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posted by
janrinok
on Thursday January 13 2022, @04:32AM
from the I-hope-it's-only-the-legs-half dept.
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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Omicron May Infect Half of Europeans Within Weeks, WHO Says
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13 2022, @03:17PM (2 children)
This is wrong. There are two ways that a pandemic ends, one is that the virus has been relegated to a small area or eliminated; the other is that people stop caring.
If there are more asymptomatic people, then what's the point of continuing to worry? We were worried because treatments were scarce for those that were infected and medical facilities were swamped. A flood of asymptomatic cases is exactly what we want. It may not confer much protection against other strains, but it should somewhat reduce the severity at least. This is a bit like the flu where you don't get immune to the flu strains in circulation later, but generally, having had it a few times the body is more effective at fighting it.
One of the reasons why there is an uptick in asymptomatic cases is that it's not attacking the lungs the way that other varients were, so less coughing and obvious signs. The variants have been coming quickly enough that there's no telling what the truth will look like with further research. Long covid could easily turn out to a byproduct of isolation and other factors co-occuring.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13 2022, @05:51PM (1 child)
This is what we commonly called cross-immunity, at least those of us who aren't spreading complete nonsense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 13 2022, @07:56PM
And what precisely is nonsense here? Pandemics typically end when people accept the disease as endemic or there's an effective vaccine to stop the spread and confine it to a region. None of this is particularly controversial. At least not if you stipulate true things as true.