The first U.S. case of the omicron variant has been reported
npr.org
npr.org
Anyway this same technique is used in military, for example to measure distance from point A to point B somewhere far. People will take guesses and average will be used. It is effective and pragmatic. Obviously you should take it with a grain of salt. No one is claiming it is some sort of end all authority.
The commentor I replied to shouldn't be making statements that the new variant is less severe just because a bunch of people placed bets that it was.
Actually that would mean it's likely that this is one of the most likeliest outcomes.
Assuming betting payout is 1:1 with any point score - which technically would go to infinite, most people would probably vote for the result that was historically most frequent and no-one would vote for something like 1000 point margin for instance.
2. Odds are high that the variant has, or will, arrive shortly at other major US travel hubs: NYC, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, Miami, etc. Viruses are the ultimate jet-setters. Detection and monitoring will have to be in place.
3. It's very early to be drawing concrete solutions, but the case that omicron will prove more transmissible but less severe than earlier variants has some strong points. Clearly we need to see what data emerge on this.
4. Whilst parasitic diseases often evolve to lower overall severity with time, that evolution can take a long time, and there are some other unfortunate possibilities, including long-term, only partially-debilitating, though still often fatal (especially if untreated) forms. Tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS come to mind.
5. Evolution is not teleological. It doesn't have goals. There are, however, favoured forms.
What's been sound advice throughout the pandemic remains sound: get vaccinated if at all possible, boost if you've been vaccinated, minimise social contacts, mask up, and wash your hands. Encourage others to do likewise. See that your local and national institutions are well-supported, and that testing and monitoring are effective.
Globally, ensuring minimum levels of vaccination for the maximum number of people will likely help.
Another NPR story addresses why ensuring treatment access for HIV/AIDS and immunocompromised persons is critically important. This may have been the path through which the Omicron variant emerged.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/12/01/1055803...
https://www.etymonline.com/word/teleology
In the context of evolution, it refers to the fact that there is no specific end-result or intent to evolution, no goal toward which it is developing. Rather, there is variation, selection, and inheritance. Each generation of a species is subject to a selection mechanism which determines the progenitors of the next. Fitness functions are local in time.
Or put another way, though we might describe a parasite-host relations as "the parasite wants to evolve so that it coexists with rather than kills its host", the truth is that there's no such desire. There's only the evolutionary fact that parasites which do succeed too well in killing their hosts (before the parasite itself can reproduce or jump to a new host) will eventually kill itself. The evolutionary preference, that is, seletive mechanism, is for parasites that don't kill their hosts.
How strong that selective pressure is depends greatly on the parasite, host, availability of alternative hosts (diseases in high-density populations can afford, evolutionarily, to be far more severe than those in low-density populations), options for dormant states, and the various strengths and weaknesses of other strains within the species as well as other competing species. (E.g., SARS-COV-2 triggered behavioural responses among humans which greatly reduced prevalences of influenza and common cold infections.)
A corrolary to all this is that hosts and diseases co-evolve. This has been noted among humans and diseases affecting them, and in particular, the co-evolution of human civilisations and the diseases which emerge amongst them. Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome explores this relation with regards to the Roman empire (and its contemporary empires and cultures).