Omicron is spreading like crazy in the UK but, as was suggested early on, hospitalizations are very low. In fact many of the people don’t even know they have it.
Here’s a video from two days ago from Dr. John Campbell who explains how fast the variant is spreading in the UK and the effect it is having on the population.
In short, when the video was recorded, they were seeing 200k infections per day and he predicted by the end of the month it would be around 1 million. He also predicts that it’s spreading so fast that most people will get it.
If you are short on time, skip to the 5 minute mark where he begins laying out the facts:
The US, he notes, is about three to four weeks behind the UK and so in a month or so we’ll be seeing lots and lots of new cases here every day.
A couple of things to note from the video. Campbell says that hospitalizations in the UK lag behind infection and deaths by about two weeks. And he’s getting this data from their Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
As of two days ago, there were only 10 or so people confirmed hospitalized in England with Omicron. Campbell notes that is against the backdrop of around 50% of London being infected and around 30% of England itself. He also suggests that while these are low numbers, it is still early days and the number will likely increase.
Lastly, Campbell suggests based on their data that the majority of cases not symptomatic.
There’s more in the video so be sure and watch it.
But here are a few thoughts from Ben Shapiro who has also looked at the data and has drawn some conclusions:
1. Omicron is 70x as infectious as delta, which was twice as infectious as the original variant.
2. Omicron is resulting in 10x fewer hospitalizations than prior waves in S. Africa.
3. Conclusion A: Everyone will get Omicron. Get used to it.— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 17, 2021
4. Conclusion B: Your chances of dying are minimal, and much lower than if you had delta. Those chances are striated based on age.
5. Conclusion C: Overall number of deaths will be higher than right now solely because number of infections will be larger.— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 17, 2021
6. Conclusion D: Vaccine passports will not do anything, because vaccines are not preventing infection at a high enough rate.
7. Conclusion E: There is no data that masks short of KN-95s did anything about Delta, so they'll do even less against Omicron.— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 17, 2021
8. Conclusion F: You're going to have a tough time convincing people to get vaccinated because of Omicron. If they weren't afraid of delta, which is more deadly, they're highly unlikely to be persuaded by Omicron, which is far less deadly.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 17, 2021
9. Final conclusion: All the measures currently being suggested by the covid panic crowd are completely untethered from the realities of Omicron risk and infectiousness.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 17, 2021