Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => COVID-19 => Topic started by: set fair on 27/06/2022 04:33:38

Title: How could we say if omicron variants are intrinsically less pathogenic?
Post by: set fair on 27/06/2022 04:33:38

Seropositivity to CoV2 is about 99% in the UK... ie virtually everyone has been infected or vaccinated. The ratio of hospitalizations to infections is greatly reduced compared to 2020 & 2021. Is there a way to distinguish between immunity and reduced virulence as the cause. It seems quite feasible that immunity could be entirely responsible.
North Korea isn't going to give us the data we would need.

Title: Re: How could we say if omicron variants are intrinsically less pathogenic?
Post by: evan_au on 27/06/2022 10:04:16

The newer Omicron variants are reportedly more infectious, and able to reinfect some people who have previously had Omicron.
- That is leading to increasing death rates in many countries
- But the previous Omicron infection should provide some protection against severe disease.

Mask usage is dropping due to lack of public health messages and public exhaustion, so this doesn't help.

The most likely way we will get some useful more data is to:
- infect lab animals (bearing in mind that lab animals are not an exact analogue of a human)
- infect human cell cultures (bearing in mind that a cell culture is not an exact analogue of a whole human)

Title: Re: How could we say if omicron variants are intrinsically less pathogenic?
Post by: Petrochemicals on 27/06/2022 10:18:13

I would say it is an individual thing.

 Someone who I know of works as an ambulance dispatcher organiser in an A&E department. He has had corona three times, the first 2 times he barely noticed it, the 3rd time he had a massive reaction and felt awful.

On the other hand my brothers family had corona last Christmas and felt awful and recently required it with a few mild symptoms.