Danderman123

Travelers tend to be vaccinated, so the few cases of mild symptoms from travelers represents limited data points that vaccination does mitigate Omicron symptoms.

I am so sorry you are tired of Covid, but, if left unconstrained, Covid may mutate into another form that is more infectious and nastier. BTW, Covid kills some 4 million per year now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59503517

It seems you would rather that Covid change the lives of the unvaccinated.

Somebody is filling up hospitals in South Africa, and I am sure it's not with mild cold like symptoms.

Same with plane crashes, assassination of world leaders, and other unexpected events. You think those are driven by conspiracies?

Real scientific sources on current hospital case loads? Well, I did check the South Africa Covid site, and they report that hospitals are filling up. Unclear on the severity of the cases.

If the new virus doesn’t cause symptoms in the unvaccinated, sure. But that is not likely.

I saw something about no tests or quarantine for vaccinated people, starting December 1. Can't find it now.

Fortunately, vaccines offer great protection against infection, at least, up to now.

If that were true, some other country would be flooded with Omicron patients. Possibly could be a country where they don't really pay attention to Covid.

Some news reports state that Omicron cases in South Africa are mild. Some news reports state that hospitals in South Africa are filling up with Omicron patients. so, what’s the real story?

your link is to a disinformation site. Your statement about Ivermectin working in Uttar Pradesh is junk. UP had so many Covid cases that they stopped reporting last May. Excess mortality data indicates mass casualties from Covid in Uttar Pradesh. No, Ivermectin Did Not Help Japan Bring Down Covid-19 Coronavirus Delta Surge

Let me be a bit optimistic for a moment. We have all forgotten the research showing that people with Neanderthal heritage have genes that are both helpful in fighting Covid, but also some genes that are not helpful. The two most important points here is that Neanderthal genetic heritage impacts response to Covid infection, and, most importantly, people in South Africa mostly have zero Neanderthal heritage. So..... The virus mutated in people lacking Neanderthal DNA. That could mean that the hospitalization data in South Africa may not be relevant outside Sub-Saharan Africa.

A sample size of four is pretty worthless.

Deaths and new cases are spiking up in South Africa, 21 and 4,000+ respectively. If Moderna is not so effective against Omicron, perhaps mixing vaccines might be a better approach.

I am trying to be an optimist here, and I don't see fatality data that worries me - yet.

If there continues to be a reservoir of unvaccinated people, the virus will continue to mutate, and eventually it will discover more efficient means of spreading itself. That could mean becoming more benign, or becoming the variant that is tailored to kill you. You really don't want to give the virus the opportunity to evolve into a more efficient killing machine, so please get vaccinated.

If I had to guess, one month of panic, before everything returns to the status quo of November 20.

Another day passes with South Africa having low case numbers and deaths, compared with the Beta and Delta waves.

Yes. But this variant has presumably been around for more than 2 weeks, and we are seeing 6 Covid deaths today. All we know for sure is that the virus has a lot of mutations, but we don’t know anything about what those mutations do. The data doesn’t support that the mutations make the virus more lethal, at this point in time.

There is an uptick in new cases, but deaths are still low, which was not the case for Delta.

I am looking at the Worldometer data for South Africa, and I don’t see a big uptick in Covid deaths. Presumably, this variant has been around for more than 2 weeks, so if it is a more lethal virus, it’s not obvious from the available data. Or maybe South Africa Covid data is ratty. New cases today are 10% of those during the top of the Delta wave.

Of course, if this turns out to be a minor variant, the usual suspects will post that it’s all a scam, Fauci lied, it’s all just to control people, etc.

Do you have better data?