Experts are saying that America could see 140 million new cases of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus in the next two months. USA Today. The experts say that between January 1st and March 1st we could see 140 million cases with the peak happening sometime in January with 2.8 million cases a day. Up to 60% of Americans could contract the disease. There is good news as up to 90% of those cases could be asymptomatic, compared with 40% under the Delta variant. The Omicron variant also appears to be dramatically weaker than Delta and the original strains of Coronavirus. Hospitalizations are expected to be 90 to 96% less compared to Delta and deaths will be 97 to 99% as well. That translates to a variant that will be less serious than influenza.
My Comment:
They really buried the lede in this article. Though a ton of people might catch the Omicron variant the vast majority of them won't even know they are sick, let alone have to go to the hospital for it. There should be practically zero deaths as well. Indeed, I haven't heard of anyone that has been confirmed to have died from Omicron at all, though I wouldn't be entirely surprised that some people could die from it.
Indeed, it sure seems like this variant of the virus is the best thing that has happened in the pandemic so far. You can get the virus, recover and now have antibodies for the more dangerous strains. With it spreading so fast it is already outcompeting the Delta variant, which will probably join the original and Alpha strains in the extinction bin.
This was, of course, expected. Many people believe that the Russian Flu was also a Coronavirus pandemic and the virus is still around. You probably know it as the common cold. This is common behavior for viruses. Deadly viruses kill too fast to infect a lot of people but viruses that spread easy and allow people to continue normal activities spread like wildfire. That means those viruses outcompete more deadly versions of the disease. All the evidence shows that this is what has happened to the SARS-COV-2 virus. It's now basically somewhere between a common cold and the flu in seriousness.
What is frustrating is that Omicron seems like an obvious off-ramp for pandemic restrictions and I have no trust that our "leadership" is willing to take it. Indeed, they seem to be doubling down on all the nonsense that has utterly failed to stop the pandemic so far.
Indeed, it seems like previous methods of stopping the virus will be even less effective in stopping Omicron. The vaccines are not formulated to stop it and even booster won't stop you from catching the virus. Masks won't help much due misuse and how easily Omicron spread. And lockdowns? All that will do is crash the economy. None of these methods will do much in stopping the virus from spreading.
What is really crazy is that once Omicron is everywhere the only way that people will tell that the virus is around is because the massive testing campaign going on. People are getting random tests at work and popping up hot even though they are not feeling sick. Other people will have mild colds and get tested. But most people won't even know they are sick and the few people will get ill will likely survive. I have been saying for months now that it hasn't felt like a pandemic, but the next few months when Omicron is everywhere? I am guessing other than media coverage it will be impossible to detect.
No comments:
Post a Comment