Originally published at: The US just recorded its first omicron death in Texas | Boing Boing
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“was between 50–60 years old. He wasn’t vaccinated.”
Of course.
Moron.
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A reinfection. So even getting Corona once isn’t enough if you’re not vaccinated. And might not be if you are, but at least vaccination gives you a very good chance of it being a non-severe case.
So much for the “I have an immune system” crowd and their “COVID parties”
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So you say this happened in Texass, unvaccinated & in Texass…
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Along with the “It’s just a cold” morons.
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All evidence continues to show that full vaccination is very strong protection against hospitalization and death for all known variants. However, based on delta, natural infection does not produce nearly the long lasting robust protection against variants that the vaccines do, and this is likely in part responsible for the rapid spread of delta and then omicron: there are a large number of unvaccinated previously infected people who are resistant to the strain they were infected with but not a variant. This causes a strong relative increase in transmissibility independent of any changes in infectivity of the virus itself.
Basically: let public health officials and epidemiologists worry about variants. The advice for most people is just: get vaccinated, wear a mask, and try to avoid large indoor gatherings, especially with unvaccinated people if you can. None of that advice depends on variants.
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$HERSELF points out that one (or more) of those unnamed comorbidities is almost certainly residual damage to lungs/vasculature/kidneys/etc from his previous infection.
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We’ve known that for almost 2 years. SARS-COV-2 actively fight immune system recognition. That’s why vaccination provides better immunity than infection.
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He wasn’t vaccinated… The man, who tested positive for the omicron variant before his death, according to Harris County Public Health (HCPC), had previously been infected with the coronavirus and had underlying health conditions that made him particularly vulnerable.
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I would have thought we wouldn’t have known that until after the vaccine was in common use, or at least not until pretty far into the clinical trials. I know 2021 has been a long year, but not quite that long!
I have seen a ton about how Omnicron means previous infection isn’t an effective barrier to reinfection, but don’t remember seeing that for Delta or pre-Delta. Now part of that is absolutely that my wife and I got vaccinated as soon as we were eligible (or to be accurate the first appointment we could find for her, and then the first we could find for me a week later in case she had bad side effects, which she didn’t). That makes me less personally interested in “does natural immunity even work” then I had been before, so I absolutely could have missed something.
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Scientists detailed the immune-fighting action of SARS-COV-2 by March 2020.
Specifically, how the virus attacks PRRs to “cover its tracks.”
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while i think there was always some question of “how much” protection surviving an infection provided, there were reports very early on of people getting sick multiple times.
and based on antibody levels, researchers were predicting non-vaccine immunity would probably wane - so the recommendation has been ( so far as i understand ): if you aren’t vaccinated and get sick, get vaccinated after you recover… assuming you live, of course
good point 
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Given how recently omicron showed up in the US, and how long deaths from covid usually take (weeks to months), the fact that this is the first death is not necessarily that encouraging, unfortunately.
Yeah, the early evidence was that a previous infection offered no protection at all against omicron, as it’s sufficiently different. The whole “covid party” thing has always been weird - people do it to get protection from infection… by infecting themselves with the thing they’re trying to get protection against - but it’s especially dumb as it doesn’t help against variants.
Ooof, good point. It’s a double-whammy from getting covid - not gaining any resistance to other variants and having pre-existing conditions that leave one susceptible to future infections (that go beyond covid). All the Fox-holes pushing “immunity through getting covid” aren’t just killing off their viewers via covid, but all the future respiratory viruses they might get exposed to…
There were reports of people getting sick from it multiple times before it had even widely spread in the US, which wasn’t a good sign. But yeah, there was a lot of study about it, even early on. By the time Fox even started to push the “having had covid is better protection than a vaccine” nonsense, we knew it was completely false.
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Yep. Sounds like texas is getting messed with.
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Omicron seems to be very infective but also much less deadly. If this is the first death then this is not so worrying. Seems to be over 650 000 omicron infections in the US last week alone ( https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-12-20/omicron-sweeps-across-nation-now-73-of-us-covid-19-cases).
I’m double vaccinated, wear a mask since the onset of this pandemic, and I’ll do whatever is recommended. I just don’t want to spend another year locked inside.
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No one does; not even this introvert. However, a sizable portion of this country thinks that it’s better to work against the common sense measures that were being put out there even as they get sick and die from it.
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excerpt: As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: the two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain.
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Yeah, since the beginning, they rail against shutdowns being bad, and then rail against every single thing that can be done to avoid more shutdowns. It’s maddening.
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as mentioned above by various people, it’s only been a couple of weeks since the first reported infections in the states ( and less than a month since omicron was even identified ) - it’s spreading fast
serious illness and death usually takes several weeks after infection - so there’s no data to measure state side to indicate case lethality
reports from south africa, with it’s younger population, have made it seem like it’s less deadly, while numbers from other countries make it seem equal to delta
it’s sheer speed is the most worrisome though. if people don’t treat it as deadly serious, it could easily overwhelm hospitals and cause deaths from simply lack of care
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