Quote (Handcuffs @ Jan 9 2022 07:54pm)
Certainly more deadly than the common cold, and relatively more deadly than the average flu. Although, Covid is interesting in that it can't really be compared 1:1 in terms infection -> death, because there's also the additional challenge that when Covid pushes hospitals at or beyond capacity it results in collateral deaths.
Edit: Your post was about Omricon specifically, but my response is about Covid at-large.
Yeah, that's the point, Omicron not Covid.
We know previous variants were something like 5x deadlier than the seasonal flu
Current data indicates Omicron may be less deadly than the seasonal cold, on a per-case basis at least.
We don't have hard numbers on how fast colds spread, not like the testing for covid, but its hard to imagine most colds being as incredibly infectious as omicron has been in NYC- and yet no apparent uptick in deaths. If anything, deaths in the hardest hit omicron areas are
down. Which is to be expected in the aftermath of the deadly phase of covid passing, since death rates would drop below normal in the next few years since covid is almost entirely killing people already close to death, leaving a more healthy population on average. But even if omicron was only as deadly as the common cold, or the common cold spread as fast as omicron is now, we'd expect
more deaths. The common cold isn't non-lethal after all, it can kill the severely immunocompromised or elderly. And the deaths 'with omicron' being reported right now- causality not easy to quantify- are over 75% people with
at least four comorbidities. It, the most close to death people possible, which indicates omicron may have nothing to do with them dying
So how deadly is Omicron, actually?