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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Look, I'm about as pro-vaccine, pro-lockdown, pro-mask as they come.

But the hyperbolic reporting on this variant is not helpful. News articles in mainstream press are already wrong: WHO has named this Omicron (while many publications came out with Nu).

This is a virus that takes weeks to months before a variant becomes dominant. You can afford to wait a day or two to get information correct before publishing.

Edit: downvotes? Did no one remember how long it took for Alpha or Delta to become dominant? Literally months. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?CDC_AA_refVal=http...

Take some time, get the damn details correct. You can afford a day or two before reporting to double check facts.

At least this blog had pointed out that Nu was an expected name as opposed to the actual name. But still, getting details like this wrong or speculating on the name is very counterproductive to the issue of trust.

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This variant is moving much faster to dominance in South Africa than Delta. About 6x faster. You can make some quibbles (small case numbers etc) but this is quick.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/d42bcd3d-e70...

And Lambda took over South America and people were worried it'd also overtake Delta in the USA.

Lambda didn't win however. We were right to be concerned but don't panic about it. Lambda clearly had some 'superpowers'

Small case numbers are not a "quibble". You need high case numbers to establish that a variant outcompetes another variant or else all you potentially have is luck and founder effects.

Your link is broken, but if you're talking about that FT chart with the title that starts with "A new variant is spreading rapidly..." then I might be able to to put you at ease a bit, without quibbling about "too early to tell".

It is a time vs percentage share of cases chart, comparing Beta, Delta and Omicron. Omicron is growing very fast in percentage share relative to Beta and Delta. But Beta and Delta were competing with other variants when they first emerged, whereas Omicron is currently not. So its percent share is growing fast.

Yeah, thanks for expanding on that. It’s a very valid point.

On the other hand, Israel, Hong Kong and Belgium have all reported breakthroughs from recent travellers. In Hong Kong it did so between two units in an isolation hotel.

So it certainly looks troubling. But yes if there a massive Delta wave in South Africa the relative growth rate would be slower.

Just as a reminder, HN isn’t a place where it’s acceptable to appeal to downvoters as a tactic for increasing the legitimacy of your comment.

My comment hit -3 and no one wrote a critical counterpoint yet.

I took a guess at why it was downvotes. Nothing more.

I agree. I haven't learned anything new from reporting except the designation, which some reports got wrong..

I was an idiot and commented/replied to two posts on Reddit on this topic. I showed actual research paper receipts yet was still mega downvoted, told I am wrong and don't know anything. It's so pointless and frustrating.

I'm sorry you're getting downvoted that's not what HN is about, though I'm guilty myself in the CCP threads imho on deserving posts but maybe I'm blind there.

This type of click bait reporting is dangerous. Whatever push notification text gets clicks !== news.

People don't want to hear anything that doesn't fit their viewpoint, especially if that viewpoint is the world is ending, vaccines don't do anything, and let's buy 200 rolls of TP - because they use 1/8th of a roll at a time ;)

Why is a travel stop such problem? Travel can be resumed.

The countries impacted feel villainized and punished. In the future they might decide to not report their findings or other countries seeing these countries become pariahs may decide to not their findings of new variants, lest they be cutoff.

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