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Comment by BrazzVuvuzela | Hacker News Reader

Omnicron is a blessing in disguise; the unvaccinated get it, more likely than not don't get hospitalized, but develop an immune response to it regardless. In other words, it effectively vaccinates the unvaccinated. I say let 'er rip, then let's all get on with our lives.

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There's not convincing data that this is any better for vaccinated people than Delta.

They're just more likely to get it.

In neither case were vaccinated people highly likely to get hospitalized, ventilated, or die.

In no world should we be celebrating people getting sick. Omicron is resistant to previous infection. It will likely mutate into something resistant to previous infection to itself.

It's good vaccinated people aren't dying. We still shouldn't cheerlead them getting Covid.

I'm not cheer-leading vaccinated people getting it, I'm cheer-leading unvaccinated people getting it, conditional on it not being bad enough to hospitalize them.

Just look at new cases and deaths in South Africa and compare to the previous waves. Seems pretty convincing to me.

We shouldn’t be celebrating people getting sick, we shouldn’t be obsessed about it and put our lives on hold for it either.

Do you have good data for the claim, that unvaccinated people without a prior infection of corona have a significantly lower risk of hospitalization with omicron than with delta? The last I have heard is that data from South Africa has to be taken with precaution, because there are high rates of prior infections.

Do you have 'good data' that I should be afraid? I'm through with fear of the unknown and everything I've heard about Omnicron, including the outbreak this article talks about, suggests that I'm right about it.

No I don’t, but it’s not unlikely that omicrons risks for the individual could be similar to previous strains. Then there’s also high transmissibility. When following the precautionary principle we shouldn’t act expecting the best but the worst.

That would be the least bad outcome given an already miserable pandemic. How omicron pans out in reality will depend on the balance between increased rate of spread and decreased severity. Hospitals could still be overwhelmed if the balance tips in the wrong direction.

Hospital system collapse is the most pessimistic outcome. Hospitals have spent the past two years not bulking up their personnel and infrastructure, so I don't think even the medical industry earnestly considers that a serious threat. The most realistic worse case scenario is the unvaccinated get triaged out of the hospital system.

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