If Omicron turns out to have better health outcomes than Delta, even with the increased transmissibility, will we see countries welcoming Omicron-infected travelers so that it might spread and out-compete Delta?
Omicron is coming either way.
Omicron is coming either way.
> If Omicron turns out to have better health outcomes than Delta, even with the increased transmissibility
Requiring hospitalization but 10X higher probability compared to delta for surviving hospitalization can be described as "to have better health outcomes than Delta". But if transmissibility is higher it can still overwhelm the hospital infrastructure and cause more deaths by making beds a scarce commodity not only for those affected by covid but also others who need a hospitalization bed.
Note that a multiplicative factor reduction in the probability of surviving, becomes just a time shift during exponential growth phase of the spread. With a doubling rate of 2 days, a 1/16 factor is a delay of 8 days. It shifts the curve, does not flatten it, at least not at the off-peak regime.
That implies there are tens of million dead bodies already but there aren't. There are maybe a few millions at most. From which only a part it accrual excess death and from that only a part is excess death that actually reduced average age below life expectancy by a signification margin i.e. shortened the life by several month. If the virus would go away now we should see less death in the coming years which further diminishes the actual effect.
Just to put in in perspective there may be 5 million COVID associated deaths in a time frame (~2 years) where 120 million death are expected And 280 million new people are expect to have been born (unclear if COVID has a positive or negative effect on this number). Needless to say COVID does not even make a dent in the growth of the global population. It may slow growth down by like 1-2% that means 2 years of COVID made the global population lag behind is a few days compared to no COVID.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
Either way smoking has killed more people each year for many years now than COVID + all pandemic related excess death in one year together. That should give a context of how minuscule it is on a global scale. Like we are still an order of magnitudes away from making the global population stop growing.
If you know a person who died due to COVID and everyone you know also know a person who died due to COVID then everyone subjectively things many many people died but most people know 100+ people and every person who dies was know by many people so in reality only a fraction of a percent of all people would need to die for this to be statically true.
What gives? Many countries have >80% vaccination rate (doubled vaccinated). Actually, where are we expecting these dead bodies to be, and why? If we answer that, maybe we can solve it.
Basically a wide tree of infections vs. a deep one.
But this is only true if you expect both A and B to reach everyone eventually. Currently we expect that a lot people never had any variant and therefore no mutation could happen in these people. But if they get it all eventually then it just delays mutation.
Why not let it come, especially if your country has high vaccination rates, so it spreads rather than the delta variant.
Or do what I do shrug and assume some vaccinated person will have almost no symptoms and they will spread it to the unvaccinated like me, and then I’ll either get a cold or die.
At least us unvaccinated are more likely to know we have the sickness and will stay home. All these vaccinated folk probably have it and are just spreading it because the vaccine protects them from symptoms.
Lol - I’m probably not going to be able to sell the story that the vaccinated are the dirty ones huh?