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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 13 2022, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-hope-it's-only-the-legs-half dept.

Omicron May Infect Half of Europeans Within Weeks, WHO Says:

More than half of Europe's population could become infected with omicron within weeks at current transmission speeds, a World Health Organization official said.

The fast-spreading variant represents a "west-to-east tsunami sweeping the region," Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said in a briefing Tuesday.

He cited the Institute for Metrics and Health Assessment forecast that most Europeans could take it within the next six to eight weeks. The latest Covid surge has resulted in fewer symptomatic cases and lower death rates than in previous waves, fueling optimism that the pandemic may subside.


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 13 2022, @02:51PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 13 2022, @02:51PM (#1212414) Journal

    There's no data *proving* lower Long COVID rates for Omicron. There *is* data suggesting it. E.g. it seems to flourish in the bronchial tubes rather than in the blood stream, so the immune systems is already hyped up by the time it tries for a systematic invasion.

    What's your theory for how "long covid" works? Mine is that it gets into the blood stream and starts lots of really small blood clots circulating, which occasionally clump together somewhere where they can cause a major disaster, and other times a minor disaster. This is separate from (though related to) the way it causes lung damage. And it gets avoided when the blood clots are cleaned out before they cause any real problem. Or if they only happen to clump in a place where it's easy to repair. The theory for what causes long covid is important in making predictions about what will cause it, and what won't. (IIRC warfarin had no effect on the clotting of blood by covid as it used a different mechanism.)

    Caution: I'm a programmer, not a bioresearcher. Don't take my theories too seriously in this area.

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