[algo646464]

I don't think that it is misleading. The severity of a disease is relative to the current situation.

For example, it could be the case that Omicron is actually less infectious than the original variant, when compared in the setting of 2020. It spreads faster today because, (i) because of preexisting immunity most cases are very mild, and so lots of people become unwitting carriers, (ii) people have gone back to normal behavior after vaccination, and (iii) the vaccines inhibit the other variants much more than Omnicron. So Omicron gets more opportunities to infect and spread. Of course, all this is just conjecture and could be true or false.

What matters from a practical point of view is that, Omnicron is less severe in the general population today(for various reasons), as compared to the original strain back in 2020.

[croes]

It is misleading if you compare a country with 80% infection rate with countries with much fewer infections. If the milder cases are because of previous infections it could be a hard hit for unvaccinated first timers.

[gruez]

> I don't think that it is misleading. The severity of a disease is relative to the current situation.

I think it is misleading. AIDS is much more survivable in "the current situation" because of various drug advances we made in the past few decades. Does that mean 2021 AIDS is "less severe" than 90s AIDS? I guess you could claim it's technically less severe, but the wording definitely suggests it's something about the virus, rather than the environment.

[themgt]

So if we had:

* variant "D" that kills 1% of the 20% of the population that isn't seropositive

* variant "O" that kills 1% of the 20% of the population that isn't seropositive and 0.2% of the 80% of the population that is seropositive

The takeaway is "good news everyone, variant O is less severe!"