Originally published at: First US case of Omicron found in California | Boing Boing
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So the Vaccine works.
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I’m pretty sure it’s been here for a while.
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I hope it doesn’t come to pass; but I’m expecting the Qrowd to have a complete meltdown if we face Variant Omega.
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So much this. If we can globally turn covid infections into a bad cold instead of a death risk we have won.
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My wife and I are currently suffering from Covid that we got last week while visiting family for Thanksgiving. We were all vaccinated earlier this year but didn’t have the chance to get a booster before we left.
All I can say is that it’s not a fun experience. Really bad cold/flu is exactly how I would describe it. While miserable, at least we’re not dead or on ventilators.
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Tough nut to crack. Unless humanity as a whole accepts an effective vaccine it will persist and evolve. This, may perhaps invalidate the previous vaccination efforts?
If the whole international human populations had access then we could extinct it like smallpox?
We humans have been in an arms race with our environment since forever.
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honestly surprised the first case turned up in San Francisco. their vaccination rate is so high, and they have been super careful in general. i guess the person (vaxxed) had recently returned from a trip to south africa, and had a mild case (no hospital stay needed), but still.
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Oh, shit. I hope you’re doing better and don’t have any long-term effects (which doesn’t seem to be the case for the vaccinated). I’m recovering from minor surgery now, but am going in for my booster as soon as I’m up for it.
In other news, so far everything I’m hearing about Omicron is somewhat encouraging and they only really seem to think it may have some vaccine resistance because of specific mutations, not real-world data. Here’s hoping that’s confirmed in the next few days/weeks. Stay safe out there, mutants!
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with all teh stoopid here, I was fairly certain the moronic - er, omicron variant - would first appear in Florida-da.
only a matter of time, I’m sure.
that said, I got my booster on Monday and am rather pleased with myself (not that that is hard to do, actually).
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It’s a densely populated city that also functions as a major international travel hub. Along with cities like New York it’s one of the places you’re most likely to find novel viruses entering the country even if the locals are heavily vaccinated.
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Get well soon, and stay safe!
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Thanks all. It’s been interesting to see the progression of symptoms and the differences between what my wife and I are both experiencing.
We were both exposed by the same person at the same time (my mom), but while my symptoms are mostly on par with a bad head cold - runny nose, congestion, sinus pressure, etc…, she has had a fever, nausea, diarrhea, and cough. We both lost our sense of smell and have general fatigue and body aches but she’s been mostly bed ridden the past 4 days while I’ve had much more energy. She’s lost her appetite while I still have mine.
Losing your sense of smell is probably the weirdest sensation. I still think I can sense odors but it’s just simply not there. Even putting my head into a fresh bag of lavender and nothing. I hear that can take a while to return.
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Humanity as a whole will likely take years to get access to this vaccine anyway.
That said, put the fear mongering that the news media’s feeding aside. None of the recommendations have changed. The vaccine is still safe and effective. Areas with high transmission will spread more. This vaccine actually cures the SARS-Cov-1 it’s THAT covered. The spike protein that is being targeted hasn’t sufficiently changed enough for “Omicron” to set it back to square one.
Also, South Africa isn’t necessarily where Omicron started from, they just have one of the best networks for tracking and sequencing virus genomes since they do a lot of work with AIDS and other emergent viruses. They’re just the ones that sequenced it first. By the time they had sequenced and shared their procedures it was already located in at least 20 countries.
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New variants are most likely to spring up in places lower vaccination rates/less social distancing since more bodies = more opportunities the virus to mutate.
One wonders if we’d even be dealing with this latest Omicron variant at all if the U.S. and other rich countries had a more productive relationship with African countries to help provide access and distribution for vaccines. The vaccination rate in South Africa is still only 35% and other African nations are even lower.
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Big up South Africa for solid lab work. If testing world wide was as capable then it would have been found closer to patient 0.
I have pals who refer to populations that have bare bones lab testing as if the failure to detect the virus meant it wasn’t present.
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Yes. Mostly its a question of how much you look for them. Countries and regions that do a lot of routine sequencing and analysis to look for variants will find them. The US doesn’t do that, so we don’t detect variants until someone else sees it and we start looking.
And honestly variants are not really something that most people need to worry about. It is helpful for public health officials to keep track of vaccine efficacy and so forth, but not really meaningful to individuals. It’s often used as an excuse for why covid numbers are on the rise. As if it can’t be “there are too many unvaccinated people, most vaccinated people got their vaccinations > 6 months ago, and too many people stopped taking precautions” Nope, it can’t be that at all, must be this omicron thing that nobody could have predicted. /s
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This. It’s a humanitarian disaster that is completely avoidable, but wealthy countries would rather take the approach they always have; ignore the Southern Hemisphere unless there’s a resource to exploit. Moderna hasn’t even authorized the use of their recipe yet, ffs. Leaving money on the table at the cost of human lives because they expect to make more money by retaining direct control. Disgusting.
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