https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213
So basically, Omicron is "mild" i.e. you probably won't need extra oxygen to survive, only if you're been vaccinated, and/or previously infected. If your population is neither, i.e. both unvaccinated and COVID-naive, there will still be the kind of death rates that the EU and the US had in early 2020, and that Hong Kong is getting now among its elderly.
I just met a younger Hong Konger who left a couple of weeks ago, as Omicron was getting going. A lot of his family's older friends and relatives are sick. None has actually recovered yet, and some have already died.
This is not to forget that the countries that focused on crushing transmission in the first year of the pandemic until their populations were mostly vaccinated (eg, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, ROK etc etc) still managed to save vast numbers of lives.
So basically, Omicron is "mild" i.e. you probably won't need extra oxygen to survive, only if you're been vaccinated, and/or previously infected. If your population is neither, i.e. both unvaccinated and COVID-naive, there will still be the kind of death rates that the EU and the US had in early 2020, and that Hong Kong is getting now among its elderly.
I just met a younger Hong Konger who left a couple of weeks ago, as Omicron was getting going. A lot of his family's older friends and relatives are sick. None has actually recovered yet, and some have already died.
This is not to forget that the countries that focused on crushing transmission in the first year of the pandemic until their populations were mostly vaccinated (eg, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, ROK etc etc) still managed to save vast numbers of lives.