peaked in July, the case fatality rate was higher; because the virus was spreading more slowly. That means that if you go back the 20 days it takes for someone to die, back then, the case number would have been (and was) much higher than it was 20 days ago. In effect, you’re comparing the wrong number of cases to deaths.

So, hands up - I got that wrong. So what do the numbers look like? The 338 deaths in July should actually correlate with cases around the middle of June, when numbers averaged 8,786. That gives us an official case fatality rate of around 3.8% - remember of course CFR will be much higher in South Africa as a lower proportion of cases are captured and fewer people are vaccinated.

If then we go back 20 days from today, it’s the 24th November. By this point, there’s been a sudden spike in SA - that’s Omicron. 7 day average cases that day were 3,203, and have translated today to 24 deaths. That’s a CFR of 0.7%.

For reference, the official UK CFR in early October, with our large-scale testing program, our high vaccination rates and our standard of medical care, was already as low as 0.4% (34,305 cases translating to 136 deaths 20 days later). Extrapolating the transition in South African death rates to our base figure, and you’re left with something with around a 0.07% death rate (and even lower in reality).

Admittedly, I’m just some numpty on the internet. Don’t take my word over qualified epidemiologists and statisticians (and obviously you won’t, because that would be fúcking madness). But as grim as things look tonight, tragically at this time as year, I do believe that the early part of 2022 will turn out to be a lot more positive than that of 2021.

 

[Audax]

I'm vaccinated but what you have put goes against what the South African women who found this variant is saying. To many conflicting reports.

IIRC she said that very early on, things have evolved since then. There's data come out that in Gauteng province (hardest hit area of South Africa so far, where Omicron was first sequenced) the population was running at over 70% having either previous infection with Delta (very recently, as their Delta wave had only recently ended) or vaccination or both. A lot of the early Omicron infections coming through in Gauteng were known to be reinfections, that was one of the early warning signs that Omicron was evading immunity.

So in SA you've got a) a younger population, and b) a population that was already majority protected against severe disease through prior exposure. A huge part of the problem with Covid is the immune response: those who get severe disease (and/or die) are typically experiencing a massive immune system over-reaction. That's something that becomes less likely to happen if the immune system has had prior exposure to something similar.

One thing we have going for us here in the UK: our ratio for prior exposure (either via infection or vaccine) is now over 90%. The key is, though, to keep the virus away from those who haven't (for whatever reason) had prior exposure. Primarily because for us, a good chunk of those people will be people deemed too vulnerable to even risk the vaccine on.

Interesting news through yesterday is that Hong Kong researchers have shown that Omicron replicates itself 70x faster in bronchial tissue, but 10x slower in the lungs. The former is likely to make the virus easier to pass on to others, the latter *might* mean it's less severe than Delta.

 

[Dick Swiveller]

Ooh, yeah! All right!
Alright.
We're jabbin'

I wanna jab it wid you
We're jabbin', jabbin',
And I hope you like jabbin', too
We're jabbin'
To think that jabbin' was a thing of the past
We're jabbin',
And I hope this jab is gonna last
We're jabbin'
Jabbin'
Jabbin'
Jabbin'
Jabbin'
Now we're jabbin' in the name of the Lord

(damn [MENTION=21477]Dick Swiveller[/MENTION]!)

TBF - it was an open goal. Someone went a bit further.

[TWEET]1471224194302193665[/TWEET]

 

[jessiejames]

IIRC she said that very early on, things have evolved since then. There's data come out that in Gauteng province (hardest hit area of South Africa so far, where Omicron was first sequenced) the population was running at over 70% having either previous infection with Delta (very recently, as their Delta wave had only recently ended) or vaccination or both. A lot of the early Omicron infections coming through in Gauteng were known to be reinfections, that was one of the early warning signs that Omicron was evading immunity.

So in SA you've got a) a younger population, and b) a population that was already majority protected against severe disease through prior exposure. A huge part of the problem with Covid is the immune response: those who get severe disease (and/or die) are typically experiencing a massive immune system over-reaction. That's something that becomes less likely to happen if the immune system has had prior exposure to something similar.

One thing we have going for us here in the UK: our ratio for prior exposure (either via infection or vaccine) is now over 90%. The key is, though, to keep the virus away from those who haven't (for whatever reason) had prior exposure. Primarily because for us, a good chunk of those people will be people deemed too vulnerable to even risk the vaccine on.

Interesting news through yesterday is that Hong Kong researchers have shown that Omicron replicates itself 70x faster in bronchial tissue, but 10x slower in the lungs. The former is likely to make the virus easier to pass on to others, the latter *might* mean it's less severe than Delta.

Thank you for the explanation.

 

[Berty23]

The big issue with all of this is that if we have to isolate with omicron and it is incredibly transmissible which we do and it seems it is, then country will grind to a halt anyway. The big decision is once we get hospital data to know if then we will just say “it is endemic so crack on with life” - that has to be the hope.

 

[Swansman]

Russian virologist Petr Chumakov says it is possible that omikron variant was created artificially.
>I think this is the way it is. It is the English. They decided to stop the pandemics because now it is the time for some decisive changes in the world
>It is not just a mutation. The collected all the already known mutations ... moreover they added the chain of three amino acids which are characteristic of a coronavirus season. How could it appear in this virus just like that independently - nobody can explain.
>in his opinion this could explain that the virus is 'super weakened'. Now is the moment when they decided for some reasons to roll up the pandemics quickly, says the virologist
Chumakov is a member of Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the laboratory of cell proliferation within Engelgardt Instutute of molecular biology.

Do we trust the expert on this one?

Who knows? If he is indeed right, then 1) it would be a very clever way to end this shit and 2) it could obviously never be revealed.

He was one of the first scientists to say it likely came from the lab in Wuhan rather than from someone eating some Chinese armadillo, something that was ridiculed and seen as "tin foil" in the beginning but eventually seen as a "maybe not so ****ing crazy thought after all".