More unbiased Omicron stats:
statnews.com
And this, suggesting that Omicron might be as severe as the others but because we have so many people vaccinated and previously infected, Omicron's seriousness seems lesser, though it might severely affect the yet non-infected unvaccinated. So far, however, very few deaths. In other words, we are beating the virus slowly but surely (at least that is how I read things).
statnews.com
" And remarkably similar, also in terms of severity of disease?
If you calculate the case-hospitalization ratio as something like one-third or one-half of Delta, I still think this is entirely consistent with many more cases, if not most cases, being reinfections or breakthrough infections and immunity being the thing that is driving the decrease in severity.
The average case in South Africa and the average case in the U.S. and the average case in Denmark will all be less severe than the average case of Delta, just because of [immunity in the population].
But if that is the case, then there are some big pockets of this country that are at serious risk, are there not?
I actually don’t think so. If you do some really simple math, we’re about 35% of the country having been infected, very roughly. We’re about 70% of the country having had at least one dose [of vaccine]. Factored together, that’s 80-odd% [of people with some immunity]. And then, if you look at the seroprevalence work from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — this is only in people 15 and older — you get 90% of the country having antibodies. That range of 80% or 90% is about where we are so, yeah, I think we’re most of the way there towards everyone having some immunity.
Based on your read of the way this variant is playing out, would you then expect a lot of cases to be substantially milder?
I’m still expecting lots of infections, lots of cases, but that the average case will be less severe because it’s in a person with immunity.
Part of the huge confusion here has been when people talk about severity, they’re not being clear enough whether it’s severity of the average case or intrinsic severity [of the virus]. And so we have Imperial College’s [statement] “ It’s no different.” But there they controlled for vaccination status and breakthrough status in their estimates. When you control for breakthrough infections and reinfections you see that Omicron appears to be no less severe than Delta, than previous variants — which makes sense. But in some ways that’s not fair. If we’re going to think about how impactful the wave is, most infections will be in people that have some immunity. |
