Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

Note that I did not say Omicron isn't spreading faster than other variants. I said I doubt it has anything to do with the inherent characteristics of the variant, because I have not seen any evidence to that effect. Transmissibility studies are very difficult to perform on lab animals, where researchers can control all the variables. They are impossible to perform on people. Comparisons to other variants have differences like weather, population immunity, people's behavior changes over time, the fact that the most susceptible people died from infection by earlier variants, etc.

Omicron less virulent? It turns out 50% of the population in South Africa has some immunity because of previous infection with SARS-COV2. 40% of them are vaccinated. How do those sets overlap? Don't know, so the percentage with some immunity could be anywhere from 50% to 90%. That's going to make infection with a new variant, that has some antibody evasion, seem mild. But antibodies are not the only arm of the immune system. Don't forget, most of those people who recovered or had asymptomatic cases, before the vaccines, did so before they started to make ANY antibodies!