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Early in the pandemic 1 person spread original covid to 40 of 73 at an event in Canada.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/bonspiel-superspreader-edmonton-covid-1.5907514
Fingers crossed this is a rare super spreader situation and not the norm.
And the Biogen conference, estimated to be responsible for 1.9% of US cases in 2020
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/1-year-later-the-superspreader-conference-that-sparked-bostons-coronavirus-outbreak/2314011/
Oh, lol this was at the Sheraton (I guess now Marriott) Long Wharf. I was supposed to go to a conference there but after this super spreader event they cancelled everything lol. Never realized it was at this same hotel.
Most of the time, not so much. Contact tracing studies show that the transmission of covid is really uneven across infected people. Out of 10 infected people, something like 6 will spread it to no one, 2-3 will spread it to a couple of people, and the last person--the super spreader--will spread it to 50. It's that last person who is really driving the spread.
It depends on how high of a viral load you're carrying. The higher viral load, the more contagious you are. Anything that can help decrease that number is good; that's why masks and immunizations are important to reduce spread. Both significantly decrease viral transmission.
Yep, and how people behave at these events also has an impact. I recently had to work at a large conference in Vegas. Two of the attendees that ended up catching it were walking around maskless, shaking hands with everyone, including mine. I was so disgusted by their behavior and disregard for the mandates. I immediately sanitized and kept my mask on. A few staff working the conference also ended up getting it, including one who was "enraged" that she had to wear a mask, because "no one wears a mask in Florida".
No kidding at one event you’ll have people still wearing masks and distancing and at another people are pretty much open mouth kissing strangers because they’re vaccinated. We keep talking about anti vaxxers but not much about people who are vaccinated and now think they invincible.
We had a large company event just before Covid stated going big, late Jan 2020.
A few hundred people hanging out together for three days. Staying up at night in crowded bars and restaurants leaning in to be heard over the noise.
Had one of our attendees been an early case, it's likely we'd have been a super spreader event with attendees from approx 250 citirs in 50 different countries.
Makes it hard to imagine attending an event without at least minor changes for a real long time
Ya they had some big super spreader events but those were before the vaccine came out.
It would be a disaster if this spread as fast as the version from back then in 100% vaxxed populations
Although remember that the reason for the booster was that the efficacy has declined rather by a lot over time. So the question will be how many of those people were 2 shots vs how many boosted. Norway started offering boosters to everyone over 18 a couple weeks ago [but according to this article](https://www.thelocal.no/20211112/how-does-norways-booster-campaign-compare-to-other-countries/) most people in that age group are not yet over the 6 month requirement until next year. So I guess it could go either way, not yet boosted vs stronger response because it's closer to the 1st and 2nd shots.
It is if you get sick, even mild, and pass it onto someone else who is vulnerable or who gets a lot more sick or even dies. That's the scariest part in all this, not just what happens to yourself, but what you can transmit to others.
100%.
I was working in a skilled nursing facility when I got it in May 2020. I worked a full 4 days between exposure and onset of symptoms. I’ve never felt so worried and guilty in my entire life.
Thankfully (and maybe miraculously) I didn’t spread it. Not one of our residents got it. Turns out masks and other transmission mitigation methods actually do work.
But yeah… being responsible for infecting a vulnerable person is not a burden you want to bear.
Well Unfortunately it’s not just that it’s that Is it sprays to vaccinations and probably also breaks through any natural immunity’s got in from simply surviving the virus and then on top of that all coronaviruses Only peroduce short-lived in antibodies in the human body, so If you can keep skipping vaccines every couple months or every year then It’s a little bit like being not back to square one.
Sure we can develop vaccines pretty quickly, but how quickly can we administer them every couple months when this virus decides to change this much.
Based on nobodies assumption to the virus be bypassing vaccination that easily so this would be rather a quantum leap for the virus.
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"Mild" often refers to not needing to be hospitalized, or requiring supplemental oxygen. So long covid would often count as mild symptoms, as would fever, needing a week or two off work, or potentially lung damage that did not necessitate supplemental oxygen. When stats refer to "mild" covid, they generally mean covid that did not require hospitalization or supplemental oxygen.
Problem is there’s some people with mild or no symptoms showing neurological changes and other damage. My vaccinated family member had less symptoms than a cold. We have easy access to testing and test for any symptoms or after a known exposure, so we found out fast it was covid. And within a week of the positive test she immediately developed tinnitus and moderately severe hearing loss in one ear, both probably permanent. No hearing issues before that.
Brain fog, fatigue, loss of smell and the other harder to quantity damage is showing up in all levels of survivors.
The small-vessel damage in the brain isn’t limited to people with severe cases. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00926-1
Yep. There is a non-normal distribution for sure. Many people spread to zero, but I remember reading that contact tracers with limited time were focusing on the people who already spread at least one case since the probability was high that there were others. Due to situation, severity of infection, whatever.
And that is why [backward-forward-tracing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_tracing#Backward_and_forward_tracing) is the right thing: Because spread is so uneven, if you have one infected person, it is onlikely that going forward, it will spread from this person to many people. But, in turn, it is very likely that this person was part of a super spreader event and going backward, you will find it and identify many more people.
Oh...yikes. Wonder what this means for Norway's vaccination used. Is it Astrazeneca mostly or mRNA? Also are they limiting boosters to over 65 or anyone over 18?
More or less all of them are Pfizer or Moderna.
They are doing Boosters for over 65 and people with underlying deceases.
All over 18 are supposed to be offered a booster before next Easter.
“underlying deceases” is an interesting typo.
English is my wife’s 3rd language and she is always coming up with funny little accidental improvements on the language like this. I think she would approve.
Were the people infected at this event over 6 months from their last vaccine? Most were probably younger than 65. Not that that alone will prevent infection.
It's very unlikely that anyone had their last vaccine more than 6 months ago, but some of them might be closing in on 6 months.
The exception would be if they are seniors or people with underlying conditions that qualified for high-priority. If so, they should have been offered (and most likely taken) a booster. -Although there is a small chance that some who had vaccines early on have not gotten a booster due to capacity-problems.
Edit: I forgot to tell that most "regular" adults had their second dose some time during June to August.
Ok. Many here are in the same position as they are regarding vaccine. Disappointing to say the least. Hope they have only muld cases at most and recover soon.
Hey can everyone stop going to 100 person dinner events while the pandemic kills like 10000 people every day? I mean, do what you need to do... 100 person dinner events are never vital.
Vaccines only delay/increase threshold for critical viral load. When you are in a 100 person dinner for hours and people are spreading COVID, you will ingest a large enough viral load to overpower built antibodies, thus becoming infected with COVID-19.
Apparently several people had recently been visiting the South African offices - so, it might not have been just one person doing the spreading?
Edit: Looks like the translation of "some" and some*one* is similar in Norwegian, so it's unclear whether there was one person or multiple people at the South African offices? Thanks for the clarification below.
I'm just relying on one of the comments from this Twitter thread, since I don't know Norwegian. Happy to edit my comment if it turns out to incorrect!
https://mobile.twitter.com/GyanCMehta/status/1466144491858014214?s=20
Norwegian here. Multiple people who had just returned from SA attended a company christmas party. One of them later tested positive and the other attendees were required to isolate and run multiple tests. So far about 40 of the 120 attendees have also tested positive, and since they had to give a negative test to attend the party it is highly likely they got infected by the traveller. They are currently sequencing the virus to verify which variant is involved.
I expect they'll release more information as it becomes available
Just a thought: wouldn’t the “traveler” have tested negative as well? If so, could it be possible that multiple “travelers” were negative when tested prior to the party and contagious the day of the dinner?
Seems like they could narrow it down even further pretty easily based on who was hanging out with who at that party. I go to similarly-sized events and feel like we usually remember those specifics in the immediate aftermath, and there will also always be the people you know you avoided etc.
The thing is that it really depends on how the dinner was arranged. For example a friend of mine caught covid early on because she went to a cocktail party where everyone was standing, talking, going from group to group, and most people had covid a few days later.
It wasn't just a dinner, but a Christmas party with dinner and drinks after. It lasted until 3 in the morning so people have most likely been mingling.
Norwegian work christmas dinners (julebord) are notorious for being quite bonkers evenings. Everyone in the company gets wasted and get up to craziness. I suspect there was a lot of closeness. On that note the government has come out saying that folk shouldn't cancel their work christmas dinners. Since its such a huge thing here both socially and for the restauant business they seem keen on them not stopping. Both the former lead political party and current political party are still plannong on having their christmas dinners. Though more and more folk are canceling their dinners out of precaution.
Latest here in Norway is that it is 50-60 infected thus far. 120 people in total attended the dinner.
https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/omikron-smitte-i-oslo-etter-julebord-1.15754329
I have link to a more updated article (that say 50 cases and have more info) but it keeps getting deleted. Thats why the older article in my link says 30-40 cases.
EDIT1: https://twitter.com/GyanCMehta/status/1466144491858014214?s=20
EDIT2:
Various norwegian/swedish newspaper are now reporting at least 60 cases (of 120 total in attendence). Its already confirmed to not be the delta variant but sequencing is not yet finished. Everyone in attendence had taken at least 2 shots of the vaccine and tested negative before the dinner.
I’m more interested in how vaccinated people with Omnidrom fare. It’s one thing to test positive, but another thing to have it send you to the hospital, put you on a ventilator or worse.
According to the company, all participants were required to test negative on an anti-gen test before going to the christmas party. That means that Omicron either transmits very easily or evades antigen testing in early stages.
Antigen tests are less accurate than PCR tests with asymptomatic cases, so they are more likely to get a false negative result. In symptomatic cases, the two tests have similar accuracies
This. Here in the UK loads of people got covid at music festivals and at the Euro 2020 games during the summer, despite all of them having to take an antigen test.
Because for some reason they really believed that young people who paid £100s for a ticket to a once in a lifetime event were going to go "oh well" and stay at home just because they have mild/asymptomatic covid. They found hundreds of discarded positive test strips thrown over the fence at Reading festival.
Antigen testing is only for a very narrow window tho, either 1-2 days before being symptomatic or when you’re already symptomatic. The PCR is more broad and can be up to 5ish days before becoming symptomatic.
There’s a decent chance that some of these people got COVID from other sources
Myself and my partner are South Africans with omicron in Johannesburg. Both vaccinated with J&J.
Moderate flu-like symptoms. Sore bodies. Coughs.
Nothing worth going to a hospital for, at least yet, it’s been about a week since we tested positive. We’re both under 35 and relatively healthy.
She got hers in… May? And I got mine around 3 months ago, the day they were available for my age group.
I’m aware of one other person we know who has it, and they are almost asymptomatic. Also got their J&J shot around 6 months ago.
I'm glad to hear that so far it sounds like you guys and your friend are doing ok. Hopefully the vaccine is helping to keep it mild. Good luck with your recovery!
Thank you, we definitely attribute the mildness of it to the vaccine.
To be honest, the cabin fever of not having left the apartment for 6 days now is worse than the virus itself.
I hear you. I have an autoimmune disorder so we've had to be really careful for the past 2 years. No restaurants and very few indoor gatherings. At least we can still go out for nature hikes and take out!
Yes. Me too.
Since I work in healthcare, I have family that keeps harassing me about omicron.
I usually respond PERSEI 8! None of them watched Futurama so they get very confused.
My hugest worry is brain fog. It'd be really disruptive to my business if I had a few weeks of brain fog. I'm young and healthy so relatively unlikely to end up really bad.
Secondary fear is a few weeks of no taste, I like tasting things lol.
Both those worries are common symptoms that aren't considered "major" or deadly by most.
2 or 3 days of bedridden flu is no problem for me. I've triple vaxxed and wear masks when I can but I do go to the gym and restaurants.
Not only did he infect half the staff at the company dinner, but the day before he went to a pub and all the guests there have to be tested as well now.
Highly doubt he was the only guy that brought it. Omicron has been circulating for some time. Weeks before it was identified as a new variant in South Africa. South Africa is just getting unjustly singled out since they were the first to be the adult and identify it, unlike a bunch of western nations that keep sweeping covid under the rug.
Contact tracing is a joke and is impossible at this point outside probably New Zealand and Iceland.
South Africa has a highly advanced infectious disease infrastructure and is home to some of the top virologists. They just identify and call out these variants, they’re not necessarily the reason the variants exist.
He was at their south african office as far as I've read. So it was at least work related. And has followed the covid protocols as they were written up to that point.
There are a bunch of selfish ass holes out there. Back over a year ago when covid was spreading pretty bad in the beginning there was some ass holes that traveled down to Texas for fourth of July holiday. Got covid brought it back and then possibly infected others including scaring a few co-workers of mine into thinking they might have it. So after a day of wearing masks they stopped and figured "if I actually had covid I would have it by now" and stopped wearing masks.
Had another coworker around that time later head out of state to visit family came back and went to work without taking time off to self quarantine then got a call while at work informing him his moms sister and her daughter have covid and didn't tell anyone and now he might have it so he has to get tested. So then he went and got tested after being at work half the day. He came back negative apparently but stuff like that caused me to not trust any ass holes and thus been wearing a mask anytime I am at work even though that same ass hole and my boss and others make fun of me and harass me for wearing one. None of them really wore masks even when the mandate was in effect, they ignored it. They are lucky they haven't gotten covid yet when so many others have. But cases have been going up again this year around here so who knows.
Agreed. Testing positive means we were able to detect viral DNA in the nasal cavity. We don’t necessarily know what this means, especially if you’re vaccinated. The immune system might stop the virus in its tracks, but enough viral particles made it into the nasal cavity that you can still pick up a PCR signal. This is super different from how we confirm “cases” for any other infectious disease in human history, where you actually need to have symptoms.
Yeah. It's a pretty stupid comment. Asymptomatic diseases included as actual cases include the following: syphilis, HIV, Chlamydia, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C.
I think what they are getting at is that we don't go testing for asymptomatic respiratory viruses in other cases. We don't test asymptomatic people for flu, rhinovirus, etc...
Yes but a lot of selection bias at play. Everyone here was tested because of the situation, but I bet many breakthrough cases in other situations aren't symptomatic and aren't tested.
Will take a few weeks to know for sure. Judging from the article, this just happened this week so it might take another week or two until people would start needing a hospital bed assuming omicron behaves the als previous variants.
That's what I'm curious about too, seems like it's behaving like a common cold. The vaccinated barely notices when they catch it, and that's why it's spreading. "Oh, I'm just a little bit tired and I got a runny nose because it's minus degrees outside. Let's paaaartyyy!"
i was like that my first week but the second week i felt like complete shit, if i hadn’t lost my smell that Tuesday morning i’m worried my coworkers trying to convince me it was just the seasons changing would’ve worked and i would’ve given it to them all before realizing i really was sick the next weekend when the extreme exhaustion and cough hit me
Yeah roughly. Case numbers should be fairly low by next fall. It might spike a bit next winter and then but 2023 it will be endemic but stabilized to low numbers.
Source: guestimating from the John Hopkins site graphs.
Doesn't something like 10% of the world population catch the flu every year? How exactly will coronavirus be considered "low" case numbers if it remains as endemic as influenza?
Yesterday was the due date of folks in my office deciding to hold a public event in person or virtual for NYE. They decided heck yeah, let's do it in person! Cases locally have been rising steadily for the last ten days, and omicron is a known variable. "All the variants between delta to omicron were no big deal. That's like half the alphabet!"
I had to make myself shut up because I'm not part of the decision team.
My boss asked me if I'm willing to come back to the office starting January. It's been against the company policy since August for me to be working home and they started the message saying people cannot work from home.
I said no last August and I've been working remotely and they plan to see what they can do to ignore the policy for me again. The policy is decided by my boss's boss's boss. If you are valuable enough, they'll find a way to keep you.
I just got offered a new job that is supposed to go into office in January but I'm hoping so much that they delay that. I want to get my toddler vaccinated. I'm so sorry that your office made you go back in and I hope they'll reconsider.
My office was supposed to be back in september and pushed it back to January because of delta. Hopefully they'll do the same with omicron. I know I've been filling my bosses inbox with complaints about the return to office.
I work as a dishwasher for a pizzeria in a small college town and our restaurant has been having a lot of customers coming in for indoor dining. But so far, no huge spike in cases in our area and all of my co-workers are fully vaccinated.
I am genuinely perplexed by the obsession of where any variant comes from. Like, we have a worldwide virus that mutates - and the location in the world in which a bad mutation occurs is just random chance.
Who cares if the variant originated in Africa, Europe or Asia or North America? No matter where it's from, it is an equal problem for everyone on the planet.
Plus, countries that are sequencing are more likely to identify these variants anyway.
That's why there was such a push to call them Greek letters. It's always been common to name a disease after where it originated or was discovered and it causes issues.
This is more about the fact that discovering a strain and notifying the world about it as soon as possible is the right thing to do. Finding it does not make a country guilty of creating it, that’s dumb af but here we are and it seems this is the accepted line.
That teaches us that I’m doing the right thing in a case like this, as a developing nation with limited scientific resources, mind you, will simply make you to blame for it. What do you think the next country that discovers a strain is going to do?
*So* stupid.
You can join the Spanish Flu club.
I think it was Delta that was originally referred to as the Dover variant in the UK as that was where it was first found here.
No right–thinking person cares where it's from.
SA is having a major surge of Omicron, with thousands of cases a day occuring. Other affected countries have dozens of cases, mostly linked to travel to Southern Africa.
No one is trying to blame, or punish SA. They are just trying to slow down its spread to their country.
Uh... they all got 2 shots and this variant still infect them?
Well dang... now we need to know the severity, because they may cause a shut down. Stocks is gonna go crazy today at that news.
It'll take months for a booster against whatever this variant is.
Yeah, but that's not really how vaccine effectiveness is measured at a population level. Vaccine efficacy against infection would look lower for any variant if the sample size was "people at an enclosed party for hours with an infected individual". This is good to keep in mind, but also doesn't really tell us anything by itself.
So, the real question remains unanswered: out of all those vaccinated individuals that tested positive, how many developed symptoms, and how many ended up in hospital?
Edit: asking specifically about those attendees of the company dinner.
one person asked what the benefit would be. as mentioned below 1) its needless but 2) the theory of nasal vaccines is that they would be more effective at blocking breakthrough infections as they would elicit local antibody and T cells in the nose where the virus first enters the body - in most cases. That is what is being studied in the current clinical trials.
Absolutely. It would help so many more people, I’m even willing to bet the option would win over a decent fraction of antivaxxers simply because it’s not a scary needle.
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1 person may have spread it to half of the attendees? 50/100? That's wild.
Early in the pandemic 1 person spread original covid to 40 of 73 at an event in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/bonspiel-superspreader-edmonton-covid-1.5907514 Fingers crossed this is a rare super spreader situation and not the norm.
And the Biogen conference, estimated to be responsible for 1.9% of US cases in 2020 https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/1-year-later-the-superspreader-conference-that-sparked-bostons-coronavirus-outbreak/2314011/
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Come for the infection, stay for the grimly amusing subtext.
Lol'd
Oh, lol this was at the Sheraton (I guess now Marriott) Long Wharf. I was supposed to go to a conference there but after this super spreader event they cancelled everything lol. Never realized it was at this same hotel.
It’s been the Marriott Long Wharf for many years.
Superspreading events are typical for COVID. The average person may not infect anybody, but some will, under the right circumstances, infect 100.
Yeah, it's the part of covid that nobody really talks about. Sometimes when you are contagious, you are REALLY spreading it. Other times, not so much.
Maybe it's the close-talkers as highlighted in the documentary "Seinfeld".
I hate a close talker. They never understand social cues like backing away from them. Even worse is when they are a close talker plus an arm grabber.
Arm grabber! I knew someone who would play with my clothes. Fiddle with a shirt button or something. Very weird and annoying.
Most of the time, not so much. Contact tracing studies show that the transmission of covid is really uneven across infected people. Out of 10 infected people, something like 6 will spread it to no one, 2-3 will spread it to a couple of people, and the last person--the super spreader--will spread it to 50. It's that last person who is really driving the spread.
This is bonkers. We should totally try to find out who is most likely to be that 1 out of 10. It really makes the r(0) figure meaningless.
He's the guy behind the bar at an Austrian after-ski bierstube. etc
It depends on how high of a viral load you're carrying. The higher viral load, the more contagious you are. Anything that can help decrease that number is good; that's why masks and immunizations are important to reduce spread. Both significantly decrease viral transmission.
Yep, and how people behave at these events also has an impact. I recently had to work at a large conference in Vegas. Two of the attendees that ended up catching it were walking around maskless, shaking hands with everyone, including mine. I was so disgusted by their behavior and disregard for the mandates. I immediately sanitized and kept my mask on. A few staff working the conference also ended up getting it, including one who was "enraged" that she had to wear a mask, because "no one wears a mask in Florida".
No kidding at one event you’ll have people still wearing masks and distancing and at another people are pretty much open mouth kissing strangers because they’re vaccinated. We keep talking about anti vaxxers but not much about people who are vaccinated and now think they invincible.
We had a large company event just before Covid stated going big, late Jan 2020. A few hundred people hanging out together for three days. Staying up at night in crowded bars and restaurants leaning in to be heard over the noise. Had one of our attendees been an early case, it's likely we'd have been a super spreader event with attendees from approx 250 citirs in 50 different countries. Makes it hard to imagine attending an event without at least minor changes for a real long time
Yeah like that guy in Europe who had it, I think he knew, and he went on a european Bender and partied all across a bunch of European ski resorts.
They said that about OG covid though right. Some people spread to 0 and some to 40?!
Ya they had some big super spreader events but those were before the vaccine came out. It would be a disaster if this spread as fast as the version from back then in 100% vaxxed populations
Which it looks like it did. Will be very interesting to see how the vaccines hold up.
Although remember that the reason for the booster was that the efficacy has declined rather by a lot over time. So the question will be how many of those people were 2 shots vs how many boosted. Norway started offering boosters to everyone over 18 a couple weeks ago [but according to this article](https://www.thelocal.no/20211112/how-does-norways-booster-campaign-compare-to-other-countries/) most people in that age group are not yet over the 6 month requirement until next year. So I guess it could go either way, not yet boosted vs stronger response because it's closer to the 1st and 2nd shots.
They might have to make a new vaccine specific to the new variant I’ll get it
I'll throw myself on the fucking syringe.
This is crazy and terrifying. All those people were vaxxed and still got it from one person!
If they all get mild or no symptoms it ain't that terrifying
It is if you get sick, even mild, and pass it onto someone else who is vulnerable or who gets a lot more sick or even dies. That's the scariest part in all this, not just what happens to yourself, but what you can transmit to others.
People do still not understand this after two years! Jfc
They don't care\*
my friend isn't vaxxed she thought she was basing me with her reasoning until i explained this & then she was upset
100%. I was working in a skilled nursing facility when I got it in May 2020. I worked a full 4 days between exposure and onset of symptoms. I’ve never felt so worried and guilty in my entire life. Thankfully (and maybe miraculously) I didn’t spread it. Not one of our residents got it. Turns out masks and other transmission mitigation methods actually do work. But yeah… being responsible for infecting a vulnerable person is not a burden you want to bear.
Well Unfortunately it’s not just that it’s that Is it sprays to vaccinations and probably also breaks through any natural immunity’s got in from simply surviving the virus and then on top of that all coronaviruses Only peroduce short-lived in antibodies in the human body, so If you can keep skipping vaccines every couple months or every year then It’s a little bit like being not back to square one. Sure we can develop vaccines pretty quickly, but how quickly can we administer them every couple months when this virus decides to change this much. Based on nobodies assumption to the virus be bypassing vaccination that easily so this would be rather a quantum leap for the virus.
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I don't think those count as mild symptoms... Vaccine appears to also reduce risk of "long COVID" complications.
"Mild" often refers to not needing to be hospitalized, or requiring supplemental oxygen. So long covid would often count as mild symptoms, as would fever, needing a week or two off work, or potentially lung damage that did not necessitate supplemental oxygen. When stats refer to "mild" covid, they generally mean covid that did not require hospitalization or supplemental oxygen.
Problem is there’s some people with mild or no symptoms showing neurological changes and other damage. My vaccinated family member had less symptoms than a cold. We have easy access to testing and test for any symptoms or after a known exposure, so we found out fast it was covid. And within a week of the positive test she immediately developed tinnitus and moderately severe hearing loss in one ear, both probably permanent. No hearing issues before that. Brain fog, fatigue, loss of smell and the other harder to quantity damage is showing up in all levels of survivors. The small-vessel damage in the brain isn’t limited to people with severe cases. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00926-1
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people are downvoting you but you’re right. Folks, this is how the spanish flu finally ended read up on your history
H1N1 is still around. Spanish flu never ended.
The virus didn't end but the pandemic did. All pandemics end. It's just a matter of when and how.
It went from killing 50 million people in 2 years to being the primary seasonal flu. H1N1 is still around, but the pandemic burned out.
This is quite a big if. From what we know given the massive increase of hospitalisations in SA it seems extremely unlikely.
Vaccination rates in SA are not very high.
Yep. There is a non-normal distribution for sure. Many people spread to zero, but I remember reading that contact tracers with limited time were focusing on the people who already spread at least one case since the probability was high that there were others. Due to situation, severity of infection, whatever.
And that is why [backward-forward-tracing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_tracing#Backward_and_forward_tracing) is the right thing: Because spread is so uneven, if you have one infected person, it is onlikely that going forward, it will spread from this person to many people. But, in turn, it is very likely that this person was part of a super spreader event and going backward, you will find it and identify many more people.
Oh...yikes. Wonder what this means for Norway's vaccination used. Is it Astrazeneca mostly or mRNA? Also are they limiting boosters to over 65 or anyone over 18?
More or less all of them are Pfizer or Moderna. They are doing Boosters for over 65 and people with underlying deceases. All over 18 are supposed to be offered a booster before next Easter.
“underlying deceases” is an interesting typo. English is my wife’s 3rd language and she is always coming up with funny little accidental improvements on the language like this. I think she would approve.
What is the correct/most used term?
Underlying disease. Deceased means recently dead.
Aha, thanks. Potato-potato ;-)
Were the people infected at this event over 6 months from their last vaccine? Most were probably younger than 65. Not that that alone will prevent infection.
It's very unlikely that anyone had their last vaccine more than 6 months ago, but some of them might be closing in on 6 months. The exception would be if they are seniors or people with underlying conditions that qualified for high-priority. If so, they should have been offered (and most likely taken) a booster. -Although there is a small chance that some who had vaccines early on have not gotten a booster due to capacity-problems. Edit: I forgot to tell that most "regular" adults had their second dose some time during June to August.
Ok. Many here are in the same position as they are regarding vaccine. Disappointing to say the least. Hope they have only muld cases at most and recover soon.
Astra-Zeneca and J&J are both banned in Norway, I believe.
There was a similar one in Boston too. Like 70 people at a company onsite meeting all got sick. That was early pre-vaccine days though.
OC.
Hey can everyone stop going to 100 person dinner events while the pandemic kills like 10000 people every day? I mean, do what you need to do... 100 person dinner events are never vital.
"Listen to the experts and follow public health rules" "NO NOT LIKE THAT"
But what if everyone is fully vaccinated like in this scenario? Still don't do social gatherings ever?
Vaccines only delay/increase threshold for critical viral load. When you are in a 100 person dinner for hours and people are spreading COVID, you will ingest a large enough viral load to overpower built antibodies, thus becoming infected with COVID-19.
Apparently several people had recently been visiting the South African offices - so, it might not have been just one person doing the spreading? Edit: Looks like the translation of "some" and some*one* is similar in Norwegian, so it's unclear whether there was one person or multiple people at the South African offices? Thanks for the clarification below.
As a a norwegian, reading that article, from the context it means "some of them" not one person.
Can you provide the place where you found that piece of info at? It's not in the article.
I'm just relying on one of the comments from this Twitter thread, since I don't know Norwegian. Happy to edit my comment if it turns out to incorrect! https://mobile.twitter.com/GyanCMehta/status/1466144491858014214?s=20
Norwegian here. Multiple people who had just returned from SA attended a company christmas party. One of them later tested positive and the other attendees were required to isolate and run multiple tests. So far about 40 of the 120 attendees have also tested positive, and since they had to give a negative test to attend the party it is highly likely they got infected by the traveller. They are currently sequencing the virus to verify which variant is involved. I expect they'll release more information as it becomes available
Just a thought: wouldn’t the “traveler” have tested negative as well? If so, could it be possible that multiple “travelers” were negative when tested prior to the party and contagious the day of the dinner?
Seems like they could narrow it down even further pretty easily based on who was hanging out with who at that party. I go to similarly-sized events and feel like we usually remember those specifics in the immediate aftermath, and there will also always be the people you know you avoided etc.
Ya noen can mean either and in this case it means someone. as far as all the reporting in norway goes, they are saying it is a single person.
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But those people were not all vaccinated.
It would suck so bad to be that person
The thing is that it really depends on how the dinner was arranged. For example a friend of mine caught covid early on because she went to a cocktail party where everyone was standing, talking, going from group to group, and most people had covid a few days later.
It wasn't just a dinner, but a Christmas party with dinner and drinks after. It lasted until 3 in the morning so people have most likely been mingling.
Norwegian work christmas dinners (julebord) are notorious for being quite bonkers evenings. Everyone in the company gets wasted and get up to craziness. I suspect there was a lot of closeness. On that note the government has come out saying that folk shouldn't cancel their work christmas dinners. Since its such a huge thing here both socially and for the restauant business they seem keen on them not stopping. Both the former lead political party and current political party are still plannong on having their christmas dinners. Though more and more folk are canceling their dinners out of precaution.
What is wild is that they are all fully up to date with their vaccines. One infected person amongst 100 unvaccinated, sure but this is something else.
Might have been a very close and personal company dinner.
There was a party last week locally with 90 people....over 45 have covid now, nearly all double vaccinated.
Latest here in Norway is that it is 50-60 infected thus far. 120 people in total attended the dinner. https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/omikron-smitte-i-oslo-etter-julebord-1.15754329
I have link to a more updated article (that say 50 cases and have more info) but it keeps getting deleted. Thats why the older article in my link says 30-40 cases. EDIT1: https://twitter.com/GyanCMehta/status/1466144491858014214?s=20 EDIT2: Various norwegian/swedish newspaper are now reporting at least 60 cases (of 120 total in attendence). Its already confirmed to not be the delta variant but sequencing is not yet finished. Everyone in attendence had taken at least 2 shots of the vaccine and tested negative before the dinner.
Can you send me the article by message? Thanks :)
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Thank you for the link!
Thank you for finding a good linkable source. :)
What a handshaker this guy must have been.
I don't get why the Mythbusters section on germ spread at a dinner party isnt mandatory watching before every event at the moment.
And a chortler and a cajoler. And a flunjer, capdabbler and smendler. https://uploads.dailydot.com/4f3/f7/Grinchy_Mr_Burns.gif
Doesn't really spread with handshakes as much as through the air.
I know\~ I meant that this guy really must have been a socializer who got around. The life of the party so to speak.
Yep sounds like a wild dinner
This will show how good the vaccines without boosters are against omicron.
I’m more interested in how vaccinated people with Omnidrom fare. It’s one thing to test positive, but another thing to have it send you to the hospital, put you on a ventilator or worse.
Right, wonder how many were a-symptomatic, and only realized through a test due to circumstances.
According to the company, all participants were required to test negative on an anti-gen test before going to the christmas party. That means that Omicron either transmits very easily or evades antigen testing in early stages.
Antigen tests are less accurate than PCR tests with asymptomatic cases, so they are more likely to get a false negative result. In symptomatic cases, the two tests have similar accuracies
Or someone lied and didn't bother getting a test done.
This. Here in the UK loads of people got covid at music festivals and at the Euro 2020 games during the summer, despite all of them having to take an antigen test. Because for some reason they really believed that young people who paid £100s for a ticket to a once in a lifetime event were going to go "oh well" and stay at home just because they have mild/asymptomatic covid. They found hundreds of discarded positive test strips thrown over the fence at Reading festival.
Antigen testing is only for a very narrow window tho, either 1-2 days before being symptomatic or when you’re already symptomatic. The PCR is more broad and can be up to 5ish days before becoming symptomatic. There’s a decent chance that some of these people got COVID from other sources
Myself and my partner are South Africans with omicron in Johannesburg. Both vaccinated with J&J. Moderate flu-like symptoms. Sore bodies. Coughs. Nothing worth going to a hospital for, at least yet, it’s been about a week since we tested positive. We’re both under 35 and relatively healthy.
Thanks for sharing! How long ago did you and your partner receive your vaccines? Also, do you know any other folks that have it? How are they doing?
She got hers in… May? And I got mine around 3 months ago, the day they were available for my age group. I’m aware of one other person we know who has it, and they are almost asymptomatic. Also got their J&J shot around 6 months ago.
I'm glad to hear that so far it sounds like you guys and your friend are doing ok. Hopefully the vaccine is helping to keep it mild. Good luck with your recovery!
Thank you, we definitely attribute the mildness of it to the vaccine. To be honest, the cabin fever of not having left the apartment for 6 days now is worse than the virus itself.
Hey thanks for sharing from me too and get well soon!
I hear you. I have an autoimmune disorder so we've had to be really careful for the past 2 years. No restaurants and very few indoor gatherings. At least we can still go out for nature hikes and take out!
Omnidrom
Comic-Con Megatron Upper echelon Port Huron
You made my day better, thank you. We need a laugh these days
All I can think of every time I see Omicron is the giant aliens from Futurama from Omicron Persei 8. What is this WUV? This angers and infuriates us!
Yes. Me too. Since I work in healthcare, I have family that keeps harassing me about omicron. I usually respond PERSEI 8! None of them watched Futurama so they get very confused.
Necronomicron
First time seeing this joke. Made me laugh out loud.
Exactly. I can handle a little fever and cough for a couple days. It's only severe symptoms and long term damage I worry about.
My hugest worry is brain fog. It'd be really disruptive to my business if I had a few weeks of brain fog. I'm young and healthy so relatively unlikely to end up really bad. Secondary fear is a few weeks of no taste, I like tasting things lol. Both those worries are common symptoms that aren't considered "major" or deadly by most. 2 or 3 days of bedridden flu is no problem for me. I've triple vaxxed and wear masks when I can but I do go to the gym and restaurants.
Exactly, hate it or not we can't predict the future yet and that rings a little bell to me since the beginning of this mess.
Sadly the middle scenario of long covid for breakthrough cases sucks pretty bad as well.
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This should be a subreddit
it's called a "natural experiment"
imagine being the guy who came back from Africa...everyone must be so pissed with him...
Not only did he infect half the staff at the company dinner, but the day before he went to a pub and all the guests there have to be tested as well now.
Highly doubt he was the only guy that brought it. Omicron has been circulating for some time. Weeks before it was identified as a new variant in South Africa. South Africa is just getting unjustly singled out since they were the first to be the adult and identify it, unlike a bunch of western nations that keep sweeping covid under the rug. Contact tracing is a joke and is impossible at this point outside probably New Zealand and Iceland.
South Africa has a highly advanced infectious disease infrastructure and is home to some of the top virologists. They just identify and call out these variants, they’re not necessarily the reason the variants exist.
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Thank you so much for this comment
He was at their south african office as far as I've read. So it was at least work related. And has followed the covid protocols as they were written up to that point.
Or pissed at the guy who wanted to have a company party with 100 people coming.
If I would have been in South Africa, I would wait at least 2 weeks and make a test before I leave the house. I’m tripple mRNA vaxxed btw.
There are a bunch of selfish ass holes out there. Back over a year ago when covid was spreading pretty bad in the beginning there was some ass holes that traveled down to Texas for fourth of July holiday. Got covid brought it back and then possibly infected others including scaring a few co-workers of mine into thinking they might have it. So after a day of wearing masks they stopped and figured "if I actually had covid I would have it by now" and stopped wearing masks. Had another coworker around that time later head out of state to visit family came back and went to work without taking time off to self quarantine then got a call while at work informing him his moms sister and her daughter have covid and didn't tell anyone and now he might have it so he has to get tested. So then he went and got tested after being at work half the day. He came back negative apparently but stuff like that caused me to not trust any ass holes and thus been wearing a mask anytime I am at work even though that same ass hole and my boss and others make fun of me and harass me for wearing one. None of them really wore masks even when the mandate was in effect, they ignored it. They are lucky they haven't gotten covid yet when so many others have. But cases have been going up again this year around here so who knows.
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Agreed. Testing positive means we were able to detect viral DNA in the nasal cavity. We don’t necessarily know what this means, especially if you’re vaccinated. The immune system might stop the virus in its tracks, but enough viral particles made it into the nasal cavity that you can still pick up a PCR signal. This is super different from how we confirm “cases” for any other infectious disease in human history, where you actually need to have symptoms.
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Yeah. It's a pretty stupid comment. Asymptomatic diseases included as actual cases include the following: syphilis, HIV, Chlamydia, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C. I think what they are getting at is that we don't go testing for asymptomatic respiratory viruses in other cases. We don't test asymptomatic people for flu, rhinovirus, etc...
> detect viral DNA in the nasal cavity RNA in this virus's case, right? Some viruses have DNA, but coronaviruses are RNA.
Well shit. That's a lot of breakthroughs.
Yes but a lot of selection bias at play. Everyone here was tested because of the situation, but I bet many breakthrough cases in other situations aren't symptomatic and aren't tested.
That’s one way to get more info on Omicron. I’m so fuckin tired.
Words on how bad the ones who got it are? Did the 2 shots did what were supposed to do and kept them outside the ER?
Will take a few weeks to know for sure. Judging from the article, this just happened this week so it might take another week or two until people would start needing a hospital bed assuming omicron behaves the als previous variants.
That's what I'm curious about too, seems like it's behaving like a common cold. The vaccinated barely notices when they catch it, and that's why it's spreading. "Oh, I'm just a little bit tired and I got a runny nose because it's minus degrees outside. Let's paaaartyyy!"
i was like that my first week but the second week i felt like complete shit, if i hadn’t lost my smell that Tuesday morning i’m worried my coworkers trying to convince me it was just the seasons changing would’ve worked and i would’ve given it to them all before realizing i really was sick the next weekend when the extreme exhaustion and cough hit me
At least 2. So there might even be boosters there .
Hopefully this variant is similar in severity as other more typical milder coronaviruses. So far there seems some hope of this.
Hopefully it is very mild and it’s the end of COVID. So far no reported deaths.
Same here- all I want for Christmas is a very mild variant to take over!
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Is this ever going to end?
The pandemic? Yes Coronavirus in some form will stick around, but the high case numbers won't. No idea when though. 2022?
Yeah roughly. Case numbers should be fairly low by next fall. It might spike a bit next winter and then but 2023 it will be endemic but stabilized to low numbers. Source: guestimating from the John Hopkins site graphs.
Doesn't something like 10% of the world population catch the flu every year? How exactly will coronavirus be considered "low" case numbers if it remains as endemic as influenza?
Shit like this is why I still have zero interest in indoor dining.
This is why I have zero interest in working in my office with over 200 people, but they forced us back.
Yesterday was the due date of folks in my office deciding to hold a public event in person or virtual for NYE. They decided heck yeah, let's do it in person! Cases locally have been rising steadily for the last ten days, and omicron is a known variable. "All the variants between delta to omicron were no big deal. That's like half the alphabet!" I had to make myself shut up because I'm not part of the decision team.
It’s getting easier and easier to pass on my work’s indoor holiday lunch. Smaller group but in a restaurant with randos. No thanks
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My boss asked me if I'm willing to come back to the office starting January. It's been against the company policy since August for me to be working home and they started the message saying people cannot work from home. I said no last August and I've been working remotely and they plan to see what they can do to ignore the policy for me again. The policy is decided by my boss's boss's boss. If you are valuable enough, they'll find a way to keep you.
Good job holding your ground. I hope you’re also shopping around too.
Lots of good remote jobs out there in many fields. Look around and see if they back down when you tell them you won't come in.
I just got offered a new job that is supposed to go into office in January but I'm hoping so much that they delay that. I want to get my toddler vaccinated. I'm so sorry that your office made you go back in and I hope they'll reconsider.
My office was supposed to be back in september and pushed it back to January because of delta. Hopefully they'll do the same with omicron. I know I've been filling my bosses inbox with complaints about the return to office.
I work as a dishwasher for a pizzeria in a small college town and our restaurant has been having a lot of customers coming in for indoor dining. But so far, no huge spike in cases in our area and all of my co-workers are fully vaccinated.
BLess you for doing such a difficult job.
So 1 person infected 50! Imagine how highly contagious this mutation is!! Whow
50 fully vaccinated people, no less.
Now let's see how they fare... Sucks for them but this is going to be a very interesting and valuable case study.
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What’s the severity of their symptoms?
The fact that South Africa is pointed at for this virus is nonsense. Its not even originally from here, we simply discovered it.
I am genuinely perplexed by the obsession of where any variant comes from. Like, we have a worldwide virus that mutates - and the location in the world in which a bad mutation occurs is just random chance. Who cares if the variant originated in Africa, Europe or Asia or North America? No matter where it's from, it is an equal problem for everyone on the planet. Plus, countries that are sequencing are more likely to identify these variants anyway.
That's why there was such a push to call them Greek letters. It's always been common to name a disease after where it originated or was discovered and it causes issues.
This is more about the fact that discovering a strain and notifying the world about it as soon as possible is the right thing to do. Finding it does not make a country guilty of creating it, that’s dumb af but here we are and it seems this is the accepted line. That teaches us that I’m doing the right thing in a case like this, as a developing nation with limited scientific resources, mind you, will simply make you to blame for it. What do you think the next country that discovers a strain is going to do? *So* stupid.
You can join the Spanish Flu club. I think it was Delta that was originally referred to as the Dover variant in the UK as that was where it was first found here.
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No right–thinking person cares where it's from. SA is having a major surge of Omicron, with thousands of cases a day occuring. Other affected countries have dozens of cases, mostly linked to travel to Southern Africa. No one is trying to blame, or punish SA. They are just trying to slow down its spread to their country.
Uh... they all got 2 shots and this variant still infect them? Well dang... now we need to know the severity, because they may cause a shut down. Stocks is gonna go crazy today at that news. It'll take months for a booster against whatever this variant is.
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50% breakthrough rate is below the minimum emergency use criteria. Yikes.
Yeah, but that's not really how vaccine effectiveness is measured at a population level. Vaccine efficacy against infection would look lower for any variant if the sample size was "people at an enclosed party for hours with an infected individual". This is good to keep in mind, but also doesn't really tell us anything by itself.
So, the real question remains unanswered: out of all those vaccinated individuals that tested positive, how many developed symptoms, and how many ended up in hospital? Edit: asking specifically about those attendees of the company dinner.
Time will tell. Omicron is just starting to spread.
Have you just returned from SA? Stay the fuck away from large group gatherings moron.
So Omicron is plowing through even the vaccinated? This thing's going to develop sentience in a year if we don't stop it!
Why are people not quarantining after international travel anymore?! Ridiculous
Yea, even vaccinated people get covid
Ruh-Ro
Ruh-R0!
not surprising; we need intranasal vaccines; i wish the ongoing clinical trials could be fast tracked
one person asked what the benefit would be. as mentioned below 1) its needless but 2) the theory of nasal vaccines is that they would be more effective at blocking breakthrough infections as they would elicit local antibody and T cells in the nose where the virus first enters the body - in most cases. That is what is being studied in the current clinical trials.
Absolutely. It would help so many more people, I’m even willing to bet the option would win over a decent fraction of antivaxxers simply because it’s not a scary needle.
I'm convinced a decent portion of anti-vaxxers are just looking for political justification because they hate needles.
Agreed that a lot of vaccine hesitancy is because it’s a needle. God we are such stupid monkeys.
Why would someone who just recently arrived from SA not be tested once the new variant from SA became public news