Early Data Hints at Omicron's Potential Toll Across America

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/09/us/omicron-cities-cases-hospitals.html

No paywall
https://archive.fo/Izs6T


The extremely transmissible Omicron variant is spreading quickly across the United States, making up a vast majority of U.S. cases after becoming dominant in the week before Christmas.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that it is still too soon to predict the full impact Omicron could have on deaths and illness across the country. But data in some of the earliest-hit cities is beginning to show what the future could hold.

Death trends are sharply up in these three cities but are not approaching last winter’s peaks quite as fast as increasing case rates. The chart below shows death rates shifted by three weeks to allow a clearer comparison of the peaks and dips in cases and deaths.

In New York City, Boston and Chicago — cities with some of the country’s earliest Omicron surges — deaths have followed cases at a slightly reduced scale than in previous peaks. But because of the extraordinarily high case count, even a proportionally lower death toll from the current case curve in the United States could be devastating.

In early-hit cities, hospitals are seeing more patients testing positive for Covid-19 than at any time last year. Because of the sheer infectiousness of the Omicron variant, many who arrive at the hospital for other ailments test positive for the coronavirus. Some doctors have also said that patients who do have Covid as a primary diagnosis are faring better than during previous waves.

*snip*

[JanMichael]

1. Don't worry Omicron is less severe. South Africa sez so. Nt

[underpants]

2. I know 5 people who've tested positive in the last week

They’d avoided COVID all these months but omicron got them. Mostly exhaustion.

[FirstLight]

5. same...I think I had it too

My son's GF family caught it right before Cmas, and my son had already exposed me before he found out. He stayed with them during Cmas, but I was definitely not well for about 4-5 days.


I just saw a funny meme on FB that said "Not having had Covid yet feels like being in a middle-school dodgeball game and managing to hide in the back, and now the front line is THINNING!"

[madville]

3. Interesting data here as far as breakthrough hospitalizations

They released a study from the Houston Methodist healthcare system a few days ago, of the 1,313 patients hospitalized with the Omicron variant, 51% of that total were previously “vaccinated” and considered breakthrough infections by the CDC definition.


Excerpt:
We next analyzed Omicron vaccine breakthrough cases (Table 1, Table 2). We found 675 of the 1313 total Omicron patients (51.4%) for whom we have whole genome sequence data met the CDC definition of vaccine breakthrough cases

Compared to either Alpha or Delta patients, a significantly greater percentage of patients with breakthrough cases was caused by the Omicron VOC (51.4% compared to 3.2% and 24.3% for Alpha and Delta VOCs, respectively)

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.30.21268560v2.full

[Ms. Toad]

4. My daughter was boosted less than 2 months ago -

an just got over omicron.

I believe I had it and gave it to her, despite my own negative antigen and PCR tests. My booster was back in September.