Does omicron have 80% lower risk of hospitalization?

Will rapidly increase community immune response for future variants.

“So even though cases of omicron were less likely to end up in hospital than cases of delta, it is not possible to say whether this is due to inherent differences in virulence or whether this is due to higher population immunity in November compared to earlier in the year,” Hunter said.

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Population in South Africa is younger than average for EU, USA.

Most people in South Africa had a previous variant of the virus, thus giving them some immunity to severe illness.

It is POSSIBLE that Omicron is less virulent than Delta... but unknown yet for those not exposed and not vaccinated (and boosted).

it was always the cost in lives that made the proposal by Trump's quack Scott Atlas such a callous and dangerous proposal.

South Africa has paid that cost already. It wasn't as steep a price to pay as the USA because they have a younger population.

We still have 60 Million people without vaccines. Most of them have not had any exposure to SARS-Cov-2.

IF Omicron is as virulent as Delta in an unvaccinated and not previously exposed population... that is another 600,000 dead. Probably more because remember those infection curves they talked about way back in March of 2020 and how we wanted to "flatten the curve" to give hospitals and health care worker a chance to save the infected? Well.. Omicron is going to happen all at once... likely over in 4 to 6 weeks time... and the hospitals, which are filling up now, will simply be out of beds early into this very fast and very tall wave.

We will hope that Omicron is less virulent.

...and a stunningly high percentage of people who are immuno-compromised. So they have some positives and some negatives.

and, as you say, a higher number of immuno-compromised.

We will hold our breath and see.

I, for one, am getting my booster today and planning another self imposed lock down for the next few weeks.

The vast majority were asymptomatic, and none were suffering from severe disease. No hospitalizations at all as of last week, though I was told I should wait, since lagging indicator, etc. Any updates there?