I know two couples where both the husband and wife came down with Covid. In both of them the husband claimed they only had a sore throat, while the wives were laid out for at least a week.
As for flu, the year I neglected to get a flu shot and got sick, I had a fever of just under 104 for three days, and developed a mild case of pneumonia. It took me a week of recovery before I could even get back to work, and another week before I felt like a human.
Data out today in the local paper:
Effectiveness against omicron symptomatic infection, six months after second dose:
AstraZeneca: 7.5 per cent
Pfizer: 28.1 per cent
Moderna: 40.4 per cent
Effectiveness against omicron severe infection, six months after second dose
AstraZeneca: 36.7 per cent
Pfizer: 70.9 per cent
Moderna: 81.1 per cent
MRNA booster, effectiveness against omicron symptomatic infection
86.2 per cent
MRNA booster, effectiveness against omicron severe infection
98.2 per cent
Wow, go Moderna! I initially made fun of my brother who got the Moderna when we were all Team Pfizer. Dammit!
Studies now seem to indicate that, if you’re vaccinated, Omicron is less deadly than the flu. Here is a probably paywalled article. Here’s the money quote:
For now, the available evidence suggests that Omicron is less threatening to a vaccinated person than a normal flu. Obviously, the Omicron wave has still been damaging, because the variant is so contagious that it has infected tens of millions of Americans in a matter of weeks. Small individual risks have added up to large societal damage.
So, it certainly may kill more people because it’s so contagious, but given you have either the Omicron variant or the flu, the flu seems worse. Now, your total risk from Omicron is probably higher (risk of getting it to begin with times your risk of dying from it), but given you have it, it’s not as deadly.
I’m not sure if I’m using those stats terms correctly.
…I wouldn’t trust an opinion article from David Leonhardt as an authoritative cite for anything, especially in regard to anything covid related. I don’t think the evidence shows that “Omicron appears to be in retreat.” I don’t think that the “U.S. may be only a few weeks away from the most encouraging Covid situation since early last summer, before the Delta variant emerged.” I think he is talking a lot of nonsense.
Coronavirus really is in retreat in many parts of the US. Caseloads are down from two weeks ago in NY, NJ, CT, DC, for example. A similar thing happened in South Africa.
Look, I’m as pessimistic as the next guy, but there are reasons Omicron is less deadly than Delta, and it could easily be that it makes it less deadly than the flu.
…case loads have gone up and down for the entire duration of the pandemic. Two weeks isn’t enough time to determine anything. You can’t compare yourself to South Africa, either: they have mandatory masking. Limits on public gatherings. Enforced social distancing. You can’t look at what is happening there and assume that the US will follow the same pattern.
This isn’t a sign that Omicron is “in retreat.” Covid won’t come under control until you decide to actually take things seriously.
Australia just had its most deadly day of the pandemic. Omicron is deadly enough to keep putting people into hospital, and to keep making people dead. Just under 3000 dead in the US today, with a seven-day-average matching earlier peaks.
America nearly had it under control by July last year. Then you let it get away from you: and now you are doing practically nothing to bring it back under control. There isn’t any reason to be optimistic.
All this has nothing to do with this thread, and I’ve already said that Omicron is likely deadlier overall than the flu given its contagiousness.
This thread, I think, is about which is more dangerous given you already have it.
…I was just responding to the points that you bought up. We are discussing your cite. And your cite said nothing at all about whether Omicron is worse than having the flu.
I disagree. Your point about how the US is dealing with Omicron has nothing to do with whether it’s in retreat.
False. Here’s the money quote again:
For now, the available evidence suggests that Omicron is less threatening to a vaccinated person than a normal flu. Obviously, the Omicron wave has still been damaging, because the variant is so contagious that it has infected tens of millions of Americans in a matter of weeks. Small individual risks have added up to large societal damage.
I mean, sure, the NY Times could just be lying about that, but it seems unlikely. I brought a cite. Bring yours.
Interesting. Maybe TMI, but I’ve also had slow flow issues for over a decade, and the urologists can’t figure it out. It’s not a prostate issue, as was initially diagnosed, but I still take uroxatrol since it seems to help by relaxing the muscles go down there. I was only about 40 when it started, and in the peak of health (even through now), so the docs always considered it an anomaly. Back on topic, I’ve noticed that the issue always seems to go away when I’m sick, or otherwise relatively inactive. It also gets worse for a couple days after I work out at the gym. So the current diagnosis is inflammation for no reason except through normal activity. When activity is decreased, it goes away. Hope this helps, and YMMV.
…diseases don’t go into “retreat.” It isn’t an army. It isn’t going away to the spa. It isn’t giving up. It is an entirely inappropriate word to be using here because it give the impression that Covid is doing something that it is not. We are barely just over a month into this. We can’t know where this is going to go.
I bought up the US’s response in response to your claim that covid is in “retreat in many parts of the US”, and that “a similar thing happened in South Africa.” If you don’t have the same non-pharmaceutical interventions that they have in South Africa then you can’t assume the US will follow the same pattern. That is unreasonable.
You are quoting a person, not an entity. Opinion writers spin the truth all the time. The keywords in the quote here are “vaccinated” and “threatened.” Threatened says nothing about whether it hits worse than the flu or not. And the unvaccinated are people too. You can’t just pretend that they don’t exist. Your cite says nothing about whether Omicron is worse for them or not than the flu.
I tested positive on Thursday and spent the next two days with bad flu symptoms, namely fever and body/joint pain and fatigue. Now it’s settled into a upper chest cough and sore throat and still get run down quickly. I have a feeling this cough is going to take its sweet time moving on but, hey, fingers crossed. So, since it hit me like “Nasty Flu” plus the trailing end, I gotta say “worse than flu” but that’s just my experience and not medical data. Double Pfizer vax and Moderna boosted.
Yeah, if we’re doing anecdotes, my observation is that everyone I know who has gotten hit this wave has had very mild symptoms (no more than a cold, if any symptoms). Covid (original flavor) and alpha hit the folks I know pretty hard. Most of my contacts have somehow managed to avoid delta, though, so I have no anecdotal data for that. I personally right now would take my chances with omicron vs the flu.
That person was writing for the entity The NY Times as part of their daily COVID briefing. Feel free not to accept the cite, and feel free to bring your own counter-cite.
In my post, I said “if you’re vaccinated”. I started with that. I didn’t say anything about the affect on people who aren’t vaccinated. I’m really not sure why you’re bringing up the unvaccinated as a response to anything I’ve written. I made no claim whatsoever about the unvaccinated, because I have no information about the effect of Omicron on them. My guess would be that it would be much worse than for the vaccinated, just like every other variant is. I don’t have a cite for that, so I’m not making the claim.
Here’s what I started with:
Anyway, this exchange seems less than fruitful, so I’ll probably bow out of it.
Does it make sense in this discussion to compare a breakthrough Omicron infection in a vaxxed and boosted person to an influenza infection in someone who didn’t get a flu shot? I feel like we should be comparing vaxxed with vaxxed, unvaxxed with unvaxxed. But then, there are probably a fair number of people who do fall into that category of being vaxxed against COVID but not flu.
Ditto, lots of folk at work (restaurant so they skew young, with me the outlier).
I will say that though I never got hit with the flu/covid truck*…this experience has sure made me ‘feel old’. I still just want to sleep all day.
*You know the feelings guys, ya big pansies! “Ohhhh…im dying. I’m going to die.” I am of course referring to guys when they get sick. Not actually dying. I know that happens.
Women: “Get up.”
Me, first positive last Wednesday, negative again since this morning.
The only symptom I recognized was an unusual feeling of heat as I woke up the second morning, as if a bout of fever was receding.
I have an apparently unrelated cough since November, which Covid had no effect on whatsoever.
41 M, non-vax.