[bipson]

All this talk about "mild" cases with Omicron are failing to grasp the whole situation at two very important corners:

- countries affected so far have excellent immunization rates, i.e. if I take these populations as a reference, I'm just checking how immunized people are affected. Not every country has had either a lot of cases or large/successful immunization programs

- if the transmission rate in South Afrika and GB is any indication (reminder, both have quite good immunization rates), there will still be enough severe cases, because there will be just an unbelievable amount of overall cases in a very short timeframe and even with Omicron and a well immunized population, some remaining x% will land in the hospital.

I would argue that at the rate Omicron currently growing in GB, NL, DK, NO, etc. this thing will go on a rampage all over Europe. The amount of spread virus is so much not comparable to Delta getting to populations that were so far better protected, i.e. child care, elderly care, etc.

Countries like Germany and Austria are seriously in for a ride. Yes, I'm quite pessimistic here and I really hope I am wrong.

[makomk]

Yeah, Omicron is is still potentially a huge threat to countries which both have low vaccine uptake amongst the most at risk and avoided people being infected by previous variants. I think that might only apply to Germany, Austria and China at this point though - almost everywhere on the planet had widespread infection in past waves, and the exceptions generally have high vaccination rates by now.

[bipson]

No country on earth has vaccinated children under 5.

SA allegedly has had a huge amount of hospitalized children under 10 in the past weeks.

This alone can cause havoc. And suffering for the affected (incl. health workers and parents).

[jtc331]

South Africa has extremely low vaccination rates, correct?

Edit: Yes, your premise seems to be quite wrong. South Africa has only 26% vaccination rate.

[funcDropShadow]

But South Africa has a lot of previously infected people with some degeree of natural immunization.

[jtc331]

Sure, but so does America and the UK and so on.

[bipson]

Incidence in UK over the last 12 months is not comparable to large parts of Europe.

Quite astonishing how you just "confirmed" how my premise is wrong without reading what I wrote in the first place

[MontyCarloHall]

Hospitalizations [0], and perhaps even cases [1,2], appear to have peaked in South Africa.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/s-africa-...

[1] https://twitter.com/pieterstreicher/status/14718990936853954...

[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2021/12/the-south-africa...

[bipson]

And this means... ?

[MontyCarloHall]

It means that if (big ifs!) (a) the South African peak is truly a peak and (b) vaccine-acquired immunity staves off severe illness to the same extent that infection-acquired immunity does[*], Europe is not in for “quite a ride.” As in South Africa, cases will briefly peak at a very high level, but without a corresponding high level of hospitalizations or deaths.

[*] while only ~30% of SA’s population has been vaccinated, some estimate an additional 40% of the population have been infected, for an overall immunity rate of ~70%, which is comparable to the vaccination rate in the US/Europe.

[pfg]

The likely higher transmissibility in combination with a generally more elderly population and vaccination gaps among older individuals in some European countries (e.g. Germany) could still spell trouble.

[bipson]

And experts are pretty sure by now that it will.

Also NL, DK and the London area are already putting drastic measures up. They are not doing this just for fun.

[Jansen312]

It is already 2 weeks for "Omicron" hogging the news. If it is as deadly as Delta, by now you should have heard a lot of death and not "number of infected". Even if there is a delay in death due to better care, hospitals in SA should have full of patients in ICU rooms with pictures showing rows and rows of patients on ventilations. Even if you use the arguments lots of them are vaccinated, there are stil many not vaccinated especially outside of 1st world categories. SA isn't exactly at western EU level. I think this isn't as severe as most healthcare professional have expected. I would speculate this would be nature's way to confer us with some immunity.

[impendingchange]

0 out of 79 cases requiring hospitalization? If we assumed a _generous_ vaccination rate of, say, 80% for SA or GB, then we could say that 16 of these cases are with unvaccinated individuals. So, 0 out of 16 is still pretty good for no hospitalizations.

Or am I figuring this wrong?

[bipson]

Infection also leads to immunization.

Both GB and SA had considerably higher incidence numbers over the last 12 months than most of the EU, with GB running a very successful vaccination program.

Particularly in SA researches estimate that almost anyone has had one or more infections in the last 24 months.

[greatpatton]

96% of the participants were fully vaccinated.

[rurban]

> well immunized population, some remaining x% will land in the hospital.

Compare that to that 8% fatality rate for the common cold amongst the vulnerables. Here we have 1.4% so far. It's a a ride, yes, but this ride looks good. We have such rides every single year.