[SubiculumCode]

Well, since the booster seems to protect, no?

I am hoping that Omicron will boost immunity versus delta while being more mild. This makes me suspect that this will be the case: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/omicron-dominant-was...

"Even though there have been practically no cases of clinical infection, wastewater samples show that the new omicron variant is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the Florida county that is home to the nation's largest theme park resorts, officials said this week."

[bellyfullofbac]

I wonder if they saw more traces from the theme park wastewater...

Business idea: device that you plug to your home wastewater output, scans it, and reports to you anything interesting.

Of course it'd need to be connected to the cloud and have a stupid subscription fee. /s . At least then "Internet of Shit" will apply to the name non-sarcastically.

[Xylakant]

You’re late to the party. Smart toilet, identifies you by looking at your butthole https://www.vice.com/en/article/jge377/stanford-smart-toilet...

[kurthr]

Unfortunately, the mutation differences between Delta and Omicron are more significant than from the early Alpha/Beta which it appears to be more related.

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global (see B1.1.529)

It's fitness is driven (in South Africa) largely by the ability to avoid Delta immunity, where a majority of the population has already had that.

Whether Omicron is more mild or not seems still up in the air. Saying that it is more mild in Southern Africa (or a theme park?) where the average age is in the mid 20s (rather than 38 for the whole US) isn't all that relevant since we know symptomatic illness falls more than an order of magnitude between those two.

That said, I've been expecting COVID immunity in the US to look something like Pfizer-Pfizer-Delta-Omicron-Omega since it was clear that we couldn't get more that 60% vaccination. The goal should be keeping the hospitals available for actual catastrophic accidents (heart attacks, car accidents, ladders) rather than complex suicide lottery attempts.

Frankly, at this point it's a choice. You can be a rude nudist/antimasker, a filthy contagion/antivaxer who will spread disease or you can be a regular human who goes about their life. Other than the old/infirm we don't need to protect people from their (bad) decisions any more. I'm glad I'm not immune compromised, 80 years old, or caring for a very young child... it would suck!

[pakitan]

> Well, since the booster seems to protect, no?

That hasn't been proven, as far as I know. Pfizer did some in vitro study but we still have no idea if that translates to real world results.

[corin_]

From the article this thread is about (italics emphasis added by me):

> The researchers found a significantly increased risk of developing a symptomatic Omicron case compared to Delta for those who were two or more weeks past their second vaccine dose, and two or more weeks past their booster dose (for AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines).

> Depending on the estimates used for vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant, this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose. Similar estimates were obtained using genotype data, albeit with greater uncertainty.

[SubiculumCode]

That is an accurate statement I believe. However, given it is the only available evidence we have, it is probably the most accurate prediction that we have, so let's call it our prior.