We Know a Lot More About Omicron Now

theatlantic.com

5 pointspavelmark3 comments

Why do journalists feel so comfortable extrapolating from an entirely different country which has wildly different demographics, exposure characterists and past wave impacts. What I'm saying is:

1) Suppose a disease came by and wiped out all the main at risk people.

2) Now the disease comes back round with mutations but mostly the same at risk demographics.

At step 2 you would no longer be able to extrapolate from this country which has no data on at-risk people at step 2 because they are all dead.

Are we sure if Omicron was the original strain, it would be considered milder?

And perhaps more obviously, any prior immune learning from the previous wave that transfers.

In South Africa the huge bias towards the young of Omicron infections over their Delta wave seems like it could explain much of the mildness. Why it is hitting the young the most is another question.

Twitter might ban me, but Africa fares well against Covid because the population is young on average.

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