magz wrote:
According to its discoverer, Omicron infections tend to be mild, common-cold-like.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sa ... 021-11-28/If this turns out to be a milder strain that would not be surprising. New variants have gotten incorrectly conflated as more severe strains. The COVID variants up until now have not been more severe they have been more transmissible. A main argument for vaccination has been an avoidable new variant would emerge that would evade the vaccine. That is still possible but the opposite is also possible and might be happening with Omicron. This does not negate the pro vaccine argument because more avoidable severe mutations are plausible. Also with more transmissibility comes more severe COVID cases even without the variant being more severe as we have seen.
Might is they key word, the data is very preliminary. If the discover doctor is seeing mostly people under 40 of course their cases will generally be mild this has been true through the whole pandemic.
If Omicron is as mild as suggested and large gatherings continue not to be superspreader events through the holiday season and you do not have any risk factors and especially if you are fully vaccinated it is probably ok to live your pre pandemic life. There are a couple of caveats. If you are at high risk you should probably take more severe migration measures because everybody else is not mask wearing and social distancing anymore. Also the risk of Long COVID is uncertain. Although the preliminary data on vaccinated people is encouraging very disabling Long COVID following mild COVID has not been uncommon. That uncertainty would need to weighed against the near certainty of further economic, societal, and psychological damage of continuing mitigation measures.
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Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 29 Nov 2021, 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.