Friday is another day of very mixed messages on omicron. Some hopeful results out of South Africa show the number of daily cases taking a slight drop in the Gauteng district where the variant first became dominant. There has also been a decline in patients under critical care in that region. At the same time, the rate of deaths in South Africa has remained almost flat throughout the omicron spike so far. The result has been a great tendency to declare that omicron is, in fact, milder than delta or previous variants.  In fact, the health minister for South Africa hosted a presentation on Friday morning in which data was produced indicating that rate of deaths from omicron was about 33% lower that what was seen with delta. That’s not “like a cold.” It is, in fact, still many times worse than the flu. But it is better than delta. However, the case for “milder omicron” is far from clear. In fact, a new report from Imperial College, London, indicates that the percentage of people who show symptomatic illness after being infected with omicron is almost identical to the rate of those who get sick with delta. Taking it one step further, the rate of those who need hospitalization after becoming ill, is also nearly the same as seen in delta variant infections. The Imperial College evidence so far shows that there are “at most limited changes in severity compared with Delta.” And there’s another factor. One that says that, even if omicron is as relatively mild as the South Africa data suggests, it’s still likely to bring on a much larger wave of deaths and long-term illness. Read more