Is Omicron Mild?

The Case of South Africa

Shortly after its discovery, the Omicron variant was hailed by many as being milder than Delta. An early study of cases in City of Tshwane in South Africa found a “rapid rise and decline of admissions and decreased severity of COVID-19 disease.” The study also found “a lower mortality rate from Omicron compared to previous waves.”

The study found a number of potential mitigating factors, including the significantly lower number of hospitalizations. Age was also possible factor, as the mean for Omicron patients was 39 vs. 49 for earlier waves.

Additionally, roughly 2/3 of the people in the City of Tshwane are believed to have hybrid immunity, which is “immunity from prior infection and vaccine induced immunity.” The studies authors claimed that this was “another plausible cause for the lower number of admissions and decreased severity is a decrease in pathogenicity of the highly mutated Omicron variant,” before noting that more research is required to validate or disprove this theory.

The sharp rise and fall of cases in South Africa, paired with the early reports of reduced severity, have given many hope, but it’s not enough information to tell us how dangerous Omicron might be.

The UK Experience

The United Kingdom might also give us hints as it was one of the early nations to receive a sharp uptick in Omicron cases.

Many have noted a ‘decoupling’ in the UK data between cases and deaths since the summer when Delta took off.

With Omicron taking hold in mid-December, the number of daily new confirmed cases in the UK has roughly doubled off an already elevated number.

And while the UK ranged between roughly 700-1050 new hospital admissions per day from mid-July to mid-December, new hospitalizations jumped from just under 900 to over 1400 between December 18 and December 27.

Given the time of year, this data hasn’t been updated since the 27th, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. (The hospital admission rate has remained elevated for months since Boris Johnson’s July 19 “Freedom Day.”)

Update: A UK study looked at 528,176 Omicron cases and 573,012 Delta cases and found an 81% reduction in the likelihood of hospitalization for people who had received booster shots. That’s surely great news for those who have received them, but fewer than 7% of humanity has received a booster shot and around 40% hasn’t had a dose yet.

And while cases and hospitalizations in the UK have jumped, deaths fortunately have not.

It’s also worth noting that the UK has relatively high vaccination rates (for those 12 or over):

• 90.1% have had at least one dose

• 82.5% have had a second dose

• 59.5% have received boosters

So What?

At this point, I’m not making any claims beyond the fact that we don’t yet know how severe Omicron is compared to its predecessors, and that the circumstances will likely have a hand in the outcomes.

For now, I’ll be watching the UK’s cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and I’ll also be watching what happens in places that have significantly lower vaccination rates.

Here are a few questions I’m thinking about.

• Will Omicron prove mild enough to offer broad decoupling similar to what the UK experienced with the pairing of Delta and high vacccination rates?

• Will the sheer volume of cases still overwhelm medical systems?

• What will Omicron do to our ability to deliver necessities like food to our communities if large portions of the workforce are unable to work?

• Will shortened quarantine times fuel greater caseloads?

I hope Omicron is so mild as to have little impact on society. For now, I’m far from convinced that that’s the case.

I’m thoroughly convinced that the US government is doing far too little to help mitigate transmission and help people get through the current wave. If you disagree, maybe the fact that we reported 1 million new cases yesterday will change your mind. The previous record one day record for any nation was 591,000. That was set last Thursday. One study from the UK estimated that “between 7% and 18% of people who had COVID-19 went on to develop some symptoms of long COVID that lingered for at least 5 weeks.” 7% of the 1.6 million people from the two recent peak days in the US would be over one hundred thousand people experiencing some form of long covid.

Globally, we have had nearly 300 million confirmed cases (That’s 21 million long covid cases at the low end estimate), and nearly 5.5 million deaths. Both of these figures are likely significantly undercounted.

Let’s hope Omicron is incredibly mild. Even so, it wouldn’t excuse our government’s inaction.

Additional posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• Capitalism Can't End the Pandemic

• IP Over Humanity

• It's Time to Suppress the Economy to Eliminate COVID-19

• The Variants Are Coming

• Omicron is Upon Us

• Quit Acting Like the Pandemic is Almost Over