Forum - View topicNEWS: Man Diagnosed With Omicron Variant of COVID-19 Attended Anime NYC
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ximpalullaorg
Posts: 396 |
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Someone was infected with a highly contagious respiratory virus that can't be contained with non-pharmacological interventions....who would have thought? (yes I'm being sarcastic).
Aside "the variant" this looks like non-news to me. P.s. HIT with this kind of virus is unreachable (and always was). This is not measles. |
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tygerchickchibi
 Posts: 1454 |
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As someone who attended and was part of a venue, I can say that I was planning to get tested after the con anyhow, because it just makes sense to-- there were a lot of people who attended (Over 50k to be exact). So you know, you're gonna end up breathing other peoples' air. In a confined and warmer space, at that.
TBH, I also don't trust that some attendees would be completely honest with their vaccination status, and would probably try to sneak in one way or the other. I tested negative, so this news made me feel pretty relieved that I was proactive about it. The good news is that the man who was infected was previously vaccinated, so most likely it saved his life. From what I understand, there is a significantly lower risk for transmission to happen between parties that are already vaccinated, so I hope that it eases a bit of worry. Last edited by tygerchickchibi on Thu Dec 02, 2021 5:25 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16939 |
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Why? Because that's what a journalist would/should do? Reach out to applicable sources for comment. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2326 |
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I agree that it's probably unreachable, now, short of a major technological breakthrough, but what do you mean when you say it was always unreachable? The HIT estimate for the ancestral strain given in the wiki reference is 58-71%, and 75-80% for the Alpha variant. Those seem within the ballpark I've seen for studies of vaccines in blunting vaccine efficacy, e.g. "We previously reported effectiveness of 73% (95%CI 65-79%) against transmission to unvaccinated household contacts for the Alpha variant."; i.e., a fully vaccinated population would have hit those HIT targets, or be very close to them, depending on variant. (The estimates I've seen for Delta are much less rosy, though, which is why I commented that this has looked increasingly like a pipedream, as more contagious variants - and against which vaccine transmission efficacy may be reduced - evolve.) |
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HueyLion
 Posts: 890 |
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It' s game over man, Game over!
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LegitPancake
 Posts: 1296 Location: Texas, USA |
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It sounds more like he got infected at the convention, but probably wasn’t infectious himself until he got home. So it seems like there was open transmission at the convention (even though proof of vaccination was required for admission and masks were worn), since it doesn’t sound like he travelled to Africa or was in contact with anyone from Africa. |
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Emerje
 Posts: 7349 Location: Maine |
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Problem is each variant seems to play by its own rules and newer ones (delta, omicron) seem to ignore immunity. I work in a nursing home in a state where it's mandatory for employees and residents to be vaccinated. 20+ of the fully vaccinated residents on my unit caught Covid in late October through November along with 30+ staff members including myself. Some of our residents just had Covid in September during a smaller outbreak and then caught it again in November. We do full lab tests on everyone in the building twice a week and everyone gets screened daily and all staff were wearing full PPE and it still spread that easily. The elderly residents are one thing, but most of the staff are in the 20-40 range. The CDC only just cleared us of our outbreak status this week. I'll be truly shocked if more cases of omicron aren't traced back to Anime NYC, it just seems entirely impossible that this person didn't spread it to others no matter what kind of precautions were in place. Emerje |
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animefan1238
 Posts: 299 Location: Ma |
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Depending how this winter goes I may or may not go to my local con in 2022. Yes, it's a long way off but you never know. I'm vaccinated and am getting my booster in a week and a half but I'm on immune suppressants for colitis. If I have to pass then I will. I know the con will be as safe as it can be but I'd rather not risk it for myself. Time will tell.
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Just bad luck and timing, really, since "Omicron" is likely all over the US already (this case is from almost 2 weeks ago, before we even knew about this variant), and in a group of 50 thousand people, someone's bound to have covid. Along with many other, less scary contagions.
I don't expect this to be a "superspreader" or anything, since it's pretty hard for a virus to jump around between vaccinated people wearing masks, starting from a person who was also vaccinated. But I do expect a unique sort of negative reaction from the general public due to this happening at an anime con. If there is such a thing as bad publicity, this is probably it. |
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tygerchickchibi
Posts: 1454 |
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Yeah, I understand that. I just think it's bananas that it came all the way from Mississippi so like, wow. I hope you guys didn't suffer from the virus too much. It also sounds like no one died (?) |
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ninjamitsuki
 Posts: 598 Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology) |
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Already got tested a few days after I got home from the con and it came back negative. I did feel sick for a few days but it was regular ol' con crud from lack of sleep.
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ximpalullaorg
Posts: 396 |
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The HIT isn't a fixed value and keeps fluctuating. Even with Alpha the thresold was already too high. Unfortunately, even know, governments doesn't seem to notice (despite saying "follow the science"). Otherwise, how can one explain the obsession over relative risk reduction towards infection? The vaccines weren't made with that in mind.
Breakthrough infections don't mean immunity (either via vaccination or naturally acquired) doesn't work. And in any case, I think people are delusional: everyone will get this virus, vaccinated or not, multiple times, until it reaches the endemic stage. Vaccines and treatments (including, for example, the recent EUA-approved Merck pill) will blunt the impact on the population but won't nullify it. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (masks, lockdowns, distancing)....haven't worked and won't work. But even if they worked, with the estimated R0 of Delta being 8, they would be completely useless. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1116 Location: Puget Sound |
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It's not known where Omicron originated, it's been identified all over the world. It is emphatically not limited to Africa, that was merely where it was identified first. |
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Aresef
Posts: 914 Location: MD |
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On the front end, I'll disclose that I was a paid crew member at Anime NYC. I don't know what they're talking about at Leftfield right now and I don't speak for them. I'm boosted so I think I'll take it case by case. MAGFest has a vaccine mandate, I think I'm OK with the idea of going to that. Otakon, I'm going to go to that but would want them to implement a vaccine mandate. Power Morphicon, I plan to go but expect to hear something from them if the virus is still a thing then. Other cons, including Anime NYC, I think I'll play it by ear based on the disease picture, what the local rules are and what the convention rules are in regards to masks and vaccines. I'm more likely to attend a con where there's a vaccine mandate. But something instructive from this for me is the need to get tested after *any* event like this. I'm technically immunosuppressed but not in a way that it severely impacts my calculus. Everybody has their own factors to consider. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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No intervention will completely eradicate the virus, but masks definitely reduce infection rates and are an important public health tool: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html. I wish we lived in a world that would treat the pandemic as the global issue it truly is. We “higher income” countries should be garnering far more resources and effort to make covid vaccines available in “lower income” countries. We’re literally in the same boat, offering boosters on the upper decks while the lower decks flood. Not that there is anything wrong with boosters per se or that not getting a booster shot in the US could somehow ensure that someone in another country could be vaccinated (I’ve gotten a 3rd shot, personally)—vaccinating everyone on Earth is a huge logistical problem, and I just wish that world leaders were *as* focused and committed to making vaccines available to more people around the world as they are to making boosters available to their own citizens. We need both strategies to reduce variant development and spread. I’ll admit that my first reaction to the Anime NYC News was a sigh of relief that I decided not to go after deliberating it, because I take immunosuppressants. But I live in NYC and I wouldn’t be surprised if the variant were more widespread here than public health officials are aware of... |
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