Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started to notice twinges of a feeling to which I have become unaccustomed. At first I thought it was indigestion, but I’m beginning to think it is actually cautious optimism. That’s because the recent Omicron surge underscored how well our COVID-19 vaccines are working.
Omicron was first documented in Botswana and South Africa in late November, 2021, and rapidly spread around the world. Yet something was different this time around. Compared with the Delta variant, Omicron infection resulted in notably lower hospitalization and death rates in South Africa and elsewhere.
There has been a rush to declare Omicron “milder” than Delta, and before we spend any time thinking about whether it is, we should remember that this “mild” virus was responsible for more than 15,000 deaths in the U.S. over the last week alone. And a virus this transmissible does collateral damage by infecting healthcare workers who must then isolate.
Having said that, at the peak of Omicron, the U.S. reported about ten times more daily infections than were recorded in the middle of November when Delta was the only variant in town. The Omicron peak however resulted in about twice as many deaths as we saw in the middle of November. It should be clear that were we seeing this many infections with Delta, things would be much, much worse than they are.
Read more at TIME.