[throwaway55421]

Moving from 100% infected to 100% infected is not a reduction.

At some point, there is no realistic difference between R=10 and R=7. Everyone is getting this. Some of us have known that since March 2020.

If your theory includes "avoid being infected with coronavirus" and you live in a democratic country it is a flawed theory. Only full home isolation or hazmat suit rituals will suffice.

[jquery]

Overwhelmed ICUs and hospitals beg to differ that reducing transmission rate is useless. Reducing virulence is absolutely worthwhile even if eventually everyone will get infected at some point.

[throwaway55421]

In fact the opposite is true. If everyone gets coronavirus in a two week period, ICU is less overwhelmed for the rest of the year. A lot of susceptible people die, of course.

If you attempt to spread it out and succeed, you're at 100% capacity basically all of the time, plus 99% of people get to deal with the fact that coronavirus restrictions are utterly miserable.

Omicron has probably made all of this irrelevant anyway, it's so contagious that effectively everyone who goes outside is getting it this month. 1 in 15 in London right now and that's only the confirmed cases I believe.

[scrollaway]

I'm vaccinated and effectively boosted. I've been going out tons and not being careful at all. I kissed my girlfriend recently who had as it turns out Omicron at the time. I have yet to catch it.

"Everyone" is a significant stretch. Yeah its seriously contagious but you, an engineer, should know better than deal with such absolutes. Viruses burn out long before they infect everyone, even without vaccines and even if they're extremely contagious.

[lordloki]

You might want to knock on some wood.

[throwaway55421]

Let me know next month, I guess.

[scrollaway]

Happily. And i fully realize that i obviously am not immune to this and could catch it at any point. My point was that just because it's highly transmissible doesn't guarantee transmission.

[throwaway55421]

Well sure. I apologize for using the word "everyone", I'm using it as a colloquialism.

We're not far off 1 in 5 _confirmed_ in the UK and most of that was pre Omicron.

Based on the experience of my friendship group I believe that huge numbers of people have probably had it and not even noticed. I finally had a positive test and it was indistinguishable from the other 30 times I've woken up a bit tired in the morning over the past two years.

You have to remember that a lot of people aren't tuned in to the "omg test every time you move" stuff.