Omicron is here. Millions are getting infected, both vaccinated and unvaccinated. The good news is the more contagious variant is milder. In fact, it’s much, MUCH milder. That’s a good thing. Obviously, no one wants to get sick, but if you do—it shouldn’t be too terrible, especially for those who have received the vaccine. Alas, this is the endgame regarding the narrative about the vaccine. You get the shot to prevent serious illness and death, but you can still get infected. Still, it’s no more of the risks we take every day with other airborne pathogens we face every winter. Live as you did with regards to the seasonal flu. That’s where we’re at, which I know has some liberal infuriated as they followed all the rules of Fauci the fraud but still got the virus. Well, this is probably what they should have told us instead of trying to make Joe Biden the guy who crushed COVID. Once again, the credibility of the experts got mud in its face. Yet, forget the elites for a second, here’s what we know about Omicron and hospitals.
First, the stays are much shorter, fewer people are being hospitalized, and deaths are modest, though the latter pertains to those who have been vaccinated. The New York Times crunched the numbers from a study of 70,000 patients in California:
A new study of nearly 70,000 Covid patients in California demonstrates that Omicron causes less severe disease than other coronavirus variants, results that align with similar findings from South Africa, Britain and Denmark, as well as a host of experiments on animals.
Compared with Delta, Omicron infections were half as likely to send people to the hospital. Out of more than 52,000 Omicron patients identified from electronic medical records of Kaiser Permanente of Southern California, a large health system, the researchers found that not a single patient went on a ventilator during that time.
“It’s truly a viral factor that accounts for reduced severity,” said Dr. Lewnard, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley who was an author of the study, which was posted online on Tuesday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal.
Despite the less severe virulence of Omicron, U.S. hospitals are buckling under an influx of coronavirus cases. Dr. Lewnard said that this was the result of the variant spreading like wildfire. On average, more than 730,000 people are testing positive every day in the United States, almost three times the previous peak last winter.
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Compared with Delta, Omicron cut the risk of hospitalization in half, the study found, and the people who came to the hospital with Omicron stayed for a shorter period. The variant cut hospital stays by more than three days, a reduction of 70 percent compared with Delta.
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Fourteen of the Delta-infected patients died, while only one Omicron patient did.
As scientists have gathered evidence that Omicron is less severe, they have struggled to understand why. One reason is that the people infected with Omicron have more immune defenses than in previous waves.
In other countries, researchers have found that earlier infections with other variants reduce the chances that people end up severely ill with Omicron. Vaccination also offers protection.
51% of reported hospitalizations are "incidental," but many will only see the headline. NJ had the highest death rate in spring 2020, and there are currently mass school closures. It's reckless for media to not make a more overt distinction when reporting these incendiary figures pic.twitter.com/1nLFZWVLPY
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 11, 2022
Hey @WSJ is this a responsible push notification when it’s being widely reported that as many as half of current hospitalizations are not caused by COVID pic.twitter.com/FNENqlNcgE
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 11, 2022
One caveat is death trends tend to lag case trends by about three weeks. In coming weeks, deaths among the vaccinated will almost certainly rise, given how sharply cases have risen. These deaths will likely be concentrated among people in vulnerable health.
— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) January 11, 2022
Vaccination remains highly effective at preventing severe Covid illnesses. And Omicron is milder than earlier versions of the virus. The combination means that most Americans — including children and vaccinated adults — face little personal risk from Omicron.
— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) January 11, 2022
NEW: Study on severity of those infected with the #OmicronVariant compared to the #DeltaVariant:
— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) January 12, 2022
??53% less risk of symptomatic hospitalization
??74% less risk of ICU admission
??91% less risk of death
0?Omicron patients required mechanical ventilation
https://t.co/to2swFYF5Q pic.twitter.com/LZYf0t3CGY
These are all good things, so keep these figures in mind because the 'hospitals are being overrun’ narrative is starting to creep back from the dead. It’s not happening. It’s never happened. Yes, in three weeks’ time, when the numbers are updated again, we’re going to see an uptick in hospitalizations and deaths from this wave, but don’t freak out. You know well in advance before the media’s panic porn frenzy begins. Omicron probably won’t peak until mid-February so be mindful, safe, but also live your life. COVID is here to stay. It’s endemic. Everyone is going to get it. Some might not get it soon, but over the course of our lives, like the common cold, we will all get COVID probably multiple times before we die.
Also, we must contend that when Omicron arrived, we were still in the last throes of the Delta wave which is deadlier.
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