3 ms·

Hospitalization and death lags infection by quite a while.

• ajross 5y ago
  Death rate peaks happen about three weeks after case load peaks. This has been very consistent through the pandemic (at least everywhere that has good test reporting), you can play with graphs at https://91-divoc.com/ https://91-divoc.com/ or elsewhere to see the effect. Certainly if omicron had the same behavior as previous variants, we'd know by now. Continued worries aren't about severity lag, but about whether or not there's something else different about omicron. It's worth being safe and cautious. But nonetheless the best evidence we have says that this is probably a very safe variant and a near-best-case outcome (i.e. everyone gets sick rapidly and we reach herd immunity rapidly with minimal severe cases, vs. everyone "eventually" getting delta with much worse outcomes).
  • astrange 5y ago
    Well "herd immunity" isn't really possible for respiratory diseases because our immunity wanes too fast. If we had "herd immunity" against cold/flu you wouldn't get it every year.
    • ajross 5y ago
      That's not correct. In fact we don't get influenza[1] every year, and the reason is most of us have had (or been immunized to, or both) most or all of the variants at some point in the past. Flu variants aren't pandemics, they're just endemic diseases. "Herd immunity" isn't a synonym for eradication. It just means that we reach a stage where disease spread is effectively controlled by existing immune systems and most outbreaks remain limited and local. [1] We do get colds, which are any of a zillion different endemic diseases all subject to the same math.
• astrange 5y ago
  You can look at the South Africa data which is "quite a while" old. NYC and SF data is already more than good enough to draw conclusions from though.