The Omicron variant

Lol. I’m quite aware of that. Just like you need to come to terms that not everyone in hospital is there because of Covid.

Where are the UK/England figures that has 70% of those in hospital testing positive while in for some other treatment and 30% actually admitted due to covid?

The number of positive ventilated patients wouldn't suggest it's that high.

This is the thing about exponentials - they can make highly intelligent people look silly.

In the third tweet on that thread he says "In all, I tallied no more than four suspected covid pneumonias. At the worst of the Delta wave, I could tally as many as 60 a shift".

He's talking like Canada are nearing the worst point of the omicron wave because they've surpassed their previous daily records by quite a distance. What he doesn't seem to realise is that it's going to get much worse. Denmark have roughly five times the case count that Canada does (per capita), because it took off earlier there.

I don't know where it's going to end, but it's just getting started for that poor fella.

Yes, talk of Omicron being "mild" seems mainly to apply to those who have been doubly or trebly vaccinated.

You definitely wouldn't want to be catching this if you had no vaccine at all (ditto with Delta).

Yes that's what I'm reading into it also, especially if one has underling issues health wise, unfortunately with the case numbers yesterday and today this godamn virus is going no where

The Canadian doctor being quoted above says the risk of contracting severe pneumonia from Omicron is much higher in any unvaccinated person (and this is a guy who believes in a 'best case' scenario re. the variant). This also makes a nonsense of the 'it's just another form of mild cold' claims. How would large numbers of people who have had three dedicated vaccines in the space of six months be still getting sick and becoming symptomatic from something as harmless as a 'mild cold'?

SA population was something like 70% seropositive with strong recent immunity due to the Delta wave that immediately preceded Omicron.

That plus age structure of population was why there was doubt over how well the SA experience would translate to Europe.

On second thoughts, I'm not sure my analysis holds up.

Looking at it from a different angle: if nobody was hospitalised from COVID, how many people in hospital would have COVID, if the incidence was the same as in the general population?

If we have 14,500 beds and 90% occupancy, that's 13k patients in hospital. Taking a community incidence of 2%, that's about 260 people in hospital with COVID but not from COVID.

Yesterday we had 426 COVID positives in hospital.

So the incidentals ought to be significant, and particularly might contribute a large proportion of the rise in COVID patients when community incidence rises.

Source of bed stats:

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2021/1123/1262560-covid-19-ireland-hospitals-icu-capacity/

Only one thing with that though ...

If the incidence rate is 2% right now, then yes, we’d expect 1 in 50 to show up in hospital with Covid. But those 13k in hospital would have shown up there at various times over the past weeks/month, etc. So there maybe needs to be some time average over that the incidence over the last month to get a better idea.

but ...

the hospital being an indoor space with close contact, etc, there may be a risk of outbreaks which would increase the amount of people “with Covid” beyond the incidence of the general population.

Anyway, I’d say we’ll see a rise in hospital cases soon, at least initially from people “with Covid” as opposed to from, but then maybe some from as well depending on what the actual risk of hospitalisation from omicron is.

Some people can't handle positive news anymore,it's sad really.You question a doctor's view who is in the middle of it in a hospital currently and has been through out it by the sounds of it,but you know better obviously. I'm sure if it was bad news from that doctor you would be all over it.

The vast majority have mild symptoms from all strains even if unvaccinated. People lost sense of the individual risk long ago.

You've know idea weather it what variant it was that they caught.